Question: Have you ever lost any students altogether?
Sri Chinmoy: Some people have left our Centre. But people who have accepted me wholeheartedly once will never be and can never be rejected by me. They are like my children. A child may become naughty, delinquent, but the parents have to claim him as their own. Children may disown their parents and have nothing to do with them, but good parents can’t and won’t do that. They will claim their children no matter how bad the children are. These are my spiritual children. Outwardly they may go, but inwardly, in my spiritual heart, they have to remain because the Supreme in me has commanded me to take care of their lives, and inwardly I am asked by the Inner Pilot to remain responsible for them.
Sri Chinmoy, AUM — Vol. 2, No. 9, 27 September 1975, Vishma Press, 1975