Question: If God is everywhere, what is the purpose of evolution?

Sri Chinmoy: God is present in the mineral kingdom, in plants, in animals, in everything. God is omnipresent. God is also in the process of evolution. From the world of Silence the transcendental Spirit descended into the mineral kingdom which He created. When the Spirit descends, we call it involution and when the Spirit evolves from inconscience and goes up again to the Source, we call it evolution. From the mineral life, God within us evolved into plant life, then into animal life and now into human life. From human life it has to evolve into divine life. Now we are human beings, yet we are still half animal. We quarrel, we fight, we kill, we do many undivine things. But we also have the aspiration to become divine, to serve God in mankind, to become one with the world at large. As seekers, as lovers of Truth who pray and meditate, we are to some extent divine. So God has evolved in and through us from the mineral kingdom to the plant kingdom, from the plant kingdom to the animal kingdom and from the animal kingdom to the human kingdom. Now God within us is trying to evolve into a divine being. He has started climbing the tree right from the foot. He will be satisfied only when he has reached the topmost branch.