Question: If meditation is the only way of seeing God face to face, how would you advise the man who has a family to look after, to lead the spiritual life and see God face to face?

Sri Chinmoy: The family man, early in the morning when he gets up, what does he do? What does he think of? He thinks of the members of his family, the education of his children and so forth. But if, before he enters into his earthly activities, he can meditate, if he can think of God, say for five minutes, this five minutes nobody can steal from him. Yes, he shoulders responsibility, he has to think of his whole, large earthly family. But again, who shoulders the responsibility of the entire universe? Not he, not the members of his family, but God, God Himself. God Himself shoulders this problem of the entire world.

Now, if for five minutes the family man, the head of the family, meditates on God, on Light – for God means Light – then the Light descends. It starts to decrease his worries and anxieties. When you concentrate for any purpose, perhaps to learn something, whatever you want to do becomes easier. A student, when he does not concentrate on his studies, may read a poem ten times to commit it to memory. He finds it difficult, he cannot do it. But, when he concentrates for five minutes and then reads the poem, he learns it. He just reads it once or twice and it is all memorised.

So, similarly, if an individual who has big family problems meditates for five or ten minutes before he thinks of his family, it will immediately help him in minimising the difficulties he faces and also the Light that he will receive will operate in him. He has not to meditate ten or twelve hours like others. He knows that his progress will not necessarily be very fast. Slow and steady wins the race. But, he has to know why he is thinking of his children and members of his family. Not because they are dear to him. No. But because God is inside him and inside his dearest ones. If every day you try to feel God, the living God, inside your children, then immediately you are seeing and feeling the Light within them. It is also a form of real meditation. But we don’t do that. We look at our children as our possessions and feel that we have every right to mould them and guide them according to our sweet will. We feel that we know best. But, if we see, if we feel that we love our children, the members of our family, precisely because God is inside them, and if we think of that and we meditate on it, we will see that we are doing the highest form of meditation. The son should be dearest to the father, not because he is the son, but because the father feels the son embodies the highest Light, which is God. If he loves his son for that purpose, knowing that God is inside him, then he is doing his meditation.