Question: Master, please tell me, if I have to come back here in another incarnation, who is going to take care of my soul? You? If you don't want to come to this world again, will you name someone to take care of me?

Sri Chinmoy: Very good. First of all it is true that I will not come back anymore. I have played my role. When the game is over, you don’t play again. When you are playing your part in a game, sometimes you lose the game, sometimes you win. You only know that you have played your part. You have done what God asked you to do.

You are thinking of your next incarnation. I wish to say that in this incarnation you have to know whether or not you have achieved an inseparable oneness with my soul or not. In ordinary human life we see the bond between mother and son. You are here. Now your son may be in New York. When you are working with your other children, you may be working in the kitchen, but your heart is inside your son. And your son may be studying in New York in the University, but his heart is inside the mother. It is human love, the human bond, and even then it has crossed thousands of miles. This is the human way. Your human body will perhaps stay on earth seventy or eighty years. But in these years, you have developed something which is called a heart. How it is crossing the distance of thousands of miles! Your son is in New York and from New York message is coming to your heart of all his affection, love, concern. This is your offering and his offering. Now you must ask yourself if you have made this heart’s connection with me, with my soul, with your Master’s soul. Now on the spiritual plane, the teacher himself represents God and his soul is infinitely more illumined than the disciple’s soul. Your soul wants to be illumined as my soul and it knows that everyone has to realise God. We can deceive everyone, but not God. We can say that we won’t do something or eat something. But one thing we will have to eat is the fruit of the realisation-tree. Realisation-food we won’t be able to deny. God will say, “Alright, if you don’t want to do this, don’t do it; if you don’t want to eat, don’t eat, but this food, the realisation-food you have to eat sooner or later, in this incarnation or ten incarnations later.

Now it is I, your eternal friend and your eternal Guru, who has to give you this realisation-food. If I am unable to do it during my lifetime, I shall continue to feed your soul after I return to my heavenly Home. I do not need to name someone to take care of you, Vijaya, for it is I who promised the Supreme that I would take care of you eternally. I made this promise to Him when I first accepted you as my disciple.

Even while remaining in the physical, which is a real bondage, a spiritual Master can help his disciples in different parts of the world. But when he leaves the body, he is totally free. From the other shore, the spiritual Master works through the soul’s Light or will-power. The soul’s Light can be offered from any plane of consciousness, from the highest plane right down to the earth plane. So from the higher worlds, the Master can easily make contact with the disciple’s aspiring soul, and the disciple can respond to the Master’s Light. In this way, the Master can and does and must help the disciple.

When a Master accepts someone as a real disciple, a true disciple, he makes a promise to God, the Supreme, and to the soul of the individual seeker that he will be eternally responsible for that soul.

When great Masters come to earth, they greatly expedite the progress of their disciples. But how far can they expedite it when the disciples themselves have made so little progress? Still, the Masters try to make a very brave fight; they challenge ignorance. They say, “Let us see how far we can go.”

On the part of the disciple, there has to be a real feeling, a radiant feeling, a feeling of oneness with the Master. Then, if the person does not get realisation in this incarnation, the Master, when he has left his body, will make a definite, direct contact, an express connection with that disciple’s soul. During the disciple’s remaining earthly life and also in the soul’s world, where she will go to rest, she will feel the Master helping and guiding her so that in her next incarnation or in one or two future incarnations, she can reach the Highest, the Absolute.

So when the Master is in the physical, it is the greatest opportunity because at that time, the physical mind is bound to be convinced of the value of the spiritual help the disciple is receiving. The soul always feels this help and never needs to be convinced. You get the greatest opportunity when a spiritual Master descends on earth. Ramakrishna used to say, “The cow is standing before you. The cow has milk. Where does the milk lie? Only in the udders. So milk the cow! You should not try to get milk from the tail of a cow, for there is no milk there.” So here also, Divine Bliss is standing before you. The whole universe embodies his Bliss, but there is a place, a particular place where constantly Infinite Grace and Compassion are descending in bountiful streams. And that is where the spiritual Avatar has descended on earth.

At the end of the game, everybody will be judged as to where he lies, where she lies, whether or not it is in the Heart of the Master. Everybody is given a chance. Everybody will be given a chance. The Supreme will see the result.