Question: Will there be a time when our daughters can maintain many of the marvellous things that they are learning and becoming and go out in the world and be on their own? Will they still be able to feel the inner spirituality within them without having to be more or less centred in this one area?

Sri Chinmoy: In your question, my answer is there. We start with a seed. The seed germinates. First it is a sapling, then a tender plant; then it becomes a huge banyan tree. Your children are now like tender plants. Will you advise tender plants to be uprooted and moved somewhere else? You are taking tremendous risk if you carry a tiny plant from one place to another. The plant will be damaged or totally destroyed. But when the plant grows into a huge tree and starts bearing fruit, at that time this fruit can become the achievement or possession of the entire world. Then you can carry the fruit to any part of the world and the tree will not be destroyed or damaged.

Whatever your children are learning from me is good, and in the course of time when this bears fruit, naturally they will be going to all parts of the world to serve the Supreme in humanity. I am doing this now and, in the future, your children will do the same. But right now, most of them have not received or achieved enough for them to share with the world. Again, some of our students have learned our philosophy well or are in a position to share our light with others. I always encourage them to travel, and many disciples of ours go to various places all over the world to give talks and speak about peace, light and bliss.

I will not confine my students to me or to this little Jamaica, Queens. No, my world, our world, is very vast. Sometimes my Indian friends argue with me at public meetings. They say that India is poverty-stricken and people there are suffering, so what am I doing here? I should stay in India. But I tell them that my world is very vast. Just because the Supreme, the Almighty, the All-pervading, is my Father, I claim the whole world as my very own. So, according to my inner understanding, I wish to say that my world is all of God's creation. When your children grow into light and delight, eventually they also will go and share with the rest of the world the fruits that they have become. It is only a matter of time.