Question: Throughout illusion, throughout enlightenment, throughout attachment and non-attachment why do we always say that God is good?

Sri Chinmoy: It is because we are evolving. In the process of evolution, what is good according to the light of a child need not seem good when the child is grown up. The individual has to remember that once he felt there was something which he needed badly, and God gave it to him. It was good according to his standard or his level of evolution at that time. But he eventually found out that that very thing did not give abiding satisfaction. He needed something more lasting, more illumining, more fulfilling.

When we are in the desire-world, God fulfils one or two desires of ours. At that time, we say that God was good to us because He fulfilled our desires. Eventually, we come to realise that just by satisfying our desires, we are not achieving anything significant. What was good according to our receptivity or light yesterday need not be good today. Yesterday God was good because He fulfilled our desires. Today God is good, not because He is fulfilling our desires, but because He has given us the inner cry to fulfil our aspiration.

Finally, he will come to feel that God is good because God Himself is playing in and through him; God Himself is having an experience in and through him. Before, he didn't have that kind of realisation. Before, he used to feel that he did something and God gave him the result. But when he made inner progress, he came to realise that he did nothing; it was God Himself who acted in and through him. God was the doer, God was the action and God was the result. The seeker himself had merely become an instrument.