Question: Guru, I have a question about a dream my husband had. He is not a disciple, but the dream was about you. He dreamt that you visited him and had a discussion about genetics with him and that you told him that environment was not that important in one's spiritual development.

Sri Chinmoy: One's environmental circumstances can increase one's aspiration and spirituality and also they can destroy these things. But, often we give too much importance to our environmental circumstances. Many people on earth have come into the world in an ordinary, unaspiring family, but they have gone very far and very deep in their inner life. Again, there are many people who have come into the world in a high, spiritual family and yet led a most ordinary life.

All spiritual Masters have brothers, sisters, friends, relatives and so forth who live in the same environment as they do. But you don't hear anything about their friends or their relatives. When you hear about the spiritual Master, you also hear about his dearest disciples, who become immortal. The Master's spiritual children become his real children, whereas his own physical children are nowhere. The spiritual people around a Master, who also pray and meditate with him, become his real children.

If, from our forefathers, we get something that is good, we can increase it. But again, even if we don't get any spiritual help from our origins, we can still realise and manifest the Highest if the soul comes to the fore. But those who are meant to be spiritual and divine do not depend either on the members of the family from which they came or on the circumstances of their environment. Their inner power pushes them towards the highest height and manifests their divine qualities.

Question: But was it the Supreme in you that visited my husband?

Sri Chinmoy: My soul visits everyone. Not my physical consciousness, but my soul visits everyone. So my soul visited him.