Question: Do cosmic gods and goddesses have the capacity to make spiritual progress?

Sri Chinmoy: Evolution requires human incarnation, and they do not take human incarnation. Mythology tells stories about how one god cursed another so that he would be born into a servant-class family; but these are just stories. Actually, cosmic gods do not take human incarnation because they are not evolutionary beings. They started meditating thousands of years ago and got tremendous spiritual or occult power and enormous light, and this satisfied them. They reached a certain height, which is infinitely superior to the height of ordinary human beings. But they will not go any higher.

According to our present standard, the cosmic gods seem unlimited. We have one dollar, let us say, and the cosmic gods have ten million dollars. But ten million is not the ultimate. After ten million comes one billion and so on. We feel that the cosmic gods are dealing with the Unlimited, but that is not the case. For that, it is necessary to take a physical body and evolve from the animal to the human to the divine and, finally, to the Supreme.

Compared to the cosmic gods, right now human beings are like little children. A child is so small; who can ever imagine that one day he will be six feet tall? But although right now we are weaker than the weakest, our evolution never stops because human beings have the eternal hunger, the eternal aspiration, to go up, up, up. By praying and meditating and surrendering our will to God’s Will, we human beings can eventually become saints, then yogis, and go beyond the cosmic gods.