Question: Do your students have the opportunity to come to you privately at home?

Sri Chinmoy: They can come to me privately for short interviews, either in my home or at our tennis court, where I have a private room. I am an avid tennis player and I allow my students to play tennis there, because the message of tennis is “love and serve.” Tennis starts with love and then goes to service. If you serve well, then you get a point. Similarly, if you love the Supreme and serve the Supreme in mankind, you are doing absolutely the right thing.

Many times my disciples have asked for interviews, and I have granted them. But very often on the day that their interview is scheduled, early in the morning they find that their problem is solved, so the interview is no longer necessary. It has happened many times that I did not have to give an interview at the appointed hour because the disciple’s problems had already been inwardly solved.

Just two weeks ago the parents of five of my disciples died, and the disciples came to me for consolation. Individually they came and sat in front of me to pray and meditate. Most lovingly and most compassionately I told them, “Life and death are two rooms, side by side. This room, where we are physically and mentally active, we call life. This is where we stay during the day. Then, in the evening, we go to the other room to take rest. If you pray and meditate, you will see the door connecting the two rooms.

“Right now you are not able to go inside the other room, but there is Somebody who can go there, and that is God. Please pray to Him to most blessingfully do the needful for your mother and father. God will definitely listen to your prayers. God is the One who created your mother and father, and He is fully responsible for them. It is His Duty to take care of them; your only task is to pray to Him for His inner Guidance.

“So let us pray together and offer our gratitude to our Lord Supreme that for sixty or seventy years He kept your father and mother in the living room. Now the same Beloved Supreme has asked your father and mother to do something for Him in the other room. Right now you have no access to that room, but your prayer will go to God and He will most blessingfully do whatever is needed for your father and mother.” This is how I consoled them.