Author's introduction

Sometimes our childish qualities may be destructive, but here in this book there is no destruction. You can call it childish amusement or fun, or childish recreation. A spiritual Master is always a child. One moment he can be childlike and the next moment he can be childish. This is how the Supreme has been manifesting in me, and this is how He will always manifest in me. I have reached the Highest to bring down the fruit of the Highest for you. Again, I enjoy on earth a child's height. A child is all innocence. Mother Earth has millions, billions and trillions of children; I perfectly join them with my Reality's realisation-height, and I become one with them.

Question: What did God do before everything?

Sri Chinmoy: Before everything, God did quite a few things. He used to go and take rest.

Question: What does God learn from us?

Sri Chinmoy: Who is not a student? Even God is a student. We are teaching Him every day. He is learning our ignorance. We are learning His Wisdom and He is learning our ignorance every day.

Question: Will you have a celebration when we realise God?

Sri Chinmoy: I will celebrate when you realise God. I will celebrate it eternally. I am telling you a top secret. When one of you realises God, then my celebration of your God-realisation will be eternal. I sincerely mean it. The day I get one God-realised soul, then my celebration of that achievement of my spiritual daughter or son will be eternal.

Question: What did you give God after He gave you realisation?

Sri Chinmoy: One friend saw me and said, "God gave him realisation and then he had to give something to God. So he gave his hair to God."

Then my friend said, "I too can give God something, but I am not prepared to give Him my hair. However, if God wants my glasses, He can have them."

Question: What does God do for entertainment?

Sri Chinmoy: For entertainment, God remains challenging, illumining and fulfilling.

Question: Where does humour come from?

Sri Chinmoy: Humour comes directly from God. Why? He needs humour. It is the salt of life. Fortunately or unfortunately, consciously or unconsciously, God has done something. He has created this world and every second He is getting a headache, a stomach-ache and a heart attack. Now, He feels that there should be some way to get rid of His fever and pain. When we suffer from anything we need medicine. In God's case there is only one medicine and that is humour. It cures the disease that He takes from the world.

Question: What does God think of our humour?

Sri Chinmoy: If you don't have humour, you can't exist on earth. God enjoys our humour.

Question: What is the funniest joke that God ever told?

Sri Chinmoy: God's funniest joke is His expectation from His creation of something more than what He has given to His creation.

Question: What really makes God laugh?

Sri Chinmoy: What really makes God laugh is man's conscious declaration that his status is inferior to God's status. That is to say, when someone thinks that he is totally separate from God and infinitely inferior to God, at that time God laughs and laughs at that person's unfortunate, deplorable stupidity.

Question: What is the funniest joke God ever told?

Sri Chinmoy: The funniest joke that God ever told was that He was not satisfied with His creation.

Question: What is the longest time that God ever went without a smile?

Sri Chinmoy: God always smiles, both in His Silence-life and in His Sound-life. When He smiles in His Silence-life, it is not easy for the human beings to observe it. But when He smiles in the Sound-life, it is quite easy for the human beings to observe it. Since there is no distance to cover between His Silence-life and His Sound-life, we must feel that God is always smiling

Question: Why did God give us mouths?

Sri Chinmoy: The day He gave me a mouth, He made a Himalayan blunder. Here is the proof that God also makes mistakes. God asked me to come into the world and I said, "God, You wanted me come into the world. This is the favour You want from my soul. But I have another favour to ask. That is to talk and talk and talk and turn my dear ones everywhere deaf." As long as God had His desire fulfilled that I take human incarnation, then He does not mind if I have my own desire.

Question: Does God need to lose some weight?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, God needs to lose some weight when He sees that He is disproportionately heavy. God tells us that He does not want to act like a camel carrying a heavy load through the deserts of life. He wants everything that He has and everything that He is to be proportionate and normal.

Question: Was God ever fat? Did He lose weight?

Sri Chinmoy: God is not usually fat, but when a world war takes place, at that time He gets the opportunity to take off some of the heavy, unnecessary garments that He is wearing. When He removes these garments, then He loses weight.

Question: When God starts to diet, does that mean that He diets eternally?

Sri Chinmoy: No. God has in His Vision how much weight He is going to lose or at what point He will reach a goal, and then, when He reaches His goal, He will stop dieting. God is not going to diet eternally, for God is wise enough not to eat voraciously in a greedy manner like a hungry tiger. If He does so, then He pays the penalty. Therefore, He feels that wisdom has to dawn on Him. He will eat only nutritious food that has twenty calories so that He does not suffer from overweight again.

Question: How does the Supreme lose weight when He wants to diet?

Sri Chinmoy: If the Supreme wants to lose His excess weight in the physical, then He adopts the physical process: He starves and starves. He takes not more than twenty calories a day for two weeks at least. And if He has to lose excess weight on the inner plane, then He does it by dint of His Will-power.

Question: Does God like to eat?

Sri Chinmoy: God always likes to eat, not because He is always hungry but because He wants to please the person who has cooked or who has brought the food. There are two persons who bring food for Him. One is ignorance, one is wisdom. When ignorance says, "I have something for You to eat," God says, "Certainly, my son, I shall eat. That is what you have for me and that is what you are." When wisdom says, "Father, I have something for You to eat," God says, "Certainly, my son, I shall eat, for that is what you have and that is what you are." So God likes to please both His sons. He gets satisfaction by pleasing them, not by eating their food.

Question: Does God like ice cream?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, God does like ice cream because ice cream is the food of the human beings who love the childlike consciousness. God always treasures the child-consciousness; therefore, He likes ice cream. He eternally wants to remain in the child-consciousness. He is an eternal Child. Whatever a child likes, He also likes because that is the only way He can satisfy and please Himself. Because He is an eternal Child, He eternally likes ice cream.

Question: Has God ever picked black raspberries?

Sri Chinmoy: God has never picked black raspberries because God Himself is a raspberry. God wants His children, especially you, who have a great fondness for raspberries, to pick and enjoy. He is like a mother. The mother not only has the food; the mother becomes the food for her children. The mother not only has the compassion-food, the compassion-concern food, but the mother is compassion-food and concern-food for her children to eat to their heart's content.

Question: Does God lose His teeth?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, God loses His teeth if He neglects His teeth. Why does He do that? It is not because He is negligent in anything. Only at times, in a childlike manner He wants to enjoy the loss of something, as we always want to enjoy the gain of something.

Question: Does God shave?

Sri Chinmoy: God shaves every day because He gives all importance to His cleanliness. He believes in mutual appreciation. If He appreciates His creation because the creation remains clean and pure, then He is also expected to do the same. That is to say, He has to keep Himself clean and pure. God tells us that appreciation is nothing short of our inner and outer self-expansion.

Question: What is God's favourite toy?

Sri Chinmoy: God's favourite toy is His top. He spins the top. While His top is spinning, while it is in motion, He feels that He Himself is being rotated in His inner world and His outer world, carrying His children in His universal Cry and transcendental Smile.

Question: Does God wear glasses?

Sri Chinmoy: If God assumes a human body and looks at human beings, and if His human eyes need glasses to see other people or other objects, if it is purely the need of the physical, then He will accept material objects, for the physical body and the material world must go together, just as the spiritual and the material must go together. The physical is His and the material world is also His. Therefore, He has to abide by the laws of the material world, the physical world. In the inner plane He does not have to use glasses because He uses His third eye. His third eye pierces the length of the past, present and future all at once. It covers the past, present and future at His sweet Will. Therefore, it is not necessary for Him to wear glasses for His third eye. His third eye is all Vision, all-pervading Vision.

Question: Can God play ping-pong?

Sri Chinmoy: Certainly God can play ping-pong. Ping-pong is a miniature cosmic Game. Here He plays with the tiniest ball and there He plays with the highest and strongest cosmic forces.

Question: When God walks about in Heaven, does everyone recognise Him?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, everybody recognises God when He walks about in Heaven, but there are degrees of recognition. Here on earth when a great person is recognised by a multitude of people, one will recognise him at a particular plane of consciousness with much more capacity than another. Each one will recognise his capacity, undoubtedly, but the extent of his capacity will not be recognised on the same level by all and sundry. One will see his capacity to one extent, another will see it to another extent. Each will have his dimension, intensity, shade and colour of recognition.

In Heaven also, the souls will undoubtedly recognise God, but the ordinary souls will not be able to recognise God's eternal Capacity in infinite measure the way developed souls will recognise God's Capacity. It is like the eldest son and the youngest son recognising their father. The older son will recognise the father's capacity more than the younger one will. The younger son will only say, "Oh, he is very great." He has to develop his consciousness. Only then will he know what contribution his father has made in his field to the world. Similarly, in the inner world God will be recognised, but not at the same level by each and every individual soul.

Question: How old is God's oldest Friend and what is his name?

Sri Chinmoy: God has not one but three oldest friends. Their names are Sat-Chit-Ananda: Existence-Consciousness-Bliss. This is a triune Consciousness. If you want to separate them, you can call them Existence, Consciousness and Bliss in three different planes. Here is one thing — Existence; here is one thing — Consciousness; here is one thing — Bliss. In this case you can say that God has three dearest friends, three oldest friends, and they are Sat, Chit and Ananda. Again, these three friends of His are eternally inseparable. They are bosom friends, or you can say, they are only one friend called by three different names by different individuals. The father is called by his children in one way, by his friends in another way and by his wife in another. In the same way, if one wants to see Existence-Consciousness-Bliss as three different entities or realities, one can. But if one wants to see Existence-Consciousness-Bliss in one form, one reality and one vision, then God's only friend is Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.

Question: What human being on earth looks the most like God?

Sri Chinmoy: In spite of knowing perfectly well that he and God are inseparable — eternally, constantly and inseparably one — the spiritual Guide constantly tells mankind who God is or shows mankind where God is. Consciously he leads mankind to God the Source, and he himself remains as the guide or the messenger boy. In spite of knowing that he and God are inseparable, eternally inseparable, he makes earth feel that he is the messenger of God and that he is leading the earth-consciousness somewhere else, where God is. He does not say that he himself is with God or in God. But when the seeker reaches the Goal, at that time he sees God and the Guide together as one.

Question: God has many children. Am I going to be one of His apostles?

Sri Chinmoy: An apostle is he who is a chosen instrument of God; therefore, you are already an apostle of God. Dive deep within, fly high and run forward. You are bound to notice that you are a real representative of God on earth.

Question: Does God like to go on trips?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, God likes to go on trips, but in God's case, He is constantly enjoying trips. God is silence and God is movement. Therefore, even while He is seated here on earth, He can move around the world and around Heaven. God is at once static and dynamic. While He is sleeping, He is running across the world. God has the capacity to do two contradictory things at one time.

Question: How many paintings can God paint in an hour?

Sri Chinmoy: God can do countless paintings in a fleeting second. If He has to paint for an hour, then you have to multiply Infinity by Infinity. Now, will you or anybody be able to watch infinite paintings? It seems that nobody will be able to watch and appreciate countless paintings. God, out of His infinite Compassion, paints the number of paintings that can be watched and appreciated by the seekers and lovers of art so that they will not be totally lost in an infinite sea of paintings.

Question: Why is God not rich, even though He is everything?

Sri Chinmoy: God is always rich in His Compassion-life and in His Forgiveness-life. If He is rich in everything that He has created and is, then He will be misunderstood by the doubting and ignorant human mind.

Question: I meditate on God for many hours at a time, but God never appears before me.

Sri Chinmoy: In India some village woman may say, "I meditated for six hours or eight hours, but God never appears before me. He is so unkind." But when she starts meditation, what does she actually do? At that time she thinks of her cow: "The cow is grazing and perhaps it is entering into somebody else's territory. Then it will be beaten." Her mind is roaming around, thinking of this person or that person. It is all imagination. Then she says, "I have meditated for so many hours."

If I ask her, "Please tell me, what did you meditate on," she will say, "I meditated on God." Then I will say, "Yes, but how many times did you feel the Presence of God?" Then she will answer, "All the time I was uttering God's Name, but I was thinking of my cow because the cow is disturbing my mind." Then I will say, "Well, you have to differentiate between your cow and God."

Question: Guru, does God talk as much as you do?

Sri Chinmoy: You have got a talkative Guru who speaks sixteen to the dozen. As our soul has neither beginning nor end, so when I start talking, there is no beginning and no end. I have defeated all spiritual Masters in that respect.

Question: How can we fool God?

Sri Chinmoy: The question is not how we can fool God, but whether we are fooling God or not. I wish to say that at every moment we are fooling God, although God is all wisdom, all-pervading Wisdom. God is eternally wise, but He has created two things to guide His entire creation. One is His Compassion and the other is His Forgiveness. As long as God is all Forgiveness and all Compassion and as long as He has asked us to enter into the world-arena, He Himself looks upon us quite often with a human eye and with a human heart — that is to say, not with His unlimited wisdom and unlimited capacity, but with a little more capacity than poor human beings have. He feels that if He hides His infinite Capacity and keeps forward only a little of His capacity, then the human beings will get the inspiration and aspiration to catch Him, to run with Him.

In a hundred-metre dash, if one runner is seventy metres ahead of another runner, then the one who is so much behind will not have the inspiration and inclination to run and overtake the runner who is ahead of him. But if the leading runner is only a few steps ahead, then the one who is behind has the determination to overtake him. God stays only a few steps ahead of us so that He can be seen. He feels that in this way we will be able to see Him running with us and competing with us.

When God is playing the game with us with a little more capacity than we ourselves have, out of His infinite Compassion, infinite Forgiveness, He allows us to fool Him on the physical plane. He feels that after deceiving Him on the physical plane, we will feel repentant. Then His Compassion-power and Illumination-power can work. The after-effect of His action will inspire some sorrow in us. Then we will try to illumine that sorrow and finally we will try to do the right thing: we will try to serve God and love God.

Question: When the Supreme is in a hurry, does He ever go over 50 mph in His divine car?

Sri Chinmoy: If the Supreme Himself is the driver, then He usually sticks to His command because He feels that if He Himself does not listen to His own command, who will? But if anybody else is driving, if His chauffeur divine is driving, then the Supreme asks that person, if necessity demands, to go over fifty miles an hour, for the Supreme believes in the theory that every rule admits of exception.

Question: Why do we get God's Compassion instead of His Justice?

Sri Chinmoy: We get God's Compassion-power instead of His Justice-power because He knows that His Compassion-power is an infinitely more powerful weapon to perfect and transform humanity. Compassion is like a magnet, whereas Justice is like an iron rod. We like a magnet to pull us up and not an iron rod to break our heads, no matter how bad we are.

Question: Has God ever fallen asleep during meditation?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, on very rare occasions God has fallen asleep during His meditation, but His sleep is not the sleep of ordinary human beings. He keeps His body-consciousness separate from His soul-reality. The cosmic gods and goddesses, especially the goddesses, laughed at God when He fell asleep during His meditation. But God proved to them that His sleep was not an ordinary sleep where one loses one's conscious awareness. He told them what they were doing, where they were, what was in their being — in their thought-world, their desire-world and their aspiration-world — while He was sleeping. They were at once fascinated and baffled. He also told them that there is a term in Sanskrit called Yoga Nidra, Yogic sleep. The Master Yogis have the capacity that allows them to take complete rest by sleeping and even snoring, while retaining perfect conscious awareness of what is happening both in the inner world and in the outer world.

There are human beings who suffer from lack of sleep. In one of our scriptures, Chandi, which is like the Bhagavad-Gita, God the Mother is invoked to grant the boon of sleep in a specific prayer. Many have offered that prayer and their prayers have been fulfilled. Now, God can grant us only the things that He Himself has. He has awareness and if you want awareness, He will give it to you. If He has sleep and you want sleep, He can give it to you. If He does not have the capacity to sleep at His sweet Will, how can He grant the sleep-quality to you, who always needs it so badly?

Question: Will the Golden Boat get rusty?

Sri Chinmoy: The Golden Boat will never get rusty precisely because it will always sail. The Inner Pilot will always sail the Golden Boat even if there is only one seeker left out of millions and trillions of human beings. If one single solitary human being wants to sail in the Golden Boat, God will use His Boat to bring that person to the Golden Shore of the Beyond. Since it will be in constant use, the Golden Boat will never get rusty.

Question: Did God the Father and God the Mother ever have an argument?

Sri Chinmoy: "Argument" is a complicated word in the spiritual sense of the term. The dictionary will say it means "heated discussion". God the Father and God the Mother can easily have an exchange of ideas on a dynamic plane. While they are exchanging ideas on a dynamic plane of consciousness, it may seem to others that they are having a heated discussion or human argument. But it is not a human argument; it is a serious exchange of thought-worlds and consciousness-worlds from where God the Father and God the Mother make a decision.

Question: Who is the greatest hero in God's Eyes?

Sri Chinmoy: The greatest hero in God's Eyes is he who has made his unconditional surrender to God and whose unconditional surrender to God is soulful, conscious and constant.

Question: How did my Inner Pilot learn to fly?

Sri Chinmoy: The Inner Pilot learned how to fly by releasing His cosmic energy-Will.

Question: How many angels can God fit on the head of a pin?

Sri Chinmoy: It entirely depends on God's Will and choice. If the angels care for the pin, then God will place countless angels on the pin. But if they do not care for the pin, then He will not place even one on the pin. Here the pin is poor earth. If the angels care for suffering and helpless earth, then God will definitely send countless angels to help and accelerate the consciousness of the earth. If the angels don't care for the earth, then He will allow them to remain self-contained in their angel world.

Question: What kind of degrees does God like?

Sri Chinmoy: When God was born, He did not have a BA or an MA. Did Jesus Christ have a degree? Did Sri Ramakrishna have a degree? Did Lord Buddha have a degree? Did Sri Krishna have a degree? Does Sri Chinmoy have a degree? No. Yet professors and big shots come to spiritual Masters because we have got just one degree: we love God. Once you have got your "Master's degree," once you have this long tail, it is very hard to cut it off.

Question: Does God forgive me when I make mistakes?

Sri Chinmoy: In the inner world everybody makes mistakes. I also make mistakes. My first mistake was to be born. My second mistake was to enter into the spiritual life. My third and last mistake was to come to America. How am I going to rectify these three mistakes? I came here to be a donkey. These three mistakes are killing me. If God can tolerate these three mistakes, then how is it that He cannot tolerate your mistakes?

Question: Did any Christian saints realise God?

Sri Chinmoy: Certainly.

Question: Which ones?

Sri Chinmoy: Saint Madhuri. Madhuri realised God long ago, and now she is only paying God back for her realisation. She is saying, "God, take it back. I don't want to be indebted to You. Then, when the time comes, give it to my son, Christopher." She is depositing money in the bank, so that Christopher without meditating can realise God.

Question: I know I paid too much money to buy these musical instruments for you. But isn't everything God's Grace?

Sri Chinmoy: I wish to tell you a story. A merchant once said, "By God's Grace I went to the store and bought something for such and such a price and I sold it for such and such a price. Why did I sell it for a higher price? Because God's Grace acted in and through me. God wanted me to make a profit so that my business would flourish. If I don't make money, then how am I going to prosper? So it is all God's Grace."

In your case perhaps someone will snatch your money and he will say, "By God's Grace I am getting your money."

Question: How did God feel when He came to earth. and how did God feel when He left earth?

Sri Chinmoy: God came from Heaven with an unconscious headache. He returned from earth with a conscious fever.

Publisher's note to the first edition

The majority of these questions were asked and answered during a bus trip that Sri Chinmoy took with his disciples on 14 July 1975.