Question: What is the significance of children in the fulfilment of your mission?

Sri Chinmoy: Children have more love for me. They listen to me. If I ask a child to do something for me, he just runs. If I ask a grown-up person, he will take ten hours. A child means obedience. If obedience is there, then God-realisation is not a far cry. Children run the fastest, unless they are spoilt by their parents. Children don’t have the doubting mind. They don’t use the mind; they use the heart. If I ask them to do something, immediately they will do it and they will get tremendous joy from doing it. But if I ask a grown-up, sometimes he will listen with reluctance. After waiting to prove his independence, then he will do it. But children don’t do that. They won’t say, “Why has he asked me? I will not really get any benefit.”

A child means God’s Dream, God’s Vision. That is why I ask everybody to act like a four-year-old child. If everybody can become a four-year-old child, then all problems will be solved. But we act like we are fifty or sixty years old. That is why we are suffering so much. It is the child-quality in us that will fulfil our mission. We have a mission that will be fulfilled only by the child in us, the divine child. The child is all eagerness; he always wants something new, new, new. The importance of the child in our life, in our mission, is incalculable.