Question: Why does our evolution go so slowly that it takes us many hundreds of incarnations to realise God? Why do we have to go through so much struggle?

Sri Chinmoy: God can give you realisation overnight, but if you have worked for something consciously, you will be more satisfied when you get it. Then you will appreciate it. There is a poem about how the farmer ploughs the field, then sows the seed. Then he puts on manure as fertiliser and he waters the field. Everything he does. Afterwards the farmer asks, “Mother Earth, how is it that it takes so many months to get the bumper crop? How is it that everything did not germinate in one day from all that I did?” The poet answers for Mother Earth, “If I do everything for you, then your joy will be next to nothing.”

Again, thousands of years is nothing when compared with God’s eternal Time. When you live in the soul, a few incarnations is next to nothing and you will not feel that your evolution is going slowly. But if you live in the body, even one minute will torture you.