Question: What is God?

Sri Chinmoy: We know that God is everything, God is in everything and God is beyond everything. This is our philosophical understanding and our psychic understanding. But when we get this question from a nine-year-old child, from a pure, innocent, soulful, divine child, then we have to answer the question according to the child's understanding.

I wish to say that God is Concern. You have a mother. She is right beside you. Your mother is showing you all her affection. She shows her concern for you day in and day out. But out of twenty-four hours, your mother can offer you only two or three or four hours of conscious concern. When you are sick, perhaps she will offer her concern for fifteen or sixteen or twenty-four hours. But when you are well, she can give you her concern for only a few hours in spite of her best intentions. She has to study, she has to do her own meditation, she has to do quite a few things apart from taking care of you, even though you are her dearest. So in spite of her best effort, her most sincere effort, she can give you only a few hours of her time.

We stay on earth for seventy, eighty or even a hundred years, but that is not our real life. Our real life is endless. It came from the beginningless past and is forever entering into the endless future. In this incarnation you are living in America, but you have to know that you had many previous incarnations and you will have many future incarnations. In your previous incarnation you lived in Italy. At that time you didn't have this mother; other parents cared for you. In the future you will get concern from still other parents.

God's Concern is different. His Concern started from the very beginning and it will remain the same forever. The moment He created you, His Concern started, and this Concern will last for Eternity. Where does this Concern come from? Everything has a source, and the source of God's Concern is His Oneness. When my finger is hurt, immediately I am concerned for my finger. Why? Because I am one with my finger. When something is wrong with your mother, you show her your concern because of your oneness. There are many who are suffering whom you do not know. Even if you do know them, you are not going to offer your concern. Why? Because you are not completely identified with them. You don't feel oneness with them. But you do feel your oneness with your mother and your mother feels her oneness with you.

No matter how dear your mother is, you have to know that God is dearer. He loves you infinitely more than your mother loves you and infinitely more than you love your mother. His Love doesn't last for just one incarnation, but for Eternity. God is all Concern because He is one with everything. Because of His all-pervading Oneness, He has to offer His Concern. So if you want to know what God is, then in one sense I wish to say that God is Concern.