Question: Why do people seem so confident and self-assured?

Sri Chinmoy: People are confident of everything these days. Even a child knows everything. Two or three hundred years ago, people wouldn’t dare to speak of God. A few hundred years ago most people didn’t know anything about God. Very few had the feeling that some people had realised God. Now all Indian widows are realised; we have to touch their feet. These days in America, people who haven’t even done Hatha Yoga, let alone meditation, talk to their friends as if they know everything about God. They may not have been to any spiritual Master, but they know everything.

As in the Indian villages, people here have a disproportionate confidence. In the past people had faith in their incapacity. They would learn from God. Now the people in the world know everything about God. Often people are insincere. If they tell a lie ten times in a dramatic way, the eleventh time they do not take it as a lie. By the eleventh time, it is the truth. Once they are convinced that they will realise God, they try to give realisation to everybody.

A kind of confidence has entered into the world that is founded upon nothing. We need confidence, but this is false confidence. It is something we have created in order to show off to the world and to other people.