Question: You have used the term 'new era' when talking about your achievements. Could you explain what this means?

Sri Chinmoy: Anything that has been done in the past is recorded and is well appreciated. If a new idea or a new goal enters into a human being, then he becomes the pioneer in that particular field. When people normally speak about an era, they are talking about a period of time when an individual or a group of individuals has achieved certain things. An era depends entirely on the individual achievement or collective achievement that occurred during a number of years. But I see an era in terms of vision. I take an era as the vision of human beings for a certain period in life or in history. If somebody comes with new inspiration and new aspiration, he opens a new door for mankind to look forward and upward and offers a new vision. So ‘new era’ to me means the opening of a new door in our consciousness that allows us to go forward rather than stay with the past. Again, if there is something helpful in the past, we shall not discard it. The old way or traditional way or, let us say, the conventional way, we are not discarding. Because it is helpful and beneficial, we shall accept it. But if somebody discovers something new — a new method, a new approach to reality — then definitely he is embarking on a new discovery. And this new discovery itself brings in a new era.