Question: Guru, have you ever gone backward or forward in time? In science fiction they have time machines where you can go backwards and forwards. Instead of speaking to Krishna in the inner worlds, let us say, have you ever actually gone back to the time of the Mahabharata and seen him there? Could you actually walk around in a scene that happened hundreds of years ago?

Sri Chinmoy: Why not? That is the easiest thing. Now I am here chatting with you people on the physical plane. You are seeing my gross physical body. But there is something called the subtle physical, which I can easily take to many other places. If somebody wants to see me in a meditative consciousness, he does not have to see my soul or see me enter into a higher consciousness in this body. It is enough to see my subtle physical body, which is carried by the dynamic vital or the highest vital.

You are talking about four or five thousand years ago. It is so easy for me to go back there, because I was one of the supreme heroes of the Mahabharata. I can go back there or to any other place, because it is the soul that took a form then, and that soul is still the same. For the soul to take that form again is like putting on an old coat. Now this body is wearing a T-shirt. At that time I did not use a T-shirt; I used a long robe. If I want, I can easily discard my T-shirt and put on a long robe. Like that, the soul can go everywhere, no matter what outer garment it is wearing.