Question: Could you do it even if you had not physically been there at that time?

Sri Chinmoy: Certainly. I can become one with a particular place or situation at any time. I don’t have to have been there the first time. There are so many caves in the Himalayas which I have not visited personally, because I stayed in only one or two caves. But occultly and spiritually I have visited all the caves. So many sincere sadhus were blessed by me three or four incarnations ago, although physically I remained only in my two or three tiny unbearable caves. So many sadhus in those days got my blessings — two hundred or three hundred years ago.

This is very easy. But there is something else that is really difficult for most spiritual Masters to do, although I do it very easily. If I want to, I have the capacity to go and touch the God who existed long before time. Mentally you may ask when God was born. I came into the world on the 27th of August, 1931, so my existence and a particular date go together. This is logical, quite logical. This body was born at seven o’clock, let us say. If you ask, “What happened at seven o’clock?” I will say that this body was born. But in God’s case it is not like that. God created Himself. God’s Self-Creation, you will say, must have taken place at a particular time. But this is not the case. This creation did not have time as a factor. It is complicated. When God created Himself, He had nothing to do with time as such. Your mind will try to give a time, but God separated Himself from time. Time is a reality that exists only for the body-reality. God’s Body means the Creation, God’s own Creation. Another reality is God’s Spirit. When God started the Creation, when He took form, only then did He start using time: one hour, two hours and so on. But before that, when He was not in Creation, time did not touch Him, because time had not yet been born. God Himself existed as Spirit, but He was not in time. Time was born only when the Creation began. In Creation God bound Himself to time, or time bound Him. But before that, He was above and beyond time. Before the Creation He was another Reality, and that Reality is not bound or limited by time at all.

New York is one state and Vermont is another state. You can drive to the end of New York State, and then New York stops. In the same way, in the inner world you will see that time has a limit, like a geographical area. If you go beyond a certain point, time stops. So when we speak of going beyond time and space, it is not just like a poetical expression we are using. No, time has an actual limit. There is earth-bound time and Heaven-free time. In earth-bound time you are caught and bound tightly. Heaven-free time also has its own limit. In Heaven-free time you can go far and very fast. You have the freedom to go, to run from here to there. But you can’t say that you have gone the farthest, that you can’t go any farther. Earth-bound time stops at one place; in earth-bound time you can only go so far. In Heaven-free time you have the capacity to go much farther, but even there there are limits. My occult Vision or somebody else’s occult Vision can go much farther than Heaven-free time. Vision can go much farther than time.

In Heaven-free time you are always transcending yourself, but that is not the ultimate at all. Whatever point you have reached is just the beginning. Wherever it is, you can always go a little farther. But with Vision the spiritual Masters have the capacity to go beyond not only the earth-bound time but also the Heaven-free time, and touch the God who existed before time itself ever came into being, although mentally this is not conceivable.