Question: Well, I don't know of anybody in the West. At least for the past one hundred years. But in the East, in India and other parts of the East, Tibet and so forth, I have read about souls that have remained in the same physical body for several hundred years.

Sri Chinmoy: Yes, there are some who have achieved the inner realisation, spiritual realisation. At the same time, on the strength of that inner realisation, they want to continue to live. They say that their only wish is to remain on earth. They do not take an active part in earthly activities; they stay in the Himalayan caves or in unknown or obscure places. They do not want to work for the world.

Now there are other souls who are not spiritually realised but who live for an indefinite period of time. They have somehow made friends with Nature. They do not have any high realisation, nothing of the sort. Only they have become children of Nature, Mother-Earth. All of us here are not children of Nature. Although we see Nature all around us, we are not identified with Nature. In us the mind is working unceasingly and this mind is sophisticated and unlit. This mind is the product of the outer world. But in their case, there is no mind at all. It is all Nature within them and outside them. They are like little children. Their whole existence is composed of a spontaneous oneness with Nature. So in them Nature becomes perpetual, Nature plays unceasingly. True, these people live for hundreds of years, but they are not realised persons.