Question: Why did God create all this misery and unhappiness if He is the Creator? Why did he not create perfection?

Sri Chinmoy: I have answered this question quite a few times. God has created us and we have also created God according to our own ideas and conceptions. Why did God do this? Why did He not do otherwise? Now, we have to know that God is the Creator. He is also the Player. He is playing His eternal Game. The more we play, the more we become conscious of the fact that we do nothing and we can do nothing. We are all instruments. He, Himself, is having all experiences in and through us. When God created the world, He gave each individual very limited freedom. Unfortunately, we have been misusing this freedom. He gave to each person limited capacity. But this capacity we have been using for the wrong purpose. Early in the morning we know that we have the time to do whatever we want to. What do we do? We get up late. We know that at 5:30 a.m., if we want to, we can pray to God and ask for His Blessing and receive His Joy and Love. Instead of getting up early in the morning, we get up very late. What is worse, we don’t meditate at all. So you see how we misuse our limited freedom and capacity. We misuse His precious Concern for us, His Compassion for us. Now, the creation is in the process of evolution. In this creation we see two things, inspiration and aspiration. You are inspiring me and I am inspired. I am aspiring. My aspiration can kindle the flame of aspiration in you.

Now, realising the truth is one thing and manifesting the truth is another. There is a vast gulf between realisation and manifestation. All great spiritual Masters, Krishna, Buddha, Christ and spiritual Masters of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries did realise the highest Truth. Their message was that human beings would no longer remain animals but be transformed into divinity. But, when they wanted to offer their own realisation to the world, the world mocked at them. As far as realisation was concerned, they were perfect; but when the manifestation was going to take place on earth, that very earth-consciousness denied their inner wealth. Most of the spiritual Masters were not accepted. Even when some of the disciples knew who their spiritual Master was, they betrayed Him or did not listen to Him.

Now, you see that earth is the field of manifestation. Here on earth one person realises the Highest and wants to offer it to the world. Why does the earth-consciousness revolt when it is going to get something divine and fulfilling? Precisely because the earth-consciousness wants to remain in bondage and ignorance.

The camel eats the cactus and his mouth bleeds. But a few hours later the same camel eats these thorns and bleeds again. Here also, ordinary human beings do not want real Joy; what they want is pleasure. There is a great difference between pleasure and Joy. Pleasure is something which is immediately going to be followed by frustration. But Joy, which resides here inside our heart, knows only how to increase. An iota of Joy expands itself and becomes vast. As human beings, we want pleasure and not real inner Joy. Now, first we have to know, with our limited capacity and aspiration, what we want. If there is aspiration in our heart, then perfection will eventually dawn. But you look around and, out of thousands, how many people really want God? They don’t have five minutes to meditate daily on God. Days will run into weeks and weeks into months, but to your utter amazement, they will not have meditated even for five minutes. Now the world of realisation and manifestation can be established only on the strength of aspiration. The world unfortunately is wanting in aspiration. It is filled with desires ever on the increase. When we aspire, it is not like that. We try to have only the boundless, the infinite, the measureless. Only when each individual wants to sing the song of Infinity, Eternity and Immortality can God offer here on earth the message of perfection. How can perfection dawn? It can dawn on earth only through mutual acceptance. God is perfect. We are imperfect. Only if we accept God as our very own, can He give what He has and what He is. But we don’t take God as our own, we only take the nearest, dearest ones as our own. God does not come first in our lives. This is what an individual feels. God comes last. When somebody dies, we cry, “O God, God, God!” Otherwise, how many times have you uttered God’s name during the day and how many times have you uttered your own children’s names during the day? He is your Divine Child who has the message of Perfection, not the ones whose names you utter thousands of times. So if we know the right Person, then only can we expect the right thing. If you knock at the wrong door and it opens, you will see that the Real Person is not there. But if you knock at the right door, perfection comes to receive you. God wants us to be perfect and to be fulfilled, but if we go deep within we see that we are satisfied with our pleasures, desires, limited consciousness, jealousy, doubt, fear, negative thoughts, etc. When we are satisfied with something undivine, how can we blame God? How can we say that He is not giving us the right thing? Let us not want these negative things. Tomorrow God will come and knock at our door. He will give us Peace, Love, Joy, Concern and Compassion. Even the limited capacity that God has given us, we are not offering to Him. If a child finds a penny while walking along the street and gives it to his mother, the mother becomes so pleased. She sees that the child could have kept the penny for himself. But he did not do that. The mother is highly pleased with him and gives him a quarter in return. The child could easily have thought that the penny was his own possession and he could have been bloated with pride with the money, but his heart spontaneously compelled him to give his greatest treasure to his dearest mother. The same thing happens when we give a little bit of our aspiration to God every day for five minutes. He will be so pleased with us, and He will bring down Peace, Light and Bliss for us in boundless measure. God is for us, and we have to know and feel that He is doing everything for us. At His choice hour He will grant us the Supreme Realisation. When we aspire and enter into the Highest, it is He who takes us to our destined Goal. If we don’t want to do that, God says, “Sleep, baby, sleep. The time has not come for you.”