Question: How do you define God? I try to define Him as an animate Force, but this just confuses me more.

Sri Chinmoy: We define something. We try to limit and bind it, but God the Infinite is limitless; thus we can never define Him. One minute the mind may think that God is this, then we see that God is also something else. You are absolutely right when you say that God is an animate Force, Infinite Energy, if the lady sitting next to you feels that God is Infinite Joy, then I must say that she, too, is correct. Another may feel that God is Infinite Light. Still another may want to see God as an absolutely divinised human form with two arms, two legs and all. They are all correct. God is everything. God is both personal and impersonal, with form and formless. God is beyond the limitations of the mind. The Vedic Seers said of God [Guru recites in Sanskrit]: “That moves and that moves not. That is far and the same is near. That is within and at the same time, without.” Our human mind cannot understand it.

So, to come back to your question, each individual must go deep within where his inner being will tell him which aspect of God is most inspiring to him.