Part III — Questions and answers: University of Tennessee

Question: What has been your experience of God?

Sri Chinmoy: I have experienced God in the personal as well as the impersonal form. At this moment, I see Him as an expanse of Light and Delight. The next moment He may take the form of a most luminous being. When we realise the Highest, we see that He is at once personal and impersonal. Like water and ice, He can be with form or without. Sometimes water is liquid, and we can swim in it. Other times it is solid, and we can walk on it. In the spiritual life also, sometimes we are fond of the impersonal aspect of the Highest Absolute, sometimes we are fond of the personal aspect. The Highest is beyond personal and impersonal but, at the same time, He embodies both. The Highest is formless, and at the same time He is with form. If we have to state in a word what He is, we have to say that He is both, and again, that He is beyond both. We cannot grasp God with the human mind. In the beginning He is this; then He is that. Then there comes a time when He is beyond both. The Highest is the ever-transcending Reality. Today's Beyond is tomorrow's starting point.