Question: In the course of evolution, will there ever be a time when there will be no animal incarnations, but people will be born automatically realised and not have to go through the process of aspiration and inner development?

Sri Chinmoy: People and animals will continue to be born as they are now, but evolution will also continue. We are human beings right now. We are not animals, but we still have many animal qualities. We quarrel, we fight, we have wars, we do so many undivine things. We claim that we lead a higher life than animals, but when we enter into ourselves we see that we are human animals. Again, even though we have animal qualities and animal propensities, still we have made a little progress. There are some people among us who are really aspiring and crying for God. Eventually they will see the Truth, feel the Truth and grow into the Truth and Light. Evolution has accomplished this.

After four hundred or five hundred years there will still be animal incarnations. There will be animals and there will be people. But there will also be more perfection on earth. Today, say out of ten thousand people perhaps one person may aspire. But a time will come when only one person out of ten thousand will not aspire. It will be just reversed.

But we cannot say that evolution will reach the point where everybody will come to earth God-realised. It would be like this: I have worked for years and centuries in order to realise something and you won't have to work at all. No, everybody has to work hard; God's Grace will descend only when we work hard. Some people realise God when they are in their teens. Perhaps you may say, "Oh, I have been meditating for twenty or thirty years and he has only meditated for five or ten years. How is it that he has realised God?" But you do not know how hard he worked in his previous incarnation. Perhaps for years and years he meditated. We see him with our human eyes, but we don't use our third eye to look at what has happened in his previous incarnation.

The world is now imperfect. Gradually, gradually, the world will become perfect. It is not that at a fixed time, all of a sudden, the Light will dawn and non-aspiring people will suddenly run towards the goal. No, it is a slow, gradual process.