Question: How do your forgiveness, compassion and protection operate in our present, past and future lives?

Sri Chinmoy: I can do nothing. I am nothing. But the Supreme, my Beloved Supreme, who is your Guru, my Guru, everybody's Guru — the Guru of every human being and even the Guru of spiritual Masters — it is He who makes the decision about past, present and future.

We pray to God, "Protect me, protect me!" But then God sees that something is going to happen to us in six years or ten years, so sometimes God offers protection for the future, not only for the present. Most of the time we pray to God to protect us in the present or the immediate future. We never pray to God to protect us against what will happen in twenty years' time. But God, out of His infinite Bounty, can give protection even to prevent something that is going to happen twenty years from now.

When it is a matter of spiritual Masters, I have to say that God is often indulgent to them because they have pleased God to such an extent. Sometimes a spiritual Master may plead with God to alter the fate of a particular person. The ordinary mind will say, "Why are you trying to change God's Will? If you are so surrendered to God, why do you have to pray to God? Whatever He has decided, let it be." Sometimes God scolds the spiritual Master: "Why are you trying to break My Cosmic Law?" But sometimes, because the Master has realised God and has become inseparably one with God, God grants the request.