Question: As we approach the millennium, there is possibly a feeling of despair. Do you think this is a special time for the fate of humanity? Is there another way of looking at this?
Sri Chinmoy: This is a very serious question. I am not a prophet; I would only like to say that things cannot get darker. The future cannot be worse than the present or the past. We have touched rock bottom, the abysmal abyss; now things have to go up.Again, we have to know that by seeing the dark side of an individual or the present-day world, we do not bring light to the fore. The world is full of despair, but God did not create this world for suffering. When we create something, we do not do it with the idea, “I am creating this to torture myself.” God created this world to give Himself joy. The suffering in the world is caused by us.
It is a vast game; we call it the Cosmic Game or Cosmic Lila. In a game, sometimes we do not know which side is going to win. It is so complicated. In this Game there is a fight going on between light and darkness. When darkness conquers light, it shows its supremacy. But when light conquers darkness, it shows its intimacy. When the dark part of our nature conquers something, it acts like Julius Caesar when he said, “I came, I saw, I conquered.” But when the good side of us conquers something, it says, “I came, I saw you, I loved you and I became one with you.”
What the world has been passing through for the last fifty or one hundred years is only a temporary reign of darkness. For a time, darkness has been showing its supremacy. But now light is coming to embrace and illumine this darkness. This will happen not today or tomorrow, but in the near future. People have been using the mind-power for a long time, and it has brought only misery and suffering. If I have two ways of approaching reality, and one is bringing me only unhappiness, will I not one day begin to use the other approach? The other approach is the way of the heart, and the day is fast approaching when heart-power will replace mind-power.
