Part IV — Questions on science

Question: Do people today have more confidence in what they know because of science?

Sri Chinmoy: Science has made human beings consciously confident. Science is progressing through the mind and intellect, and even through intuition. When human beings on earth achieve something, it immediately becomes more or less humanity's mental, vital or physical possession. Even if something is achieved on the scientific plane, it immediately becomes established on the physical, vital and mental planes. Now people are confident about everything. These days people don't care to speak of God; they know everything. Even a child knows everything. A few hundred years ago, when people did not know something, they said they didn't know. They would never say that they did know. But now people don't say, "I don't know." No, they won't confess that they don't know something. People often have such disproportionate confidence in their realisation, which is completely undivine.

The problem is that people are insincere. We tell a lie ten times and then we believe it. Ten times we say that we know all about God. Once we are convinced that we have realised God, we feel that we are giving realisation to everybody. So a kind of confidence has entered that is founded on nothing. It is false confidence. Even some of the disciples have the feeling that they know everything. Some people don't touch my books. Why? They know my philosophy: love, devotion and surrender. Out of a thousand disciples, on some days only twenty read my writings. Some read only five minutes or ten minutes; others don't have even that much time. Many watch television or read newspapers. But if they read my writings for even five minutes, they would enter into my world as well as into their meditation-world.