Caller: I have intellectual pursuits, but I do believe in a very, very deep spiritual life and I have become much more of what I would call a human being. But the more you become that, the more you are eaten, as you said before, by the sharks, by the life around you. What is to be done?

Steve Powers: That’s a very important question in our society. This woman feels that the more she allows herself to become sensitive, the more pain she feels and the more vulnerable she is to the sharks who seem to be constantly circling her.

Sri Chinmoy: I sympathise with her, I sympathise with you. But I wish to say that sometimes we see a dark tunnel before we see sunlight. Before dawn, the hour is the darkest. Right now we are experiencing the world as a harsh reality. The world is torturing us. We are trying to be good, kind, sympathetic, spiritual in every possible way, but in return we are being tortured by humanity. But we have to continue in our faith that God is all Power and that He is going to have a perfect creation. If we have faith in our own gradual perfection, then we will have the same kind of feeling about others. Right now if I look at myself and see what I am, as compared to what I was ten years ago, I would definitely notice an improvement. Ten years ago I was not, let us say, as divine as I am now. Ten years ago I was also, let us say, undivine. But I cried and I tried and my Lord was pleased with me, so He has granted me some light, some peace, some divine qualities. That is why today I have become a better human being. So if I can make progress, I feel that others can also make the same progress. Today they are undivine, but tomorrow, like me, they can become divine. Not what one is right now, but what one will eventually become is what is most important. So these people who are now a threat to us need not and cannot remain a threat all the time because it is God’s Will that we make progress.