Question: You were waiting for a long time.

Sri Chinmoy: The Supreme did not tell me all along that I had to go to America. Until 1958 or 1959 I was thinking of going to the Himalayan caves. I was recalling some previous incarnation. After 1959, or around that time, the Supreme gave me the Command. But before that, I was only thinking of the Himalayas. That is the traditional way.

Sometimes a whimsical idea to go to America would come to me, but a solid feeling to go to the West — that God did not give me. I had only a solid feeling to go to the Himalayas. A few years ago, my eldest brother was feeling that one day I might come back to India and go and live in the Himalayas.

When I was fourteen years old, I wrote a short article called, “A Sea of Light.” There I said that I was going to give up, I was going to leave this mortal world for my eternal abode in Heaven.

Then the Supreme said to me, “If people like you withdraw, who is going to manifest Me?” That was my revelation. That was my solid experience.

Only towards the end of my Ashram life, two or three years before I came to America, I became fully aware of the manifestation aspect and the possibility of coming to America. Otherwise, no; for me there was primarily aspiration. I was thinking of one day going back to the Himalayan caves. I did not have any special feeling for America or the West.