Don Pablo: How can a child make progress if he does not know what he is? His father and mother do not know this. In the school the child does not learn this. And this is what produces the humanity, the bad humanity, we have. This is my idea: the child must know from childhood.

Sri Chinmoy: The child must learn from the parents. The parents have to feel also that they have the supreme responsibility. A child is the flower of God, a child is the instrument of God, the representative of God. The parents have to feel this.

Don Pablo: But they don’t.

Sri Chinmoy: That is why the problem starts. If they feel that their children are representing God, then all the time the parents will teach this to their children.

Don Pablo: That is why I say that the children must know what they are, the miracle that they are, as soon as they understand the sense of the word. This is my idea.

A child represents God

Sri Chinmoy: This miracle means that the child represents God on earth. He is the chosen instrument of God. We admire you, the world admires you as a musician, the greatest musician. The world admires you as a lover of mankind, a true lover of mankind. Again, the world sees in you the eternal child. Greatness is not an obstruction in your life. The eternal child is making and manifesting the divine Music, the divine Truth within you. So it is your child-heart, childlike heart, that is ready to manifest Divinity.

What you are saying is so true. Each person, each human being, should feel that he is a child and, as you say, he is a miracle. Spiritual people, those who are thinking of God and Divinity, are trying to be of help. We are trying to pray and meditate. If we go within and from there if we go without, then immediately we will see the child as a divine instrument of God. Otherwise, if we remain outside, then we cannot see the child as Divinity; we see him as an ordinary human being. But if we remain within, then we see the child as a true miracle.

Don Pablo: Well, I think that I approach some of your ideas.

Sri Chinmoy: It is your idea. This morning I was reading your writings and I was so moved. You were saying that life and work can never be separated. Life and work must go together. Life is realisation and work is manifestation. What you realise from your music, from your life, you are expressing through your outer manifestation. A child has to have the realisation and the manifestation of that realisation.

Don Pablo: I understand. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I have talked with many great people – I mean people with great names – presidents of states and ministers and so on. All of them are surprised and they say, “But what you say is a new thing – that if we are to produce something, we must begin with the child.” I told Golda Meir from Israel my ideas and she said, “This is a new thing. I want to do that.”

We must tell the child what he is. Human beings, as they live now, mostly think of material possessions – money, glory and such stupid things. They do everything that others do without thinking.

Sri Chinmoy: Unfortunately, the mind is working too much and the heart is not working. When the heart works, these problems disappear. The child has a flower-heart but grown-up people are using the mind. In the mind there is no love. Real love is inside the heart. So a child uses the heart and tries all the time to make others happy. God is also trying all the time to make us happy. A child embodies all the good, divine qualities of God. It is the parents who right from the beginning have to see the Divinity and Infinity in the child.

Don Pablo: But they do not do it.

Sri Chinmoy: They do not do it; that is why the problem starts. But you have been to the White House and you have spoken about your philosophy to Roosevelt and Kennedy. You are speaking of new creation all the time. The old creation has to surrender all the time to the new. The old creation means the life that does not want to see the Truth, accept the Truth or fulfil the Truth. In your case you are trying always to offer a new creation. Every day that dawns, according to your philosophy, is freshness, newness, inspiration. Only a child has the capacity to feel this. Every morning he is inspired to do something, to run, to give something to the world. This is something only a child can do.

How can we give this truth to the child? Only if the parents feel that they are responsible for bringing out their children’s divine qualities. Parents send their children to school and then they feel their responsibility is over. The teacher often teaches just for the sake of money and does not take responsibility for the child. After all, the child is somebody else’s son. If he fails or passes, it is not the teacher’s business.

The parents have to feel that to bring a child into the world means to feel divine joy and divine pride that God has brought this person into the world. As you say, each child is unique; this is absolutely true. God’s creation is like a lotus or a rose. Each petal is unique in its own way. Through each individual child God is manifesting Himself in an unprecedented way.

Each child is bringing down a new message from God which was not known before. Naturally, if the world accepts it, the world is getting new light, new power, new joy, new love. So what you are saying, that each child is a miracle, each child is unique, is so true, because God wants to manifest Himself in infinite ways, in infinite forms, in infinite Light. A child is here on earth to show us that God does exist, and God is manifesting through that child.

Don Pablo: This is not on the same level of truth that I can explain its value as clearly as you do, but I have the same idea and I work for that. I work, I speak to everybody – I mean, everybody who can understand what I say. And it has been wonderful that you have come like this. It has been wonderful.

God in nature