Question: How can I recognise a spiritual experience as such?

Sri Chinmoy: In your case it is easy. Millions of times you have had the feeling of true eagerness to help humanity, and with God’s Grace you have helped humanity according to your capacity. Then you have gotten joy. But do not take this joy as the result of your action. When you have inner joy, please do not feel that it is the result of a fulfilled desire or a successful action.

Do not feel that you are happy because the result is satisfactory. No, immediately separate yourself from your action. Then you will see that the joy you are having is from a feeling of oneness — oneness with the universal Consciousness or cosmic Consciousness or your own consciousness.

Spirituality is always natural. Anything that is unnatural can never be spiritual. Right now, you are not seeing truth as your birthright. Truth is something unnatural; somebody else possesses the truth, but you do not possess it. But when you are in the spiritual life, you see that spirituality is everybody’s property.

In your case, spiritual experiences you have had many, many times. Whenever I concentrate on you, I do see that you want to be illumined and guided by the Supreme. This very idea that you want to be illumined, guided or moulded by somebody who knows how to guide and mould you, is not a desire. It is more than an aspiration even. What it is, is an outer expression of your soul’s inner experience. It is your soul that is having this inner experience. An unaspiring person says, “I have to save myself. I have to do everything. Nobody will do anything for me.” But in your case, I have seen many times that you have the desire to be helped and guided by the Supreme in me. This is the highest, or you can say, the most effective experience of your soul, expressed in the form of desire or in the form of aspiration. So constantly you are getting experiences when you feel that you are a child in the Lap of the Supreme. That very feeling, you will see if you go deep within, is an experience which is embodied by your soul, and only you are trying to manifest it in the form of aspiration.