Question: Can we actually feel our realisation coming, or does it appear spontaneously and unexpectedly?

Sri Chinmoy: Real realisation cannot dawn unexpectedly. Gradually, gradually we come to the point where we realise God. If one is on the verge of realisation, he will know that it is a matter of days or months or years. Realisation is complete conscious oneness with God. Now, if one does not have a limited conscious oneness with God, how can he attain an unlimited conscious oneness with God all at once? It is true that God can do everything, that He can grant realisation without asking anything of the seeker. But if God did that, He would be partial. If God gave you realisation without your meditating and practising the spiritual life, then everybody would expect it.

Some people get realisation after only four or five years of meditation, whereas others who have been meditating for thirty, forty or fifty years are nowhere near realisation. But you have to know that in the case of the person who realises God after having meditated for only four or five years, this is not his first incarnation as a seeker. He started his journey long before you may even have thought of God. Now he is completing his journey to God-realisation, while you perhaps have just started yours. Again, we have to know that even though we have meditated for many incarnations in the past and for a few years in this incarnation, it does not actually mean that we deserve God. It was God’s Grace that operated in our previous incarnations and it is God’s Grace that is helping us realise Him in this incarnation as well.

From your constant, lifelong meditation, you can expect realisation, but only at God’s choice Hour. You may want it immediately, but God may know that if you realise Him right now, you will be more harmful than helpful to mankind. So God has His own Hour for your realisation, and when that Hour nears, you will be aware of it.