Question: In psychology there's a symptom called manic depression where first of all the person is very lively and gay and then he becomes depressed. Sometimes I've noticed this in disciples because it seems to be part of the human psyche. What can we do to break the cycle?

Sri Chinmoy: The difficulty with all human beings is that they are not satisfied with one thing for more than five minutes. If we have something for five minutes, we feel that we are very rich. Then that particular thing does not satisfy us any more, and we run after something new. Always we feel that the other side of the field is very green. So we go to the other side and see that it is not green at all there. Or it may happen that we go to the other side and feel that that side really is green. So we enjoy it for five minutes. But then again we think, "No, no, no! I was mistaken, the other side was equally green." So then we come back to the other side and there we find nothing. In this way three or four times we will be happy during the day, and three or four times we will be unhappy. Or one day we are very happy and then the following day we are depressed. Up and down, up and down! But why should there be a descent? If we are walking along the right path and if we are sincere walkers, then we should just continue.

When we are happy, at that time we are living inside our heart, inside our soul. But we are not satisfied there for more than five minutes. We want to go to the vital, to the mind or to the physical because we get tremendous joy in constant change. So, unconsciously or consciously again we go back to the physical, to the vital and to the mind. Change is good when it is a change from good to better and from better to best. If we are getting a little joy from the heart or from the soul, we try to increase it and intensify it. Then, when we enter into our highest frame of mind, when we are in our soul consciousness, there is no end to our joy.

We have to know what we have in the kitchen and what we have in the meditation room. In the meditation room there are incense, candles and flowers. So here we will get great joy because of our inspiration, because of our sincerity in the spiritual life. Knowing what the meditation room can offer, why do we have to go into the kitchen and get all this confusion? It is because we feel that this place also has joy. But I wish to say that the kitchen is the wrong place to find joy.

We should be like an Indian farmer. An Indian farmer does not wait for rain or sun; he feels that his job is to plough the field. Every day he goes out to the field and does his job. So, in our case also, we should not anticipate ups and downs. After staying one day in a cheerful frame of mind, the next day this cheerful frame of mind is followed by a wave of depression. But if we live in Light, if we live in divine Peace, then this does not happen. It comes only because we have not totally mastered our vital and our mind.