Question: Is it a good idea to discuss your spiritual experiences with your brothers and sisters?

Sri Chinmoy: It is not advisable to discuss inner experiences with your spiritual brothers and sisters. Although they belong to the same family as you do, they have not yet conquered jealousy. Outwardly they will act happy and extol you to the skies. But inwardly their hearts will burn and they will try to take away the essence of your experience through jealousy and other low forces. There is no hard and fast rule, but even if a disciple is extremely close to you — let us say your husband or wife — still jealousy can arise.

Sometimes when people have an experience and tell their friends about it, their friends doubt it. At that time, immediately the strength, power and light of the experience disappears. Doubt has the power to immediately take your experience away. In the outer life, if you tell others that you are suffering or in a low consciousness, then you will get some sympathy from them and they will try to elevate your consciousness. But when it is a matter of very high, sublime experiences, there is every possibility of being misunderstood or creating jealousy or being assailed by others' doubts. So please keep these things to yourself. Your experiences will eventually turn into realisation, which is like broad daylight. You cannot hide the daylight, but you have to hide the flame because there are people who can blow out the flame with jealousy or doubt.

You should, however, let your Master know. Your spiritual Master alone is not jealous of you, because he has had infinitely higher experiences. Also, he knows that no disciple will have a major experience without his personal inspiration, knowledge and conscious or indirect help. If you tell the Master about an experience that you have, it will only add to your conviction. Or if it was only a mental hallucination, the Master can tell you so. Some people do get false experiences. They read a few books dealing with higher experiences and then these experiences unconsciously enter into their minds; unconsciously they are trying to assimilate the sublime experiences of the person who has written a book. But sometimes even that person has not had the experiences. He has only borrowed them from somebody else's book. At that time the Master will be able to tell the seeker whether or not his experiences are genuine and really the result of his inner aspiration.

If you do not have a Master to tell your experiences to, then what can you do? You have to try to observe where the result of the experience leads you and what you are getting from it. If you get peace, light and bliss in abundant measure, then you will know that the experience is genuine. If it is a real, genuine experience, your mind will become calm and quiet and your heart will enter into perfect poise. Only in perfect poise does one get the highest type of experience. But if the experience is false, it will create excitement in you and it will compel you to tell your friends about it so you will get their appreciation and admiration. But this will only create jealousy in them. You have no right either consciously or unconsciously to increase their jealousy. So the best thing is to keep your inner experiences to yourself.