Question: Guru, you revealed your consciousness in the performance of your play, and you reveal your consciousness through pure meditation. What is the difference between the two?

Sri Chinmoy: There is a great difference. In my meditation, usually I first enter into my highest consciousness and then bring down and share with you what I have achieved or gained on the highest plane. Yesterday at the Manhattan Centre we had an absolutely sublime meditation. If you had seen me yesterday at the Manhattan Centre, you would have seen my highest height. I was trying so hard to come down, walking like an absolutely crazy person; I couldn't keep my feet properly on the ground. When I came to the door, I was still struggling to come back to normal consciousness. Even in the car, for ten minutes I could not come down.

While I was performing my play, I was in a very high consciousness, but I was not in my absolutely highest consciousness. You can say it was the fruit of my very highest consciousness that I was offering. I did not enter my highest, but the result of the highest I kept in store to share with you. And while I was performing, the Supreme told me many things, but all I wish to say is that it was a unique experience for me and for my Inner Pilot.

The moment we open our mouth and use our physical organs to speak, we can never remain in the absolutely highest consciousness. It will be one inch below the highest always. My highest in its purest form, I maintain only in silence. That is unfortunately the experience of all spiritual Masters. When we come down to the physical level and use earthly means to give something, the highest vision cannot remain the same; it becomes slightly less divine than it was in silence.¹