Question: If we have an experience which we feel may be coming from God, how do we know whether we are experiencing God, the Devil, or something from our own imagination?

Sri Chinmoy: The Devil will destroy you, but the real God, the compassionate God, will fulfil you. When you meditate, if you get inner Peace or inner Joy, then immediately you can feel that there is some Truth, some Light, that is compelling you to go faster, to move forward or upward or inward. But if you feel that it is not like that, then naturally some wrong forces, hostile forces, are entering into you. You must know that the spiritual life is not a life of imagination. It is something real, absolutely real.