Question: When we are having a high meditation, what is the method that we can use to stay at that point where we know and feel that there is no separation between any of us?

Sri Chinmoy: How can we feel that we are all one? It is on the strength of our conscious aspiration. Right now, let us say, early in the morning we meditate for ten minutes, and then we go to work. For seven or eight hours we are unfortunately compelled to mix with people who are unaspiring. We are thrown into a world of desire, fear, anxiety, worries and so forth. At that time we lose our best consciousness and then it becomes almost impossible for us to feel our oneness with others.

Here in the meditation hall we are all aspiring; that is why our consciousness is elevated. Then, when we go home, our consciousness will go down. Some calamity will take place or something else will happen and we will lose our aspiration. Even if there is nothing outwardly to prevent us from aspiring, our own limited being will not allow us to stay on the top of the tree. Sometimes there is no outer disturbance, but even then we find it difficult to remain on the top of the tree because we do not normally live there. We aspire for half an hour with utmost sincerity and then relaxation starts. We feel that we have worked very hard. We have played our part for five minutes or half an hour, and now we feel we can take rest for an hour or two. So we start reading a newspaper, or watching television, and in this way we enter into relaxation.

But if we want to maintain our standard, the height of our aspiration, then we should be continuous, flowing. Suppose we have meditated for an hour. We may not be able to meditate again for another hour or so. No harm, we shall do something which will maintain and preserve our meditation. We can read spiritual books or sing spiritual songs. At that time, automatically our inner being will inspire us to read books. We won't have to use the mind to think, "Oh, the time has come for me to read." No, our inner being will help us to do the right thing. Right now the inner being is deep inside us, deeply hidden; but we are trying our best, through yoga, to bring the inner being to the fore. Then, after reading for half an hour or an hour, we can go to visit a spiritual friend or, if that is not possible, call him up on the phone and speak about our experiences.

Then we can write about our own experiences. We won't want to publish them, no. But while we are writing them down we are revealing our own inner light and perfecting our spiritual nature. For half an hour we can write and we can read what we have written. Each time we read about one of our own experiences, we get abundant peace, light and bliss. This is not our false imagination. As soon as we have written, we have created something. The creator always wants to enjoy his creation. Look at the gardener. The gardener takes great pain in planting the flower and watering it. Then, after six or seven months when he sees the flower, he deeply appreciates and admires it. Similarly, we also get joy from our own creations.

In this way, doing all these things, we can go on for five or six hours. Even while we are eating we can remember what experiences we had while meditating early in the morning. This imagination is like a battery. We are charging our memory with our spiritual progress. In this way we can continue, entering or retaining our meditation.

But unfortunately we don't do this. We meditate for half an hour or forty-five minutes. Then we feel tired and exhausted. So we mix with unaspiring people, we read unaspiring books, we do so many wrong things after we meditate. We feel that we have seen one shore of the river, so we want to go to the other shore. But the other shore is unfortunately all darkness. We have to try to remain on the shore that has light. We have to do things which will increase our meditation or, at least, retain the power of the meditation. We have to be very wise in our day-to-day lives in how we spend each hour, each second. A time will come when we won't have to have any restrictions in our life; our life itself will be a continuous flow of aspiration. But now we have to use our conscious mind in order to aspire.

So we have to meditate early in the morning and then read, sing spiritual songs or mix with spiritual people. Then, when we are in the office or doing some other activity, we have to try to remain with the spiritual flow that we had early in the morning. From our early morning meditation we acquired peace, light and bliss, which is spiritual money. We have to then deposit this money inside our heart, which is the safest of all banks. Then, when we are in the office, when we need protection from unaspiring people, we can concentrate on our heart and bring forward a little of the peace, light and bliss which we acquired early in the morning. In this way we will be able to maintain our own spiritual standard and keep our level of consciousness high.