Questions and answers

Question: You once said that in your last life your disciples were ninety-nine per cent devoted to you. Why didn't they come to you this time?

Sri Chinmoy: Why do first-class disciples leave our Centre in this incarnation? After staying with me for six, seven or eight years most devotedly, and after becoming first-class disciples, how do people disappear? As you do not eat most delicious food every day, so your meditation, your sincerity, your devotion and your surrender do not last forever. But if you become a real spiritual Master, then your aspiration and realisation become permanent. Before you reach a certain height, there is no certainty. Then, even after you have reached the height, there is also no certainty, because temptation may pull you down. But once you reach the highest Height, and if you are in a position to stay there permanently, then there can be no fall.

You have come here, but temptation is pulling against you; so you easily fall down. But if you can stay here for some time after reaching a certain standard, then if you get a pull from above and if you also have the intense urge to go up, then you go higher. It is like that in ordinary human beings. For six months someone can meditate well; then for two years he takes a rest. Somebody can meditate for one day and then for three months he takes a rest. You are very devoted, but in this undivine world nothing is permanent. Today when somebody becomes a first-class disciple, I am so proud of that person. But then, in five minutes, that person does something wrong. Then, oh God! I cannot even call that person a sixth or seventh-class disciple. He is now an eighth-class disciple. But disciples should maintain the same standard and only go up. The problem is that they don't maintain it.