Question: How can we maintain a good spiritual standard consistently instead of going up and down?¹⁷¹

Sri Chinmoy: Please feel that every day is equally important. Suppose that a runner has to run one hundred metres in order to reach his goal. After covering twenty metres at top speed, he knows that he is going to reach the goal in just a few seconds. Then relaxation comes, and for ten or twenty metres his speed may decrease considerably. Then again, if he sees that some other runners are going ahead of him, he realises that his speed has fallen and once more he starts to run the fastest. But as soon as the starter has fired the gun, the runner has to maintain top speed from the beginning to the end if he wants to be pleased with his result.

In the spiritual life the same thing happens. If today we do a wonderful meditation, then tomorrow we feel we can relax. We feel that easily we will maintain the same speed tomorrow because it is our due. But it does not happen that way. Tomorrow again we have to try most sincerely. Our difficulty is that when we do something well, we feel we deserve some relaxation. It is our due. But every day when we meditate we have to feel that it is our last day on earth, and that tomorrow we are going to die. We know that we are in the Heart of the Eternal Supreme, but each day we have to regard as our last day to aspire. Today if we fail, we will get zero; we will be out of the race. If today is the last day, our sincerity, our aspiration, all our divine qualities will come to the fore and we will run the fastest. Then, when tomorrow comes, again we have to feel, “Today if I do not realise God, then I am doomed. I shall have to wait another five thousand years.”

Whenever you sit down to meditate, you have to feel that the hour has struck. The teacher will give you only two hours to complete your examination. In two hours’ time, even if you cannot complete your papers, the examination is over. Either you pass or you fail. Forget about yesterday’s examination. Also, do not think that tomorrow the teacher will stand in front of you again and give you the same examination. If you feel that opportunity will come again and again and knock at your door, then you are lost. Neither the past nor the future exist; only the present exists for you. Here in the present you have to succeed.

If you feel that today is your absolutely last chance, then you are bound to have a good meditation. But if you feel, “Oh, now I am only twenty-eight. At the age of seventy-eight I will realise God,” then you will never realise God. Perhaps at the age of thirty or forty God will call you to the other side. When the time comes for you to go to the other world, you have to go. You do not know when it will be, so you should make yourself feel that today is the last day for you to achieve everything that you are supposed to achieve. If today is your last day, then your sincerity, your aspiration, all your divine qualities, will come to the fore.