Question: Sometimes after meditating I lose the joy that I have received from my meditation. Is there a method that would help me keep that joy?

Sri Chinmoy: There can be two reasons why you lose the joy you have received. One reason is very simple. The mind starts functioning most powerfully and vehemently. While functioning the mind allows obscure, impure and undivine thoughts to enter. If the mind helplessly allows these thoughts to come in consciously or unconsciously, then the joy disappears; it will not last. But if purity is well established in your being, then the joy will last for a long time or forever.

Or it may happen that your inner vessel is small; this can be the second reason. You have invoked light, which is joy itself, but the quantity that you have brought down from above is beyond the capacity and receptivity of your vessel. The quantity that you have got during the meditation has satisfied you but you are not in a position to hold the excess amount, so it disappears. At that time you feel miserable.

So this happens for one of these two reasons. Either the joy is beyond the capacity of the vessel or impure ideas enter into your aspiring heart and the joy, which is light, cannot last.