_Question:_ Is there such a thing as deep and lasting sadness, or are we just cherishing these things?

Sri Chinmoy: We are cherishing sadness. We are fond of it. We feel that ultimately from this sadness something very good will emerge. But there is something called psychic sadness. Psychic sadness is not like ordinary sadness. Psychic sadness is the realisation that once upon a time you had a home in Heaven, where your Beloved Supreme and you lived together. Now you are swimming in the sea of ignorance, and where He is you do not know. You do not know how many millions of years it will take for you to go back to that abode where the Supreme and you lived together and drank ambrosia.

If you have that kind of psychic sorrow, then it helps. Psychic sorrow has strength in it which is transformed, after a few days or a few months, into positive will. You will think, "I was with my Beloved Supreme before, so that means I can be with Him again, tomorrow or in ten years or twenty years." Then you have to long for Him. You have to feel that you need Him desperately.

That kind of sadness will help us. But our usual sadness is in the vital plane. We create this vital sadness, which takes the form of frustration and depression. That sadness says, "Oh, I have not achieved anything on earth. Everybody is making progress; only I am useless. He is great, she is great, and I am nothing." That kind of sadness we cherish, and from that sadness nothing good will ever come.

From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol.VII-7, No.1, January 1981, Agni Press, 1981
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