Question: A lot of people who are genuinely interested in meditation and become disciples disappear after the first few months. I am wondering what are some things we can do to try to make new people feel more comfortable and more a part of this group?

Sri Chinmoy: Each individual should try to make friends. Boys, you should try to make friends with one or two newcomers, according to your nature. Girls, also, should do the same. If you feel a kind of affinity with some individuals, then try to mix with them. You will not lose anything. You can take it as a responsibility in your own inner life to take care of one or two people. Boys will do devoted service for the boys and girls for the girls.

And there should be more Joy Day types of activities. The newcomers should definitely come on your regular meditation day, but also two or three times a month try to have some recreational activities to make them feel that our way of life is not renunciation. From acceptance, we transcend the things that have to be transcended and illumined.

Some disciples feel that if they mix with the newcomers, they will lose their spirituality or divinity. Others become insecure. They feel that these newcomers are more talented than they are, so the best thing is to keep the newcomers beneath them by ignoring them.

That is not true at all. If you help someone to walk along the path of spirituality, God will give you the capacity to run faster, infinitely faster. And then, since you have been doing Yoga for so many years, you have to feel oneness if that person goes one step ahead of you. You will be so proud that it is you who have helped that particular person to go ahead.

Insecurity does not even need another individual. When your own heart is going ahead, your mind feels jealous. Your mind does not want your heart to go ahead. Your mind enters into your heart and creates confusion. It tells the heart that you are doing the wrong thing. Very cleverly it is jealous of the heart because everybody is appreciating the heart and they are not appreciating the mind. So the mind tells the heart, “You are doing everything wrong.”