Question: How can we maintain our inner cry and intensity when we are not around you?

Sri Chinmoy: It entirely depends on your inner connection. In your office, you may speak to your colleagues for hours, but your heart is not in them. And needless to say, their heart is not inside you. But your heart is inside your Guru, inside God. Your heart lies inside your Guru, but your outer being is with your colleagues, doing office work and other things. You have already established a very, very close, intimate connection with my soul and the Heart of the Supreme. All my good disciples have done it. You also have done it. The mistake that you make and that others make is that you have a fixed goal. During your meditation, if you come to a certain standard, you feel that you have reached your goal. Or in the inner life, if you get a little joy, immediately you get a complacent feeling. You always want to remain with yesterday’s laurels. Yesterday you got a little joy and now you are crying to get that same little joy. But how do you know that the Supreme wants you to have that little joy? Perhaps He wants you to go farther, higher and deeper.

On the physical plane, our goals are very limited. When I started to lose weight, my goal was 165 pounds. Then came 160. And then it went on to 156 and 154 and 146. Now I can come back to 140 or say 130, maximum. But then I can go no further. The physical goal is always limited. But in the spiritual world, the goal is not fixed; there is no end in the inner world. Here we are dealing with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality.

Where is Infinity, where is Eternity, where is Immortality on the physical plane? Immortality is in consciousness. If you have developed an immortal consciousness, then you are serving the Supreme all over the world. Physically, all spiritual Masters leave the body. But the consciousness that they have brought down to the world is immortal. The Christ brought down the immortal Consciousness; Sri Krishna did it; all the spiritual Masters did it. It is the Consciousness that they offered that remains immortal.

Every day you have to feel that you have a higher goal. Do not think that yesterday’s goal is the final goal in your life. In your case, you always try to reach a particular goal. If you can run fifty metres, you feel that your part is over. If you cannot run fifty metres one day because of a stomach upset, you feel miserable. But God does not want you to be satisfied with fifty metres. He wants you to make your goal fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three, fifty-four metres. When you have a higher goal, automatically your aspiration increases. Otherwise, if you are using the same capacity to aim at the same goal, you are not going very far. Then your inner life becomes monotonous. But if you feel that your goal is always transcending itself, then you have constant joy in your achievement and progress.

Do not think about success. Success ends your journey, but progress never ends. When you have a fixed goal and you reach it, this is your success. Then you are finished; after that you are not doing anything. But if you don’t have a fixed goal, you are going on constantly. Then you are making progress, and in continuous progress your goal is constantly going beyond, beyond, beyond. At that time, you get the greatest satisfaction. So do not be satisfied with success; success ends the journey. Progress continues. And each time you make progress, it is a real form of success. Every day when you meditate, feel you will dive still deeper, fly still higher. Then you will be able to maintain a conscious feeling for the Supreme, for your Guru, because you are marching towards an eternal goal.