Question: When I become aware that my consciousness has slipped down very far, I often feel that when I try to do something to raise it again, I'm not being sincere or it's just coming from the mind, or maybe I'm pushing or pulling or forcing. What is the best way when you become aware that your consciousness has dropped to get it back up?

Sri Chinmoy: The best thing is to surrender your undivine life to your divine life. When you fall down from the tree, you definitely know what has compelled you to fall down. Overnight you cannot realise God; also overnight you cannot fall to your lowest point. You have been with us four or five years, and you know how hard, how sincerely you have tried to make progress. It has taken you so many years to make this progress. Will all this go away immediately? No, it is not like that. It will go slowly, slowly, slowly. But if you do a few things very undivine, naturally your descent will be faster. But that doesn't mean that overnight you will fall to the foot of the tree. Each time you will climb down, say, one step or a few inches.

If you feel that you are falling, here is a way to prevent it. When you are falling down, try to remember devotedly and soulfully your best inner experience. There is not a single disciple who has not had one or two major experiences, according to his own capacity or receptivity. So immediately think of that incident. For instance, if one day I showed you tremendous compassion, love or gratitude, and you felt that if you didn't get anything else in this world, still on that one day you got something significant, then you have to bring that incident right in front of your vision. If you write it down, look at it, enter into it and become one with it, I tell you, the way you are climbing down will immediately stop. Immediately you will return to your height. Some spiritual Masters have done this when they went through barrenness; for six months they would have good meditations and then for one or two months they would not be able to meditate at all. Vivekananda used to have that problem. He had so many lofty, high realisations and meditations, and he wrote them down in a big notebook. Then he read them; immediately, he became one with those experiences and again he used to return to his own height. Then his meditations would again be very powerful.

So when your meditation is not profound and you feel that you are descending, try to remember a significant experience. You are drowning, but there is somebody on the shore to save you and you are raising your hand towards that person. That person is your own experience. You touch him and grab his hand, and then you are saved. He represents your own highest, your own sublime experience, which you had perhaps two or three years ago.