Question: When I meditate I get a feeling of joy and then, like a pendulum, I get a feeling of absolute desolation. Why must it be like that?

Sri Chinmoy: The joy that you get right after you have a good meditation, a sublime meditation, is of greatest importance. You need that joy. But you are making a mistake if you feel that your spiritual life has to be like the movement of a pendulum. Some people have very high experiences and then they have a dry period. But I wish to say that it is not inevitable. A few spiritual Masters have not gone through dry periods at all. Once they got inner experiences, they got delight and, on the strength of their delight, they continued getting deeper experiences. Once you get joy, please try to assimilate it and continue. Walk along the spiritual path continuously with joy and delight. When you are experiencing a higher truth and inner light, you get an inner poise and that gives you inner happiness. And with this happiness you can continue to make progress.

After you have assimilated this joy, you may experience a kind of hunger, a real hunger, as if you had not eaten for ages. But this is extremely good. It is not the hunger of a greedy person but the hunger of an eternal seeker. You have assimilated, and then you have new, very intense hunger. But that is not desolation. It is a good experience.