Question: Is there any difference between nirvana and nirvikalpa samadhi?

Sri Chinmoy: Let us take nirvana and nirvikalpa samadhi as two tallest mansions. Other mansions are next to nothing in comparison to these two mansions. If you climb up the nirvana -mansion, there is no way to come down, or you do not feel the necessity of coming down to offer what you have received to the world. There is no link with the earth-consciousness. In nirvana you notice the extinction of earth-pangs and the end of the cosmic dance. Nirvana is flooded with infinite Peace and Bliss. From the point of view of Absolute Truth, nirvana is the Goal of goals to the seekers who do not want to take any more part in God’s manifested creation. Of course, if the Supreme Pilot wants an individual seeker of the absolute Truth to go beyond nirvana and enter into the world for earth-transformation and earth-perfection in a divine way, He sends him down. He feels that that particular instrument of His is supremely indispensable for transforming the Supreme’s birthless transcendental Vision into His deathless universal Reality.

When you climb up the nirvikalpa samadhi-mansion, there is a way to climb down if you want to. But if you stay there for a long period of time, then you totally forget that there is a way to come down. Nirvikalpa samadhi throws illumination flood into us and makes us feel that there are higher worlds far beyond this world of ours. Further, it reveals itself to the seeker as a connecting link between this world and other high, higher, highest worlds, and it offers him the road to go beyond it and enter into the ever-transcending Beyond.