Question: Guru, is ecstatic love of God the highest type of aspiration?

Sri Chinmoy: Love is undoubtedly aspiration. But the thing is that if you have love of God, that is one reality. You may become self-complacent and remain satisfied with that love. But inside that love if you have the aspiration to increase it, then that is the highest type of aspiration. Everything has its capacity. Love itself has its own capacity. But if, inside love, there is an intense aspiration to increase that love, then that is the highest form of aspiration. If you say that this is final, that more than that you cannot have, then that is not the highest form of aspiration. Aspiration is continuous progress, continuous transcendence. So, ecstatic love is very good, but it has to be a climbing and ever-transcending ecstasy. Then only is it the highest type of aspiration. If the ecstasy is not increasing or heightening, then it becomes a stagnant pool, no matter how much ecstasy you are enjoying. The highest type of aspiration is continuous transcendence, self-transcendence.
Sri Chinmoy, Aspiration-Tree, Aum Publications, 1976