Question: What is the best way to meditate so that we can be spiritually strong? And if we become spiritually weak, how can we regain our strength?

Sri Chinmoy: First of all, there are two ways in which you can keep from losing what I give you. One way is to believe in what you get. You value your material wealth, your money-power. If you have one hundred dollars in your wallet, then you value that money and you are always on the alert so that nobody will snatch it away from you. Now spirituality, spiritual wealth, is infinitely more valuable. Suppose you have received a very high experience in your spiritual life. I gave you a most soulful, most sincere and most powerful smile that gave you abundant joy. Now that inner wealth you will try to treasure. How can you treasure it? By valuing it. You have to value your inner experience as you value your material power, only you have to value it infinitely more. If you value something, then you will never lose it. On rare occasions if you are unguarded, then a robber can take your money. Otherwise, most of the time you do not lose what you have. Then the time comes when you can properly use your money.

There is another way to retain your spiritual wealth, to keep it forever. That is by assimilating it. Once when you get something from me, the real in you will value it. If you get a soulful inner experience, take that experience as a beautiful flower. Then on each petal of this flower you can write the word "gratitude". If you see the word "gratitude" around the entire flower and on each of the petals you also see your gratitude, then this is the strength, the boundless strength, the magnetic power to pull what I wish to give you and to keep the experience lodged inside your heart. When you value something, then automatically your gratitude-flower comes forward. If you start eating gratitude-food daily, then you will never lose anything that I give you.

Again, if you do lose something, do not think that you can get it back tomorrow or at some other indefinite time, whenever you please. Do not leave it for the future. If you feel that you have lost something which you have received, then immediately sit down and concentrate on it, meditate on it, contemplate on it until you get it back. It has to be like the Buddha's determination: "Until the time I get illumination, I am not going to move." The Buddha's illumination was infinitely more important than an ordinary seeker's achievement, but the light that you receive when you regain your experience is most important for you. If you lose something, then you must say, "I am going to get it back. And once I get it back I will not lose it again. No matter if it takes an hour or two hours or three or four, I will remain here until I get it back." I assure you that if you are sincere, then new experience, new divine wealth or spiritual wealth will never be denied you.

Suppose you have got a very solid experience from me. This solid experience can come in different forms. It can come as clarity, purity, security, peace, delight, light or satisfaction. If you have lost security or purity or your sense of perfection, what will you do? In your case, I assure you, the maximum it will take is twenty minutes to get it back. Twenty minutes of your one-pointed concentration, meditation and contemplation will be enough to get it back. During this twenty minutes, you have to feel that you as your individual self do not exist. Only oneness with your Guru exists. You can't say, "This does not exist, that does not exist, nobody exists." You have to feel that you yourself do not exist. If you feel that you don't exist, it doesn't mean that no one else exists. At that time you have to feel that you have what I have and that you are what I am. Then, in twenty minutes I will be able to give you back what you lost. If you have lost anything, any divine quality or any divine experience, whether it is security, divinity, purity, perfection, light, delight or satisfaction, then give me twenty minutes and I will get it back for you. You may get it back in one minute or two minutes or so, but a maximum of twenty minutes it may take to get it back, provided you have concentration, meditation, contemplation only on your Guru. You have to feel that your Guru has what you have lost and your Guru is what you have lost.

Suppose you have lost security. Then immediately feel that your Guru has it. If I have security for you, then I am that security as well. If you have lost purity, then you have to say, "Guru has purity and Guru is purity." If you have lost some perfection, then you say, "Guru has that perfection and Guru is that perfection." Look at my picture and repeat, "Guru has and Guru is." The thing that you have lost, I have; and I am also that very thing. So you will see that in twenty minutes I will return to you what you have lost.

It also depends on the individual. Some of you will take two days, some will take even two months. But in your case, I am telling you that in twenty minutes you will get back everything that you lost. It may happen also that you will not only get back what you have lost, but you may get even more. But that is not your main concern now. The main thing is to get back what you have lost and to build it up again. Let that very quality be the foundation-stone of your aspiration. If you conquer your loss, then you will definitely get back the quality from me.