Question: When we feel joyful most of the time, does that mean God is pleased with us?

Sri Chinmoy: If we are pleased and happy, God is pleased. But we have to know whether we are experiencing real happiness or not. Sometimes we are tricky people. We get pleasure when we exchange all kinds of vital gossip with our friends. We become jealous of someone and when that person fails, we get malicious pleasure. We have to be careful of this impure joy. We have to know whether we are experiencing pleasure or pure joy. Real joy means immediate expansion. If we experience pure joy, immediately our heart will expand. We will really spread our wings, and we will feel that we are flying in the divine freedom-sky. The entire length and breadth of the world becomes ours, not for us to rule over, but as an expansion of our consciousness. We become reality and vastness. But if it is only vital pleasure, then the vital will gain a kind of strength. We will become like an elephant and will feel that we can trample the whole world.

When we separate ourselves from an individual who has done something wrong and derive satisfaction from it, this is our feeling of superiority coming to the fore. Only when we have the true feeling of inner oneness do we become one with vastness itself. Then no fear, no doubt, no jealousy, no anxiety, no limitations enter into us.

If we are experiencing real joy we can feel that God is pleased with us. God's greatest achievement is our joy. When we are unhappy, miserable and depressed, we are housing undivine, hostile forces. But when we are really happy we can feel that we are giving something to God. God's deepest joy is in receiving this gift from us.