Question: Can we lose our God-realisation when we try to reveal or manifest it?

Sri Chinmoy: First comes God-realisation. Inside your heart-garden you see a most beautiful flower — the God-realisation-flower — and you become that flower. Then you bring it out of your central being and reveal it to the world, not to show off, but in order to offer the beauty and the fragrance of your heart-flower to others.

Some people, after realisation, do not want to reveal God’s Light because it is so difficult. They say, “Who cares whether others believe that there is a most beautiful flower inside my heart? If they do not believe that I have divine peace, which they lack, then I do not have to show them.” They also say, “Who knows? While revealing or manifesting God’s Light, I may lose it.”

But others want to share the peace and light that they have inside because they feel that others will be miserable without it. This is the heart’s generosity and magnanimity of those daring souls who try to reveal and manifest God. They are not afraid of losing their inner wealth. They feel, “If I only possess something, then definitely I can lose it because my possession is separate from me. If there is a difference between my existence and my realisation, then naturally I can lose my realisation. But if I have become what I was longing for, then how can I lose it? What I have, I can lose; but what I am, I cannot lose.”

Again, it is possible to have an impermanent realisation. When Arjuna got a vision of the Krishna Consciousness, he had not actually achieved God-realisation, so it did not last. In the case of one very great spiritual Master, at first the Krishna Consciousness used to come and disappear. It took twenty-eight years before the Master declared that the Krishna Consciousness had descended fully into his personality. But once you truly realise the Supreme Consciousness, then it can never go.