Serving the Lord in Joy

Rabbi Marc Gellman is a beloved Rabbi and author of many children’s books. For many years he co-presented The God Squad, a nationally syndicated interfaith programme, with his best friend Monsignor Tom Hartman, who was known to all as Father Tom. Father Tom had a lifelong friendship with Sri Chinmoy, and introduced Rabbi Gellman to him at a ceremony where Sri Chinmoy honoured both of them for their outstanding service. Rabbi Gellman is interviewed here by Dr Agraha Levine.

Rabbi Gellman: So I'm happy to be with you. Honoured, really.

Dr Agraha: Oh, my God, we're the ones honoured. You know, by the way, I took the opportunity and looked up the date - it was May 23rd, 2001, when you and Father Tom were with Sri Chinmoy.

Rabbi Gellman: Right, and it was Tom's birthday, the 21st was his birthday. That's why we were there. It was actually, I kind of forced my way in. It was really a meeting between Sri and Tom about his birthday. And Sri was gracious enough to include me in that day. And I was so anxious and so happy and thrilled to meet him and to with Tom to get lifted by him.

Dr Agraha: Wow. And then what was that whole experience like for you, when you met Sri Chinmoy, when you were lifted, and your good friend, too?

Rabbi Gellman: For people who are watching this who don't know what I'm referring to, let me bring you in, so you're completely aware of this extraordinary ability that Sri had. Its really, I think it's fair to say, a superhuman ability. Sri had built a device where he would sit in a chair, a bench and people would climb up this device. And there was a platform above the bench connected to a pole, the horizontal pole. Sri would grab the pole which supported the whole structure and push up so that anyone standing on the device would be lifted up. And just with the strength of his arms.

You know, of course, the legs are more are stronger than the arms, but just with the strength of his back in his arms, he would lift people up. And this is I mean, I don't want to be indelicate about the fact that I was overweight and Tom was overweight at the time, but with all of our clothes and shoes and it was a cold day, and we had overcoats. I would say the combined weight, plus the device of the two of us was 500 and some odd pounds. It was a huge amount of weight, certainly over 600 pounds altogether. And he just lifted us up.

And it's an odd thing to say that being lifted physically can actually lift you spiritually, because there there are two different domains, the physical and the spiritual. But that I think is one of the great lessons that Sri Chinmoy and his mission in his life brought to the world, that there is no difference. Physical perfection and spiritual perfection. And that one of the the real flaws - he would never say anything has a flaw, but my interpretation is one of the flaws of the Western religious tradition - Judaism, Christianity, Islam. The Abrahamic faiths is and this really came, I think, mainly through Greek ideas of body and spirit and soul of matter and form, that the body is the source of sin. The body is the source of our limitation and the spirit, the soul, in Judaism we say neshamah, the soul in Hebrew. These are different, they're immaterial, they have nothing to do with the body. They're weighed down by the body. They're encumbered by the body. And that is, that's not true. That is profoundly untrue.

And what happens is, in the West you have traditions of people who were great thinkers but who had ignored their physical health, ignored their bodies, and ignored the truth of their physicality. And what that does is, it eventually causes you to despair about the future of your soul, because what you're really doing is you're despairing about the future of your body. And I think when you look at Sri's unique trait, most unique trait, which was his surpassing joyousness, when you look at that, it really was the result of a body and spirit that were in perfect harmony.

And the second thing I would say in addition to the body-spirit awareness that that day brought to me, was the the idea that it is - it is not conceivable, it is not true, it is not even plausible, that God would give all the truth to one people, to one religion, to one nation, to one group. It's not true and it's not reasonable. Why would the God of all people everywhere, give everything to one faith, one people, or one philosophy?

Now certainly there are philosophies that are evil and destructive and God has shunned them and we should shun them. And, you know, there are there are practises and philosophies that are really destructive. But the truth of the matter is that, all of the lifting-up truths, all of the positive truths, all of the ennobling truths are scattered amongst the different religions. And so this truth about body and soul that Sri embodied really in this lift, I think that is an example of that fact.

And you can see how, outside his life, there is a kind of, at this point, a bleed-over of truth from the East to religions in the West. My successor in my synagogue, a woman rabbi, teaches a class in Torah yoga. Now, I don't know exactly what she does in the class. It's not important. The point is that she has used her practise of yoga to enrich her teaching of Judaism. And I was privileged to be a part of a meeting with the Dalai Lama, who was a friend of Tom's and a friend of mine, and he participated in some of our projects like our our HBO special and our book How do you spell God? And he understood this as well, that there's many paths up the same mountain. And that we are all climbers and that we need to learn from other climbers. What have you learnt about the mountain? What songs do you sing that help you climb? What foods do you eat that help you climb?

And so I learnt that from Sri, from his example. There are people who are perfected in the spirit and Tom Hartman was a man, who was not just my best friend, my partner in our work together. But he was my teacher as well. That's why our friendship was so much deeper than just a friendship. It was a missionary friendship - our efforts were all directed to sending out into the world a message. We know enough about how we are different. We do not know enough yet about how we are all the same. That was the message of The God Squad. And so Tom was was spiritually perfected. He wasn't, and I also wasn't and am not physically perfect. And and I think the gap was difficult for both of us. After his death his spirit came to me in ways that are really quite remarkable and jarring in a certain way. But it was quite clear that to me that the physical encumbrances of his Parkinson's disease and of his physical ailments have completely melted away and that his spirit was completely luminous. And it has been guiding me since his death.

One final impact of the visit with Sri was something I never told you about. And I have a little show and tell here - this is a gift from Sri to us.  Sri sent us this laminated song with a picture of us at the very first time we met. That was early in our friendship. It was 1987. And so here it is, the lyrics of this Sri Chinmoy authored song.

God Squad, God squad, God squad, God.
All love, all joy, no iron rod.
Christianity, Judaism embrace oneness,
heart and oneness, life and face.
Father Tom and Rabbi Gellman.
You have revealed God's special plan.

And then it's in music, which I can't read and I can't sing. So me attempt this. (sings song)

Dr Agraha: Well, bravo. It was very good, actually.

Rabbi Gellman: I have no idea if those were the notes he put down or that's the way you want it sung. But that's the best I can do.

Dr Agraha: Well, you did great. It brings it to life. You know, I could feel it much more when you sing it.

Rabbi Gellman: And so back to this point about Sri's physical development. It is common now for people to realise that yogins have physical abilities that are just striking. Yes. I mean, stopping their heart rate, you know, the the cliched stuff of walking on a bed of nails and walking on coals and being immune to pain and those kinds of things. But Sri's ability to lift weights that were - first of all, how old was he in 2001?

Dr Agraha: So that would have made him 70 years old.

Rabbi Gellman: So for a 70 year old man to lift over 600 pounds from a sitting position, not using his legs. I mean, if he had pushed with his legs, it still would be unbelievable. But just using his arms, and straight up push - it was a press, I guess - it's not doable. It's not possible for a 70 year old person to do what he did. Not possible. And yet it was, in the end, he did it. And I think actually that day Al Gore was about to be lifted. But Sri kicked out Al Gore that day so he could lift the God squad.

Dr Agraha: That's correct.

Rabbi Gellman: I can't lift you because I want to lift The God Squad on Father Tom's birthday.

Dr Agraha: That's right, I knew that.

Rabbi Gellman: So you meet a person who can do that, and you say, well, wait a minute, the limitations of our mind are artificial and the limitations of our body are artificial, and we are stronger and wiser than we could ever imagine if we will only exercise those capacities. So I learnt that from him as well.

And after Tom died - the final thing I wanted to say in memory of Sri and also to ask you if you've had similar experiences - when Tommy was alive, he had a deep interest, I wouldn't say it was an obsession, but it was a very, very deep interest in psychics. They talk to people. Mediums. Talking to people who could supposedly talk to dead people.

Now, my role, I think that God intended, clearly intended, was to be introduced into his life to keep him more centred. So that he didn't go off the rails. And the bishop was very pleased with my impact.

Dr Agraha: I guess he was!

Rabbi Gellman: Because many of the psychics that he hung around with would write books and dedicate them to Tom. And this was not good for his career as a priest. The Church looked askance at séances and consulting mediums. Which I completely agree with. I found that many of them -  Tom took me to one; of course, I won't mention his name because it was a story that doesn't reflect well upon him. We went to one of these meetings and it's in a community filled with Italian-Americans. So the room had about 40 people in it, all of them mourners, all of them looking to contact their dead relatives. The psychic was doing something and said, okay, I'm getting a message from the other side. Does anyone here know a Maria? 50 hands went up. Well, it's an Italian community, and I'm kicking Tom, hitting him with my elbow - What? Really? What a genius, he got in a room of 40 Italian-Americans, and someone is mourning a Maria?

Tommy was embarrassed, and I was out of my mind with joy because my job was to make fun of things that are not true. I'm a philosopher. I have a Ph.D. in philosophy, and I have a rational side. And I know how to destroy an idea. But my intellectual capacities to destroy false ideas also ended up destroying people. Because when you rip an idea out of them, it's like doing surgery without anaesthesia, it's just too painful. And they don't ever give up the bad idea. So what I discovered is that laughter, joy, humour was the anaesthesia that enables people to laugh at foolish ideas and enable them to freely let them go.

Dr Agraha: What a beautiful thing you learned!

Rabbi Gellman: And it wasn't anything I learnt. Well, I guess it's something that I didn't learn how to do, I just recognised that God had gifted me in this particular way. So anyway, so I said to Tom, Do you really? - and this was my rational side, when we were just alone, I would say, Tom, really? Really. Come on. Do you believe you can talk to dead people? And he said, Yes, I do. And I believe dead people can talk to us. And I said, okay, Tom, you need a drink, you need some drugs, you need something, because this is stupid. That's what it means to die. What it means to die is you lose your cell phone, it means you lose your capacity to connect to the world of the living.

I mean, I believe in the soul. I told him, and I believe the soul goes to God in some abstract way. But I didn't believe much more than that. Even though Judaism is very lush and elaborate about the soul, and that's where Christianity and Islam got their ideas of the soul. But we didn't just invent the soul, we got it from the Greeks because Aristotle brought it to the Middle East in 331 BC when he was the tutor of Alexander the Great.

So I said, okay, Tom, we're going to have to agree to disagree on this thing. Just do me a favour - don't do any high profile psychic stuff. Because there is a problem, rationally speaking, there's a problem with people consulting psychics, and it has nothing to do with whether they can or cannot talk to dead people. The problem is it destroys their grief work, accepting the reality of death. They're saying, no, no, they're not really dead. They're just somewhere where I need this psychic to connect to them. And then they don't mourn the same way. They don't accept in the same way the finality of death. And so that's the problem with talking to dead people, it prevents you from accepting their, their death because you think it's really sort of imagining that they just moved to Cleveland, which is you're not going to go to generally, but they might go to and then maybe they call you from there. So that's the idea, I said.

And he said, but Mark, you never talk about death and life after death, you never preach about it. I said no, because I think we should be focused on this world. He would say, well, but look at Mother Teresa and Gandhi and and Martin Luther King: they didn't give up on this world and they believed in life after death. And he totally convinced me that I should talk about life after death because of the hope that it brings people.

Anyway, as Tommy was dying, I had a problem. And that problem was he was dying. And the problem I had, was I had counselled thousands of people through death in my work – now, this year, 50 years of work as a rabbi – I had counselled people and I knew in every case that I counselled, they needed me or some other counsellor in order to get through their grief work. They couldn't do it alone. Some people do it alone, but mostly people need a guide, a helper, someone to help them. And I was about to go into the valley of the shadow of death when Tom died.

Dr Agraha: But you didn't have anyone.

Rabbi Gellman: I had no one.

Dr Agraha: No-one to help guide you.

Rabbi Gellman: No one. And it reminded me of this great story that a man comes to his teacher and says, I am deeply depressed because of the death of a friend, and I am sunk in and in despair. What can I do? And his teacher said, Well, this is simple. You go to this town and you ask to see the great clown Carlini. You go to see Carlini, and Carlini will heal you. Just with his smile, he will heal you. And so the man says to the teacher, no, my teacher, that will not work. The teacher said, why won't that work? He says, because I am Carlini.

Now I was Carlini. And I knew I needed someone. So I went reached out to Jean Kelly, you know, of the Interfaith Nutrition Network and the Mary Brennan Inn. And Jean is a truly actualised saint, I believe. And I said, look, Jean, I can't ask a rabbi to help me because they're all my students or they're all my admirers or they're all my detractors either way. They are of no use to me.  

So I need someone and I want you to be my rabbi to help me through the pain that I know is coming to me when Tom dies. Because we all know this, the level of pain and despair you have at the death of someone you love is directly proportional to the amount of love you had for the person. The more you love them, the more pain you're in. There's no way out of that. The Buddhists understand that in their truth about dukkka, about suffering. And so I said, I know this is going to be the worst, because I couldn't love him more. And I need you to help me get through it. And she said, okay.

And so what she did was she set up a meeting, several meetings with Tommy when he was lucid, before he went into his end of life fog. And she said to him one day, you know, Tom, when you die, it's going to be nothing for you, because you'll simply close your eyes and you'll wake up in God's arms. But when you die, it's going to destroy your best friend's life. And you need to help Mark more than you need to worry about your own death. And he said, yes, I understand that.

So he looked at me and he said, Mark, what can I do for you? I said, well, I don't know, I think there's nothing you can do to take away the pain and it's going to be very long. I said, people who love someone deeply, in my experience, take over a year to get through their grief. And I just did an essay responding to a New York Times article about how long grief should last. And it's six years since Tom's death, and I just this year came out of my grief work. And the image that I had was that I was underwater holding my breath because I was like a cork pushed underwater by a big wave. Every day I would wake up drowning, and I would cling to a truth. And that truth was, you are a cork. You are a cork, and God made you to pop up to the surface with your spiritual buoyancy while God has given you spiritual buoyancy, and that will bring you to the surface. But it hasn't brought you to the surface yet, because whatever, it's because of the depth of your grief. But hang on, hold your breath, and someday you will fill your lungs with fresh air. And that happened just this year. And that it happened in a variety of ways.  

I said, Tommy, one thing that would help me after you die, is that you could settle our years, decades long debate. I said, I want you when you're dead to send me a message. That you're dead and everything's okay and whatever you want to put in the message, I don't care. But it has to be unambiguous. It can't be I'm okay, Mark, pray for me, no, it has to be something unique, special, inescapable, unambiguous, clear.

He said, well, what sign do you want me to send you? I said, I can't tell you that, because then that let's say, I say, send me a yellow bird; then every time I see a yellow bird, even though it's just a yellow bird... So I said, nope, you have to think of a sign. Just make it unambiguous. And he said, okay, I'll do that. And we went on to other things.

And then, of course, he died. And for two years after his death, in 2016 in February, nothing came to me. Nothing. And every year after I retired from the synagogue in 2014, every year my synagogue wanted me to come back to preach a sermon on the high holidays and the second day of Rosh Hashanah. I would always call up our friend Mike Pascucci, who introduced us, and have chicken salad at a diner near my synagogue on Jericho Turnpike every year. And so it was our tradition. The second day of Rosh Hashanah, two years after Tommy died, we're having chicken salad at the diner on Jericho Turnpike. And Michael tells everyone at the table to leave except for me because he wants to speak to me privately. So they they were all quite amazed and they didn't understand why he was doing that, but they laughed.

And he looked at me and he said. Mark. Who is Saul? I said, What do you mean, who's Saul? He said, well let me tell you. This morning, I'm shaving in my bathroom and Tom Hartman came into my bathroom. I don't know, a ghost, the spirit, a voice; I'm not sure what form it took. But it came in to the bathroom and started talking to me and he said, so you're going to have a lunch with my best friend today? And Mike said, I told him, yeah, I'm meeting Marc for chicken salad, it's the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and we do that. And he said, good. He said, when you see Marc, tell him this. Saul thinks he's in charge of heaven, and heaven is the most beautiful place you have ever seen. So he said, I got the message, and I'm giving it to you. But there's only one problem, Marc. I don't know who Saul is, and I don't know what the meaning of this is. And I said, Michael, Saul is my dead father. My father died in 2007.

Dr Agraha: Oh, my God.

Rabbi Gellman: And my father had a trait that I inherited, which is I like talking to anybody. He used to talk to, people who ran elevators, to the clerks. When you used to throw a dime into the tollbooth and the guy there, he would talk to them. Dad spoke to everyone. And he was friendly to everyone. And interested in everyone. And he always thought he was in charge of stuff. And the truth about my father is that he was never in charge of anything. He didn't have a very financially successful life, and even in our home, my mother was sort of in charge of stuff.

And so the statement Saul thinks he's in charge of heaven is exactly, precisely how my father's soul would react to being in heaven. And the humour of it is exactly Tom's sense of humour. My father is going around thinking he's in charge of this place. And here is the point. Michael, of course, did not know who Saul was. Michael did not know Saul was the name of my father. I had known Michael for many years and we had never spoken about my father. He never met my father. Tommy never talked to him about my father. So there was only one way. Only one way. And Michael was not a phoney psychic, who said does anyone know a Maria? He's a regular guy. So there's only one way that, Michael could have known the name Saul. And that's if Tom Hartmann's soul didn't die. And its in heaven, and it came to Michael, and it said Saul thinks he's in charge of this place.

My hair on my arms stood up. I couldn't speak because it was, it was the one thing that I had asked Tom to do - send me an unambiguous sign. And so this was totally unambiguous. There's no other way to interpret it. There's no other way to explain it.  You know, normally cynics would say, yeah, he did research. He found out about your family. You know, psychics do that. They find out about someone in the audience and they do research on their family and then they call up a name that they supposedly could never have known, but they looked it up. And that's one of their cons. But Michael wasn't that. No.

So the rational part of my brain said to the mystical part of my brain, just like it did on the day Sri Chinmoy lifted us. Your rational brain, Marc, cannot understand some of these things because you are not meant to understand them now. They are meant for you to understand them later in your spiritual journey. Whether that journey involves you returning in a new body or in reincarnation, or whether this is the only time, who knows? So after that experience, I had decisive, rational proof. Not mystical proof. But rational proof that death is not the end of us. And I have from that time till now, gone around speaking about the importance of believing in life after death. And I believe in life after death. And I tell people about how the hope it brings.

So after Tom's death, several people, many people said to me, including Michael, said, look, The God Squad was too important, for you to give it up because Tom died. So for five now, six years. I was looking for a replacement. And I you know, I even interviewed some people and I realised how foolish it was because what Tom and I had was the result of deep, pure love. We were friends first, and then we became teachers to the world and in our little corner of the world and. You can't just go out and replace that. There's no way to find someone like that. I thought about putting an ad in the paper: wanted, best friend, must be a priest. How stupid is that?

So finally I get a message from Tom directly to me that says you've mourned me long enough. Time to get on with the work of The God Squad. That was a year ago. So I have created a podcast which I want people to know about, and it's easy to find on any podcast platform. You just put in the God Squad podcast with Rabbi Marc Gellmann, right? They'll come up and the first season has 13 episodes, including the story about Tom and the chicken salad and and other things as well. And it's my way of continuing the message of The God Squad, and I hope to continue the podcast on into the future. And I hope I will be doing a an episode in the future, on the lifters, on Sri, and on being lifted into the air.

So in summary, that's what I know about Sri and what I love him for and what and and what I'm sure he is communicated when he was alive and after his passing to his followers and how grateful I am for his kindness to me and to Tom, and how much I appreciate and how proud I am of you and all of his followers who have created such a haven of love in the middle of Queens there in your outpost, and in your Centre.

And I think about all the doves that he drew, all the birds that he drew, the peace birds. And I think particularly now at this time of war, that that this message that you and I are sharing shouldn't be seen as some abstract message. It's a message about the war, it's about the suffering there. And how if people will mobilise their their ability to be lifters, in any way they can lift through good words, through solidarity, through kindness, through gifts of humanitarian relief. That that this war will will end and that the people of Ukraine will be redeemed.

And particularly this week, which this Friday is the holiday of redemption for Jews. In Passover, the Seder is on Friday night, April 15th, and of course, it's Easter Sunday. And Good Friday is also April 15th for Christians. And so this this whole coming together this week, I think is very much supported by Tom and by Sri. And I was happy to be a part of it.

Dr Agraha: Oh, my God. You just gifted me, when I share with everyone here, we have hundreds and hundreds of our members have come again for the first time all over the world in two years. We always get together every April and August. Because April is when Sri Chinmoy came to America and all our peace work began, so we're observing that. And it's kind of like a new beginning for us, too. And so to hear that story of yours, of redemption and rebirth, of hope, is just exquisite. So I'm just so grateful to you.

I wanted to share one poem that has been of huge solace to me. And everything you said about passing, I wasn't prepared for the pain that I would experience when Sri Chinmoy passed. That was in 2007, and the very last poem he ever wrote, he actually dictated it to me on the phone. I was in Seattle at the time, and it was this one.

My physical death is not the end of my life.
I am an eternal journey.

And what was a very strange thing was he would always dictate like even numbers like 50 or 100, 200 poems at the time. And then he would say, How many do I have? Oh, let me get to 100 or how many more? Let me do another 10, 20. So this one was like number 73. After that poem, he just hung up the phone. And it was just a few days before his passing. And I was I was saying. In my mind, I was sort of freaking out, you know, and I say, Wait a minute. And what's going on here? And then I tried actually calling. I had a number or I could call at his house. I tried calling the number and I knew he was at home. He did not answer. He knew I was calling anyway. It. And after that, somehow it went away from my mind, you know? And then just like a week later, he passed. And then and again, it was the most painful thing I've ever experienced. But we had lots of people that we all came together to Queens again. And actually his physical is buried at at the same place you came, we called it Aspiration-Ground where you came, and then you were lifted. I think I think you were lifted.

Rabbi Gellman: In the tennis court.

Dr Agraha: Right on the tennis court, exactly there. So that now is like a shrine area. Basically, it's all sacred for us and Sri Chinmoy is actually buried there. And we got special permission by, you know, the various authorities. But that poem kept coming back to me.

Anyway, so I thought that the journey that you've been through and to hear that story about your friendship, you know, with, with Father Tom and, and the your healing process is exquisitely beautiful, particularly those stories. And I mean, you have so much to teach and to continue teaching this so many people. I'm so grateful that you're continuing The God Squad, because I think Father Tom will also speak in and through you. And if there's something important he wants you to bring up to me, I don't think he'll hesitate to tell you.

Rabbi Gellman: I agree.

Dr Agraha: You have a communication channel now. So, I mean, he's established it. But he had to follow your rule that, you know, the promise you made him make, he had to do it in such a way that you would believe it. What an amazing story. Sri Chinmoy says that he was born into a Hindu family, but now he said, now my religion is to love God and serve humanity. That is my religion. And I'm wondering as you relaunch The God Squad, your feelings about that and the teachings of, you alluded to that of the great faiths and what they really teach us, this idea of loving God and serving humanity, how does that fit in with with your your understanding of the various faiths and your beliefs?

Rabbi Gellman: Well. My mantra from Judaism is Evdo adonai besimchua, which in Hebrew means 'Serve the Lord in joy'. And that was my understanding of my gift and my need. Let me say it this way. The key to happiness is to unify your gift and your need. That is the key.

Recently I was asked by a woman who reads my newspaper column, which is circulated around the country and Newsday carries it every week - 'The God Squad'. Jean Pepitone, who teaches the theology class at Mercy High School in Middleton, Connecticut, a Catholic girls school - she assigned as their final exam, that they should all write Rabbi Gellman a question about God. These are like 50 kids. So last year, it took me three months of my column to answer every one of their questions. And afterwards, she said they were they were just so grateful that you took the time to do that. Could we ask you could you do a Zoom class for them? Wow. So I said, yes, I can do that, too. So I did a Zoom class for the juniors and seniors. And at that point, the questions began to coalesce into one question. Oh, they had various versions of it, but it was all one question. Which was Sri's question, which is the question of every climber. How do I know that the path I'm on is the path God wants me to be on? How do I know that? It's the only important question.  

So I don't know where this came from, but I said to them. Well, the key to knowing this is first you have to know what you're good at. And secondly, you have to use what you're good at to make the world better. That is the answer to your question. However, it's very difficult. And I said, let's go back and I'll explain why it's difficult. You have to know what you're good at. First of all, that's very difficult, particularly for teenagers who don't think, many of them don't think they're good at anything. So, find out what you're good at. I said you have to ask people. You have to look into your own soul, but you're not going to find anything there because you don't know what you're good at. Yes, you have to ask people. So the first people you would think you should ask are your parents?

Dr Agraha: Yes.

Rabbi Gellman: But they are the last people you should ask. And the reason is they love you and they think you're good at everything. And the truth is, you're not good at everything. And they don't have the guts to tell you you suck. I knew I always sucked at singing even when I wanted to join the choir. But the truth of the matter is, you're not good at everything. And your parents won't tell you that. Generally, if you have honest parents, they will. But they don't want to hurt your feelings because they love you. I said the best people to tell you what you're good at is your friends. Your friends know what you're good at.

So I'm doing the Zoom class, and the girl stands up and says. You told us that, and I asked my friends. And they said I'm the best one at stopping fights. Oh. So there it is. There it is. So that's what you're good at. You're good at stopping fights. So what that means is you should be a fight stopper. Psychiatrists, a psychologist, a social worker, a school counselor. Somebody who stops fights. A mediator. Somebody. And you use that talent to make the world a better place. I said, that's the key to it. The key to it is. To find out what you're good at and, to make the world a better place. That's beautiful.

Dr Agraha: Wow. I love that. That's so wise, so helpful.

Rabbi Gellman: It's what I've learnt. So that experience of teaching these girls changed me. Because one night in my meditation, I asked myself, I said, Well, that was very good what you said for those girls. But you've never asked yourself that question. What are you good at? And I've been gifted to be good at several things. But what am I really good at? And since I grew up, as Tommy did in the sixties, and it was a turbulent time, and because I had intellectual capacities, I was smart. And I was also argumentative. And so I became, you know, one of those political activists. And I realised in my meditation that all my arguing, well, the war is good, this is bad, this is good, this is bad, all this, all my arguing had never convinced anyone of anything. And the reason is, no one is ever convinced to change a belief because they're assaulted. Because they are aggressively stripped of that belief. That's not how it happens. It happens because of love, and trust. And you grow into realising, what I believed about this was wrong.

And so what I grew into, which was essential in restarting The God Squad was, I had to face the fact that I'm not a good pundit, I'm not a good political activist. I can do it. I know the moves, but it's not my best part. And I realised my best part, the part in me that is a true gift, that isn't my talent, it's like just given to me, it was bestowed upon me by God, is that I am a storyteller of hope. I am a storyteller of hope.

Dr Agraha: That's beautiful.

Rabbi Gellman: And that is what I should be doing. So The God Squad podcast and everything else I do from now on in my life will be stories of hope.

Dr Agraha: How profound.

Rabbi Gellman: Really when you think about it - Sri was not a storyteller. Sri was a man of joy and singing and and just radiance, which is certainly one way to communicate joy. He wasn't a man of words in that way. You can't write thousands of poems and have each one be a masterpiece. They have a different purpose. And the purpose is to to strip, as I understood Sri's poetry, to strip the words of their toxic quality and let them shine with their loving qualities. That to me was his purpose. But the point of it is - everyone watching, everyone - there's something you're good at. And if you find out what you're good at, which you must do, it's your life's most important quest - what am I good at? And then do that to make the world better. Now you could find out that you could discover that you're good at punching people in the face. But that's not going to make the world a better place. So you must look at some quality you have that isn't destructive.

Dr Agraha: Well, one thing I want to say is that actually Sri Chinmoy did tell many stories. But but they're not as prominently featured, if you will, you know, as this poet, because he loved poetry more. There's a book of his stories with lessons that he told several books, but one got published by an outside publisher who sold Health Communications. And I can try and find that book and send it to you like.

So you -  it sounds like you're in constant communication with with Father Tom.

Rabbi Gellman: I mean, it's not like he communicates with me every day. But at this point, the channel is open. I think that's the perfect way to say it.

Dr Agraha: That's beautiful. I was actually going to tell, when you were saying about not believing in communication with people who have passed and souls. I was going to tell some stories about Sri Chinmoy describing his putting certain people in touch with their loved ones and pretty amazing stories. But but you already have discovered on your own that one, you've got that down pat. And even better than that.

Rabbi Gellman: Did he communicate with dead people?

Dr Agraha: I mean, what he says, is communication with souls for him and for a spiritual teacher is like drinking water. Sometimes people would be in the physical, but he would still be communicating with their soul. And very often it would happen that someone's soul, he's out walking, someone's soul would come to him and he's speaking with them. And almost invariably, like a minute or two later, the body would come, you know, and he'd see. But but it often happened with people who had passed. And he would tell us about a conversation he would have sometimes with very great spiritual luminaries.

Rabbi Gellman: So at some point, you know, you're enlightened. And that's the difference between Buddhas and ordinary people or saints in the Christian tradition, tzadikim in the Jewish tradition, where certain people can be completely realised in this life. And Sri was obviously was completely realised in this life. But it is so rare. It is so rare because of primarily the physical encumbrances, you know, your hungers, your appetites, what Buddhists called tanha, which means attachment, like my attachment to the dried fruit (which he has been eating during the interview). I am not completely realised but pretty damn close, as close as I'll ever get, or maybe not, I don't know. But anyway, I had this tanha, I had this attachment to hunger. And I think maybe it was Sri who was sending this lesson, which was here's some little dried fruit, and I'll just take a piece while you're talking, which got stuck in my throat (laughs) and so that's the lesson. Your attachments get stuck in your throat.

Dr Agraha: Oh, that's beautiful.

Rabbi Gellman: And you don't need those attachments. So I'm saying that that everything to me is a lesson.

Dr Agraha: It seems like you're so alive. I want to ask you one more thing - could you say a little bit more about how you viewed Sri Chinmoy? You just said something which will thrill everyone, of course, like how you saw him as a being on the earth, in the physical on his, the experience being with him yourself.

Rabbi Gellman: Well, everything I said about Sri up until now, I give you full permission to use, and I say it with with love and with gratitude for everything. I would say of the many achievements of Sri Chinmoy, by far the greatest was his achievement of the simplicity of joy. People imagine that joy is a complex achievement, that in order to be joyous, you have to know things you don't know. In order to be joyous, you have to own things you don't own yet. In order to be joyous, you have to have capacities you don't yet. None of that is true. What Sri showed in his life is a level of simple, what seems like simple joy, but it was enlightened joy. Totally different thing. It's the joyousness of a real life being. And he had that. And just to be in the presence of a Hindu mystic who understood this and who achieved this level is extraordinary. People focused on the wrong attributes of Sri. They focused on his physical attributes, that his body could do things no 70 year old man's body could do. And that's all true. But his remote achievement, his remote human achievement was in achieving the simplicity of joy and and in communicating that to people who might be uneducated, people who've never thought of themselves as spiritual being. And he gave them an inspiration to be able to do that. That was a gift. A true gift. To all the world.

Dr Agraha: That's like honey to my heart and soul, its so beautiful. You're really eloquent. I have learnt so much, I'm so lucky that I've gotten to speak with you. It's such an honour, and you're just full of joy yourself, actually. and I think that God has blessed you with so much wisdom and and the fact that you're learning at every moment. I mean, how old when you when Tommy came to you?

Rabbi Gellman: Well, it was 1987. When I met Tom, it was 1987.

Dr Agraha: But then how old were you, when his soul came to you with the message from your father?

Rabbi Gellman: That was three years ago.

Dr Agraha: Yeah, it was just three years ago. How old are you now if may ask?

Rabbi Gellman: I'm 74.

Dr Agraha: See, so you were 71 years old, and that radically changed your outlook on the world. I mean, it influenced it dramatically. I don't know if it changed, but it expanded it greatly. That's an amazing thing for any person to be so open at age 71, you know?

Rabbi Gellman: Well, one of the things that's happened to me is that when I finally, one day I woke up and I could breathe air again. My cork was underwater and I had finished the grief work with Tom. And I could breathe air again. And. And finally I could be happy again. But if you had spoken to me at any time between really now recently and and Tom's death in 2016, I would have seen a man who was underwater. To mourn someone for six years is painful. It's the most painful thing I've ever done in my life. And I couldn't because I'm so deeply attached. I am not naturally disentangled about the world. I'm naturally engaged in the world. I love the taste of food. I love the sound of a good symphony or a grea ballad or, you know, a beautiful day with perfect weather. Everything that is - we call it in Hebrew, gosh mute, which is material things, right?

Dr Agraha: The senses.

Rabbi Gellman: And it's funny because only rarely do I admire expensive things. You know, I grew up in the Midwest in the fifties and sixties. And so, you know, cool cars are still something that catch my eye. But other than that, there aren't any real physical things or accoutrements of luxury that that attract me on any level. Wow. But pure things, the way that clouds dance in the sky on a perfect weather day with with a cool breeze or something that's as perfect as you can make it. I bake. I'm a baker. And so I bake banana breads and cookie things. And I live in a gated community down here in Florida. And I give away everything I bake to mainly workers who are working hard in the sun. And I just give them these banana breads that I make, little loaves and biscuits and other things. And the idea of baking, I realised, what attracted me to baking, was not the food, the things you bake that you can eat. It's the giving away of what you see. I may have baked a thousand banana breads since we moved back from Los Angeles to Florida after moving from New York to Los Angeles. And of all the banana bread I baked, I have not eaten one of them.

Dr Agraha:  Really?

Rabbi Gellman: No, not one. I might have had a taste. Maybe of one occasionally. But basically, no, I just give them away because the joy in baking is giving them to others, giving them to people. A woman said to me, no one's ever given me a gift. Oh, no one's given me a gift.

Dr Agraha: No one?

Rabbi Gellman: No one, she said. And you know, one guy working in the sun, I told them in Spanish, I'm rabbino, rabbi, and he knew what that meant. And so the other day, I was out on the golf course. And I saw him, he said rabbino, rabbino, come. I came and he was clearing out coconuts that had fallen from the coconut trees and he had a machete and he went, whack, and cut the top off the coconut. And he handed it to me like a chalice, and I drink this sweet coconut. And it was a perfect day because he was able to return to return the gift, you know. So if you had talked to me before now, this surpassing joyousness not have been on my face or in my soul.

Dr Agraha: Well, it's a great, great gift from from your dearest friend, and I think God himself used Tommy to bring you joy again. I really believe it. And I think what he spoke were from God himself. I believe he was a channel and instrument. And when all of us will leave this earth, where we will meet, I think hopefully I'll get to see Guru there, Sri Chinmoy, I mean, and and you'll see Tommy and we'll resume.

But one day, I can tell you, that just out of curiosity people asked Sri Chinmoy all kinds of questions. And he said that the flowers in heaven are out of this world. Beautiful gardens. There are gardens in heaven, and the colours are far richer, far more beautiful than we have on Earth.

Rabbi Gellman: You know, that's the other part of what Tommy told Mike, that heaven is the most beautiful place you've ever seen. And of course, he didn't explain why or what, but it's probably that - the colours, the flowers, the something. That's the part of his message - not the part about Saul, which just validated the message. But what does it mean that heaven is the most beautiful? What does that mean, exactly?

Dr Agraha: Exactly.

Rabbi Gellman: And I think I know something about what it means. I remember when I was a kid on Halloween and I would put a sheet over, you know, to be a ghost and run to get trick or treats from the neighbours in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. And it was a safe time and there were no dangers. And I remember the smell of the leaves and I remember running, almost like I was flying. But my feet were touching the ground, but only accidentally touching. And I know, since I'm arthritic and, you know, the pains and aches of ageing and so forth, I know that in heaven I will be able to run, the same way that I ran when I was a child.

Dr Agraha: Absolutely. That's a beautiful story. You've been very, very generous. But you know what? I think that it's about time I allow you to eat.

Rabbi Gellman: Yes. And I will accept that invitation. God bless you, Agraha, and God bless all of the followers of Sri Chinmoy. And may God comfort you at this time and grant you a little piece of his simple joy.