Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students and friends
You have a multitude of questions,
But there is only one answer:
The road is right in front of you,
And the guide is waiting for you.
We, Sri Chinmoy's students, are grateful for the opportunity to share some of our most precious experiences of Sri Chinmoy with you. Like many-faceted gems, these stories reveal the powerful guidance, sweetly intimate moments, and deep inner connection that the students of a true spiritual Master can experience.
The first time I saw Guru in person was when I became a disciple in San Francisco, but the very first time I got to see him quite closely was in 1975. I was a medical student, learning to become a doctor. I was also doing research, and my advisor paid for me to go to a conference in Iceland which Guru was also attending. This was a conference on what was called “transpersonal psychology” and Guru had been invited to offer the opening meditation for the hundreds of participants.
It was a very small conference, and at lunchtime we all went to eat. Guru was there, and I happened to be sitting right across from him. I was so overwhelmed I felt as though I almost couldn’t breathe. My heart was full of joy and awe. Whenever you were close to Guru, his physical presence was so incredible, along with the spiritual aspect of being with your Master. He had so much life energy you could feel it emanating from him.
There was a cuckoo clock in the lunchroom, which would say “Cuckoo!” for the number of hours on the clock. We were eating at 12:00 noon, so the cuckoo clock went off twelve times while we sat there. I was amazed because instead of saying “Cuckoo!” the clock seemed to be saying “Guru!” twelve times. I was absolutely stunned.
I realized later that the clock was probably saying “Cuckoo,” but Guru’s presence was so strong that I heard the clock say “Guru” instead. No matter what it actually said, being so close to Guru for the very first time that day was a hugely significant experience for me as a young disciple. I treasure those moments to this day.
We came into the world,
Not only to eat material food,
But also to feed our heart
With our aspiration-meal.Sri Chinmoy1
When I started to meditate under the guidance of Sri Chinmoy, the situation in the family wasn't so good because of the doubts of my spouse and my parents. I could not even talk about meditation. But I had a little corner in the basement where I could be by myself. It was in my office behind the door. I had set up a little altar, a very minimal altar, and I would meditate in the morning. I would try to wake up at least 20 minutes before François, my son, because when he was up, it was another world, since he was hyperactive.
Both children attended the local school. François was in grade 4, Julie in grade 2. At school, François always wanted to joke around and have fun. He would do things that distracted the teacher or made him/her upset. Julie, two years younger, was an example of conformity. François was the opposite! He was a little bit hyper, and this created challenges.
So I had started meditating to help me accept my son and not get too upset with everyday events, either at home or at school. Before the children woke up in the morning, I would go to my secluded area for about half an hour of relaxation, deep breathing, building up my tolerance level…
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Bishwas played an instrumental role in designing and building many of the apparatus that Sri Chinmoy used for his weightlifting feats.
Guru periodically performed weightlifting exhibitions in which he would perform one enormous and creative lifting feat after another. He announced in the fall of 2004 that he would like to have another such exhibition. He wanted ideas for new lifting machines. That was when we built his “shrugging” machine and one or two other new ones like the leg press machine.
I had the idea that Guru could lift his own cute little blue smart car, but from overhead rather than from underneath. I told Guru that this was definitely a more difficult way of lifting the car, but that as long as the car wasn’t over 2,000 pounds, I thought he would be able to lift it. Guru liked the idea, and immediately called Prataya to ask what the weight was because she had bought the car for him. It turned out that the weight was 1,971 pounds.
So Guru asked us to start building a machine to lift the car right away. But he also kept asking, “Will I be able to lift it?”
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In 1985, I became the first student of Sri Chinmoy to swim the English Channel. It was a very, very special experience. As I was told later, Guru was sitting at home, meditating for most of the time on my swim, always trying to get information on how I was doing.
I was blessed with an extremely easy swim. When I stepped into the Channel water at Shakespeare Beach at 7 a.m., I was full of confidence that I would make it. After six hours into the swim, when I could see both coasts, I had the firm conviction that on the inner plane, it was already done—it just had to be executed outwardly. I felt carried by a wave of inner joy and bliss most of the time.
After ten hours, the cross-current set in and it was slowly getting dark. Previously I could not imagine swimming in the dark. I would never have dared to get into pitchblack, unknown water at night. Now, with the gradual transition into night, I felt extremely comfortable. I enjoyed the star-strewn sky above me each time I took a breath. And when I looked down into the black water—where earlier I had enjoyed watching the dance of the rays of sunlight—I started to see bright light once again. In the midst of the darkness, Guru's face - his transcendental photograph that we use in our meditations - appeared.
Because of the unpredictable, strong cross-current, I had to swim for five hours more, but it did not matter to me. For those hours, I was swimming into the light of the Transcendental, into Guru's infinite consciousness of light and delight, which was right in front of me like an ever-transcending goal.
Since Sri Chinmoy’s passing in 2007, more than 40 statues of his likeness have been placed in major cities and remote natural settings around the world.
Many people, especially children, seem to feel a living presence in the statues. Adults have reported feeling inner guidance for a decision or consolation in their grief. A few of their stories follow, as reported by members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre worldwide — just a few glimpses into a spiritual Master’s love and concern that continue long after his earthly life.
A young lady often came to offer owers at the statue in Vienna. She had lost a child and was inconsolable in her grief. Once when she casually stopped at the statue for a while, she had an unusual experience that changed her life: suddenly she could make an inner connection with her child’s soul and speak with her. She said that this experience happened repeatedly, but only at the statue.
One evening in Seattle, a young girl taking a stroll with her father came very close to the statue, exclaiming,“Daddy, Daddy, he is alive! He is alive!” Her father said,“Dear, it is only a statue.” She came even closer and grasped the torch, then repeated, “No, Daddy! I can see he is alive!”
A sweet Indian boy about three or four years old came to Sri Chinmoy’s statue in Seattle with his father. He gave the statue a big hug, exclaiming “Grampa! Grampa! Grampa!” with boundless joy. We asked him if he would like to give Sri Chinmoy a flower and he was jumping with eagerness. The boy was so happy. Then his father said with a big smile on his face, “We come here every day. Rahul calls Sri Chinmoy ‘Grampa’.”
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In my early years of exploring meditation and the little-known subject of reincarnation, I came across a rather discouraging description of the long passage of time the soul supposedly takes from its very earliest entry into the earth arena until its full blossoming in God-realisation. Imagine, said the words of an old Indian text, a beautiful white bird flying to a large lake once every several thousand years and taking away a single drop of water in its beak. The length of time it takes for the bird to empty the lake is a description – metaphorical of course – of how long it takes for this journey to be concluded, for realisation or self-blossoming to be won.
A rather bleak thought! But encouragingly, it did add the further comment that for those who have a curiosity or an awakening interest in spirituality, the lake is almost empty and the long journey of the soul is not in front of us but already behind us.
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As a medical doctor, I have often been in the intensive care unit. Once the Supreme also wanted me to get to know the other side. And so it happened that I found myself in this unit with a fellow sufferer next to me. He was in a deep coma and his chest was rising and falling in perfect time to the rhythm of the respirator, producing a hissing sound. This mechanical sound was intermittently complemented by a gurgling caused by the extraction of mucus from his lungs. The poor fellow wasn’t able to swallow any more either. He was receiving medication by intravenous infusion and I could tell by the electrocardiogram on the control screen that his heart could say good-bye anytime. He seemed to be a cardiac patient who had suffered an embolic stroke.
Now there I was, hooked up to infusions and monitors myself. Out of the blue my heart had gone berserk, so I landed in the hospital, where they finally moved me into the cardiac intensive care unit to better supervise all the medical experiments to be carried out on me. Being a professional doctor, I could easily interpret the graph that was bouncing on the monitor over my head: my two ventricles had started to fall out of sync and beat totally independently from each other.
This condition diminishes heart effciency and, more importantly, it induces the great risk of thrombosis with an ensuing brain embolism (a blood clot in the brain) The latter may occur after a period of 48 hours and results in a hemiplegic stroke, with the possible outcome of being unable to swallow or to speak or to think, or even death. These embolisms tend to appear particularly at the stage where your heartbeat normalises. So, after this 48-hour period elapses, it is above all extremely dangerous trying to convert the heartbeat to a normal rhythm. The doctor in charge had never in his whole life seen this condition in someone of my age.
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We were told Mother Teresa was staying at a church in Rome, very close to the Coliseum. It was near a church but it was a convent. It was so simple. There was no running water or heat, and the nuns lived with such simplicity. Guru was so excited and so delighted.
When Guru got there, Kailash was driving, and I got to be in the car with Guru. There were about 50 disciples who were already there waiting. They wanted us all to gather at the back entrance of the convent. It was quite beautiful. There were beautiful trees and a view of Rome.
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