Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students
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.
Guru was going through New Zealand on his way to Australia. We all went out to the airport knowing Guru was there, because we could see into the transit lounge. We looked over a high wall and we could see Guru and the disciples. One of the disciples saw us and told Guru that we were all there in the lounge.
Guru walked out through the way that people are meant to walk in. He walked out that way past the customs and the immigration, as though he was completely invisible. We were all completely amazed. Guru gathered us around and he gave out prasad to everybody. He said to us, “Where there is heart, always there is a way.”
Then he walked straight back in again with no passport and no documents, as though he was completely invisible. It was most extraordinary.
The power of the heart
Is unlimited
In every sense.Sri Chinmoy 1
Guru always wanted to play at the Sydney Opera House. For Guru, there was something very magical about that building. Guru liked the building very, very much. Guru said whenever he hears the name Sydney, he thinks of the Opera House. We knew that Guru would love to play the organ, so we got permission somehow, I don't know how. It was a miracle that we got permission for Guru to play the organ.
There were about maybe one hundred disciples. It was not for the public. It was only for some disciples. Also, it was being recorded by the national radio. The gentleman who would show Guru the organ was a very famous organ player himself. It was arranged that he would also interview Guru for the radio program. Guru was very excited about playing this organ. It is the largest mechanical action organ in the world. It has ten thousand pipes.
There were many forces coming together. There was the building itself that Guru loved so much, then there was the organ, which was so special, and the occasion. Guru flew especially to Sydney from Melbourne just to play this organ.
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For three years, starting in 1977, some 200 New York area students of Sri Chinmoy trained as a group for the Pepsi 24-Hour Bicycle Marathon in Central Park, as he encouraged us to challenge our limitations and thus discover our deeper capacities.
Starting a month before the race, which was held on Memorial Day Weekend, Sri Chinmoy would lead us on daily training rides in Flushing Meadow Park. The Pepsi Bike Marathon drew thousands of amateur participants, but also a core group of professional riders who competed seriously for the prizes. None of our team members had experience in racing, though a few of us did cycle regularly and take road trips. The first year we entered as a team was a bit of an experiment, though I think we won a prize or two for the size of our team and for our uniforms. But the second year, 1978, we trained more seriously, and I felt that Sri Chinmoy was determined to show us the limits of what was possible.
A week before the race, Sri Chinmoy chose who would be on the two small teams that would compete for the team prizes. I felt honoured that I was the only woman on the first-string team of ten, but I was quite alarmed when Sri Chinmoy solemnly called us up in front of the whole group and told us he envisioned each of us doing 300 miles in 24 hours!
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After three months of coming to the Centre, I decided I would go to New York to meet Guru and see if I was meant to be following his path. The evening I arrived, I went to PS 86, the public school where Guru was holding a public meditation that night.
At the end of the evening, I stood in the corridor and Guru walked past me. When he walked past me, he stopped and gave me this very, very beautiful smile. When he looked at me, I knew he saw everything about me. He looked at my spiritual heart and his eyes kind of flickered very momentarily, very briefly, when he looked at my spiritual heart. He did something occultly or psychically, because I felt this like a little warm explosion in my heart centre. All my worldly troubles all fell away, and I suddenly felt immensely happy.
That feeling of being unburdened by my mind and free of all my troubles stayed with me for about three or four days. That was the very first time that I really understood that I had a soul, that I am the soul. That was the beginning of my journey.
The Sunshine-Smile
Of my Lord’s Heart
Feeds my heart’s prayer-cry
Before I start my daily spiritual journey.Sri Chinmoy 1
It was during Celebrations. I don’t remember how old I was, maybe in my early twenties. I remember being very insecure and feeling that Guru outwardly didn’t give me enough attention and felt a little bit like Guru loved other people more than me because he didn’t talk to me. I felt insecure and down and a little bit unloved or not loved enough. Guru loves everyone else more than me, that is how I felt. I remember it went on for quite a few days. My mind was very strong. I was really down for a few days.
One day out of the blue, Guru calls me up and without really saying anything gives me a little gift bag. And we have a photo of it. It’s a blue gift bag, that’s right. In the gift bag was a little stuffed animal or something. But the most precious thing was that Guru wrote on the gift bag, it’s very faint, He wrote, “My dearest Aruna,” and then is the printed “I love you,” and then underneath Guru writes, “Guru.”
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.
The nuns said Mother would be coming very soon to see Guru and that she was so excited to meet Guru. I walked around to the front to see how everything was going. There was a Cardinal with a huge black Cadillac. The Cardinal was very upset and was walking back and forth by his Cadillac very impatiently. Probably he had been waiting for quite a while. Mother had just come back to the convent a little bit before we arrived from the airport. I am sure he was thinking he would see her right away.
What happened was that Mother Teresa did not go to the front to greet him. Instead of seeing the Cardinal who had been waiting for a really long time, she went to the back to greet Guru and all of us. Everyone was very happy.
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