Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students and friends

Sweet moments with our Guru

A kind of love not from this world

On December 21, 1969, Guru came to Puerto Rico for a short three-day visit. The first meeting with Guru was on a Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. Everybody was waiting for him because he had gone out for a walk.

The older disciples were downstairs inside the Puerto Rico Centre with all of us seekers, talking to us about Guru while we waited for him. I had had many, many dreams of Guru by that time, so I was telling them about some of my dreams.

Eventually we went outside. The Centre was located towards the end of a hill. I was facing down the hill as we spoke. Suddenly my hands spontaneously folded and I turned around to look up the hill.

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Everyday Miracles on Sri Chinmoy's Path

“Where there is heart, always there is a way.”

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

• 1. Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 49, Agni Press, 2008

Dynamic Spirituality

The fountain of light

This experience is kind of neat because spiritually if we open our eyes, which many of us are not able to do so much, we realise that there were many inner things going on in Guru’s life. It was not too often that Guru shared the inner level that he was operating on. But this is one example at Aspiration-Ground.

This was 1983 or 1982. We had finished Aspiration-Ground tennis court in 1981, and Guru threw himself completely into playing tennis for hours and hours on end. We would play that first year and a half or two years, probably three to four hours every day.

People would be sitting in the stands, and Guru would have a rotation of six or seven different disciples who would play Guru in tennis. They would rotate in for two games, and then the next player would come out and play Guru. So there was a routine and an organization. Guru would always be out there so you would always see Guru. To see Guru play and run and get such joy gave everybody tremendous happiness and joy.

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Achieving the Impossible

All I needed was the Supreme, and I would always win

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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Inner communication

Where is the light coming from?

I first came to know about Sri Chinmoy through a meditation workshop I took in France. As a newcomer, I did not know anything about meditation, but I had quite a nice and powerful experience during the first session.

On this unforgettable Sunday morning, as we were all meditating in silence with closed eyes, I inwardly saw a streak of light coming from my right side. I had never meditated before, at least not consciously, and I was not expecting anything in particular. But this experience puzzled me.

At the end of the meditation I looked to my right, searching for something that could have been the cause of this light. I saw nothing except a picture frame placed on the floor and leaning against the wall with its back to us. During the intermission, I decided to go and look at this frame from which the light seemed to have come. As I turned it around, I was surprised to discover the picture of an extraordinary face.

I did not know what it meant, but I felt that the light I saw during my meditation had emanated from it. At the end of the session, I could not help telling this story to the leader of the class. To my amazement, she said that it was a photograph of her spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy in what she called his transcendental consciousness ⎯ streaming light even from the back of the frame!

Light, more light, abundant light,
Infinite light
We need every day
To illumine our ignorance-sufferings.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, part 188, Agni Press, 1993

Constant Growth and Progress

The white bird and the lake

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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the life-saving Divine Force

I did my job

A bad fall, a broken ankle, a cast on my leg, a sudden sharp pain in my chest . . . events cascading with increasing speed left me unable to breathe, as each time I tried to take a breath my chest muscles snapped back from the pain.

I was staying with my parents in my family’s home while recuperating from my fall. Now here it was, 5:30 a.m., and I was in agony from the pain in my chest. I knew enough from nursing school to suspect the worst: a pulmonary embolism, a blood clot in my lungs. Unable to take more than the shallowest of breaths, I could not call for help. So I had to use my cell phone to wake my father in the next room.

The look on his face when he entered my room confirmed my worst fears⎯a blood clot had formed in the leg under the cast and had now entered my lungs. My father the surgeon quickly called 911, then in his best professor-of-medicine style, explained that I was at immediate risk of a stroke (if the clot traveled to my brain) or a heart attack (if it went to my heart). Thanks, Dad!

While Dad went to greet the ambulance, I called Ashrita in New York, who fortunately answered despite the early hour. I later learned that he had immediately called our restaurant Annam Brahma, as the workers there would have had the quickest access to Guru at that time.

I ended up spending a week in the hospital on life-saving drugs⎯but I know it was really Guru who saved my life. A few hours later I would have been on the train back to Boston, and if the clot had showed up then, I would have been unable to call for help, explain my predicament, or ask Amtrak to arrange for an ambulance at the next station. Plus, the stops between Delaware and Boston can be almost an hour apart⎯I might not have survived until I got to a hospital.

A few weeks later, arriving in New York for August Celebrations, I ran into Dipali, who looked like she was seeing a ghost, she was so startled to see me alive. She told me the “inside story”: Guru had told the restaurant staff at Annam Brahma that my soul was leaving the body and he had to bring it back.

“I did my job,” Guru told them.

Treasured friendships

Guru's first meeting with Mother Teresa

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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