Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students and friends

Sweet moments with our Guru

With Guru on my birthday

I had some other experiences with Guru—twice for my birthday. Guru used to celebrate birthdays, mainly for the close disciples, the inner circle of people very close to him—usually not for people like me. I was not well known on the path.

The first time was during the New York City Marathon. Guru was friends with Fred Lebow, one of the founders of the New York City Marathon. We ran this marathon until the year 2000. Disciples used to meet in New York in November for this race. This is also the time of my birthday. I was born on the 6th of November.

There was a kind of celebration at this time and Guru was teaching some songs in the morning. I was seated in the benches beside another French disciple. Guru called the good singers to go down to start learning the songs. I am a good singer, but when Guru teaches songs, you have to write down the words, and sometimes it is difficult to catch the words and then to memorise them. I didn't want to go down. I hesitated to go down and stayed in my seat. But my friend beside me said, "No, no, it is your birthday today. You have to go down. You have to go down and at least participate."

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Everyday Miracles on Sri Chinmoy's Path

Seeing the God inside my son

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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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

Swimming in the infinite consciousness

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.

Inner communication

It was Christ himself who sent me to Guru

I was an ordained Christian minister serving at the Metropolitan Community Church in Manhattan. I had found my “church home” there, and loved the community as well as the opportunity to serve the poor and downtrodden—but I was feeling a lack of spiritual direction for myself.

I began to feel desperate spiritually. Where was I going to find a place to address my personal spiritual growth? How was I going to grow in my walk with God? I couldn’t live without a place to grow emotionally and spiritually. I felt like I was dying inside. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

Late one evening, I went into my bedroom and sat down to pray. I prayed to Christ and asked him to help me. I needed a new spiritual director. I needed someone who could guide and advise me in my spiritual life. Someone really, really far ahead of me, someone I wouldn’t catch up with in just a few years by learning all that they could teach me. I wanted someone so far ahead of me that I could spend a very long time learning from them.

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Constant Growth and Progress

The love is always there, boundless

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.”

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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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