Stories by Sri Chinmoy's students and friends

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.
—Sri Chinmoy

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.

Sweet moments with our Guru

Jogyata Dallas • Auckland, New Zealand

A barrage of Candy Bullets

Sometime in the late 1990s I sat in a hotel room in Atitlan, Guatemala, feeling incredibly depressed. Every year around Christmas and the New Year, Guru would travel to different countries for all of us to share and learn from inspiring people all over the world. Several hundred of Sri Chinmoy’s students would stay at the same one or two hotels and we had many functions, plus a lot of time for sports.

Playing soccer earlier that morning, I had felt depressed. Eating breakfast—depressed. A mid-morning nap, avoiding everyone—depressed! In our hotel function room I sat at the back, avoiding Guru’s scrutiny and the banter of friends. Guru had a bag of sweets in his lap and was tossing them out, like a playful father.

Suddenly he stopped, glared at me with a fierce concentration, then began hurling wrapped sweets at me with incredible velocity. I felt a jolt inside and sat bolt upright. The sweets were whizzing by me, a barrage, bouncing off the seating and ricocheting away like hurtling bullets. I couldn’t believe it! Relentless, Guru threw one after another, firing away, a wild fusillade of candies.

Then I caught one and Guru stopped. I held it in my hand and started laughing—Guru started laughing too. Suddenly my depression went away. It was quite extraordinary. He had known how I felt and banished this force from my mind in such a remarkable way. After that I felt happy and grateful to be on the trip and didn’t allow depression back to rule my mind.

When my Lord’s Compassion-Eye
Appears,
My depression-vital
Disappears.

Sri Chinmoy 1

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Everyday Miracles on Sri Chinmoy's Path

Begabati Lennihan • Boston, United States

Keep doing the right thing

Begabati in her health food store

One weekend in New York I was invited to a disciple’s birthday party, celebrated in Guru’s customary way—disciples sitting on Guru’s living room floor as paper plates of curry and birthday cake were passed around. It was a typical time for chitchat with Guru. “So, Marion,” Guru said, catching me by surprise (Guru so rarely spoke to me), “when will you open your restaurant?”

I nearly choked on my curry. “Wha - wha - what restaurant, Guru?”
“First choice restaurant, second choice health food store.”
“But I don’t have any money, Guru!”
“Your parents will give you,” Guru reassured me. “Can you have it open by April 13th?”

But that gave me only six weeks to convince my parents, find a location, buy the equipment, and set it up. And I had never even run a cash register, let alone a business!

When Guru asked us to do something, he would put an incredible force on it. It was as though a divine wind was blowing inexorably towards a particular goal, and all I had to do was to spread my sails to catch the wind. In one way it did feel like an enormous amount of hard work, but in another way, it felt effortless, as though everything was already done.

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Dynamic Spirituality

Bipin Larkin • New York

The fountain of light

Video

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

Pragati Pascale • New York, United States

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

Gabriele Settimi • San Diego, United States

Just go with it and jump!

Video

One funny anecdote I would like to add is that I remember having an experience that was steering me towards something that I never expected or looked for, whatever I had imagined my life to be. It was towards something truly spiritual.

At first I really tried to suppress it and fight it because it was scary.  But the moment I did that I would get so sick in my stomach that I could not function.  And the moment I surrendered to it, I would have waves of joy. 

Then I thought there has to be another way to go about it.  So I would suppress it and fight it again and I would be sick to my stomach. The moment I surrendered to it, again I would feel peace and joy. 

So the choice was very clear. I said okay, “I don’t have a choice here, let’s just go with it and jump.” And I did jump.

One Voice, One Divine Choice

One voice, one voice, one divine voice,
One choice, one choice, one supreme choice,
Have made my life
Divinely soulful,
Supremely fruitful.
One voice, one divine voice,
One choice, one supreme choice.

Sri Chinmoy 1

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Constant Growth and Progress

Pradhan Balter • Chicago, United States

The Potter and the Clay

Video

I was blessed to have quite a bit of private time with Guru on various occasions. One time I approached him having allowed myself to be immersed by a sense of failure. I told him that I was feeling failure all around me.

He said, “It is not like that. You have to think of yourself as the lump of clay that the potter has. When the potter is working on the lump of clay, you cannot say that it is very beautiful. But he is working on it and it becomes something beautiful.”

Another example Guru used was the farmer who works in the field. He spreads fertilizer, and you cannot say that that is very beautiful. But eventually the farmer grows a bumper crop of food. So it was not that I was a failure, Guru explained to me―it was simply that I was not finished yet. I was witnessing myself in the process of being perfected.

Then Guru added, “If all else fails you and none of that works, just remember that you belong to me. You belong to me.”

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the life-saving Divine Force

Agraha Levine • Seattle, United States

No more darkness, only light

Audio Interview

So the first time that Guru saved me was on New Year’s Eve on a boat trip from Trinidad to Tobago. On the boat trip to Trinidad Guru asked me if I could find him a jackfruit. Because jackfruit was out of season, I went all over Trinidad looking for it. I had so much joy going all over the place. Finally I found one man who said, “I don’t have any now but in a week I can get it for you.” I said, “That’s perfect because we will be going back tonight, which is New Year’s Eve. We will be going back to Tobago and in four or five days we will be flying home from Trinidad. We’ll be flying home. And on that day, I will come see you.”

On the boat trip back, a man, not in our group, had a heart attack. I was a medical student then and I heard people saying, “Is there a doctor? Is there a doctor?” I ran over to the man. There was also a doctor there, and both of us went to see the man.

The man actually was not alive. He did not have a pulse, but we tried to bring him back. My friend the doctor was pushing on his chest, and I was breathing. We were trying very hard. When I was trying to help the man breathe, he gave a cough. Often times it is called a death cough. Often times after a person passes on, their lungs release air. The man gave a cough and something from inside him, like his saliva, went into me. What happened was that he passed away; we could not bring him back.

After about an hour, I started to get a fever. I started getting very weak and had a very high fever. By the time we got back to Tobago, I was so sick. I remember going back to my room. We were staying in cabins. I could only lie down, I was so weak. For three or four days I felt so bad. I was so sick.

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Treasured friendships

Agraha Levine • Seattle, United States

Guru's first meeting with Mother Teresa

A joyous moment with Sri Chinmoy, Mother Teresa and the nuns of the Sisters of Charity as Mother Teresa holds the Peace Torch

Audio Interview

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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