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.
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
In early 1998 Guru completed what was then his most prodigious poetic work—the 270 volumes of his monumental Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants—and so concluded an epic venture spanning more than fourteen years. It was another of those relentlessly sustained and patient undertakings which together coursed like a braided river through Guru’s life, those multiple strands of inspiration, of paintings and soul-birds, literature and music and wonderfully original things.
One evening we were with Guru shortly after the last poem in this series had been written. We asked Guru for suggestions for how his New Zealand disciples could celebrate the culmination of this vast poetic work.
Guru rose and went through a doorway into an adjoining room for two or three minutes, then came back with a series of ideas that quite astonished us. It was as though he had also stepped through an unseen portal into another world where the future, the unimagined, the possible, lay awaiting its manifestation—and gathered from there a few trinkets to bring back. The first of these? That we shake 27,000 people’s hands, giving each of these people a card of poems and a sweet!
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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
On my first Christmas trip, which was in 1990, I went to Hawaii and then Bali with Guru. Every morning, early in the morning, we would wake up about 4:35. We would go down to the beach and wait for Guru, and Guru would practice throwing shot put. He had many special shot puts made from lighter ones to very heavy ones. The heavy one was very heavy, maybe 80 kilograms. Guru would practice. We would give Guru the shot put and then we would also pick it up. There was a line of us and we would take it in turns to give Guru the shot put and then also pick it up.
With the very heavy weights, you would have to go very close to Guru. I was not super strong. I'd have to go very close to Guru to be safe and to give it to Guru safely. You were very, very close to Guru when you would do this. As a guard, often you would have to work around Guru. You learned how to purify your consciousness, to be in a good consciousness because when you're around Guru, you're very aware of his consciousness and you want to be your best too.
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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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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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