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.
My first significant experience with Sri Chinmoy was at the Seattle airport in 1996. I was just five years old at the time.
My sister and mother and I had gone to visit him along with a bunch of other Seattle disciples, because his itinerary brought him there for a few hours. At that time, you were allowed to go into the gate through airport security without a ticket.
At one point Sri Chinmoy had offered prasad (blessed food), and I was in the line to take some. He called me over to stand next to him and pulled my arm to have me sit next to him. We were facing a crowd of people, just the two of us. I remember the very surreal feeling of being with someone so “famous,” and how wide and vast his consciousness was. I felt it stretching out into Infinity, filling the room and the building and city and entire world. I felt like I was a little drop next to the ocean, and his infinite heart was pulling me inside. I also felt his voice in silence inside my own heart, echoing “we are the same.”
At the place where his hand touched my arm, a very powerful vibration like a solid bolt of energy was tingling and electrifying my body like a conduit. In retrospect, I feel this is one of the moments he “initiated” me, or gave me a direct taste of the experience he’s having all the time. And I can say with full confidence and utmost certainty that that moment has been with me wherever I have gone, and will remain with me no matter what I do for the rest of my life!
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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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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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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.
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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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.”
When I was 19 years old and still in college, I had to go home from school for the summer. I had recently joined Guru’s path and had been a disciple for only a month. I still didn't understand Guru that much and had a little bit of fear about the whole “being a disciple” thing, but as this story will show, I was also receptive to Guru’s influence and protection.
My means of transportation was my motorcycle, and I had to ride it home about 100 kilometers on the highway. As I got on the motorcycle, I felt a very powerful thought—you could say an inner voice—run through me. It wouldn't leave my mind, and it gave me two directives. The first was, “Check your front tire. Before you ride your motorcycle, check the front tire of your motorcycle.” And the second was, “Chant ‘Supreme’ all the way home.” (Sri Chinmoy’s preferred term for God was “Supreme.”)
I had not yet met Guru in person, and I didn't know where this thought was coming from. But it was extremely powerful and it wouldn’t leave me. So I checked the bike—I checked the tires, I checked everything. And I rode home very carefully at a minimum speed, chanting, “Supreme, Supreme, Supreme, Supreme” the whole way. I thought I was going crazy, but I felt compelled to do these things.
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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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