Meditation gets me my first job

Previously, Abarita had been living in the Swiss mountains, away from human contact.

So the day came when I finished taking the potatoes out of the frozen earth. I made a few trips down to the village and took the post car to the city and from there, the train to Zurich. In Zurich I was back in civilisation, and it was a very strange experience.

In the mountains, I had started every day at 5:00 in the evening to practice japa yoga together with breathing. I had very, very strong experiences from the exercise of chanting from five hundred to twelve hundred and back to five hundred and so on, making a curve. After about half a year, it became so strong that every thought that I had was very loud. When I was with people, I thought they could hear my thoughts because they were so loud. But of course, they couldn't hear. I had to get used to being with people again and being a social being.

I had stopped being interested in anything in the outer world because everything in my first year of meditation turned inward. I had really deep inner experiences. I was not interested in anything in the outer world. Now I was back within, and I was asking Guru to please show me what I should do. I would not go and work anywhere or do anything unless I was sure that it was what Guru wanted. Nothing happened. My meditation was fine, but there was no kind of indication what I should do.

Maybe after six or eight weeks, in my evening meditation, there was a very clear, nice, woman's voice that said, “Tomorrow you will find your job in the newspaper.” After my morning meditation, I hurried to a kiosk, bought the newspaper, ran back to my kitchen and opened it. There it was. It said Advertising and Sales manager for an art magazine.

So, I applied and they immediately accepted me. I now had a job and I was learning everything about magazines, printing books, publishing, because this was a big printing house. I had a nice office and a secretary and piles of complaints against previous managers in English and German and French. I had to create order for this whole business, which was in complete chaos.

I went there dressed up in my suit and tie. At lunchtime, when the others were eating, I would open a book and pretend I was reading. But I was actually trying to meditate.

God compassionately corrects
My outer life.
God proudly directs
My inner life.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 5, Agni Press, 1998