Whispering Tree

When I first started substitute teaching, I found out that the city of Chicago pays more money if I go to high need schools, in the most dangerous neighborhoods.  It pays a LOT more money to go to these Places: think Englewood, Austin, O-block, Garfield Park, Little Village.  Lots of carjackings, muggings and shootings.

I was scared, but I like money.

And surprise, surprise: these neighborhoods are mostly on the South Side of Chicago, where there is a lot more nature, and the buildings date from the 1920’s, and there are huge urban parks and ancient trees, and old fashioned donut shops that have long since vanished from the posh north side.

Trust me- I went to sub for a school in Rosedale- one of the most gang-ridden areas of the city, but right next to the school was the aforementioned “Old Fashioned Donuts” and I swear on all that is holy I have NEVER in my life had such wonderful donuts or fritters.  Also, the store has kept all the features it had when it first opened in the nineteen-seventies- a huge heavy cash register, old curtains, big wooden door.

I think I need to accept another substitute assignment in the far South Side…

One thing that surprised and saddened me about my substitute teaching work, is the fact that none of these schools have libraries.  I’ve visited thirty schools, and not one of them has had a school librarian or a library.  I made inquiries, and I discovered that the school system fired all their school librarians in 2015, and then they tossed out all the books.  The rationale is that everything is online now, so we don’t need books anymore.  They call it the new literacy.

For thousands of years, books have represented knowledge.  Our Guru taught us to never touch paper with our feet, because paper embodies the Goddess of knowledge, Saraswati.  Symbols matter.  Books symbolize knowledge, wisdom.  You can’t deprive children of books and then say that you really care about their education.  I don’t care how much is on-line.  Screens don’t have the quality that paper has- the subtle quality that has to do with the sacredness of knowledge.

Recently, I subbed for a school that actually did have a library.  It’s called “Goethe Elementary”.  In the office there is a portrait of Goethe painted by an unknown artist.  It’s hung in the office for a hundred years:

It’s common to find beautiful works of art in these old schools, and no one knows who painted them, or when.  In this painting you can see Goethe’s broad humanity and sensitivity.

Anyway, the school, Goethe Elementary, was one of the only schools which actually has a library and a librarian.  And I saw some of the kids in my classroom had checked out books from the school library and I recognized some of them from my own middle school days.

In other words, the kids were reading for fun.  Give kids books, and they will read them.  It’s really that simple, but apparently somewhat beyond the grasp of the public school administration.

Anyway, I saw one boy had a copy of “Under Sea, Over Stone” by Susan Cooper, the first book in her marvelous “The Dark Is Rising” series, and I stopped in my tracks, closed my eyes, and recited from memory the poem that prefaces all the books in the series:

“When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;

Three from the circle, three from the track;

Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;

Five will return and one go alone.

Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;

Wood from the burning; stone out of song;

Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;

Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.

Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold

Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.

Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.

All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree.”

― Susan Cooper, The Dark Is Rising Sequence

I read those books when I was in the seventh grade, the same age as these students, and I never forgot that poem.  It has stayed with me.

When I finished there was a long silence in the classroom and then one boy spoke up, “Mr. Klein, I can tell you really like that poem!”

I had a co-teacher in the classroom that day, and he asked me if I could recite some poems, so I recited “Tyger, Tyger” by William Blake and “The Stolen Child” by W.B. Yeats.  Both of these poems marry sound with meaning, and have lots of interesting and evocative images.  He told me he was very impressed.  Later, some of the students approached me in the hallway and told me they liked the poems.

I don’t often have that experience- where the co teachers or administrators try to make use of my talents as part of the curriculum.  I’m happy when that does happen.  It makes sense that I would have that kind of experience in a school named for Goethe.

It’s funny- I often sit in on fifth grade or eighth grade classes, and I end up learning a lot!  For example, I sat in on a Seventh grade Spanish class, and I learned that in Spanish, they don’t really use the phrase “to give birth”.  Instead, they say, “Brought to light”- “Dar me a luz”- “Mi mama me dio a luz”- my mother brought me to the light.  I really like that a lot- my mother gave me to light, brought me to the light.  I think Guru would have liked this, too.

Once I accepted an assignment for an “alternative” school- “York Alternative High School.”  It wasn’t too far away according to Google Maps, so I hopped on the bus and told the bus driver the address and he let me off in front of the courthouse.  I searched for the high school, but where the school should be, 2700 S California, I saw only the Maximum Security unit of the Cook County Jail.  It was surrounded by five concentric nests of razor wire.

I paced up and down the block from 26^th street to 32^nd street, and I saw that there was no distinct address for 2700 S California!  The whole five blocks were taken up by the sheriff’s office and prison blocks!

Finally, in desperation, I called the secretary of the high school and told her I couldn’t find the  school, and she told me that an “alternative” school means it’s a high school located inside the prison.

It took me forever to get through security.  I had to get finger printed, lock up my phone and keys, and let the security officers rifle through all my bags.  They told me that, if I wanted to teach in the prison in the future, then I had to bring only clear plastic bags, and no paper of any kind- no books or notebooks or pads or anything.

Finally I was allowed in, and the director of the “Alternative School” sat me down and told me not to ask the detainees about their lives in custody.  My job is to educate them, not to learn about prison life or what crimes they committed that brought them there.

Finally, I was shown to my classroom.  I looked over the lesson plans- an art history class, and then the guys were led into the class, all in light brown uniforms and handcuffs, and the warden unbuckled them and they all sat down and listened politely as I gave them a brief lesson on the history of Western Art.  Then, we watched YouTube videos on street artists like Banksy and also local Chicago graffiti artists.  Many of these kids were street artists themselves and could relate.

The boys were more polite than most high school kids.  That’s not surprising.  They either behave or they go back to their cell.  I taught  four periods that day.  Towards the end of the last period, some of the guys in the class asked if they could watch YouTube videos of rappers- all of them incidentally young, female and attractive.  I told them that that was not on the lesson plan, and I therefore had my hands tied.  The young man responded, “It’s a good thing you don’t work here every day, Mr. Klein, because otherwise you’d probably get killed.”

I think he was joking.  He was smiling as he said it.

Anyway, the rowdiness continued, and they shouted out the names of lady rappers they wanted to watch and I eventually had to call the guards in.  The moment the wardens came in, all the boys stood up, faced the wall, with their hands in position to get handcuffed.  They didn’t resist.  They knew the drill.

Surprisingly, the prison had a better atmosphere than many of the high schools I’ve visited!  Sometimes, when freedom is taken away from us, it can be a great boon to our aspiring self.

Sri Chinmoy writes in “Transcendence-Perfection”:

“If my life’s freedom dies,
What shall remain
In my heart?
Not the sighs of loss,
But the illumining
Surrender-tears
Of my gratitude-soul.”

As a spiritual seeker, I find I have to find ways to surrender my outer freedom to my inner life.  I have to do this all the time.

Many of my assignments are not too far from the University of Chicago.  There’s an old library on site that has been repurposed as a reading area.  But whenever people walk in, they gasp!  It’s like a cathedral!  It has huge vaulted ceilings and floating candelabras and it’s all made of old stone, and it is vast and glorious.  It is full of comfortable settees and big cushiony chairs and I go there often just to read Guru’s books.  In the past few weeks, when I’ve been feeling so low, so drained and tired after a long day of the foibles relevant to substitute teaching, I just bring a sack full of Guru’s writings and I sit there and read for three or four hours at a stretch.

And I’ve made a thrilling discovery: I have, in thirty years of discipleship to Sri Chinmoy, just barely scratched the surface of his writings.  This means I can spend the next thirty years, or whatever time is left to me, reading and studying his writings with much more intensity.

Sri Chinmoy writes:

“The book of your heart’s light
Is an excellent book.
Keep it always on your reading desk
To serve as your ever-ready reference book,
Especially when you enter into
The library of ignorance-night.”

Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, part 76, Agni Press, 1983

There are some experiences I had with my Guru that pop up again and again in my mind.  I remember once in the late Autumn of 2001, a Sunday function had just ended, and Guru’s car was going up the 85^th Avenue hill.  I saw an old Sikh man crossing the street, slowly, and Guru’s car was going slowly and Guru’s car drove past me and he folded his hands and bowed to me, but it was like this flash of light and etched in my memory is me standing on the curb with folded hands, and the Sikh man crossing the street behind me.  It’s like an inner photograph.  I think about that moment often.

On October 22^nd, 2006, I asked Guru a question about Beethoven and Bach.  I told him that I love their music, and these were my words, “Very, very, very, very, very much.” And Guru said, “VERY good!”  The emphasis was on “VERY”, that he was so pleased that I have the capacity to enjoy this music.  But when I got the recording, I realised he had not said “very good”.  He had said, “Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah!”  But I heard it as “very good”.  It’s almost like I got the meaning of Guru’s utterance through the vibration that came from him, and that feeling or vibration was expressed to my physical mind in a way that would be easiest for me to understand.  So, I heard “very good!”, as that was what Guru meant by “bah, bah…”

My question was about the essence or quintessence of Beethoven’s and Bach’s music, and when Guru started talking about Beethoven, he said that with Beethoven, when you think of him, it is like a huge tree, and I leaned into the microphone and I said, “YES!”  But this also does not appear in the recording.  It’s almost as if Guru was talking to me on a subtle, akashic level, and I was responding on that level as well.

Another time, my friend, Aron (not his real name), an inspired seeker from Israel, had joined the rest of us on 85^th Avenue to watch Guru’s car go up the hill.  As soon as Guru saw Aron, he reached out the window and blessed him four or five times with utmost joy and enthusiasm.  He said something also to Aron, maybe “Bah!”  Aron was smiling, almost crying with joy.  He was so happy!

I remember once Guru was selling CD’s from the greatly gifted sitarist Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar’s daughter.  I had spent the whole day cleaning my room, which was a very rare event for me at the time.  Guru was handing out the CDs, and when he handed me mine, he gave me the brightest smile, full of joy, confidence and assurance.  And for hours after that I felt resonating strings within me, just humming and vibrating with joy.  I just felt I had become some stringed instrument myself, and I was just immersed in joy.

Another time, Guru mentioned to one of his visiting guests, the sister of one of his close disciples, that she had been a devout Buddhist seeker in Burma in her past life, and that she visited many, many sacred temples and stupas in Burma.  I felt a lot of joy when I heard Guru reveal this woman’s prior spiritual Buddhist incarnation.  When it was time for prasad, as I was passing by him, I saw Guru blessing me in a way he never had before.  His head was moving up and down so slowly, and his eyes were flickering like the shutter of a camera, at a million revolutions a second.  I felt, with no outer evidence or corroboration, that the Buddha used to bless his disciples like this.  Guru was expressing his oneness with the Buddha by showering his blessings on me in this way.

Another time, when Guru was honoring the memory of his dearest friend, Pir Vilayat Khan, who had just passed, when Guru asked us to pass by him, Guru gave me just the sweetest smile, just the kindest, sweetest smile.  I felt that had my life been a little different, I might have followed the Sufi path, and have been happy in that mode.  (I am, of course, extremely grateful that I found Guru and his path)

Just an interesting aside: I have heard that Pir Vilayat Khan’s disciples were the only people that Guru would freely allow to touch his feet.

I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to read Guru’s books, to immerse ourselves in his writings.  Recently I encountered a young man sitting by himself at the old indoor basketball court at my local YMCA.  He told me his name was Logan.  We spoke for a little bit, and I put on my shtick for him, about my imaginary rattlesnake and my homicidal aunt who just got out of jail (I have no rattlesnake, and no aunt).  He laughed, fortunately.

Then we started talking about different college majors and he told me he was studying liberal arts, so a general, non-specific study focusing on the humanities.  I told him that it is good to cultivate a life-long habit of reading, and I try to read for at least three hours a day (Guru’s books of course!), and not to confine his learning to four years at college.

I also told him that when he reads, he should make an effort to read from actual books, not from any phone or computer.  I started quoting Guru’s comments on how important paper is, how paper embodies and preserves the achievements of the human brain, which is nothing but light, and that paper is also sacred to the goddess of learning, Saraswati, and that it is a crime to ever touch paper with the feet.  If we want to absorb the subtle, delicate qualities of whatever we are reading, we must read that thing from ink and paper.

“Very elegantly stated!” Logan replied.  Of course, everything I was saying came straight from Guru’s books.

I like what Guru says in his inspired book Obedience or Oneness:

“My writings are not borrowed thoughts, but the expressions of my own experience. Some philosophers, professors and scholars borrow ideas from others; the ideas they write about do not come from their own realisation. In my case, my grammar may be absolutely wrong, but the consciousness that I reveal is a divine consciousness. So even if I say, “I goes,” there is no problem. But when I say “I”, it will carry tremendous spiritual strength and spiritual power. This is true not only when I say it, but also when all spiritual Masters say it.”

(https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/oo-9)

I didn’t mention Guru’s name on this occasion, but I still felt Guru’s Light operating as I spoke to this boy in the basketball court, sharing Guru’s thoughts about the importance of physical books.

Interestingly enough, I dreamt a couple of nights ago that I attended a performance of Bach’s B-Minor Mass in an old church in Chicago.  Many disciples were there.  Before the concert started, in my dream, I caught myself remembering the following question and answer:

[Why] Is that… when you are in churches you can feel the love?

Sri Chinmoy: “It is because thousands of people have prayed there for many years.”

(https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/med-16)

And, even in my dream, I felt that Guru’s words are not just words, but they are surcharged with light, power and beauty.  From this church I saw in my dream, I had that experience of feeling serene and gentle love.

Two years ago, I had to take a week and a half off of work to deal with a health issue.  I just spent my time, hour after hour, day after day, studying Guru’s books.  I cherished them like never before.  And the day I got back, I felt like I was seeing everything through the filter of the Transcendental Photograph!  I saw his Transcendental in front of me, and I felt I was meditating on it while doing my daily tasks and taking care of the customers.  One of my supervisors told me that I looked really good.  I could tell he could feel the peace and joy that I had received from Guru’s writings.  And the fact that I saw the Transcendental the entire day, reinforces my belief in Guru’s oft-repeated maxim, that his books are one of the easiest ways to enter into his highest consciousness.

Interestingly enough, Sundar, our barber-scholar-humorist-seer, told me that Guru said you don’t have to buy all of his books.  You can buy one book, and if you can read it every day, that is enough.  You just need one book.  You will get Guru’s consciousness.  Sundar said, “Guru wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true.  Why would he say that in the first place?  It’s bad for business!”

I was speaking to a friend today about one of my highest experiences, the Riverside Peace Concert that the Master gave on the 23^rd of August, 2000.  It is such a majestic cathedral!

I remember that the organ was the last instrument Guru played that day.  And as he was playing, I felt this coolness come over me, and I heard, or I felt that I heard, a voice repeating, “Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary…” and I felt this otherworldly love, like love that sweeps like a wind off of a distant ocean.  It was just this pure, sweet, mysterious love.  I felt that this Consciousness was descending into the room, and I felt the voice whisper again, “It’s an Avatar.  It’s an Avatar.  It’s an Avatar.”  Over and over, it just said, “It’s an Avatar.”  And I knew it was referring to another Master, another Avatar who had just entered the room- Jesus Christ.  I remember everyone was enthralled, enraptured, stupefied.  We all knew.  My first impression of Christ was, “Oh, he’s another Buddha!”

I’ve always thought that I had Christian incarnations, that I have a link with Christian spirituality, so why would my first impression of the Christ be “Oh, he’s a second Buddha!”?

I asked this question of Ushashi, who wrote “Thy Will Be Done: A Christian Journey to Sri Chinmoy”, about her experiences as a Protestant Minister, and how her spiritual seeking eventually led her to Guru’s path.  She told me that perhaps I have also been Buddhist, and that I was trying to assimilate Christ’s presence and divinity in a way that would be relatable to a Buddhist- that Christ is another Buddha.  This is not totally illogical.  In Guru’s play “The Son”, when Jesus Christ is studying in a classroom in India, the teacher points to him, and says of Christ, “He is a world-saviour.  He is another Krishna.” (https://www.srichinmoylibrary.com/son-12)

Again, maybe I responded that way to Christ, by thinking of him as the Buddha, because these great Avatars all come from the same room, and are brothers.

I think I felt Christ’s Third Eye, his supernal Will- Power, just unthinkable, unfathomable Will-Power,  overwhelming Will-Power, luminosity and divinity.

I also felt that Christ travels with his companions, his dearest devotees.  I felt that he brought not only himself and his mother, but hundreds or thousands of his dearest devotees, adorers and worshippers.  They travel with him.

This experience was special for me, most sacred and special, because it is the only time I ever had a truly collective experience on this path.  Hundreds and hundreds of us felt it.  You can read about other people’s experiences at this concert, now twenty-five years distant, here:

Love of Jesus

One thing recently struck me about this concert, and I wanted to share my thought:  Here, all of us, Sri Chinmoy’s disciples were just basking and basking in the light of Lord Jesus Christ, but Guru did not stop playing the organ.  He did not outwardly acknowledge Jesus Christ’s presence in any way.  The Supreme wanted him to play the organ to reveal His Light, and that was what he was going to do.  Nothing was going to shake him or deter him from that purpose.  He could have stopped his performance, and asked us to rise and fold our hands.  He didn’t.  He knew that he didn’t have to say anything.  We were spiritually developed enough to feel it.  This is one of the ways Sri Chinmoy honoured his own disciples’ spirituality.  He didn’t have to tell us everything.  We can know certain things ourselves.

Also, Guru said that his most important quality was poise, equanimity.  Guru once said that his poise was one of the easiest things for seekers to see in him- that he is always fully in control of every situation.  Nothing can shake him.  Not tragedies or triumphs, or even the presence of Lord Jesus Christ Himself.  Guru has his poise, his most important quality.

I like this poem, from “The Goal Is Won”, as it touches on the qualities of love and poise:

“Love-wind blows

In all directions,

Cheerfully, speedily

And

Fruitfully.

Who divinely follows?

Emperor-Calm

Of Eternity’s Height.”

(Sri Chinmoy, The Goal is Won, Sri Chinmoy Centre, New York, 1974)

Another thing: when Guru wanted to go and see Sri Ramana Maharshi, the Mother adamantly opposed this.  She did not want him to see another Master.  In fact, it was forbidden for Aurobindo’s disciples to go see Ramana Maharshi, because they felt his presence would be too powerful and it would take them away from the Ashram.

But at the Riverside Church, Guru mediated for us the experience of the Lord Jesus in His aspect of infinite Glory, and we were all adoring and worshipping Him.  How many Masters would be generous enough to let their students admire and adore another Master, another Teacher?  But this aligns with what Guru said- that no other spiritual figure has ever appreciated and honored the other Masters the way Guru has.  This speaks not only to Guru’s kindness and magnanimity, but also to his own height.  Guru’s title for his play about Krishna applies also to himself, for Sri Chinmoy is equally “The Singer of the Eternal Beyond.”

My spiritual community, the Sri Chinmoy  Centre, holds two important “Celebration”-style events a year.  Each event lasts about two weeks.  One, in April, honors the anniversary of his 1964 arrival in the West.  The other, held in August, commemorates his birthday.  A lot of Yoga retreats emphasize silence.  You go into nature, and you hold silent meditation for weeks on end.  Our meditative events do incorporate some silent meditation, but we also do a lot of singing and chanting as well as put on spiritual plays.  We also just hang out a lot and talk!  It’s a good thing that we do not just observe silence, as that would be very difficult for me.  I’m a natural extrovert.

I almost did not attend this past August Celebration.  I was offered a new job just before the celebration- a part-part-time position as a school bus safety monitor- buckling the kids into seatbelts, making sure nobody wanders the aisle while the bus is in motion, asking the children to keep the noise level to a low roar.  But, I spoke to the HR manager, and she said that they are well staffed, and that it would be fine for me to go.

This led me to my second conundrum- I had no money.  Really!  But I had bought the ticket months prior, and because I help out with arranging accommodations for the event, I do not have to pay my board.  But still, I would be skating close.

I meditated on the picture of my Master that I keep in my room- his Transcendental, taken in his highest consciousness.  I worship this picture.  For me, it does not represent the human in my Master.  It represents God.  I approached the Transcendental Photograph and I prayed for days.  I told it my position, that I have no money, that I just started a new job, that I am in dire straits.  And I got the vibration from the picture that it totally understood!  It did not really mind if I did not go.

I thought, “I could go, in theory, but it’s not practical!”

So, I decided not to go.  And I felt my Master’s support and understanding.

Then, a couple nights later I had an interesting dream.  I live in Chicago, and I meditate at our Chicago Sri Chinmoy Centre.  I guess I can call it a meditation space or a temple.  It’s decorated with many pictures of my Master in states of high consciousness.  Whenever I go there, I feel this vibration of serene, pure love.  Anyway, in my dream we had lost our lease for the space, and the Chicago Sri Chinmoy Centre was to be dismantled.  My Centre leader and the other disciples were putting everything away in boxes, with the help of some professional movers.  They were working in one room, and I was by myself in the shrine area.  The Transcendental was alone on the wall.  I could hear them working in the next room, but they couldn’t hear me.  I sat down in front of the Transcendental and folded my hands.  I felt I would never see the Transcendental again, and I looked at it with such longing, but also grief.  “Oh, Guru,” I said repeatedly under my breath, “Oh Guru, oh Guru.”

And I felt a voice within me say, “Not oh, but ah!”

And that was the dream.

What does this mean?

Not oh, but ah.

I remember the poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay:

“My candle burns at both ends

It will not last the night

But ah my foes

And oh my friends

It gives a lovely light.”

I’ve always thought that the poem would read better:

“Oh my foes

And ah my friends”

This is because “oh” can be an exclamation of shock or sadness, whereas “ah” sounds more like revelation, or the joy of reunion.

When I woke up from the dream, I was in tears.  I just lay in my bed, and I felt I was rocking in a cradle, and I felt bathed in warmth, in love.

Not oh, but ah.

I lived with my Guru for the last ten years of his earthly life.  And I can say from my own inner experiences with him, in dreams and in meditation, that my Guru lives!  And he is telling me in this dream, that the very act of aspiration is a miracle.  Every aspiring day I live, every day that I make the time to meditate, to pray, to read his books, I am accomplishing something.  In our path, we accept the world.  We live in society.  We manifest what we get from our meditation in the wider world.  Therefore, aspiration is revelation.  This is true for all spiritual paths, but especially for this one, in which we emphasize the acceptance of life.

I also think that his statement “not oh, but ah!” means that my Guru already thinks of me as one of his chosen children, his close and intimate disciples, and so therefore all the major decisions in my life should be made by him.  If I don’t express my faith in my actions, what is this faith worth?

So the next morning, I was praying in front of the Transcendental, and I told Guru that I’m grateful he understands my financial position, and why I can’t go to Celebrations because of my financial problems.  But while I was talking to Guru, I was tapping away at the computer, not really knowing what I was typing, or only half knowing.  But I looked at the Photograph and Guru seemed a little amused.  And then I looked at the monitor, and I saw a message from Bank of America, thanking me for ordering my first credit card.  My flight was in six days.  The card arrived the evening before my flight.  It’s a starter credit card, with only a five hundred dollar balance.  But it was enough to get me through our celebrations.

I don’t know if the dream I had related directly to Celebrations or not, but I think it pointed me in the right direction.  While I was biking home last night, I saw the most remarkable golden light in the sky, and it touched the tops of the clouds.  But they were low hanging clouds, like clouds from a fairy tale- massive and touched with crimson and gold.  I felt the evening sun represented divine hope, and the lofty, mighty clouds stood for human promise.  I felt I was between them.  Hope and promise.

Not oh, the bitter reality, but ah, the infallible dream.

Sometimes people ask me what it was like to meditate with Sri Chinmoy when he was in the physical, and if it was similar to the kinds of experiences I get now from the Transcendental.  I guess the main difference is how quickly I get inner experiences.  When Sri Chinmoy was in the physical, I didn’t really have to do anything to get inner experiences.  I just had to show up.  We meditated either at PS 86, the public elementary school in Queens where we used to hold all of our meetings in the winter, or to our dedicated meditative “Aspiration-Ground”.  I just sat down, and Sri Chinmoy would enter into meditation, and he would bring light down, tangible and palpable divine Light.  This is not jargon.

These days, at our Chicago Centre meetings, I have to sit in front of Sri Chinmoy’s Transcendental photograph, taken when he was in his absolutely highest Consciousness, and I have to concentrate for two or three minutes.  Then, suddenly, the photograph will “awaken”, and it will start functioning, and it feels like a living entity.  Life floods into the photograph, and the picture begins emitting a certain quality I struggle to name.  But I think the best word for it is “Poise”.  It awakens, and I feel poise coming from the picture.  It’s like a warrior who has hundreds of weapons to choose from, but poise means rather than just grabbing whatever implement is closest, he examines the situation calmly and then makes a decision.  So, when the picture wakes up at the Centre, I feel this poise, equipoise, almost a kind of tension- but not a worried tension but more like a live wire, like a low electrical current, but that current is fully conscious and poised.  It is a Warrior-consciousness, but it is not belligerent- it is simply able to face any situation.  Then, the next thing I feel is Light.  The picture, after demonstrating absolute poise, begins shedding light.  In my case, I usually see just pure white light, just white.  After Guru’s Mahasamadhi, the light was blinding, brilliant.   These days the light maybe isn’t so overt, but it is a calm, gentle, all-pervading white light.  I know that white is the color of the Divine Mother, the color of purity, of divinity.  I guess the Transcendental gives to each aspirant what they need.  In my case it gives me poise and also the presence and love of the Divine Mother.

When Guru was on earth, I had many visions and experiences when I meditated with him.  I don’t get those so often from the Transcendental.   Rather, as I said, I just get pure white Light.  But that white Light, along with that absolute poise that I always feel in the beginning, may be all that I need.  Another thing I want to say is that it’s possible the meditations I have with the Transcendental are, in a certain sense, more important than the meditations I had with the Master in the physical.  This is because I have to dig a little deeper to get these experiences.  I have to do a little work, and I have to bring some devotion and receptivity.  And so I feel that the Master is always very pleased with me when I go to the meditation, when I cherish and worship his Transcendental Photograph, when I am able to absorb his poise and light.  I help to awaken the Transcendental just through my own devotion and worship that I express towards it, and my aspiration also plays a role in bringing these divine qualities down.

Recently, I’ve been thinking about becoming an on the road (OTR) truck driver and handling cross-country loads.  This would involve contracting to a company for my CDL schooling, and becoming more or less their indentured server for at least a year, or maybe two.  During this time I would be unable to participate in the Centre in any meaningful way.  I approached my personal Transcendental in my room and I asked it if it liked the idea.

I don’t usually talk to the Transcendental.  I talk to Guru in my heart, I chant his poems, I do my silent meditation.  But I don’t usually use the Transcendental as a tool to distinguish courses of action.  But this time I did.  I got down on my knees and I prayed for half an hour to the Transcendental, and I begged it for its sanction for my becoming a truck driver.

I finished praying and I looked at the Transcendental, and I asked, “May I?”

And the Transcendental said it was very concerned for my physical safety.

I never get messages, or almost never.  But this was a real message.

I looked at it, and the Transcendental looked so worried, so unhappy and so concerned.  The expression on the picture had totally changed from its usual posture of serenity and detachment.  It was very worried.  It didn’t like the idea at all.  But then, as I looked at the Photograph, I got another message: “It is what it is.”

If I can interpret the experience, and these are my thoughts, and not from Guru’s writings:

The Transcendental has an outer Consciousness, and also an inner Consciousness.

The outer Transcendental Consciousness is Sri Chinmoy my human Guru, full of concern, full of love, and always approachable.

The inner Transcendental Consciousness is Sri Chinmoy the Supreme, God, the absolute Mystery, the Unfathomable, the One Without A Second.

My human Guru is telling me not to do this.  But my Guru as God is saying, “Whatever it is, it is.  Whatever will be, will be.”

If I don’t want to listen to Guru, then I can become a truck driver and have whatever experience is there.  My Guru the man wants what’s best for me, and cares for me sleeplessly.  My Guru the God knows what was, what is, and what will be, and has accepted everything.  The God in Guru does not advise, it just watches and sees.

It is what it is.  I can obey or disobey the message of my human Guru.  But the consequences either way I own.

Of course, I will follow the advice of my Guru.  The vibration of the Transcendental towards my idea was negative in the extreme.  No truck driving for me.

Then the Transcendental said something very interesting.  It said just one word: spiral.

Spiral.

Remember Guru’s answer to the question posed by one of his beloved Guards:

Question: My spiritual life is like a roller coaster. I go up and then I go all the way down. When will that end? When will I only go up?

Sri Chinmoy:  “If it ends, then there will be no fun! [laughter] You are saying ‘roller coaster’, but you have to use a different term: ‘spiral’.”

I love the word spiral.  I think it is a mantra.

Spiral.  Spiral.  Spiral.

What was the Transcendental telling me by saying the word “spiral”?

I think it’s telling me that there are no absolute answers in the spiritual life.  No answer, no utterance by any spiritual Master, no matter how high, can be the final word.

Spiral.

The Transcendental is telling me not to become a truck driver.  But by saying the word “spiral”, it is telling me that my efforts in becoming one- calling different trucking companies, beginning a bus driving CDL before aborting it, calling friends and relatives who’ve driven on the road- is not wasted.  If I’m not to become a truck driver now, that doesn’t necessarily mean I can’t do it later, at some other time.  Maybe it will be five years from now.  Maybe it will be in another life.  I don’t know.  But the important thing is to be one with God’s Will, with Guru’s Will, however this is expressed.  It is his game.  If today he says that the fruits on a particular tree are green, then they are green.  If tomorrow he says they are red, I will see them as red.  When he asks us to say our daily prayers, our obedience mantras, our daily reading and chanting, he’s asking us to see reality through his eyes.

Guru’s Will is infinite and supple, like water, yielding, accepting, encompassing.  Along with our constant cry for oneness with the Master, with God, we also must be supremely flexible.  Spiral.

Interestingly, for days and days after I asked the Transcendental for help and advice, I felt it was just blessing me, lavishly and unconditionally blessing me.  I felt it was pouring its blessings into me because I consulted it, I used it as a tool to discriminate a course of action.  Guru’s Transcendental proved to me that it is a practical resource.

When Guru gave me my name, and pressed the envelope to my head, he said, “Very happy, very happy.” And I was amazed because I have so many problems, I make so many mistakes.  But by saying “very happy”, he’s asking me to see myself the way he sees me.  It is a lifelong challenge.  But if I want to become one with his way of moving and operating, and become one with the spiral, then I must try.

Let us end with this poem:

“True, you have felt something divine
Inside your Master
At least for a fleeting second.
But to his extreme sorrow
You have not felt anything divine
Inside yourself.
Before you pass
Behind the curtain of Eternity,
Your Master wants you to feel
Something divine
Inside your own heart,
Even for a fleeting second.”

(Sri Chinmoy, Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants, part 15, Agni Press, 1983)

My bus driving aspirations have washed up, but I did learn a little bit about driving a large vehicle.  My instructor told me to look for the crack in the road.  I had never noticed, but almost all streets in the US have a crack that runs through the middle of each lane.  It’s from the tension and weight of all the vehicles, I think.  He told me that when you find the crack, make sure that either the right wheel of the bus is over the crack, or that the nose of the bus is perfectly centered over it.  In this way, you can always find your bearing on the road, and keep a safe distance between you and the other vehicles.  He also taught me that steering is a little different with big vehicles as opposed to cars.  To perform a parallel park or an offset park, you have to turn the wheel all the way to one side, wait until you are in alignment with where you want to go, and then turn the wheel all the way in the other direction to straighten it out.  With car steering wheels, you don’t have to turn the wheel so much, as car steering is much more responsive.  My instructor and I used to sing old spirituals together as we drove.  I miss that.

I’ve been so engrossed in trying to get a new job, that maybe I haven’t been devoting as much time as I could to conscious aspiration.  I like to designate at least four hours a day to spirituality.  I think this is the minimum for people like me who’ve been on the path for thirty years.  It’s just I’m bustling around, trying to find a new assignment, that I neglect meditation.  I was walking through my apartment recently, looking at all the pictures I have of Guru, and I was shocked that I didn’t see or feel anything in any of them.  They were just pictures of an old Indian man.  Then I looked at the Transcendental.  Nothing.  It’s just a black and white photograph of a young man with his eyes half closed.  I realised that the reason I didn’t get any thrill from the pictures of my Master is that I haven’t been meditating.  When I stop praying and aspiring, all I have is the physical world.  I canceled all my appointments for the day, sat down and just sang Guru’s songs for two hours with utmost devotion.  Afterwards, I looked at all the pictures of Guru, and I felt his living presence, his divinity, his joy.

I was studying some of Vidagdha’s diaries of her life with Guru in the late Eighties and early Nineties.  I came across an interesting passage.  It pertains to a statue of Guru which had recently been erected in the Mexican state of Sinaloa.  Guru said that disciples should go every day to meditate and place flowers at the foot of the statue.  They should worship it.  Only then will people feel something in the statue.  He said, “Spiritual aspiration, religious aspiration, has to come to the fore.  Otherwise, statues will remain statues.”

This aligns with my experience.

My nephew does not follow any spiritual path and does not meditate.  But once he came over to my house and saw a small Transcendental that I kept on a bookshelf.  He picked it up and asked me who this was.  I said “Sri Chinmoy.”  He said, “Of course, your sister keeps some pictures of Sri Chinmoy in the house and so I know who he is, but she never showed me this picture.”

He held it up and said, “You can see he is nowhere and everywhere at the same time.  He embodies infinite power and yet his eyes are so kind.  He has completely transcended the human life.  Those pictures my mother keeps are not Sri Chinmoy.  This is Sri Chinmoy.  This is who he is.  This picture will be etched in my mind forever.”

Even in my highest mood, I have never responded to the Transcendental like that.  Maybe that’s why we need to keep up our devotions.  Sri Ramakrishna appeared before Sri Aurobindo in a séance and told him “Arabinda, mandir gado, mandir gado” (Aurobindo, build temples, build temples).   Our temples include not just physical structures but also the Peace Run, soulful music, recitation, and Divine Enterprises.  We can build these temples for seekers to come and receive Guru’s divinity.  We owe them that much.

Sometimes finding a new job can feel like hitting a bunch of dead ends.  I wanted to go into medical tech sales.  Then I spoke to some salesmen in the field and realized that medical tech sales is their whole life- it is their dharma.  They work sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week to meet quotas, to read up on the latest technology, to take doctors and administrators out to dinner.  I respect their work ethic.  But it’s not for me- I need time to meditate and read spiritual books.

I wanted to become a freight brokerage salesman.  Once again, I did the research, I spoke to many people in the field.  I have never driven a truck, I don’t know how to trace loads.  I’m sure I could do it with enough training- and I wouldn’t mind making a hundred cold calls a day.  I have a thick skin.  I’ve been hung up on so many times during my job search that I feel that I could add it to my CV “I’m skilled at getting hung up on.”

Alas, most freight brokerages hire only people fresh out of college, and only then if they have already interned with the company while in school.  I’m young at heart, but no spring chicken.  Also, to be a successful freight brokerage salesman, you have to be on call all the time.  I want a job where I can put my uniform on a hook, go home, and enjoy my own time.  Like medical technology, freight brokerage demands a commitment I’m not ready to give.

I investigated other kinds of sales- real estate, insurance, HR software, home maintenance, and discovered that most of them involve more than a little bit of chicanery in the sales pitch.  Unless it’s a product I could wholeheartedly believe in, like selling discounted college textbooks for low-income students, I think I’d have trouble hawking the best life insurance policy if I knew deep down that it’s really just a rip off.

In my journey, I reached out to a lot of companies, spoke to salesmen in many different fields, read a lot of books on sales and persuasion theory.  I learned a lot from it, and I actually gained a lot of respect for people who work in the sales field.  It’s an incredibly demanding career that requires a special set of skills.  I’m sure I can do it- but I can’t believe that I would be able to balance a heavy workload and still study Guru’s books.

You only get one life.  There’s no such thing as a rehearsal for it.  This is it.  I believe in reincarnation, but I’ll never be me again, at least not this me- tattered and battered maybe, but it’s the only self I know.  I want to study Guru’s books.  That’s my sadhana.  I can’t have a job that would overrule my spiritual life.

But I need a job.

So I stumbled on a poster for a bus company.  The company offered paid training, and would make me a school bus driver.  I was excited.  For the past two and a half months I trained on learning the mechanics of buses and how to drive them.  I passed all three commercial learners permit exams, and all that was left was to learn to drive them.  My teacher was an old black guy, dying by inches of pancreatic cancer.  But he loved to teach.   I’m not a good student.  He had to shout in my ear to swerve to avoid road signs and cars.  I didn’t hit anything, but I got yelled at a lot, understandably.  He liked it when I recited Guru’s mantras.  “Water we need for outer purity…”

And I learned offset parking!  One of the hardest things to do with a big bus.  I didn’t think I could do it, but I did.  And then he started teaching me parallel parking.   I knew I was getting close to passing the exam and getting my Class B CDL (Commercial Drivers License), which would entitle me to drive all kinds of buses for the rest of my life.

The company sent me to the doctor to get the mandated physical.  I’m mostly blind in my right eye but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem because I have corrective lenses and I have excellent vision in my left eye.  I’ve driven a car for many years with no issues.  Alas, US DOT law requires two good eyes for bus driving and even with my prescription glasses my right eye wasn’t good enough.  I failed the physical and the doctor had to tell the company to stop training me.

A ray of hope: he told me that I can’t drive buses with only one functioning eye, but I can still get a federal waiver to drive trucks.

Bus driving gives me innocent joy- and I’m not sure truck driving gives me the same spontaneous joy.  But it pays really well, and it’s not a mentally demanding job.  It just requires good reflexes, patient attention and focus.  I have that.

To get the appropriate Commercial Driver’s License for truck driving, I would have to apprentice myself to a trucking company.  They will have me sign a contract, and so in exchange for training me I will have to be on the great American road for a year or two.  I won’t be able to really participate in any of the communal activities of my spiritual Path during that time, including attending Centre meetings.  I’ll be the bondsman of the company, chattel on wheels.

On the one hand I feel a call to the freedom of the Road, the vastness of America which has always inspired me.  On the other hand, I’ll be left to my own devices for many months.  I’ll have to swim in the sea of ignorance alone.

The value of Centre meetings for me is that at least for those three hours a week I know that I’m doing the right thing.  I’m focused on God.  I’m with other people who are praying and meditating and trying to perfect themselves.  For those few hours a week I know I’m pleasing God. Also, during my daily devotions, during those three or four hours of reading and singing, I know I am in a high consciousness, and I am doing what Guru wants.

But take me out of the spiritual environment and the spiritual community completely, and what happens?  I mean, I’ve noticed that when I talk to old disciple friends on the phone, our consciousness merges, and we become a composite person, and share each other’s spiritual qualities.  What I get from the spiritual community is my connection to a larger aspiring self, that is composed of all the people who follow the path of Sri Chinmoy.

Interestingly, when I had a profound experience of the presence of Jesus Christ at Guru’s August 23 2000 Riverside Church Concert, I felt that Christ was composed of the love and worship of all of his devotees, he embodied all the people who have ever prayed to him, who love him.  They are in him, and they make up his living body.  In the same way, the people who worship Sri Chinmoy make up his existence, they are an important part of who he is, they are his living self.  I can’t reject the Centre without rejecting Guru too.  Yes, I can meditate without being in the Centre.  But if I say I don’t need the Centre, I feel like I’m being crass.  It’s like you telling your spouse, “You know, I like and love you, but I don’t need you.”  You wouldn’t say that to someone you genuinely loved.  So if I say I love Guru but I don’t need the Centre, then there’s something about that statement that is a little dishonest.

A time comes in the life of every seeker when he realizes that he can’t leave the path, because the only thing he has is the path.  Many years ago, I asked Sundar if he had any advice for me.  It was 2000 or 2001, and I had just moved to New York.  He just said that I will be happier on the path if I aspire- if I spend my time reading spiritual books and singing Guru’s songs and participating in all the Centre activities.  These things are not required, he told me, but that if I want to be happy on the path, then it’s advisable to do these things, and to aspire.

Many years later, in 2018, I was talking to Sundar, and I wasn’t thinking of our earlier discussion, but I told him that I felt that sadhana is the only happiness.  We have to stick to our sadhana to be truly happy.  Sundar told all the people who came to that barber shop that day that “Mahiruha has given me a lofty message: Sadhana is happiness, stick to your sadhana if you want to be happy.”  Two people actually called me to thank me for sharing this thought.

He didn’t remember that he was the one who gave me that message!

What career path I will take isn’t clear to me yet.  But what is clear is that sadhana and inner happiness, founded on my own disciplines, must guide my life.  I have to turn God-ward, Guru-ward, to see the truth, and the road ahead.  Then only I can feel that the Master will make the decision for me.  And his decision is always infallible.

Recently I’ve been dealing with a personal problem, a vital issue.  I’m not sure my actions in this are terribly enlightened.  I offered it in prayer to my Guru a few days ago, and I found his answer helpful.  Of course, his “answer” might be the woven fabric of my imagination, or the throw up of my vital and mind; the answer could be what these parts of me want to hear.  But this is the message I got, if it is authentic:

“If you can’t surrender this to me, then I want you to accept the consequences, whatever they are, with a cheerful heart.  This is also surrender.”

I find this interesting.  I mean, the best thing is to never do anything wrong, and to act according to the will of our soul, with pure and perfect intention and effort.  But if I haven’t reached that point, I can still offer my actions to the Master.  And, as he said, if I can take the karmic consequences cheerfully then this is also a form of surrender.  Guru mentions various ways to know the will of God.  One way is to always act like an innocent child.  Another way is to meditate every day for long hours.  Another way is to ask the Master!   And then there is the way that Guru apparently mentioned in answer to my prayers: surrender both the actions and the consequences of the actions.  Don’t judge, don’t say, “Oh, I’m so bad, I’m so weak, I’m so disobedient.”  No, just offer it to Guru.  Let Guru see the action and the results that will or may come.  Let Guru be the judge and the fate maker.  This is the way I like.

Of course, along with acting and offering the action, and offering the eventual fruits, I also feel a strong urge to spend many hours a day reading Guru’s books, diving into Guru’s consciousness.  In my case, I think the steady intensification of aspiration must accompany my offering to Guru of what I think is wrong in my life.  They have to go together- offer the actions, and cry for God, for His Grace.  This makes sense to me.

When I lived with Guru in New York, during the last ten years of his earthly life, I made a lot of mistakes, I had a lot of problems.  But I felt that Guru always took my side.  He always made me feel he was on my side.  For example, I could never go on the Christmas Trip.  But I remember in late November 2005, it was the day before Guru left, one of the last trips, Guru had us walk by him.  He knew I couldn’t go.  When I walked by him, he looked at me with such concern.  He held my gaze for a long time and turned his head to see me walk away.

Two years ago I got very sick. I was bedridden for six or seven days.  All I did during that time was read Guru’s books- eight or nine hours a day.  I read them voraciously, and I took notes in the margins.  Some of them I read out loud from cover to cover.  I did nothing but read his writings, day after day.  After three or four days of intense reading, I felt Guru come into my room and sat by my bed. I could feel him with me, palpably in every way.  He said to me, “I love your aspiration.  I love your ignorance.  I love everything about you because I love you.”  Then he went away.  But the fragrance of his presence remained for days.

Once again, Guru had given me a fascinating message.  What I do outwardly is of no consequence relative to my openness to Guru’s love!  Am I going to perfect myself?  Am I going to transcend the sea of ignorance with my own efforts, and maybe a stepladder?  It’s absurd.  Guru has an extremely beautiful aphorism:

“Hope is at once our ancestor and descendent.”

(Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees)

It is hope that has gotten us this far, and it is hope that will push us forward to a new and higher life.  I can say the same about Guru’s love.

I got this experience in the context of a whole week reading Guru’s books voraciously and with utmost devotion.  I did not get this message out of the blue.  What’s important is maintaining contact with the Master.  This is especially true when the mountain of my mistakes looms large.  It’s funny- Guru said many times that when his disciples do wrong things, they don’t pray afterwards.  They just cherish a guilty conscience and suffer.  Prayer is so easy, but they won’t do it.

Please pray.

I have a friend whose been on the path longer than I’ve been on earth.  He’s an old man with callused hands and a skin problem.  I don’t see him much in New York these days, but I still call him from time to time.  He’s a soulful man, whose spent his whole life taking low pay menial jobs so that he has time to meditate.  I’ve visited him a few times over the years.  The very walls of his house resonate with his meditation-power.  When I used to work at the Oneness-Fountain-Heart, we were often extremely short staffed.  Once he came to help me as a selfless service.  He doesn’t know how to wait tables, and he works very slowly.  But the moment he came in, he gave me the most beautiful smile.  I had been having an aggravating day, but his smile made me forget all my problems.

I called him recently, and told him I’ve been having issues.  He said he didn’t need any outer details, but he offered to meditate with me over the phone.  We just meditated together.  I felt waves of love and light emanate from our silent phone communion, these waves just inundated my whole being.  We meditated for ten minutes.  At the end I said, “Thank you” and he said “Thank you too.”

I think our greatest service to the world is in our consciousness and aura.  That’s why we aspire.  Guru writes, and I apologize for quoting this so often:

“Inner wealth is to be acquired for distribution, and nothing else.”

(Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees)

For the past two days I’ve been listening obsessively to John Legend’s great art song “All of Me”.   At points in the song, I feel Guru is seated somewhere on a throne, a dear disciple is singing this song for him, and Guru’s is nodding, with his eyes closed.  Any song I love, Guru will also love, on the strength of his oneness.  “All of Me” I am sure will endure, as Schubert’s songs have endured, as Bach’s arias have endured.  It is a classic and will one day be added to the vast tapestry of classical music.

The melody is mesmerizing.  The words are obvious poetry.  It has a touch of Vaishnava beauty, just pure bhakti.

“I give you all of me, and you give me all of you.”

“All of me, loves all of you- loves all your curves and edges, loves your perfect imperfections.”

It reminds me of what Guru said to me, that he loves me, he loves me for who and what I am, and this love has no price tag and no condition.

Dave Hurwitz is one of the most brilliant critics alive.  And we have in common that Haydn is both of our favorite composer!  Here is what he has to say about another classical ensemble, the Beatles, and how we know they have entered the canon of classical music:

https://youtu.be/uRUYIPzFp4M?si=_Wkn8pUx0A-wu8FH

–Mahiruha

In the early fall of 2006 I got a call from my stepdad telling me that an investment he had made in my name many years ago had finally split (increased in value), and that he would be depositing thirty-one thousand dollars in my bank account.

I was elated to get so much money, but also very sad.  I couldn’t place my sadness.  Then, one Saturday night, I was meditating at our evening function with Guru, and I felt this overpowering longing to serve Guru.  I’ve never felt that before, I just felt the strongest love and devotion for Guru I have ever felt.  I wanted to do something for him while both of us were still on earth.  Tears were streaming down my face.

The following Wednesday I went to my bank and got a certified check made out in the amount of thirty-one thousand dollars.  I endorsed it and put it in the love-offering box that night, along with a letter to Guru outlining why I was giving him the money: I couldn’t for the life of me think of what I would do with it, and it made sense to just give it to my Master.

The next morning, around ten thirty, I was stocking the cooler at our vegetarian restaurant, The Oneness-Fountain-Heart, when I got a call from one of Guru’s attendants to come to the tent at Aspiration Ground, our meditation ground.  The attendant told me to come right away, and said to drive, not to walk.

Of course I told the cook I had to leave, entrusted the opening duties to the other waiters, and hopped in the car.  I played some late Beethoven string quartet on the deck to calm my nerves.  Interestingly, Guru had just answered my query on Beethoven and Bach a few weeks before.  He said that Beethoven’s last music, (which would include the last five string quartets of course) came to him through his third eye; God gave him the capacity to hear the music with his third eye after he lost his ability to hear.

Anyway, I parked the car, ran into the tent (our Aspiration-Ground is an outdoor amphitheater, but in the winter we put up a big white heated tent).  Guru saw me, and he told me to sit and meditate for a few minutes.  I saw from the people around him that he had been teaching songs and answering questions.  He wrapped up what he was doing, and the singers took their seats.  I was sitting near the front row, maybe the very front row.

I was really agitated and excited.  I knew I was about to get my spiritual name from him.  I should have just followed his instructions and meditated peacefully, but I was so emotionally hyper that I just sat there and remembered all the highest experiences I had had with Guru over the years, and with each recollection I offered him my deepest gratitude.

Guru usually did not ask people to meditate before giving them their names.  One boy told me later, “Wow, you must not have been in a high consciousness if Guru asked you to meditate!”  I laughed at that.  Guru has an extremely sympathetic nature and a sensitive heart.  I am not even referring to his occult and spiritual power.  I am just saying that, on a human level, he could feel that I was suffering from something, and wanted me to meditate to be a little more receptive.

I was dealing with an issue, and it’s something that has never left me.  I have not found an answer to it.  I just continue my sadhana anyway.  According to my friend, in life we need illumination, but if we don’t have illumination, then we have to have endurance.  But we have to have one of the two- either illumination or endurance.  Illumination is the best, but if we don’t have it, then we have to have endurance.

I looked at Guru from the front row, as I said, in a very agitated state, offering him my grateful heart.  And Guru just sat on his chair on the stage and looked at me.  He rested one arm on the arm rest and pressed his right index finger to the corner of his mouth and just looked at me.   This went on for a few minutes.  Sometimes he adjusted his position and lifted the left index finger to his lip.  He was just sitting in such a casual way, just looking at me.  It was meaningful to me because I was not outwardly close to Guru- I never went to his house, I never spoke to him.  And now I was the sole focus of his attention.  I had a similar experience at the smaller concert Guru gave after his mammoth Philadelphia Peace Concert in 1996.  He came back two weeks later and gave an intimate follow-up concert at an auditorium at the University of Pennsylvania.  I was one of the seekers who went to this intimate concert.  He played so many instruments, and was so focused on the music.  But when I closed my eyes halfway, I saw he was looking only at me.  I wasn’t even a disciple yet.  When I looked at him with my eyes open, he was concentrating on the music.  But when I looked through half-lidded eyes, I saw he was looking only at me.  And now, ten years later, I had a similar experience at the tent at Aspiration-Ground.

As Guru was looking at me, I felt that I began to meditate, to really meditate.  I know how to meditate because of my long association with my Master.  But at that moment, as Guru was looking at me, I started to meditate in a way I never have before or since.  It was like Guru’s silent gaze, for those few minutes, turned me into a Master of meditation.  I knew then how to meditate.  I meditated and meditated with utmost confidence.  I now realise that Guru’s force entered into me and meditated on my behalf.  I was just letting Guru meditate in and through me, and I just observed, fascinated.

And Guru was so calm.  He just looked and looked.  I was in a turbulent time in my life, agitated and nervous.  I was being tortured by the so called need for sex life, what Guru calls “vital life”.  This is a celibate path, and chastity, celibacy, is the biggest obstacle for me, I think.  It has been thirty years since I joined the path, and still in terms of purity and vital transformation I’m not sure I’ve made even a beginning.

But Guru wasn’t worried about my vital sins, my transgressions, my inner and outer crimes.  His silent gaze was addressing only my divinity, my soul, and he was bringing forward that hidden divinity.  I could feel it.

Then he called me up to the stage.  I stood in front of the stage and kneeled down, but he gestured that I should come around and sit at his feet.  As I sat in front of him, I saw him squirming a few times.  I could tell that my close physical proximity made him a little uncomfortable.  It can be physically painful for a God-realised soul to have to be in very close contact with someone who is not vitally or physically pure.  This is not elitism.  I could just see that my being so close to the Master was a little painful for him.  Sri Ramakrishna also suffered physically when he was touched by certain people.

At that same time, as I sat myself down, I saw that he still radiated this all-pervading calm.  I felt he was telling me “Look, I live without vital life, sex life, and I have infinite peace and light.  When you can overcome this so-called need, you can also have this kind of light.”  There was no judgment in his aspect or demeanor whatsoever.

I was looking up at Guru, and his eyes started moving back and forth, back and forth, at lightning speed, and they started climbing and climbing and his eyes started behaving strangely- one eye was moving in one pattern, and the other eye started moving in a completely different pattern and speed, but they both seemed to be working together.  And then his eyes went completely white!  And then he started breathing heavily and this smile spread over his face so broad I thought his face would crack, he was absolutely grinning ear to ear and it sounded like he was saying this long, aspirated, “Aaaaaahhhh!!!”  like a loud whisper.  And it was as if he recognised me, or once again he was acknowledging my soul, and my soul’s eternal relationship with him, and he was affirming that.  But when I say “recognition”, it was like his smile, his gaze, his aspirated “aaaaah!” were all the tokens of his recognition of a long-lost beloved friend, the real Friend in me, the soul.

And I had the strangest experience.  I was looking at Guru, watching him meditate, and as I was entering into the flow of his trance, I realised I was looking at Guru not as a disciple, but as a peer!  And I know this sounds utterly unbelievable- how can anyone, especially a disciple, say that he is equal to the Master?  And in my ordinary  consciousness, or even in my usual “highest” consciousness, I would never dare to say that- not in a million years!  But for just that infinitesimal fraction of a split second, I saw that I was in no way inferior to my Master.   I was his eternal friend, and I looked at him with the love and joy of absolute oneness-pride.

I guess there are two kinds of obedience.  There’s the obedience of doing everything the Master says.  And there’s the obedience of seeing ourselves the way the Master sees us.  When it comes to the first kind of obedience, outer obedience, perhaps I can be more in Sri Chinmoy’s Boat and less in my own boat.  But for that one iota of a nanosecond, I offered him the second obedience, I did what Guru wanted me to do more than anything else.  I saw my eternal oneness with him, and this is an experience that he vouchsafed me out of his infinite kindness, and I will treasure it throughout Eternity.

Then, Guru held an envelope over me, and I knelt down, and lowered my head, and he pressed it to the top of my head, saying “Very happy, very happy.”  And I got up and looked at him, and I saw he was blinking hard, trying to come back to this physical reality.  And he looked so humble, like a child who was trying to find his way back home, and he was struggling so hard just to orient himself to this plane.

I walked off the stage, and I looked at him one last time.  Guru looked at me with an expression that I struggle to describe.  It was like he had become as vast as the Himalayas, as extended as the ocean, as serene as the dawn.  He looked at me as from the top of Mount Everest, with infinite poise and infinite calm.  And I said to him, in silence, “Oh Master, I love you, and I love God, but I love other things too.  Oh Guru, what am I going to do?”

And he responded inwardly, “I will wait for you.  If necessary, forever.”

I’ve been thinking more about loneliness recently.  As I mentioned in my last post, there are six billion people on the planet.  If you’re lonely, go and make friends!  I spoke about my friend Aaron in my last post.  I met him last winter on the Red Line subway.  I asked him, out of the blue, what he was studying and he said he was in a dual med school/PhD cohort.  So I recited for him, also out of the blue, one of my favorite passages from Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici:

“I have resolved to pray more, and to pray always, to pray in all places where quietness inviteth- in the house, on the highway and on the street, and to know no street or passage in the city that may not witness that I have not forgotten God.”

Aaron was very impressed, both by my recitation and the beauty and depth of Sir Thomas Browne’s words.  Believe it or not, Sir Thomas Browne’s essays are funny, whimsical and very deep.  We know that America’s greatest novelist, Herman Melville, lived in the Civil War/Gilded Age era, but many scholars consider him to be a Renaissance writer, along with Shakespeare and Andrew Marvell.  This is because he is Sir Thomas Browne’s only disciple in posterity.  Please read Religio Medici, if you can.

Anyway, I got Aaron’s phone number, and now we text and chat and go to dinner and museums, we commiserate over each other’s struggles.  I made a new friend.  Do not allow social media to atomise you.  We all need real connection.  That’s what E.M. Foster said: “Only connect.”  It is so true.  Just connect.

As I mentioned earlier, I call my program of meeting random people and making friends with them “Dinner with Rando” because, after our initial connection, I invite them out to cheap ethnic restaurants and we talk.  “Rando” just means someone you don’t know, although it has a somewhat derogatory connotation- like someone who shows up uninvited to social occasions.  Anyway, another “rando” who is now my friend, Tom, has been very inspired by the poems I have recited to him and sent to him over the past few months, so he sent me one of his poems that he has just written:

“There are three things one can do

To grow their neck:

One: look down in prayer

And grow long like the willow.

Two: Look up at the sky like

A flower opening

To the sun.

Three: Hold your head high.”

I told Tom that I am so grateful and honored that these poems have inspired him to discover the poet in himself.

There’s a group of late middle-aged, Catholic men I have grown close to at my college gym.  They’re all businessmen who’ve been quite successful, but now they are tired.  They very much appreciate when I recite Guru’s poems for them.  I was sitting with my friend Nick at the college juice bar.  He is a businessman in his early sixties.  He asked me to recite Sri Chinmoy’s poems, and he gave me a list of four topics, and I just recited and recited for him while he meditated.

“When the son grows old,
His parents’ love does not diminish.
When the sun disappears
Behind the screen of evening-night,
Our love does not diminish.
Absence of beauty’s light
And
Light’s beauty
Can never take away
Our power of realisation-love.”

Sri Chinmoy, Sound becomes. Silence is, Agni Press, 1975

Afterwards he thanked me and told me he had recently ordered, from Ganapati Press, volume V of Sri Chinmoy’s poetry and had begun studying it.  He told me I was a great help to him in his study because it’s easier to assimilate spiritual poetry when you hear it out loud.  I can only agree.

A few years ago I had a dream that I was walking by Chicago’s lake shore, by the outer hills that lead out onto the sandy beach.  Many homeless men camp out there in the night.  In my dream, it was early morning, and I saw a disheveled homeless Black man come out of his tent.  He was holding a battered violin case.  I watched, fascinated, as he put down the old case and took out a tattered violin.  He then leaned it on his shoulder and began to play a transcription of the opening movement of Bach’s first cello suite.  The notes were shaky and bedraggled, but I could recognize the piece.  Somewhat hesitantly, I went up to him.

“What are you?” I asked randomly.

He looked at me and said, “I am an unconditional Smile.”

He paused and then said, “I am an absolute Smile.”

After another brief silence he said, “I am an endless and eternal Smile.”

I fell to the ground and clutched and kissed His Feet, for I knew I was in the presence of an emanation of my Lord, Sri Chinmoy.  Like Babalu-Aye, the derelict cripple of the Yoruba mythology who bestows Compassion on mankind, so my Guru takes many humble forms to inspire and uplift the world.

On 26 August 2021, the day before I was to leave for New York to recite the one thousand poems from the Wings of Light, I was walking back from the grocery store when an elderly homeless Black man crossed in front of me pushing a shopping cart full of junk.  He was wearing a beaten up top hat and a scarf, in spite of the hot weather.  I immediately dropped my groceries and folded my hands.  The man turned to me and gave me a cryptic smile and waved four or five times, enthusiastically.  I knew, and he knew that I knew.

First, a poem I wrote recently!

                                Beads 

I committed myself to the light

Through vows

And prayers

And a thousand

Abstinences,

Yet you always bring

The night

Into

My room.

Like the wind

You move so quietly.

But under me

You are cool water,

And I am the sun

That warms only

Your surface

While your depths

Remain

Unknown

And cold,

Dark

As the autumn

Flower

You pass along

To me,

Oblivious

To the click

Of the

Rosary.

–15 June 2024

I’ve been reading a lot about male loneliness, and I guess it’s real.  Interestingly, our Guru, Sri Chinmoy, says that loneliness is just either conscious or unconscious aloofness. I’d have to agree.  With six billion people on the planet to talk to, how can I feel lonely?

I like what the Master says in his book Obedience or Oneness:

“Even if you don’t have two friends, inside me is a friend who is more than enough for you.”

In medieval Christian monasteries, close friendships between the monks were forbidden, the friendship must be with the entire community, and with God.  I respect that position, to treat all people as manifestations of God, and to eschew attachment.  Again, even in my work life, I see I have had coworkers that I was very fond of, we had a bond of affection that had nothing to do with attachment.  Between these few people and me there was a resonance, a deep understanding, and a similarity in outlook.

Since I belong to a sangha, a spiritual family, I have to put up with irritating people.  Sometimes, I find the best thing is just to say “I’m sorry, my fault” until people leave me alone.  They have to feel that they are right, and that I’m totally in the wrong.  Fine!  Just let me have a few seconds of peace.

Again, I live in Chicago, which has a small Centre, and we’re all basically loners so I don’t really have anyone in my community to talk to.  I do call disciples around the world quite often, but I still feel a little isolated.

One of the ways of relieving that isolation is to go to my local gym, which is part of a college.  A lot of the students are academically brilliant, but they don’t really know anything about life.  I remember one boy in the sauna asked me for some life advice and I told him what my great aunt told me: “Don’t get married, don’t have children.”  His face lit up!  He said, “Wow!  That’s what my great-great grandfather said in 1920- ‘Don’t have kids, stay single and live in a hotel.’  It’s been passed down from generation to generation!”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, and I thought it would be cruel to point out the irony, so I just nodded sagely.

I’ve started a program called “Dinner with Rando”.  I often meet young men at the gym or on the subway, the dangerous and infamous Chicago Red Line.  But the Red Line services some of the local colleges.  So I’ll get to strike up conversations with college kids and grad students and we’ll discuss many things and I’ll often share poems with them.  I usually get their contact info and I’ll invite them to dinner at one of several ethnic restaurants: Korean, Thai, Ethiopian or Turkish.

I’ve never met them before- hence they are randos.  “Rando” is a slightly derogatory term coined by Gen Z influencers.  It means people who show up uninvited to parties; parties are often called “bangers” in young persons’ vernacular.

“Hey I saw this total rando at the banger!”  is a phrase I’ve heard more than once.

A rando can also be someone who is out of context.  For example, some guys in the gym were talking about Kendrick Lamar, a gifted rapper whose music tends to be reflective and moody.  I interrupted them to ask if any of them liked Haydn.  They all looked at me as if I was some kind of rando- which I was.

I assuage my loneliness by inviting these college randos out to dinner.  It’s a fun way to get to know them and I also get to share a little bit of Guru’s light with these guys.  On subsequent outings I take them to the Chicago Art Institute or to classical music concerts.  Some of them have even been inspired enough to meditate with me at the Centre!

Often these young men will thank me for listening to them, they don’t really have a lot of people to talk to.  They like the fact that I can just spontaneously make friends with total strangers, and they’re flattered I chose them.

Male loneliness is real, but it’s not unconquerable.

I was eating Ethiopian food with my new friend Aaron, and I asked him if he minded the fact that I call this program “Dinner With Rando”.  And he said he thought it was funny.  Aaron is in a combined med school/PhD program with a grueling study and project schedule: seventeen hours a day, seven days a week, for the duration of the quarter.  On rare occasions he’ll take a day off.  I just have to admire that kind of dedication to reach a goal.  I’ve been spending around eight hours a day trying to find a new job, just knocking on doors and making phone calls and visiting trucking companies and furniture stores and warehouses.  I get discouraged by all the interviews that go nowhere, all the rejection form letters.  But it’s nothing compared to Aaron’s workload.

His dad’ s a medical researcher, and a workaholic, so Aaron follows in his footsteps.  Born in Canada, Aaron relocated to Florida when he was a sophomore in high school.  In Canada, the high school kids were allowed to roam the city during the lunch break, go to a café, and then return after the hour.  But Florida was different!  Due to the prevalence of school shootings, the school was surrounded by a high wall.  There were armed guards at all the exits.  Everyone had to go through a security checkpoint, including an airport security style x-ray.  You could not leave the school until the end of the day, at any time, for any reason.  And the coup de grace?  Every student was gifted with six bathroom passes per class for the entire year!  I wonder if the six coveted bathroom passes were traded about on the black market for cigarettes a la Shawshank Redemption.

“But,” I asked, incredulously, “What if you really have to go and you’ve run out of bathroom vouchers?”

“Just tough it out,” he said.

“They should have at least given you a can, or at the very least let you go relieve yourself by the electrified razor wire fence!” I said.

“No such luck.”

Farm animals have it better than this!

Welcome to America.

After he had told me about how he got into the University’s combined no-sleep PhD/Med School cohort, he asked me about my life.  I told him how I had searched for a teacher for many years, and when I saw Sri Chinmoy at the Philadelphia Peace Concert, long twenty-eight years ago now, my entire being was absolutely flooded with unfathomable joy.  I knew right away I had found my teacher.  I also told Aaron about some of the dreams I had, years before I saw Sri Chinmoy in the physical.  This was when I had just graduated high school, and I was very sad because I had not gotten into the college of my choice.  I felt so empty and barren.  But I had strangely imagistic dreams that seemed to suggest a brighter destiny for me.

I related one dream to Aaron, that I haven’t thought about in years.  In my dream, I lived in a secret compartment in a shopping mall, and the little secret room was separated from the rest of the mall by a pane of one-way glass: I could see all the people shopping, but they couldn’t see me.  My companion was just a simple doll, a plastic baby doll.  I held it to my chest and I loved it.

But one day, I left the compartment, and I left my plastic “baby” and I went out into the wider world.  I explored forests and I sailed on oceans and wandered through endless fields of wildflowers. And then I remembered I had a child, that I had totally forgotten!  And I rushed halfway across the world, through parks and forests and urban jungles, and I ran into the mall and found my way into my secret hideaway, and the baby was lying face-down on the ground, and it was green.  It was dead.  I picked it up and held it, and I cried and cried.  I woke up weeping.

What I did not tell Aaron, but is clear to me now, is that people might not be able to understand my life or my experiences.  I was born with physical disabilities, with a different temperament, and also with an innate longing for something beyond the satisfaction of the senses.  That’s why the window was made of one-way glass.  I can see the world, but I can never fully participate in it.  I have to derive my values from some other source than the market or the mall.  And I can wander the whole world, see all of its wonders, but the only treasure that matters is my baby, my cheap plastic baby, my soul.

In one sense, I am concerned about getting a new job.  My unemployment benefits will run out in the beginning of August.  All I’m getting are rejections.  But in another sense, I don’t care in the slightest.  As long as I’m doing everything I can to get a new assignment, I don’t care what happens to me.  I found Guru in this life!  I have had firsthand experiences of God!  Yes, the outer world is essential, but I don’t have to worry.  I already have what I need.

I explained to Aaron what I felt the dream meant, in a way that was rational and appropriate to a new seeker.  He nodded his head and his face seemed to shine.

As I write this, I realise that these meals with strangers give me the chance to talk about my spiritual life in a way that other people can understand.  And by sharing my journey in this direct way, I remind myself why I came to the spiritual life in the first place.  It restores something in me that maybe I’ve lost touch with over the years- that original sincerity I started with.

I also recited twenty of Guru’s poems for him, including Guru’s great poem on Nirvana: “The Absolute.”

Towards the end of our meal, told him about Guru’s lengthy, extemporaneous comments about Beethoven and Bach, which Aaron especially enjoyed.  He was intrigued that someone like Sri Chinmoy, who never studied their music, could speak on them in such exhaustive detail just from his inner, meditative knowledge.

Anyway, when I take randos out for meals, I pay- at least the first time.  Aaron told me he’ll definitely reciprocate by taking me out in July.  I hope it’s not someplace too fancy, as the ethnic restaurants I love usually only have one light bulb.  But the food’s delicious.  On the way out, I gave him a copy of Beyond Within, and he told me he’ll read it.  I don’t know if he will, but I like Beyond Within to be distributed everywhere.

Next week: Adventures With Rando