Whispering Tree

During the 2006-2007 Christmas Trip, one of my friends observed two disciples arguing in front of Guru.  The first disciple, “Larry” contended that Guru’s meditation has changed over the years.  He referred to some of the early meditations that have been recorded (for example, this one) and said that it appears, in the early days, that Guru took a little time to enter into his highest consciousness.  His eyes would go up, and swivel, and seek, and his face would change expression as he passed from world to world, until he was fully submerged in his highest meditation.  It took a few minutes.  He contrasted that with his then-current meditations, where he would simply close his eyes for a second and would enter immediately into his highest consciousness.His interlocutor, “David” angrily protested and said, “No, Guru’s meditations have always been the same!”

Guru took Larry’s side!  He indicated that his meditations did change.  This is not totally illogical!  Guru did say that he had transcended his own Transcendental Consciousness, which is inconceivable!  Even at that level, this unparalleled height, the Master manifested progress.  I actually enjoy watching those old videos!  I like watching Guru’s eyes move, and the incredible volcanic intensity on his face.  But, he transcended that in his later years.  I guess he could enter into God-Height the way most of us drink Coca-Cola.

—

Yesterday, I was waiting in a crowded bus terminal to catch a Greyhound to the far-western suburbs.  It was crowded and loud.  To pass the time I listened to Messiaen’s Quatuor Pour La Fin Du Temps(Quartet For The End Of Time), which is such a sublime work.  Just sitting there, in a big crowd, with some people smoking, listening on my blue tooth (which connects directly to my implants), I had one of the most remarkable musical experiences of my life.  I tend to avoid streaming or listening to music online.  I’m attached to my records.  But it felt right to listen to that piece at that moment.  It sounds like a cross between French Impressionist music and Argentinian tango, upbeat and nostalgic at the same time.  It was a remarkable performance, and I realised that music appreciation depends on my receptivity in the moment.  At that very point in time I was open to the music, and it lifted me higher.  He actually wrote it while interred in a Nazi labor camp!  The piece is oddly scored- for a cello, clarinet, violin and piano.  But those were all the musicians available in the camp.  The cello was missing a couple of strings to boot!  And yet it works, it takes me on a journey.  Whenever I’m waiting in line in a crowded place, the “Quartet For The End Of Time” will be my go-to musical solace.

—

The day after Sundar died I had to take an Uber to work because of the harsh weather.  I never do this, but my back was against the wall and I had no choice.  My driver was a very educated Frenchman, and we discussed our shared love of Post-Impressionism and late Beethoven string quartets.  He made me laugh.  I told him I practised meditation with a spiritual Master and when he inquired about my unusual name I told him it meant “fast-climbing tree.”  As I was getting out of the car he gave me the kindest smile and said, “You are the most beautiful tree I will see today!”

I felt at that moment that maybe Sundar’s soul  had sent this man to give me a little consolation.

When I walked into the store, I had the strangest experience.  I noticed that the grocery store was absolutely beautiful.  I felt so uplifted by the beautiful store.  I never had that experience before. I asked my friend, who is a Goth, if he noticed the store had gained celestial beauty overnight.  He said, with a smile, “No, it still looks like a crypt!”   Once again, I wondered if Sundar’s soul was blessing me, and helping me to see the beauty and wonder in my everyday life.

Then, later in the day, I had an inner experience.  I can’t really go into detail, but I got a little message from Guru!  I don’t usually have this kind of certainty about my inner experiences!  Usually I have to take care to separate my inner experiences from my mental hallucinations.  But in this case, I feel it was real, and I can stand behind it.  It was a nice experience- Guru was saying something nice about my appreciation and love for his poetry.  Once again, I feel that Sundar’s soul blessed me from a different plane of consciousness and gave me a little extra receptivity.  That’s a real friend.

We’ll be Celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Guru’s completion of Transcendence-Perfection (843 poems done in 24 hours) in New York this week.  I’ll be there.  I am really looking forward!

I only had one extensive discussion with the Master, and that is my question and his immortal answer on the great composers Bach and Beethoven.  Recently someone gave me the good news that my transcription of this talk has, after nineteen years, finally appeared in book form.  I am so, so happy.  I transcribed this talk and sent it out to be compiled and eventually published.  But one of the things that I found striking, as I was transcribing it, was how carefully Guru chose his words, sometimes pausing mid sentence for a few seconds to find just the right word.  Often he would preface statements by saying things like “This is just my own inner feeling or observation.”

I’ve shared a lot of personal information about my life on this and other forums.  I guess the fact that I write on public forums means that I have to write in an organized way that other people can understand.  But that becomes a kind of self-therapy.  I feel the act of writing and sharing gives me more control.  I put my problems (and yes, adventures, triumphs and foibles) down on the page.  I can see them.  I can name them.

A friend of mine called me a while back, and mentioned some aspects of my life that I’ve shared here, and gave me an unsolicited summary, mostly in his own words, of the Master’s views on them.  He mentioned “The Cosmic Law” several times.  I thanked him for his kind and illumining commentary and then excused myself, as I was in the middle of cooking hash browns.

As I was eating my crisped hash browns, after my friend’s sermon, I reflected that there are no outsiders in Guru’s world.  There is no-one we can call the “other.”  We’re all just reflections of God, manifested in the world.  My friend basically said that people like me are not in harmony with the cosmic law.  I just inwardly laughed but said nothing.  I laughed because the cosmic law is my only friend.  It is the sign of God’s Grace that we live in a world of cause and effect and can therefore find the fastest routes to progress.  And the cosmic law is infinitely supple and generous.

If there is a sincere inner cry, then the cosmic law will support the seeker, will carve out for the seeker innumerable breaks and exceptions.  Aspiration and a sincere inner cry are superior to our mental formulations of the universal laws.

The Master is always right, and the truths of all the scriptures, if they are both timeless and universal, are to be venerated and upheld.  But the problem is that truth is living and flexible, and often inscrutable.  We come to understand it through decades, even lifetimes of spiritual discipline.  For unillumined people like my friend, and of course, like me, to promulgate the law like Emperor Augustus, is just silly.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter what is written in the shastras or (please pardon me) even what Guru said.  What matters is whether we have realised these divine truths in our own being, and are expressing those truths in God’s own Way.

My friend called me a few days later and offered me a genuine apology for his hasty words.  I thanked him, but I am also guilty of misusing Guru’s language, or misapplying it.  Guru said that there is a particular nation where the people possess such oneness with Mother Nature, and such simplicity, that we do not even have to meditate.  We can just mix with the people, absorb their simplicity, and this will be like meditation.  Once I was working on a manifestation project with a gentleman from this country and I told him what Guru said, that the people there are extremely simple and we don’t have to meditate because the people have such a meditative consciousness.  And he said, “Well, actually we are very busy with our own lives, and we’re just trying to get through the day like everybody else.”

What Guru said was very nice- the people in this nation are simple.  It’s fine if these words come from the Master, because the Master was offering these observations to a particular group of devotees in a particular context.  It’s different when it comes out of the mouth of Mahiruha, where it comes across as something like: “Look at the noble savages!  They have such an easy life, unencumbered by running water and Snap Chat!”

This person was right to be offended.  It was a stupid mistake on my part, and I’ve learned.

Once an Indian politician was asked about her sister, who was taken hostage by religious extremists, but was eventually released after the Indian government paid a large ransom.  The question was whether she felt the government did the right thing by buying off the terrorists.  And she said, “Today, as a sister, I will say she should have been freed.  Tomorrow, as a politician, I may say something else.”

And this is why Guru was so careful even when answering a totally non-controversial question like the comparative genius of Beethoven and Bach.  Any remark, however innocent, can be de-contextualized and twisted.

As a seeker, you have all the truths.  Your own realisation will shine far, far brighter than all the scriptures and commentaries ever will.

This poem is most relevant:

“Poise is the hyphen
Between what you have heard
From God
And what you have told humanity.”

(Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, part 50, Agni Press, 1982)

 

I’m listening to Haydn’s Opus 50 quartet no 3, in E, one of the strangest quartets ever written.  Hayn’s music is characterized by concision and economy, but in the opus 50 quartets, the laconic quality becomes almost oppressive.  It’s like Haydn’s playing racquetball in the tiniest court, and hitting the ball from every possible angle, until you can’t believe the inexhaustible nature of Haydn’s imagination, turning leftover Turkey bones from Thanksgiving into the most miraculous post-holiday meal.  The music resists labels like happy or sad; Haydn is all about life expressing life for its own sake.

I sometimes get the sense that Haydn had serious mental and emotional problems, but that he took them by the throat and made them work for him.  He sublimated them into his music and forced them to dance; he turned his worst inner enemies into his most effective and eloquent servants.  Anyone can listen to Haydn’s music and follow suit; he teaches you how to live a beautiful life.

***

Today I was talking to a fellow teacher about various external world situations.  She told me that she believes in God and that God will take care of the world.  I appreciated her wisdom and quoted Guru’s aphorism: “Falsehood is fearless.  Truth is deathless.”  I said it four or five times.  She was so moved!

“Falsehood is fearless.  Truth is deathless.”

She asked me what I felt it meant and I explained that we usually think of fearlessness as a positive quality.  But in the case of falsehood, it is not good for it to be fearless.

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” warned Alexander Pope.

Falsehood has no fear because it is arrogant, and does not see the red lights.  Fearlessness based on stupidity is not a good thing.  Just because you don’t see the stop sign does not protect you from the oncoming traffic.

“Truth is deathless.”

It’s an interesting formula, isn’t it?  Falsehood is fearless, but not deathless.  Truth is deathless.

Falsehood’s bravery, its “fearlessness” will take it to an early grave.

Truth has nothing to fear from falsehood’s fearlessness.  It is deathless.  It does not have to exhibit its bravery.  It knows what it has and what it is.  It is eternal, immortal, deathless.

As I repeated the mantra for my colleague six or seven times, I felt the power behind the words.  She grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down.  I always like it when people value Guru’s poetry.

***

Interestingly, those many years ago, nineteen years now, when Guru was answering my question on Beethoven and Bach, he said at one point, and this is my paraphrase, “When we think of Beethoven, it is like a fully blossomed tree- very huge tree.”  And when Guru uttered those words I leaned into the microphone and said “Yes!”

But I have the recording, and my “Yes!” did not register on the tape.  But I clearly remember saying it.  Maybe I did not say it into the microphone?

But Guru must have noticed my reaction to his comparing Beethoven to a tree, I guess, because when I got my spiritual name a few weeks later, it included the word “Tree.”  Guru’s awareness and discernment is so fine, and so exact.

I was telling another co-worker of mine about the meaning of my name.  Guru wrote, in explication of “Mahiruha”:  “The God-seeker and the God-lover’s fastest God-climbing aspiration-Tree.”  And I really felt the significance of my name!  I rarely think of it, the meaning.  So, today I decided to devote my time after work to explicitly spiritual activities:  I listened to some of Guru’s records, including “Meditation-Sun”, produced by the Canadian disciples around 1977, and I also read some of Vidagdhas’ diaries of her life with Guru in the Eighties.  Today I read about Guru’s wonderful meeting with the comedian Eddie Murphy in 1988.  Guru had a banner created for him that read : “Welcome Eddie Murphy, Emperor of Parody”.  I think I heard that Guru really like Eddie Murphy’s smile.

A poem I stumbled across in my study of Sri Chinmoy’s 1978 book From the Source, To the Source:

 

“O sun of my soul,

I devotedly love your deity.

O moon of my heart,

I soulfully love your beauty.

O star of my life,

I surprisingly love your purity.

O sky of my search,

I amazingly love your generosity.”

 

I love that first line especially: “O sun of my soul, I devotedly love your deity.”  I remember when Guru gave me my name on 16 November 2016, and I was looking into Guru’s eyes and Guru wasn’t meditating, he was contemplating.  If people can find the video “Concentration, Meditation, Contemplation” where Guru demonstrates these three realities, they can see the vast gulph between meditation and contemplation.  As I looked at Guru as his eyes began moving, each on its own track and trajectory, I had the strangest feeling that I was looking at Guru not as a disciple, but as a peer.  It lasted only a fraction of a second, a nanosecond, and then I was back to being a disciple, a devotee, an aspirant.  But I saw something.

Maybe this poem, from Twenty-Seven Thousand Aspiration-Plants may shed some light on my experience:

 

“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)

A close friend of our Sri Chinmoy family here in Chicago works as a naturopath/homeopathist, and he treats disciples free of charge as a service.  Out of the blue, he contacted me recently and asked if I still gave tours at our great local art museum- the famed Art Institute of Chicago.  I told him I did, and he asked if I would give a tour of the museum to a young man, and also tell him a little bit about our Guru, Sri Chinmoy, as he is very interested in our way of life.  Of course I agreed!

 

I met this seeker, “Mark”, at the museum.  Accompanying him was his dearest life-long friend “Steven.”  I did a double take as soon as I met Mark.  I knew him from somewhere, but I couldn’t place it.  But his speech, his mannerisms, his face, were all strangely familiar.  I gave the guys the whole grand tour of the museum.  At one point, I was standing in front of one of my favorite paintings, “The Plough and the Song” by the great Armenian painter Arshile Gorky.

I told them my own feelings about the way Gorky captured the life-breath of another dimension in his paintings- how they represent life itself on a different level of consciousness.  This is why his paintings are so engaging and full of life.  I also quoted from Sri Chinmoy’s words on how to recognize a soulful work of art, and I applied it to Gorky’s masterpiece:

“If a work of art makes you feel that there is a most beautiful child inside it, you can know that it is a soulful work of art. If you see inside it a most beautiful child, and if you feel that this child is talking to you and you are talking to him, then you can know that it is soulful art.”

(From Sri Chinmoy, Art’s life and the soul’s light, Agni Press, 1974)

 

As soon as I mentioned the name “Sri Chinmoy” Mark’s whole face changed.  He told me he was sitting in the chiropractor’s office- it was his first visit, and he just looked at one of the Jharna Kalas that the doctor kept on the wall, and that he started shedding tears.  He told me that he is an artist, and is getting his PhD in visual art, but the moment he saw Sri Chinmoy’s artwork he wanted to do his PhD on Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna Kalas, or at the very least incorporate what Sri Chinmoy did into his own artwork.

Mark told me, “I told my chiropractor that I had just got back from Pondicherry.  I was on a pilgrimage to Sri Aurobindo’s Samadhi.  I have always loved Aurobindo.  When I got back I decided to pursue a course of naturopathy treatment.  But the moment I saw Sri Chinmoy’s Jharna Kalas, I realised I had gone all the way to Pondicherry and back just to learn that Sri Aurobindo is my uncle, and Sri Chinmoy is my father, my God-Father.”

I was so startled- I was speechless!

He then told me he immediately ordered Sri Chinmoy’s books Transcendence-Perfection and My Flute and he read them cover to cover.  I started reciting poems from both books and Mark was so happy and gratified that I knew these poems by heart.  He told me that Sri Chinmoy’s poems stay with him more than any poems ever have.

I realised then that this was the very reason I felt that I knew Mark, from the first moment we met.  He is an inner disciple of my Guru, and has been so since his very birth!
And this connects exactly to my last post- that Guru’s new children are coming.  Mark is just twenty-eight years old, yet he has at least a lifetime of intuitive knowledge of Guru inside him.

Steven is still seeking for a path, I believe, but supports Mark wholeheartedly in his journey.  Steven asked me a volley of questions afterwards in the car, on our way to an Indian restaurant, but very perceptive, respectful and insightful questions.  He was impressed that I read Guru’s books for many hours a day, and that he told me “You have a great knowledge of your Teacher.”

At the restaurant, Mark told me that his art mentor at his school was thrilled to learn that he has become so deeply interested in Sri Chinmoy’s artwork, because he too admires Sri Chinmoy.  One day, sometime after he had informed his professor of his love and admiration for Guru’s Jharna Kalas, he  was drawing a three part abstract painting in class, a triptych.  His professor stood behind him and watched him paint for a long time.  It was an abstract work, with no words or anything representational.  But his professor pointed to the left panel and said, “This part represents one of Sri Chinmoy’s ancient incarnations.”  He pointed to the panel on the far right and said, “This is one of Sri Chinmoy’s more modern incarnations.”  And then he indicated the central panel and said, “This is Sri Chinmoy’s most recent life- as Sri Chinmoy.  You have captured three incarnations of Sri Chinmoy.  This is excellent!”

 

During Mark’s first visit to New York, I showed him all the original paintings at Annam Brahma and at the Smile of the Beyond.  One of the most senior disciples noticed how spellbound Mark was by Guru’s paintings, and gave him one of his own original Jharna Kalas!

I am so grateful to these new disciples, these fiery aspirants and God-lovers.  They are the future.

 

About three years ago, on a warm summer’s day, I read my Master’s immortal book Obedience or Oneness three times.  I really feel that book is immortal, and it speaks to me on a deep level.  Guru told us many times that we should study his writings, and he insisted that we mark the sections and phrases that speak most powerfully to us.  Around that time, three years ago, I was thumbing through the book, and I realised I had underlined each and every single word!  What’s the point of underlining a book if you’re going to underline everything?  It defeats the purpose.  But then I realised that the ink that I put in that book comes from me, so it is my ink that merges with the printed words, so there is something of my own consciousness in that book.

Anyway,  on that summer’s day, I read the book three times, and it took me four and a half hours.  That night I had a significant dream.  In my dream, I was participating in a walk-past at the end of a public meditation, and the leaves on the trees told me it was mid-autumn.  It was cool.  Behind me was a seeker, we shall call him “Marshall” that I met at a local college.  Years ago, I gave him a copy of Beyond Within.  Anyway, Marshall was directly behind me, meditating very seriously, with folded hands.  When it was my turn to stand in front of Guru and take prasad, Guru acknowledged me with a little smile and a half-wave.  But when Marshall stood in front of Guru, Guru stopped the prasad line and embraced him, shedding tears of joy.  He put a flower garland around Marshall’s neck, blessed him, and gave him a spiritual name on the spot!

In the next scene in the dream, Marshall and I were on a train, heading back to the airport.  He showed me the paper on which Guru had written his spiritual name, and I saw it had something to do with Krishna.   He told me he comes every year in the autumn, during the public functions.  In my dream, many young people, college students, come every Fall to see the Master, and Marshall was one of those who made the annual pilgrimage.

I’ve thought about this dream often in the years since.  Why did Guru lavish such love and affection on this boy, but barely acknowledged me at all?

Maybe one possible interpretation is that I had my time with Guru, and now Guru is focusing on the next generation of seekers.  I had my Master on the physical plane, and now Guru is drawing people towards him on the inner plane.  These people will blossom into real, conscious seekers in the course of time.  I think Guru said the best way to bring people to his path is just to meditate, meditate, meditate.  Meditate long hours every day.  People will feel  something in us, and they will want to have that thing for themselves, that poise, that joy.  We can deepen our spirituality, and this will attract the real seekers, the ones who need inner light.

I find that when I read Guru’s books for a few hours a day, I do get these kinds of inner experiences.  Guru said to at least look at the covers of his books if we can’t be bothered to read them!

 

 

I’ve written before about the Peace Concert that Sri Chinmoy gave at the Riverside Church on 23 August 2000.  It was special because I felt the presence of Jesus Christ at the end, as Sri Chinmoy was playing the organ.  Hundreds of other disciples had the same experience, and it is the only time in my entire discipleship that I had that kind of collective interaction.  We all felt it.  I just remember there was a second source of divine Consciousness that opened up in the room, in the back right corner of the cathedral.  It was so palpable, so moving, and yes, more than a little frightening.  Such pure energy, pure power.  Interestingly enough, it began with a voice inside of me saying, “It’s an Avatar!”

I told that to my friend from California, that my first reaction to Christ’s presence was this inner certainty that I was dealing with another Avatar.  I said to him that there must be some faculty in human beings that enables them to recognize an Avatar.  And he looked at me and said, “Yes.  That is called your soul!”

I had to laugh, because my friend is right.  What is this mysterious apparatus within us that can recognize divine beings and inner Light?  It’s the soul!

I told another disciple about this experience with Christ at Riverside, and he said he believes me when I say that Christ did come that day.  But he told me that another way I could look at it is that my past life came forward, and I was perceiving and receiving from Christ as a Christian devotee from several centuries ago.  Something descended from above, but also something from within me came forward.

Interestingly enough, I felt that same way when I got my spiritual name from Sri  Chinmoy in 2006.  He was looking at me in silence and I felt other people were looking through my eyes at Guru, and I think those other people were some of my past incarnations.

As soon as Guru began playing the organ, I felt a cold wind in the cathedral, and tears came to my eyes, and I began thinking of Mother Mary, the Mother of God.  I told this to another friend of mine, who used to make furniture but now cuts vegetables.  I asked him why I felt cold when Mary came as a harbinger to her Son.  It was not an unpleasant coldness.  It was like the wind off the ocean.  And he said, “Well, her colors are blue and white.”

And I realised these are cool colors!  White and Blue.  Purity and Infinity.

Finally, Sri Chinmoy was infinitely more aware of Christ and Mary’s arrival than we were.  But he did not stop playing the organ, or make any announcement.  God within him told him to play the organ, and he played completely beautifully.  In the inner world, I am sure Guru saluted Christ and his Mother most soulfully.  But his outer performance was unaffected.  To do our duty perfectly in both the inner and outer world, we need infinite poise.

I wonder at the experiences I have had with my Master, Sri Chinmoy.  I just have to shake my head in wonder.  How else can I respond to something like this?

 

I was at the local University gym yesterday, and I saw a graduate student wearing a T-shirt that said something striking:

“Always be yourself-

Unless you can be Batman-

Then always be Batman.”

This reminded me of one of my favorite aphorisms of my Teacher, Sri Chinmoy, from the twenty-eighth volume of Seventy-Seven Thousand Service Trees (poem #27834):

“Be infinitely more than just yourself.”

 

Many years ago I was sitting in the lobby of this same gym, rehearsing poems from Sri Chinmoy’s immortal collection The Golden Boat.  I was repeating them silently, although my lips were moving.  A young Asian woman, as she was passing by, smiled and waved at me.  I had never met her.  I then realised that she wasn’t waving at me, she was responding to Guru’s vibration and was greeting him.  I was just the medium.  I was happy that I was successful in manifesting Guru on that vibrational level.  Similarly, I remember after I recited the one thousand poems of The Wings of Light in 2021, how I became a different person for twenty-four hours afterwards.  I was already back in Chicago and people would stop in the street and just look at me.  I don’t think I had grown horns.  They felt something of Sri Chinmoy in my aura, and that’s why they would stop and smile.

I wrote in February about the experience that preceded my foot fracture.  The night before I broke my foot, I had to do some late night shopping at the local convenience store.  The cashier was bored and rude.  I was dismissive and curt in return.  We were irritated with each other, and I left the store in a bad consciousness.

The next day, I slipped on the ice and broke my foot.  I felt that my fracture was at least partly a result of my bad interaction with the cashier the night before.  It was a vibrational consequence.

Today I had to go back to this same pharmacy to get a prescription filled.  This time the lady at the window was every bit as callous, desultory and incompetent as the cashier had been.  She told me my prescription would take only twenty minutes to fill.  I came back in an hour and she said, “Give us ten more minutes!”

When I attempted to ask her a question about my order, she yelled at me for not staying in line.

I did not argue, but I indicated through my intonation, and some diplomatic language, that I thought she was terrible at a public-facing job.  I was right.

I left the store in a bad mood.

Then I realised I had made a serious mistake.

“Oh no,” I thought to myself, “What am I going to break now?”

So, I stood outside the store, just two feet in front of the double automatic doors, by the bike racks, and I very quietly recited from memory the whole program of Guru’s spiritual poems that I delivered over the August Celebrations.  I took me twelve minutes to say the whole thing most soulfully.  I felt I needed to say these words someplace within the vicinity of the store.  I had to heal that vibration, and keep the anger and irritation from spreading and affecting other people or causing some misfortune in my life.  I had to heal it and fix it.

Finally, I got on my bike in a much better consciousness.

I feel that the public recitation of Guru’s words is a way of planting a seed of higher consciousness in these places.

Be infinitely more than yourself.  Be your highest, purest, kindest, and greatest Self.  Even Batman will admire you.

The Master insisted that when we read his books, that we mark the passages we like, so that we can return to them again and again.  He even said we can write notes in the margins, and take his books as life-long projects for study.  He said that marking the sections we like most, and writing our own thoughts, would really help us.  I have, in fact, taken to journaling in my Guru’s books- I write down in the margins my inner experiences, sometimes I include last night’s dreams, or inspiring things that happened to me that day.

Yesterday I was reading Sri Chinmoy Answers Part One, Book Five, published by Ganapati Press.  And I found a note, a journal entry, I had made on the bottom of page 162:

“‘Your Guru really believed in you!’  A Filipina woman said                                      this to me to me today when I told her the meaning of my                                        name.”

-14 December 2021

AUM

 

I spent a couple hours reading Book Five yesterday, and I don’t remember that woman, or what I wrote, but when I read that, I burst into tears, bitter tears, but also tears of gratitude that that woman could have told me something so soulful and meaningful when I told her the significance of my name.

Please keep a diary, and please read Guru’s books.  You can even write your experiences in Guru’s books so that you can find double the wealth in them.

 

 

Yesterday I was reciting some of my favorite daily prayers, when I heard an inner voice.  Its message was simple, “It’s too late, you might as well give up.”

I’ve been meditating for thirty years now.  Before I accepted spirituality, I had a lot of problems with voices or so-called inner messages.  I didn’t know how to fight them.  When a voice would call me worthless or stupid, I would believe it.  Before I embarked on the life of meditation, I thought real spirituality meant simply accepting whatever message I got as the truth.

I’m not talking about schizophrenia.  It’s not that I thought there were people talking to me, or that I was getting “messages” from God.  It’s simply that I didn’t know how to regulate my thoughts.  I didn’t know how to control the mind, or how to silence it.  So I had to live with this thought-factory that would call me worthless and stupid.

Then, in 1994, my friend Sebastian gave me a copy of Beyond Within.  In it, Guru Sri Chinmoy talks about the mind and the heart.  In a particularly striking answer, Guru remarks:

“We should not try to enter into the mind-room in the very beginning of our spiritual journey. To enter into this room we need abundant inner courage, inner light and inner assurance from our Inner Pilot. Very often we make a Himalayan blunder: we enter into the mind-room just because we see that it is all confusion and darkness, and we want to illumine the mind.”

(Sri Chinmoy, Aspiration and God’s Hour, Agni Press, 1977)

Sri Chinmoy advocates staying in the heart, where there is light.

I have been following his path for three decades now, and I have developed considerable inner strength.  So, yesterday, when the mind told me, or the thought came, that I am useless and it’s “too late”, I just laughed at it.  “Thank you for your support!”  I said out loud and simply continued my daily prayers.  It is so nice to have a way out of the prison of the mind, so nice.

Yesterday, I did something overdue- I went through all my paper clutter- yes piles and piles of old papers, and I sorted them and threw almost everything out: receipts, recipes, gas bills from 1998.  I also went through my filing cabinets and threw out everything that I no longer need- like twenty year old tax returns and canceled parking violation checks.

But I also found two poems  that I wrote a long time ago but had forgotten.  The first is from 2007, and the second seems to be from 2009:

 

Rivers

Cry me a river

And I will buy you

A boat

To sail beyond the rages

Of spring and fall-

The blue ribbon

Winding across

This country-

Breathing

And bubbling

And sighing

With the times,

With the suns

That flash overhead

Like newly minted coins-

And you and I

Tossing pennies

Into that good river

Beneath

A vast

And ever-blossoming

Vision-sky.

 

GURU

Around every corner

I see my Guru

Smiling to himself,

Rejoicing in the throes

And surges

Of the Self,

Laughing with the

Full-bodied clouds in the sky,

Ringing all the old church bells-

Summoning my soul’s jewel

For worship.

Guru, Guru, Guru!

Where is reality

If not in you?

Where is Divinity

If not in you?

Guru,

Of what use to me

Are the crowns and bracelets

Of the world?

 

When I joined the spiritual life I thought that it always be like how it was at the beginning- in which I would just have revelation after revelation.  Doors would open to me and my life would be perpetually bathed in amazements.

I’m saying this because the gap between the spiritual life and the ordinary life that I was used to, that I was brought up in was so vast- and I thought that that’s how things would be.

But that’s not the case!

Unfortunately or maybe fortunately, I have my six or seven daily spiritual practices, mostly involving chanting or reading of spiritual books, and I do my chanting and reading every day- as I shuffle through the minefield of my life’s mistakes.

One practice that I’ve learned recently is not to really give my shortcomings and mistakes too much attention but to spend most of my time focusing on the things that uplift me and help me: reading, recitation, singing, gratitude-offering.

So I guess what I’m trying to say in a roundabout way is that the spiritual life as I have lived it is essentially a lot of repetitious practices conducted with a view to these techniques eventually transforming me.  It’s slow going.

I sing Sri Chinmoy’s Forgiveness song “Jiban Debata” (God of my life) many times a day.  This is just an example of a spiritual practice that I do over and over every day.  How many times I do it doesn’t matter.  What matters is the soulfulness and the sincerity.

Soulfulness and sincerity!  When I’m doing my daily sadhana, my inner “homework”, if I feel sincerity and soulfulness, I know I’m on the right track.

But when I don’t feel soulful or sincere I just do my daily meditation and practice anyway!  What’s the alternative?

The first time I cried during an artistic performance was back in March of 2008, during a performance of the Saint Matthew Passion by J.S. Bach, performed at Avery Fisher hall and conducted by Kurt Masur.  There’s a powerful opening chorus where Jesus Christ is referred to as the lamb and there’s a double soprano chorus of women mourning him and lamenting for him and then the chorus ends abruptly and Christ stands up and says to his disciples : “You know in two days I am going to be handed over and crucified!” And the following chorus is this keening lullaby: “Herzliebster Jesu, Was Hast Du Verbrochen” (O sweet-hearted Jesus, what law have you broken?” and it is so pathetic that I started shedding tears and I shed tears throughout the performance.

The next time I cried at a performance was in 2023, so about 15 years later.  I attended another performance of the Saint Matthew Passion, this time put on by a local church.  The tenor, who plays the Evangelist, has the biggest role as he narrates the story.  In this case the tenor came from the Deep South, but sang in impeccable German, and just the depth of his feeling, the depth of his oratory brought forward my tears and I noticed some of the musicians were also shedding tears.  A sea of tears.  It was transformational.  I am not a Christian.  But when the St Matthew Passion is done well, for three hours I do become a Christian so that I can fully participate in the mystery and the majesty of this immortal music.

Until recently those were the only times I’ve ever cried at a public performance. I find public expressions of emotion unbalancing and disconcerting.  I’m an emotional guy which is not a good or a bad thing but I’m also an extreme extrovert!  This is not the best combination.

But I treasure my time alone. I like being with people but I really like being alone- with my books and my thoughts, my music and my poetry.

I go to all of my community’s (the Sri Chinmoy Center’s) spiritual Celebrations and every time I find it overwhelming- these public gatherings with people from all over the world.  I often take refuge in the “housing office” appointed apartment, refurbished just for us, or unfurnished just for us, but always impeccably clean. And I stay there in my decrepit or ultra modern tower and I just read Guru’s books.

Last night I went to a performance of Angels In America, a justly famous play written by my landsman Tony Kushner.  A few weeks ago, I saw two guys smoking outside of the theatre.  I had seen the signs and I asked them if it was true that they were putting on Angels In America, and they said it was.  I then asked them who was playing Prior, and one of the guys, tall, skinny and blond, shook my hand and told me he was.  And his friend, a Black man, came up and told me he was playing Belize, the rough equivalent of King Lear’s “Fool” who sees things the other characters don’t.  We spoke for a few minutes, and they were both in character!  It was such a privilege to talk with them.

In the first scene of the play a younger middle-aged guy named Lewis is burying his grandmother and the rabbi is lamenting that all of her grandchildren have goyisher (non-Jewish) names.  After the funeral Lewis goes home to his partner, his boyfriend.  The play takes place in 1985 in New York, and his boyfriend, Prior, says “I have to show you something”- and he rolls up his sleeve and he shows Lewis a purple spot on his arm.   For a sexually active gay man, in 1985, to find a purple lesion on his arm, a cardinal sign of HIV infection, is an incontrovertible death sentence.  The actor who was portraying Lewis started to cry and it didn’t feel like forced tears, but hysterical tears of despair.

I didn’t sniffle, but copious tears streamed down my face. These tears did not leave me.

Lewis says to his partner, Prior, that he doesn’t think he can stay and watch Prior die and Prior asks Lewis not to leave him but Lewis leaves him anyway!

Lewis goes to his rabbi and he asks the rabbi “What do the scriptures say about someone who betrayed a loved one in their time of greatest need?” And the rabbi says that the scriptures have nothing to say about such a person.

The play has a few more subplots- prescriptions pills, Mormon moms, Black drag queens, the infamous Roy Cohn, and the fuzzy borderlands between dreams and waking life where we sometimes, fleetingly, glimpse deep truths.  The eloquence of the writing, and the emotional honesty and vulnerability of the characters left an impression on me.

My friend who taught theater for many years at a local Christian college, told me that Angels In America is one of the greatest plays of the twentieth century, and he made his students study it.  Some of his students come from missionary families, and protested being assigned a play that depicts things like gay sex and drug use.  He would respond to them that the message of the play is resonant with the Gospel, that we are the angels in America ourselves, and it is our duty to take care of each other.  He told me he couldn’t produce the play at this college, but he did assign it as reading.

The play is about many things: Where do we derive our sense of right and wrong? Who do we listen to when we make moral choices?  Can we trace a streak of the divine operating in American history?

Lewis’s AIDS-infected boyfriend Prior, in the course of the play, turns out to be some kind of divinely chosen messenger!  So another question that occurred to me last night was: “How broken do you have to be before God feels that you will be surrendered enough to convey his messages?”

I guess the sense of brokenness and betrayal is taken up by Bach in his St. Matthew Passion as well.

The goal of my spiritual practice, my sadhana (funny, the auto-dictation heard “sad night”)  is to reach that state where I can shed soulful tears for God.  I don’t mean pretend tears, or crocodile or demonstrative tears, but authentic tears for God.

Unfortunately, in my day to day spiritual life, that doesn’t happen with me.

I go through the motions, I do everything by rote.  I try for soulfulness, but tears do not come.

But when I saw the St. Matthew Passion, and also last night when I saw Angels In America, I shed genuine and soulful tears, in silence.

Sitting next to me was some guy who looked like a Hell’s Angel with the beard, the tattoos and the long braided red hair, and I caught him three or four times wiping away his tears.

The spiritual life must always be new.  Guru says “That which is eternal is outwardly new.” (From God the Supreme Musician)

If I can’t renew my sadhana on my own, then I think it’s good for me to see the greatest works of art that can evoke really deep and soulful tears, for it is through the tears of the soul that I recover newness- and also the sense of purpose that I started my spiritual life with.

Sometimes I worry that some of my thoughts and actions may separate me from my own divinity, and so last night, while I was empathizing with the characters on stage I took advantage of these tears to beg my Master for his forgiveness-oneness.  I realized finally that these were really tears of self reflection and self discovery.

But whether they were tears of repentance or gratitude or discovery I can’t deny that, like Bach’s immortal Passion, Angels in America gives me a chance to connect with something deeper and universal in myself.  Therefore I can say that those tears were ultimately tears of my soul’s joy.

I am a spiritual seeker.  I don’t need anything else.

Thanks, Prior.