I’ve been reading some of the notes I jot down after Centre meditations here in Chicago. I bring a notebook with me to both the Wednesday and Saturday meditations, and I’ll just scribble some impressions of what I saw and felt.
From this past Wednesday, the 22nd of May, 2024, I wrote:
“Tonight I entered into a blissful state where I felt I had no mind, I was just a child again, and I knew I could depend on Guru unconditionally to meet all my needs- I just had this sense of blissful assurance. At another point I felt that Guru’s light was touching my inner self, along with all my inner problems- there was no part of my being that did not feel the touch of Guru’s radiance. I felt he was answering my unspoken, unknown prayers. Right at the moment when the silent part of the meeting ended, I felt a deep silence, and in that silence I perceived my heart’s oneness with Guru and Guru’s inseparable oneness with me as well.
“After the silent portion of the meditation, we watched a video of our Guru singing songs he dedicated to the Avatars. It was an outdoor concert, and Guru was seated on a platform in front of a huge pinwheel-type backdrop, each blade of the pinwheel featured a Jharna-Kala bird. He sang songs for five Avatars:
Namo Namo Buddha Deber (For Lord Buddha)
Jishu Avatar (For Jesus Christ)
Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Ramakrishna joy hok taba joy (Sri Ramakrishna)
Nimai, Nimai (for Sri Chaitanya)
Sri Aurobindo Kandari Tumi Bhava Taranir (Sri Aurobindo)
Guru sang the last song, for Sri Aurobindo, five times. The other Avatar songs he sang twice.”
It’s helpful to keep a diary, to write down my inner experiences. I don’t mind sharing them. Guru will eternally operate through his Transcendental Photograph. The experiences that I had with him in the physical are still available, in that Photograph. The Transcendental is a photograph taken of Sri Chinmoy in 1967, in his absolutely highest consciousness, where he is one with the Supreme. When Guru was in the physical, I felt his light even with my physical body. My teeth and bones responded to the light he brought down at PS 86, and at Aspiration-Ground. Now that my Guru is in the spirit, it takes me a few minutes to enter into the Transcendental, but once I go one step beyond the lowest, ordinary kind of meditation, I am in communion with Guru’s light again. At the Centre meetings, it’s like a light bulb inside the Transcendental pops on after the first minute, and I am swimming in his Consciousness again.
Incidentally, I think Guru sang the Sri Aurobindo song at every single Peace Concert he ever gave (more than seven hundred in total). Sri Chinmoy, my Guru, lived in the Sri Aurobindo ashram for twenty years. He said that when he first came to the ashram in 1944, after the first night Sri Aurobindo used to appear before him in his subtle spiritual body, at two in the morning, pinch him, and tell him that it was time to get up to meditate.
I think Sri Aurobindo helped my Master to recover his previous God-realisation. Sri Chinmoy remained grateful to Sri Aurobindo and honored him in so many ways, throughout his life. Guru proved the importance of gratitude, and honoring people who help us. I like the following poem he wrote for Sri Aurobindo:
“Aurobindo — the perfect definition
Of a God-oneness-seeker.
Sri Aurobindo — the absolute definition
Of God the Supreme.”
You can find the song here:
https://www.srichinmoysongs.com/aurobindo-the-perfect-definition
It is very affecting and moving.
Interestingly enough, for the first six months of my employment with the health food store, I worked with a very nice young college student named Jack. We shared a deep love of classical music. He played the French horn, I think. And we often discussed our favorite pieces by Beethoven and Bach. I noticed he asked me many questions about my name, and my spiritual path. One day, he revealed to me that he had lived as a monk in a Hare Krishna ashram, for two years. He spent all his time chanting, praying and doing selfless service. In the Hare Krishna movement, this monastic novitiate phase is preparatory to one of two options: either the seeker takes solemn vows and becomes a lifelong brahmacharya (a celibate devotee), or they accept the householder path, leave the monastic life, but keep a close connection with the temple. He told me almost everyone takes the householder path. Very few people become monastics. That’s why he found it so inspiring that I live in the world as a brahmacharya.
I had no idea Jack had been a Hare Krishna monk, and so I said “Oh, I thought you were just another mlechha!” [Mleccha is a Bengali term used by the Hare Krishnas to indicate people who do not follow the Sanatan Dharma, the eternal teachings set out in the Vedas. I used the word humorously]
“No!” he said, laughing, “I am not a dog eater!”
It was nice working with a Hare Krishna because he understood many aspects of my life spontaneously, and I understood him, too. He had tremendous respect for Guru. When he happened to visit the Theosophy Society Library in Wheaton, Illinois, he was very excited to tell me that they had a large collection of Sri Chinmoy’s books. (I have yet to go!)
I told him once that Sri Chinmoy remarked that the Avatar experiment is over. There will be no more Avatars. The gap between the Avatars and humanity is too great. The experiment did not yield the progress that the Supreme had expected. I told Jack that my Guru had painted millions and millions of birds. He once remarked that the next phase of spiritual evolution involves the descent into the world of many, many souls with a very illumined consciousness. They will not be God-realised souls, but they will be far superior to ordinary human beings. The presence of so many illumined beings cannot but help to elevate the general human standard. And the millions of birds that Sri Chinmoy has drawn is indicative of the numbers in which these beings will come to earth.
And with utmost kindness and affection Jack placed his hands on my shoulders and said, “Here’s one.”
