I live near the University of Chicago, and I often go to their big Harper Memorial Library, just to study Guru’s books. In the past, only when I was ill would I read Guru’s books religiously, for hours on end. These days, I don’t wait to get sick to read Guru’s books. I try to carve out time twice a week just to go to Harper. Each session lasts about three hours. I sit in a quiet corner of the cathedral like main reading room on the second floor. I’m surrounded by young people studying and writing exams. I sit in my corner and just read. Sometimes I’ll quietly read out loud, and I underline my favorite passages.
Last week, I was reading Meditation: God Speaks and I Listen (Part Two), and I encountered some very interesting passages. Seekers were describing to Guru their first experiences with him, but the language they used was so elevated, so powerful and rhythmic, and Guru’s answers took on a poetic quality that connected with the consciousness of each seeker. The last three questions in the book were especially moving and evocative:
Question: Was the Peace and inner Bliss that I felt here last Wednesday night a sign that I had been initiated?
Sri Chinmoy: “Last Wednesday I did not intend to actually initiate anybody. But when you stood in front of me, your soul immediately recognized my status, and like a child of two years, your soul threw itself into my lap and received all the blessings: Bliss, Peace, Love and Power from the Supreme. I emptied the inner cup that was full of ignorance and impurity and replaced them with Peace, Bliss, and Purity. Although this was not a formal initiation, I can say that you were initiated that night.” (Page 48)
In Guru’s book, Obedience or Oneness, there is a very interesting passage. Guru is talking about dealing with his disciples’ inner and outer problems. On page 3, he discusses how “…there are some disciples whom I consider very dear to me who have emanations of mine “assigned” to their souls. An emanation is my inner representative that is associated with a particular soul and has a free access to me.”
He goes on to say in the following pages that an emanation, one that is assigned to a particular disciple, will often observe the situation, and then will bring the situation to the attention of Guru’s soul, and then Guru’s soul will advise the disciple’s soul directly. But again, Guru’s soul may not inform Guru’s physical mind of either the problem or the solution. Guru remarks on the next page:
“In the ordinary human life unless the mind is aware of something, we feel that we do not know about it. But although the physical mind may not know something, another part of our being may be aware of it.”
I am connecting this to the above question and answer between the seeker and Guru. The seeker is aware of feeling “Peace” and “inner Bliss” but is unable to give the precise significance of the experience. So Guru translates the experience for this person on the strength of his inner knowledge of what occurred between his soul and the seeker’s soul- the soul recognized Guru and Guru emptied the inner cup of ignorance and replaced it with light. Like that, I often wake up in the morning feeling this state of high elation and joy. I know something has happened on the soul level between Guru and me, but I cannot grasp it. At my current state of evolution, I cannot say I am in touch with my inner being. But passages like this make me feel that such contact and knowledge is ultimately achievable.
The next question and answer is as follows:
Question: The night I met you I had a very dramatic experience. During the meditation you came over to me and put a flower into my hands. My hands weren’t moving at all, but there seemed to be a tremendous power that was pulling them. I was looking at you and I thought, “What is he pulling me for?” Then when you looked at me I felt as though my inner being was whirling around and exploding through the top of my head. Can you tell me what this means?
Sri Chinmoy: “Your outer world burst into pieces and entered into the inner world, where you have not only accepted me, but felt and realised my spiritual achievement and realisation. Your outer world of turmoil finally surrendered to your inner world of spiritual infinitude. This is a most beautiful and high experience.”
What I find striking about this question and answer is that the question is as elevating and illumining as the answer. Some of the phrases the seeker uses are extraordinary: “…my inner being was whirling around and exploding through the top of my head.”
It’s as if when people came into Sri Chinmoy’s aura, his very presence and aura lifted them up into a higher sphere where they could express their inner experiences with such accuracy and beauty.
I remember when I stood in front of Guru and asked him a question about Beethoven and Bach. It was a three part question about the spiritual essence of Beethoven and Bach, if we could get spiritual benefit from listening to their music, and what makes them so unique and so great.
These kinds of questions do not usually occur to me! It was Guru’s aura that drew that question out of me. It was his presence that asked the question in and through me. This is the kind of man Guru was.
To look at Guru’s answer to this particular question I find it interesting that he says that this seeker, in the inner world, “…felt and realised my spiritual achievement and realisation.”
I find the word “achievement” interesting.
Guru says of Ramakrishna:
“Ramakrishna achieved, but he did not manifest much… So Vivekananda collected the fruits of the tree that was Ramakrishna and offered them to the world.” (From The Summits of God-Life: Samadhi and Siddhi by Sri Chinmoy)
He says of Christ:
“The achievement of Jesus Christ is extraordinary. No spiritual seeker of the Truth can deny it.”
(From The Avatars and the Masters by Sri Chinmoy)
I guess I find the word “achievement” interesting because I don’t think of these great Masters like Krishna or Christ or Ramakrishna as having to achieve anything. They came into the world as great Avatars and they left behind their eternal Light. But they achieved their God-Heights. It was not simply given to them. They prayed and meditated and aspired and ultimately became world-Saviors. They achieved it.
Guru sheds some light on what it means for a Master to achieve God-realisation in the following excerpt from the short story “Khadal’s Daughter”, a dialogue between a rather unaspiring disciple and his patient, long-suffering Master:
“The Christ stayed on earth for only thirty-three years. But look what he achieved during those thirty-three years. You have been on earth for sixty-two years and look what you have achieved!”
“But Master, how can you compare me with the savior Christ?”
“Khadal, I do not see anything wrong with that. Like you, Christ was also a son of God; but look how fast he realised the Truth.”
(One Lives, One Dies page 13)
I read in Kailash’s wonderful book Compassion-Sea and Service-Plant (his recollections as a close attendant of Sri Chinmoy, and the Master’s comments) a very interesting remark about the Avatars:
“Christ, Buddha, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna all took different paths.”
It is interesting how the Avatars have so much in common, and yet they are so different. They took different paths, and they realised God in their own unique ways.
Guru says somewhere that to consciously accept the spiritual life is in and of itself a kind of unconscious realisation. Then, we make that realisation conscious through our sadhana, our prayer and meditation. So it makes sense that Guru would refer to this seeker’s perception of Guru’s achievement and height as a kind of realisation in and of itself: “you…have felt and realised my spiritual achievement and realisation.”
The last question and answer in the book is in some ways the most striking.
Question: “When I went home after I first saw you, I entered into a kind of dream where you were the only person who existed and my entire body was decomposed into raindrops. Could you explain this?
Sri Chinmoy: “Your entire being- physical, vital, mental, and psychic- was inundated with my infinite Compassion-Light. The rain that you were seeing was Grace, Compassion. The inner thrill that you felt was my wholehearted acceptance and immediate recognition of you that day. Your dream signifies my total acceptance of your spiritual life. I have hundreds of disciples. Some try to judge me. Some absurdly attempt to fathom my spirituality. And some wait to see whether I can please them. On very rare occasions people do accept me immediately, as you have done.”
I have typed all these questions and answers from this book from memory, for as soon as I read them I knew I had to internalize this and make it part of me. As I was typing just now, I felt a wave of bliss wash over me that is almost indescribable, and the palpable sense of Guru’s living presence and breath. I called four people on the phone last week, and recited these three questions and answers from memory, and these disciples were so moved by Guru’s words, and it felt like a meditation all by itself.
My favorite part of this question and answer is where the disciple says “I entered into a kind of dream where you were the only person who existed, and my entire body was decomposed into raindrops.”
Great stuff. Very inspiring