Beethoven said that “Missa Solemnis”, his last setting of the Latin Mass, was his greatest work. I don’t know what that means. It doesn’t have the refinement or the unity of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. It also doesn’t have the variety of styles, like we see in the older Master’s B Minor Mass. What the Missa Solemnis does offer is power, and between thudding redundancies and musical experiments that fail, glimpses of another world. These glimpses are so rarefied, and so exalted.
When I say parts of the piece are redundant, or that not every musical gesture “works”, I’m really saying that Beethoven had a high vision, and he wasn’t willing to compromise with it to make pretty music. He stayed true to that vision, even if I wish he had written a work on a smaller scale, and kept only the best ideas.
But hey! This is late Beethoven we’re talking about. Even the most crashing cliches in the Missa Solemnis somehow reflect Beethoven’s genius that lifts them to another plane. Take my least favorite feature of the Missa Solemnis- the extended violin solo in the Sanctus. It express pat, conventional religiosity. Beethoven was not a conventionally religious man. Therefore, when he writes overtly religious music, and the violin tune sounds based on an old hymn, it sounds a little strained. But when you hear it in the context of the piece, it sounds like the singers are basically oblivious to the violin line. But then, they wake up, and they interpret the melody sung by the violin in their own way, and then the orchestra comes in at the end with slow, ponderous steps, and I feel the presence of a great universal soul. I think the violin tune is Beethoven’s gracious encomium to religion, and its important role in offering some kind of supernatural hope. Beethoven found God in nature, I think, but he offers his dutiful service to those who must have the Church to see God.
Riccardo Muti conducted the Missa Solemnis here in Chicago last year. He said in the program notes that he’s wanted his whole career to conduct the Missa Solemnis, but he waited until he turned eighty-four, and about to lay down the baton forever, to actually take it up. He also said that no performance can embrace every aspect of the Missa Solemnis. It is too vast. He said that he tries to embody the beauty of the piece.
And Muti was right! Toscanini, in his 1935 radio recording, knocked it out of the ballpark with a deeply introspective reading. Toscanini was obviously a spiritual seeker. I didn’t hear that kind of spirituality in Muti’s rendition. Rather, I heard pure sound, beauty for beauty’s sake. I also noticed he made each strand of the piece clear and discrete for my ear, I could almost see each of the fibers that go into the composition. He made sure I could hear everything, layer after layer, that makes Missa Solemnis so unique, and so satisfying. Muti made the piece his own. I’m happy he chose the highest mountain for last. And I was there. One of my customers had to go out of town, so she gave me her tickets!
The Chicago Centre has around twelve people. During the winter, the weather is often bad and inimical, and sometimes nobody comes to the meetings. This past winter, I broke my foot, and the weather was often cold and slippery. I missed many Centre meetings, and it affected me. Even if I’m the only one there, I feel I’m making a contribution to the fund of human aspiration. Every aspiring thing we do adds to that fund. We owe it to our future selves to contribute as much as possible to humanity’s growth and evolution. Go to the Centre, even if you’re the only one, and your voice echoes in the empty rooms. You are singing for the walls’ appreciation, and you are also keeping Guru company.
This past Wednesday I was meditating at the Centre, and inside the Consciousness of the Transcendental, I saw Jesus Christ. The image looked like a medieval devotional icon, or fresco. He had red hair, a broad face, and he was smiling. The vision lasted for just a couple of seconds.
What does this vision mean? I saw Christ just for an instant, and then his Consciousness vanished. But if I was much more developed inwardly, then I could have maintained the vision for hours, I could have communed with the Lord Jesus Christ on an intimate level. Right now, I can only have a faint glimpse. The reality, the living reality of Jesus Christ is far beyond my loftiest vision or dream. But one day that vision must become living, vivid, real, eternal.
The founder of the Puerto Rican Sri Chinmoy Centre, Sudha, used to meditate so deeply that people would see Guru’s face on her face. One boy, Sevananda, was there, and told me that he saw Guru’s face on her, like a painting in the Moghul Indian style. So, not so far off from my experience of seeing Jesus in Guru, as a fresco, or mural.
Today we see. Tomorrow we have to become. Aspire, aspire.
If I recall correctly, which is a very big “IF”, Sri Chinmoy mentions somewhere that, at the moment of death, the soul often feels sorry over how much time it has wasted. He says that all of us waste time.
I mention this because I have a habit of visiting one of Chicago’s last great bookstores, Open Books, and I try to buy new books every other week. Often I buy books on Haydn, my favorite composer, or fiction by Muriel Spark or Edith Wharton, or biographies of Richard Feynman, and most recently a slightly quaint but brilliant economics book Freakanomics (I’ll have to mention this one to Tejvan).
And I never read them. I only read Guru’s books. I don’t read any of the books I buy. I just want them near me.
But recently I’ve been feeling my Master’s sadness, that I accumulate these books, but do not read them. He’s told me that if I could develop a little more speed and focus in my daily activities, and if I brought forward more determination, I could read these books- and still have plenty of time to read his books as well.
There is always time to do the things you want. There is. Guru says if we are working twenty-four hours a day for God, then God will give us twenty-five hours to please Him.
When I worked at Victory’s Banner, I read a lot. My job ended at three o’clock, and I read obsessively. I devoured over one autumn the complete works of E.M. Forster, including “Maurice”, which is how Guru would sign my name before he gave me a new one. It’s funny how all of Forster’s novels include at least fifty pages of nostalgic reveries about Cambridge, including intricate details on the diet and menu of Cambridge scholars of the day, the endless tree-lined paths, the still quite dangerous motorcar taxis. I love Forster’s work- Howard’s End above all with its gloriously understated climax (the protagonist inherits a house), with “A Passage To India” being a noteworthy second, with its ruminations on how colonization affects the colonizer as much as the colonized.
So, today, after I log off, I’m going to finish the story by Edith Wharton that I just recently began but put aside. It’s kind of hilarious, that the story is found in her book of short fiction, Roman Fever and Other Stories, but the cover blurb reads “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence.”
It’s kind of like advertising Hamlet by saying, “Performed for the first time in 1601 for King James!”
Shakespeare is not great because his troupe performed for Kings and Queens. He’s the greatest poet of all time! (I am a Bardolator) In the same way, Edith Wharton towers over American literature! Her writing is endlessly beautiful, haunting, and deep. Her short fiction is the among the very best I have encountered in English. A lot of her work deals with questions of honor, promise keeping, and sacrifice. I don’t know if she read the Ramayana or not, but she shares Valmiki’s sentiment that it is sacrifice that makes us human.
Sri Chinmoy writes, “A heart without love is no heart. A life without sacrifice is no life.”
I get so invested in her character’s dilemmas that I can’t put the books down.
I wish I drank coffee. It would make reading these books easier if I had a mug of java. I’ll try rooibos tea and see if this helps.
I spoke to a friend about my latest poetry memorization assignment, From the Source To The Source, and I told him that the first poem I learned from the book pertains to America and India. I recited it from memory:
“I dearly love my India and its age-old silence-peace,
I dearly love my America and its child-heart’s beauty-increase.”
And he knew the song and sang it on the spot!
I didn’t know it was also a haunting song!
And I thought, yes- this is exactly what Guru wants- for a disciple to share a poem he’s just memorized, and for his friend to enlighten him by singing the song!
I know this young man spends many hours a week practicing for Kailash’s group, the ensemble that has endeavored to sing all of the Master’s 23,000 songs. But I didn’t know these people could actually recall songs they’ve sung years before!
I have more things to say, a lot more- but my homework is to read an hour before bed, it is getting late, and I have no time to waste.
Recently I’ve been reading Sundar Dalton: Seeker of Transcendental Beauty, written, compiled and put together by his old friend Trishatur LaGalia. You can find it, and buy it, here:
Obviously Trishatur put a lot of care and thought into this book. Sundar’s gentle nature and humor fill every page. This book has given me a lot of delight to read. Please buy it and read it. I am now on my first reading, but I think I will read it many more times.
—–
In the poem that I shared recently on this site, Samarra, I included lines like:
“Every man is your walking stick”
And
“I will support your steps”
A few days after I finished the poem, I disembarked from the Number 49 Bus that takes me within a block of my house, and immediately slipped on the ice and broke my foot. I recited Samarra for the doctor in the emergency room and he laughed as he passed me my new walker and said, “It sounds like you were ready for this!”
It’s a fifth metatarsal fracture, which is the most common kind of foot fracture. I will have to wear my orthopedic “boot” for another month, but I can put weight on the injured foot which is a very good thing. It took me three days to see my specialist, which just meant that, during those three days I had to hop everywhere on one foot, including up six flights of stairs.
It takes me usually five minutes to walk to the bus stop. Hopping on one foot, it took me forty-five minutes. Forty-five grueling minutes of acrobatics. But I kept imagining I was back in my marathon years, at mile nineteen, chasing down the remaining distance, and I brought forward that spirit and energy. I don’t run marathons at this point in my life, but the essence is still there inside me. I can pull it out when I need to. It’s interesting, isn’t it, that nothing we do in the spiritual life is wasted. Everything can come in handy.
A disciple once asked Guru a question about her chronic disability and persistent pain. And Guru said that this experience might be useful to her, either later in life or in a future incarnation. It’s not a waste.
Fortunately, two or three days later, I saw my specialist who told me it was fine to put weight on the foot as long as I’m wearing the boot, and so I stopped my sack-race.
For the few days prior to my accident I had been in an aggravated, irritated consciousness. Winters are hard for me. I get lonely. I stay here in my garret, carving my name into the wall with a penknife using the Greek alphabet/s.
I remember the night before the accident I dealt with a nasty cashier at my local pharmacy, but I was equally nasty to him. I guess when I used to work at the fancy supermarket I always tried to give outstanding service, so I can get a little huffy when I don’t get it myself. But that night I probably should have just kept my mouth shut. I left the store with a black cloud over my head.
That morning, before I went to work (not in the prison high school for once), I looked at the Transcendental and tried to offer it my lousy consciousness. I felt I made contact, I felt bathed in light, and I also felt that maybe I will be able to accept what comes cheerfully.
And that’s an important lesson for me. To just cheerfully accept whatever comes.
On Friday I read Guru’s 1977 book Obedience or Oneness all the way through, and yesterday I read it two more times. I was thumbing through it this morning and I noticed that I have underlined every single word in the book! What’s the point of underlining if you’re going to underline everything? I’ll have to get a highlighter next!
A passage I like is this one, on page 4:
“When I become aware that a problem has been dealt with inwardly, then my mind may ask my soul what was done on the physical plane and what is going to happen now. Otherwise the soul may not necessarily give the message to the physical mind. In the ordinary human life, unless the mind is aware of something, we feel that we do not know about it. But although our physical mind may not know something, another part of our being may be aware of it.”
(From Obedience or Oneness by Sri Chinmoy)
So I knew I was going to have an accident on some level! I knew this. Without practicing the spiritual life, I don’t think I would get this kind of fore knowledge.
——
At my job, I usually don’t have anything to do. The school district just wants substitute teachers to serve as warm bodies in the classroom so that the kids are not left unattended. But they all have their assignments on the chromebooks, so they just tap away and I sit at my desk and watch art documentaries on my phone, or study Guru’s books or write poetry. It’s not a bad gig, not at all.
Last week I worked (?) at a school on the near West side. The students were all refugees, half from Venezuela and half from Ukraine. I speak Spanish enough to dialogue at a basic level. And from working in Guru’s restaurants for so many years I do know conversational Ukrainian as well. Since the teacher hadn’t bothered to leave me any lesson plans, I just decided I would teach the kids each other’s languages! It was fun watching the Venezuelans attempt Russian! And the Ukrainians were completely baffled by Spanish pronunciation!
So much of language is in emotional projection and energy. You have to feel the vibration of the people to speak the language. When you say the Spanish word “La Verdad” (the truth), you have to identify yourself with how Spanish speakers use that word, how it feels to them. It’s a masculine-feeling word, even with its feminine article, and it implies honor, and duty to one’s family, as well as just fact-stating. In the same way, the word “Pravda”, the word for truth in Slavic languages, even though it means the same thing as “La Verdad” in Spanish, yet it carries a different weight and energy. Pravda to me smacks of sacred revelation, or something you would keep close to your chest and only confide to a few extremely close friends. So it’s not enough just to be able to pronounce the words. You have to know the people, the consciousness that flows through their language, in order to say the words properly.
At the same time, it was funny to watch them struggle with such strange words! I taught each group folk sayings from the other group’s language. It was a fun day.
I noticed the Venezuelans and Ukrainians sat in their own groups, but they still seemed friendly towards each other. They recognized they were all refugees. A black kid came into the classroom in the middle of the day, playing hookie from his scheduled class. All the kids, from both countries, greeted him enthusiastically, and he listened to my cross-cultural lesson for a few minutes and said, “This tight!” and some other things I can’t print. Soon he was asleep.
The following day I worked at another school, closer to my house. But at this school, every door was kept locked all the time, and they do not provide subs with keys. So I had to ask the security guard to let me in to the faculty lounge, the bathroom, and my classroom, all day long. They don’t trust the subs. They think we’re going to steal the keys. Well, when you’re the “sub”, last in line, the last dam between an ordered school and complete chaos, well you learn to get used to being invisible. But at least I get to pursue my hobbies and read Guru’s books all day. I’ll take it.
In this new year, I’ve decided to be true to myself.
Oh, no! All the self-help books I’ve read tell me I need concrete measurable goals. “Being true to myself” is totally abstract!
Okay.
This year, I’m going to be myself.
The other night I dreamt I was at one of our meditation gatherings in New York, our bi-annual Celebrations. Usually I stay in the shared visitor’s housing, and in my dream I had woken up late for the morning function, and was by myself in the apartment. The space was sparsely decorated, almost abandoned-looking, but I saw the suitcases and sleeping bags of all the other disciples.
I knew I wouldn’t be able to make the function in time, so I just sang the Invocation. I sang it with utmost soulfulness, trying to convey the meaning of each word through my voice.
Often I sing the Invocation by rote. But, in my dream, I sang it slowly and with feeling.
I like it when I can aspire in my dreams. Sometimes I’ll dream that I go up to random people in department stores and ask them if they want to hear a poem. And before they can answer, I’ll just start reciting some of my favorite poems. I do this in real life, too!
I was in the locker room of the YMCA recently, and struck up a conversation with a heavily tattooed younger man named Brian. He told me he worked as a psychotherapist. I usually joke with people about their jobs, and I have lots of psychotherapy jokes stored up (think Woody Allen humor). But I didn’t tell him any of these jokes. I told him that I have known what despair feels like.
I told him that after I graduated high school, I fell into a serious depression because I had not gotten into the college of my choice, namely Swarthmore. I stopped eating, I stopped sleeping. I just stayed in my room all day and all night. This went on and on.
I had a lot of nightmares. I dreamt I was running through a vast underground tunnel network, but I could hear two pieces of metal being stuck together somewhere behind me, in token of pursuit. I couldn’t escape. I dreamt repeatedly of hanging myself in the school stairwell with my uncle’s Harley-Davidson chain wallet.
Then, I had a different kind of dream. In my dream I was in the living room of someone’s house that I did not know. The carpet was pure white, and light streamed through the big windows. The room was empty except for a big CD player in the middle of the rug. I approached it, and a CD popped out, hovered in the air before me, and I saw an old, old Black man sitting on the CD. He started singing a song to me:
“Turn the page!
Turn the page!
Turn the page!
And I started singing with him:
“Turn the page!
Turn the page!
Turn the page!”
And we started singing and dancing around the room in unfathomable ecstasy, like nothing I had ever felt before.
When I woke up, I felt like I was levitating, and I felt this deep sense of calm and fulfilment. I knew I was going to be OK.
Then I told him about how one day my friend Sebastian invited me over to his house to listen to music. He played me some guitar music by John Mclaughlin (Mahavishnu) and Carlos Santana (Devadip). I found the music soothing. We had a long discussion, and at the end of the night my friend, Sebastian, gave me a copy of Beyond Within and told me this man, Sri Chinmoy, was Mclaughlin and Santana’s Guru, or spiritual teacher.
I turned the book over to the back cover, and I saw Sri Chinmoy had the same face as the Black man I had seen in my dream!
Then, when I went home, I opened the book to a random page and I found the following poem:
“I fear to speak, I fear to speak-
My tongue is killed, my heart is weak.
I fear to think, I fear to think-
My mind is wild and apt to sink.
I fear to see, I fear to see-
I eat the fruits of ignorance-tree.
I fear to love, I fear to love-
A train of doubts around, above.
I fear to be, I fear to be-
Long dead my life of faith in me.”
I saw that Chris was looking at me very intently, and I said to him that that poem encapsulated exactly what I was feeling. And I told him that I knew that Sri Chinmoy was reaching out to me through the dream world, through the psychic world, and through the poetry world and he was telling me that I was meant to follow him. And two years later I met Sri Chinmoy at the Philadelphia Peace Concert, on my twenty-first birthday, and I got direct confirmation on the physical plane of what I already known.
Chris told me that it was so strange that everything aligned: the dream, the book, the poem, and he said that it is not a coincidence, but that there was a Higher Power involved. He was so moved! He said that I have a story to tell, and that it gave him chills, and he asked for the name of the book, and he pulled Beyond Within up on Amazon, and ordered it.
I know I have told this story many times, on this forum, and also to many people. But, in a sense, it is the only story I have to tell: how I found my Guru, how I went from deepest darkness to Light. I tell this story because nothing else really matters. And I think in this New Year, which will begin my 50th year, I want to make an effort to be as spiritual as possible. In 2025, only God matters, only the Supreme matters, only Guru matters. Nothing else is relevant.
Saw a teacher today sewing clothes and cushions for the kids. I was moved to see this, I really was.
Chicago Public School teachers are heroes, especially the ones who work in the “alternative” schools, i.e. prisons. I like going to the Cook County Jail actually. Often fights will break out on the tiers, and all the classes will be canceled for the day, so I’ll just sit at a desk in the prison teacher’s lounge and watch YouTube videos.
Recently I’ve been watching Sister Wendy’s “American Collection” art history videos that she made for PBS. She was a cloistered nun from South Africa who obtained permission to leave her trailer (she was an anchoress) and give lectures on art. Her videos are so fascinating and so deep. She mentioned that while she was cloistered, she would write letters to people who she knew were art lovers and she would ask them to send her postcards and photographs from all the museums they visited. As a nun, she could not travel. But she would spend many of her silent hours just meditating on the postcards of paintings from all over the world. I don’t know how many years she lived as a solitary nun- I think it was between twenty and thirty years. One day she received an inner call to share her love of art, enriched by decades of silent reflection on these reproductions of masterpieces, with the wider public. I love her tour of the Chicago Art Institute. I think it’s one of her best presentations. She looks so out of place in her flowing black robes, walking down the crowded streets of the Magnificent Mile and sweeping down the halls of the Institute. And yet, she still somehow fits right in. Chicago is a place for pilgrims of all kinds. This has been my experience.
I recommend “YouTubing” ‘Sister Wendy’ and ‘Art Institute of Chicago’ to find this particular video. It’s worth your time, absolutely.
I listened to Haydn’s symphony number 58 today. So inspiring! It is beautiful, subtle, mystical, rich, deep. Haydn wrote 104 symphonies, and all of them have reserves of imagination and poetry that dazzle me. The string quartet and the symphony both existed before Haydn, but Haydn gets great credit into evolving them into the proving grounds for compositional genius.
About six months ago, I met a journalist by a bus stop in the Edgewater neighborhood. We spoke for about ten minutes. I recited some of Guru’s poetry, and also some of my own poetry. Last week he contacted me. His supervisor asked him to write a piece on local Chicago poets. So we sat down for a three hour interview, and he asked me questions about every aspect of my writing process. I also told him all about Sri Chinmoy’s poetry, and how essential my Guru’s poetry has been to my own creativity. I recited about twenty or thirty of Guru’s poems and I also gave him copies of my own work. I also had my typed manuscript of “From the Source, To the Source”, which is Guru’s book that I am currently memorizing. He was astounded by Guru’s poetry. I recited some of those poems also from memory while he followed along on the sheet. He took out his phone and he photographed every page so he could study them himself!
He asked me how I found Sri Chinmoy and I told him everything. I was talking and talking about being a seeker and looking for a Master, and my first impressions of Guru, and the dreams I had of Guru, and how Guru took away my breathing problem, and the visions Guru gave me, and the man just listened with utmost soulful attention. He became like the Buddhist void, and I felt I was really talking to the vast omniscient vacancy within myself.
We also went over the poems I had printed out and brought, and he went over my poems with me line by line- repeating some of the phrases many times like mantras. I could tell he was deeply impressed! He asked me what my writing process was like and I told him that it takes me months and months of drafting to get a poem, but the final form, the final utterance will often come to me in a flash and I’ll write furiously. Then I’ll take that final burst of inspiration and refine it until I’m satisfied with each word. But to enter into that place of revelation takes me a few months of work. He asked me if I ever get stuck, look through my countless pages of notes, and discover a jewel just waiting for me in the middle of a notebook, and I told him that YES, this has happened to me several times- I’ll be drafting and writing, but the poem was already written a hundred pages back and I didn’t know!
I told him that my poems ultimately are a function of Grace, God’s Grace or my Master’s Grace. I often pray over a poem if I get stuck and can’t finish it. After ten minutes of soulful prayer, the lines will begin to flow again, if not that very day, then very soon after. When it comes to my best poems, I don’t feel like I’ve written any of them. I was just a channel.
At the end of our conversation he told me that he had been having a pretty bad day, but that our marathon conversation had raised his spirits immeasurably. I told him I was grateful to him as well for giving me the opportunity to rise into a much better consciousness.
We shook hands and so concluded my first literary interview!
I’ll post a link to the article once it comes out…
The other night I had an interesting dream. I actually have a large record collection, and in my dream I put on a record I have never listened to before. It was of a young man singing in a high falsetto, with utmost soulful feeling:
“I’ve been sailing a long, long way,
I’ve been traveling a long, long way,
I’ve been on a journey a long, long way.”
His voice was so lyrical and so haunting! I was shedding tears, both in my dream and when I woke up from it.
I guess my soul is the reality in me that possesses a singular longing for deeper things. If I could tap into that longing, I would be a superlative seeker. If I could feel the longing of my soul permanently, I would far surpass my present achievements.
It’s interesting how often Beethoven’s music cries, especially in his late string quartets. When I listen to the last movement of opus 131 in C-sharp minor, his fourteenth and penultimate string quartet, in this section there is tremendous dynamism and determination. But then the brio and gusto gives way to this quiet yearning, this tearful plea for God’s Compassion.
When I think of Michelangelo’s David, it is so splendid and so powerful. But then look at his last work, the Rondanini Pieta. Once again, the power surrenders to pathos. You cannot look seriously at this statue and not be moved. It’s interesting how both Jesus and Mary are looking down. One critic, and I am sorry I do not remember the scholar’s name, said that it suggests Christ the Divine and his mother the Divine, looking down from a higher plane and sympathizing with Christ the poor, broken man.
I sometimes mention music that moves me, and, on my recommendation, people go and listen to my musical choices. And often they are not impressed! The music that speaks to me on a psychic level does not necessarily speak in the same way to everyone. But this goes both ways. We all have our tastes in art. Even at the highest level, we see that Sri Aurobindo and Sri Chinmoy, two supremely God-realised souls, had different aesthetic tastes. Is it fair for me to say that Sri Aurobindo was interested in English literature and English poetry in a way that Guru was not? Or that Guru loved Tagore’s Bengali poetry more than Sri Aurobindo did? Even as Guru’s disciple, I see that my own artistic tastes don’t always align with my Master’s. Guru loves art songs. I prefer chamber music. Neither is superior. It’s just a different rasa (taste).
I encountered a song recently that touched me deeply. It’s called “Superman” by Five For Fighting. I think it is exceptionally beautiful.
The official music video is a celebration of young love, but I think the music goes deeper than that. For one thing, Vladimir Ondrasik’s voice is extremely haunting.
Incidentally, I greatly prefer the original video of the song, which has almost vanished from YouTube, but it’s just Ondrasik with his piano:
“It’s not easy to be me,” he sings throughout the song. And in the hands of a less gifted artist, this would sound either self-pitying or preening. But when he sings it, I think of the miserable suffering that Christ and Krishna went through on earth. The “me” becomes the universal “I” embodied by spiritual Masters. Like the young man in my dream, Ondrasik sings in a high, stirring falsetto.
There’s an echo of an echo in this song of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. At certain points, like the last “It’s not easy to be me,” I feel he’s dealing with the same Christ Consciousness that Bach treated in his music. Also, for some reason, when I hear this song, I think of the striking scene in Bach’s Passion setting where Christ lifts up the cup and says, “Trinket alle daraus” (Drink this, all of you).
Also, for some reason, I can’t help but think of the song Jim Henson, the creator of Sesame Street, gave to Kermit the Frog: “It’s not easy being green.”
Here are the lyrics to Superman by Vladimir Ondrasik, also known by his band’s name “Five For Fighting:”
“I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me
I’m more than a bird, I’m more than a plane
I’m more than some pretty face beside a train
And it’s not easy to be me
I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
‘Bout a home I’ll never see
It may sound absurd, but don’t be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed, but won’t you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream?
And it’s not easy to be me
Up, up, and away, away from me
Well, it’s all right
You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy
Or anything
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees
I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
Inside of me
Inside of me
Yeah, inside of me
Inside of me
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
I’m only a man looking for a dream
I’m only a man in a funny red sheet
And it’s not easy, ooh, ooh, ooh
It’s not easy to be me”
He said that this song took him just forty-five minutes to write, and it came as of a sudden flash of God-given inspiration. But, he had already been working as a struggling song writer for twenty years at that time, and had never been able to release a single album. “Superman” was approximately his one thousandth song, and that was the one that made him famous overnight. I like artists who are so committed to their art, and who value the process more than fame or money.
The lyric “I’m only a man in a silly red sheet” speaks to me. As I walk a celibate path, I will not be a father. My own physical father vanished from my life many years ago. But I think he did the best he could, and I think of him as “only a man in a funny red sheet”. We all want to be special somehow, and it can be painful when we fail. I think a lot of my poems are addressed to my father, this man I don’t know.
I like the line “Looking for special things inside of me.” This has deep meaning. I think it means, “If you want to be special, look inside, dive into your unexplored depths.”
One of my very favorite of Guru’s answers to a question is this one:
Question: How can I get satisfaction right this minute?
Sri Chinmoy: “Go deep within. Satisfaction is there. That is the simplest answer.”
(From Perfection and Transcendence)
In this song, Ondrasik admits that he bleeds, and he daydreams, and puts on silly red capes (a symbol of lust) and has all of these self-destructive habits “digging for kryptonite on a one-way street.” And yet, he can sing about all these things with such composure and grace. There is divine longing in this song. It’s funny how anyone can be an instrument of God. Everyone prays, either consciously or not. One of my favorite of Guru’s poems from “A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile” delves into this very issue:
“A thing I never cared to know:
Who is for God?
The thing I never cared to learn:
To cry for me.
“But I hear an inner voice
Telling me
That all human beings
Consciously or unconsciously,
Directly or indirectly,
Care for God,
And all human beings in their perfect sleep
Cry for me,
Poor me.”
(A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile, Agni Press, 1977)
In my many readings of From the Source to the Source I stumbled upon this magnificent poem:
“My feet have wings.
They fly.
My hands have eyes.
They cry.
My thought has God.
It shines.
With God-Delight
It dines.”
I spoke to a brilliant scholar-disciple about this poem. I told her that I thought the first stanza, “My feet have wings. They fly” may be a reference to Apollo or Mercury, the god of winged feet. She said that if Sri Aurobindo had written the poem, then definitely that would be a quite reasonable interpretation. But she said that she doesn’t very many classical references in Guru’s poems. This doesn’t mean there can’t be such references! But she felt that “my feet have wings…they fly” refers to both Guru’s personal running career, and also to the millions of miles Guru has run through his disciples in the Peace Run and the great ultra-races like the 3100.
My own feeling about this line is that it transports us a little beyond the physical realm. Guru said that when he meditates in front of us that he becomes stock still, like a statue. But at the same time, his inner being is covering the length and breadth of the world. Also, Guru mentioned many times that his feet embody infinite compassion for humanity, divine Compassion. So, Guru’s Feet, God’s Feet, are always available. Krishna’s weak spot was his heel- this is where the archer’s arrow entered. So, the Master’s Feet are speedy, but also vulnerable. They are a symbol, the root, of his human incarnation. He chose to take human form, and to have vulnerable human feet: “Poor me”, “It’s not easy being me”.
I read recently in a disciple’s printed diary how Guru was saying he feels his voice has improved greatly over the years. His feels his younger voice was immature, and lacked resonance. I think Guru’s voice was always beautiful. But I think “My feet have wings…they fly” can refer to the youthful energy Guru had when he came to the West, the hope and joy he brought with him. Also, the idea of winged feet implies a new journey, a new adventure. I remember that From the Source, To The Source and A Soulful Cry Versus a Fruitful Smile comprise over one thousand poems, dedicated to his brothers Chitta and Mantu, respectively. So, the excitement in this line may refer to the adventure of composing one thousand rhyming poems in English. To be frank, these two books contain some of my very, very favorite of my Guru’s poem-mantras.
The next stanza reads: “My hands have eyes. They cry.” The great Professor-scholar with whom I consulted told me that only very rarely does she find mention of “hands” in Guru’s poetry. It’s very rare.
Off the top of my head I can recall just a few sublime references to “hands” in Guru’s poetry:
“…destroy the dark hands” (The Dance of Life)
“…a man-made umbrella, a God-made hand” (The Dance of Life)
“…the beautiful eyes and powerful hands of the real friends” (My Lord Reads My Letters)
All of these references are very significant. Guru doesn’t treat with hands lightly. The hands of a spiritual Master represent his mission, his action on earth.
She told me also that eyes in the hand is ancient symbol, found across diverse cultures, in both the Old and the New world. This symbol, the hand with the eye in the palm, reminds me of Guru’s talk about Compassion in The Quintessence of Knowledge-Sun:
“But the aspect that is Heaven-free does not touch the earth-bound consciousness. It deals with human incapacity on a higher level — you can say in a theoretical way, not in a practical way. On this higher level, compassion becomes the observer and not the doer.” (This reminds me of Christ and Mary in the Rondanini Pieta, looking down at the suffering Christ, the man.)
So, maybe this is why the eyes in the hands are weeping. The hands are here on earth, the Master is working to relieve the burden of human suffering. But the Vision is not theoretical, but practical, and suffers from the darkness and misunderstanding of this world. This darkness prevents the Master from manifesting his full divinity on earth, and hinders his mission in every way. This is why the hands weep, the practical hands.
“It’s not easy being me.”
The last stanza reads: “My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.”
I find it incredible that a thought, a mere thought can have God. But this is not the ordinary thought, from the ordinary earth-bound mind. Guru writes, in his poem, Immortality: “my mind a core of the One’s unmeasured Thoughts.”
This is “Mind” and “Thought” that has completely transcended all human conceptions of those terms.
The Professor then told me about Sri Aurobindo’s aside that never in his life was he able to shake the feeling that language comes from somewhere beyond the mind. This connects to the ancient Indian concept of mantra, inspired utterances that come from above.
In one of my best poems, entitled For the Monarch Butterfly, I wrote about “pensive thoughts of kings” (hence “monarch” butterfly) and I know that line comes from somewhere, but I have never been able to find the author. And I have come to feel, rightly or wrongly, that this line came to me from some inner world, that once or twice in my life I have got poetry lines that come from some source beyond. If I could draw from that source more often I would become a very famous poet. Alas, I don’t have that kind of access. Maybe one day.
“My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.”
I look at the first stanza and I think of the delicate human feet of the Master, his vulnerable all loving feet. I look at the second stanza, and I see the tears, the bleeding hands, the weeping, the unfulfilled mission and the continuous striving. And here in the last stanza, all fragility has been surmounted in this world of delight.
My thought has God, it shines. With God-delight it dines.
So in spite of all of the miseries and limitations of the earth, the Master, on another level is enjoying the thought of God, the bliss and delight of this luminous thought. I wish I could taste the bliss of this illumining, eternal Thought.
I remember the first blessing I got from my Guru. It was the Fall of 1998, and Sri Chinmoy and his students organized an aid station at the New York City marathon, as they did every year. I was a brand new disciple, and I was excited to help out. I don’t remember much from that year- I just remember handing out lots of cups of water, cheering on runners, and having a friendly discussion with an Australian disciple as to whether or not I should swat at the wasps that kept crowding around the juice station.
Anyway, the woman who directed all of the disciples in giving out refreshments complimented me on my work, and also thanked me for helping out on my birthday (November 1st). The next day one of Guru’s attendants said that this lady had been praising my work to Guru directly and Guru was wondering if I could stay in New York an extra day for a daytime function. When the attendant asked me about my plans I said that of course I’d be happy to stay!
The next afternoon there was a walk-by meditation at our Aspiration Ground/tennis court. The Master sat by his temple, all bundled up. We all walked by him as he meditated. When I passed in front of Guru he didn’t say anything. Usually Guru gave his spiritual children a flower and meditated on them for their birthday. But Guru didn’t do that. He just looked at me, for just a second. But that one second was special. That one second seemed suspended, removed from time. I felt I was a third-person observer, observing both Guru and me. In that detached, “suspended” state, I saw Guru’s face elongate and stretch until it embodied not only Guru’s face, but mine as well. It was Guru extending his own consciousness and personality to embody me. I also felt, as I was looking at Guru’s eyes, that I was peering into a tunnel, but that tunnel was sky-blue, and as I looked into the tunnel I saw that it was leading me to this vast sky-blue expanse, infinity. I also felt, in a more abstract way, Guru’s oneness-identification with me. I intuited that he felt and experienced everything I have ever suffered, and that my suffering now belonged to him.
It was just a second in time. He did not acknowledge me in any outer way. It was just a glance. But over the years I have come to feel it was one of my most significant experiences with Guru. He actually paid me a tremendous compliment by giving me his blessings in silence. He felt I was receptive enough to receive him that way. I hope to remain always receptive.
—-
I went back to prison for my most recent birthday, to teach. As I was putting my belongings through the x-ray scanner, the security guard, a Trinidadian man, looked at me and said “Your spiritual leader is from Pakistan?”
I said, “No, he is from Bangladesh. But, excuse me- how did you know I had a spiritual leader from India?”
He said, “I see it in your aura- he’s in your aura.”
I wondered why he bothers to use the x-ray machine if he has this kind of vision, but then I realised that subtle vision is probably better at detecting auras and x-ray machines are better at finding shanks!
—
I was talking to another teacher after school hours. This was just in a regular high school. He told me he swims often at the local YMCA, and he feels swimming is a meditation all by itself. So I recited the following poem from Transcendence-Perfection:
He swims in the ocean of hope,
He swims in the ocean of failure,
He swims in the ocean of tears.
Something more:
He swims also in the ocean
Of his surrendered will
To his earth-Heaven-life’s
Pilot Supreme.
(typed out from memory, so please check exact words)
Then he repeated, out loud, most soulfully, “Hope, failure, tears, will, pilot, Supreme.”
Then he said each word again: “Hope, failure, tears, will, pilot, Supreme.”
Then he closed his eyes and reflected in silence for a few seconds and said, “I really needed to hear this. Thank you so much.”
It’s interesting how Guru’s poems help me to create a bond with people. I like having that possibility to connect.
—-
One of my friends, Dan, used to come by my register almost every week and ask me for a poem. He was really sad when I lost my job but we already had each other’s contact info so we recently got together and went to a Christmas brass concert at an old Catholic church in the Old Town neighborhood of Chicago. The synchronicity of religions is really special, because the church has the feeling and décor of an ancient Hindu temple, a Krishna temple. I think Pierre Tielhard d’Jardin said that “All that rises must converge.” It is a temple that has kept all the old Cathoic reliquaries and altars and statues. It is lavish and simple at the same time, and full of heartfelt prayers. The music was beautiful, performed and sung by local musicians. I can always tell when performers feel and believe in the music. These people did. I felt I was meditating on Guru spontaneously a few times during the performance. I saw myself again as a new seeker, seeing Guru enter PS 86, in his blue dhoti.
Afterwards we were sitting in his apartment, drinking warm Amish milk, and he told me that his friends used to laugh at him when he told them that his Friday night plans were to go to the local supermarket and talk to the cashier!
I remember once I told him the following poem:
O Saviour-Christ,
Please tell me,
What did you mean
By your strongest affirmation:
‘I and my Father are one’?
Tell me in what sense you and your Father are one.
“O dear brother,
Of all people, how is it that You, my wise brother,
Do not understand my simple message?
On earth I am my Father’s Face,
In Heaven I am my Father’s Eye.
In that sense we are one, inseparable.
This is what I meant when I said:
‘I and my Father are one.’”
(From The Dance of Life by Sri Chinmoy)
And he reflected that we think of Christ as a person, but actually he is a spiritual energy, and that energy is involved in all of the lives he touched. He set something in motion, and all those people he touched went on to influence other people, but they are also part and parcel of that energy, that chain reaction of events. It is the combination of Christ’s human life and the system that he set into motion, and all the people involved, who make up the divine reality of Jesus Christ- face and eye.
I have quite a few friends who are Evangelical Christians, and they find Guru’s poetry helpful in their own prayer-life. Dan, for example, told me that Guru’s utterance “Patience is the light of truth” has become part of his own life-breath. I think these people are doing the right thing, because Guru’s poetry has to be lived.
I am happy and lucky to have a number of prayerful and soulful friends.
“To me, a seeker-friend is a rich supply of spiritual energy.” (Sri Chinmoy)
—-
I was at a wrestling tournament recently, and one guy, a 197 pound colossus ran up to me and hugged me. I thought I was going to get a cracked rib.
“Who are you?” I asked him after I had caught my breath.
He said, “My name’s Striker” (men who wrestle sometimes name their sons after wrestling moves. “Striking” is when, from a neutral position, you lunge at your opponent’s legs to take them down).
“How did we meet?” I asked him.
He said, “Last year you met me and my friend Will at the big wrestling tournament. When you found out his name was Will you wrote down a special message for him, and he framed it and put it on his wall. He told me it’s one of his most fond possessions.”
Then he pulled it up on his phone and I saw a handwritten note, my handwriting: “Fate shall be changed by an unchanging Will- Sri Aurobindo”.
I was so, so happy and so grateful!
Perhaps an “unchanging Will” should be added to the regimen of every wrestler.
I have no hesitation in sharing these messages with the world.
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.”
