One of Sri Chinmoy’s students, an Indian man named Mitra, was shot in the chest in a parking lot in Queens. His wife immediately sent a message to Sri Chinmoy, who asked one of the Centre doctors and myself, as a nurse, to go right away to the hospital. Sri Chinmoy himself came very quickly, but the doctors would not let him into the emergency room.  We told them that Sri Chinmoy was the family priest, but they said that the case was not very serious, that the patient’s condition was stable and that he did not need a priest.

The family was about to leave the hospital for a while, but Sri Chinmoy told them most urgently, “Don’t leave — stay here and pray and meditate. His case is very serious. He is dying!” At that point I saw that Mitra’s blood pressure was dropping rapidly, his pulse was weak and thready, and his colour was ashen white.  We alerted the doctors, who then saw his condition was critical. He was given volumes of blood and electrolyte solution intravenously to replace lost blood and increase blood pressure.

Because of the position of the bullet near his heart and his deteriorating condition, the doctors were not hopeful.  A team of three surgeons operated for four hours. The chief surgeon was surprised that Mitra survived the surgery, but remained very guarded in his prognosis. They had stopped the bleeding and tried to repair the damage to the tissue, but the bullet could not be removed.  We all felt Sri Chinmoy’s meditation-power constantly at the hospital and around Mitra and his family. Sri Chinmoy asked me to stay there twenty-four hours a day, and to call him every hour with an update. The family also kept a vigil day and night in the hospital chapel.

In the surgical intensive care unit, Mitra quickly improved, but he was unable to talk because of the endotracheal tube in his throat.  With two chest tubes, four IV lines and catheters, he could not move, either.A few days later, when he was taken for an x-ray, Mitra suffered a cardiac arrest. Sri Chinmoy was contacted immediately.  He later told us that he had meditated most powerfully and three times he had literally forced the soul back into the body. He explained that he had done so for the sake of Mitra’s children. The soul wanted to leave because the body was so shattered. But the children were still young and needed their father.

It has often been said that we make the most progress when we have to overcome obstacles or hardships. I have had the firsthand experience that this is true, but that experience almost cost me my life!

One hot, quiet Saturday afternoon in July of 1976, I was working in the back room of our stationery store. I was alone in the store; the front door was open, and I was busy doing paperwork, figuring I could hear if anyone came in and needed help. I was wrong. Suddenly I heard a noise and the moment I looked up, I knew I was in serious trouble. Just one foot away, an evil-looking man stood staring at me, seething with hatred. Those few seconds of frozen silence felt like an eternity.

Stunned, I jumped out of my chair. The man instantly charged at me as if to stab me. I covered my chest, expecting to be attacked with a knife, but instead he smashed me over the head with a lead pipe he had concealed in his other hand. It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, and I remember thinking to myself after the second or third blow, “What is wrong with you? Why aren’t you invoking help from Sri Chinmoy and God the Supreme?” I started chanting aloud, “Guru, Supreme, Guru, Supreme” — each time this hostile being struck, I would cry out, “Guru, Supreme!”

After seven or eight blows I fell to the ground, but he continued to attack me. I was convinced he was trying to kill me, when suddenly, for no apparent reason, he stopped. He grabbed my wallet and wristwatch and sauntered out of the store.

Back in those days there was almost no business on a summer weekend, and I might have lain there for hours, but miraculously within seconds a friend came into the store and spotted me curled up on the floor in a pool of blood, holding my head. She sank to her knees and started crying hysterically. I was so moved that anyone would care enough about me to cry like that; I even tried to calm her down by saying, “Don’t worry, I’m okay.”

Of course, I wasn’t really okay. The police came, and an ambulance took me to the hospital, where they discovered that my scalp had been split open in several places. Sri Chinmoy had just flown in from somewhere to JFK Airport, and when he got the news he came straight to the hospital.

In a dream five years after Guru passed away, he looked at me pointedly and asked lovingly yet knowingly, “Is everything okay?”

My initial reaction was to say, “Yes, yes, of course,” (partly out of a desire to not create any problems for Guru – which is actually totally stupid because if something is not okay, then Guru is the exact person to fix it – and partly out of embarrassment in not wanting to acknowledge that I was having a problem).

Just as I was about to respond within this dream, I remembered a situation in real life when Guru had gently inquired as to why he had not been seeing me around. I had responded by saying nonchalantly, “Oh Guru, I’ve been very busy working on the World Harmony Run,” when the real reason was that I was extremely upset with another disciple and also very mad at Guru because that disciple was very close to Guru. (I think that if I had actually admitted that to Guru, I would have burst into tears and totally broken down—there was so much emotion bottled up in the situation. Upon reflection, I think Guru was trying to help me release that emotion rather than let it fester.)

Anyway, Guru sadly acknowledged my response and lovingly requested that I come to functions. That very evening, Guru launched into a long public discourse, talking generally about disciples being honest with him and how he can see through our half-truths and evasive responses as easily as you or I might drink a glass of water. Listening to this, I fidgeted in my seat.

Having learned from this real-life experience, when Guru asked me in the dream if everything was okay, I said that I would like to tell him privately what was bothering me (in this dream I was in Guru’s house and there were other people around).

We went into Guru’s kitchen, where I was alone with him, and I explained my problem.Guru said, “You should have said something earlier, because you need help.” I was about to point out that Guru had passed away five years earlier, but I held my tongue as I knew Guru would get very upset with me. He would launch into a whole talk about whether I believed in the inner world and all that. (Which of course I did, as this whole exchange was taking place in the inner world, in my dream!)

Guru then reassuringly followed up with, “Well, now two of us know.” I knew that what he meant was, “Now you can rely on me to fight this battle with you.” And because I do believe in the inner world and the inner life, I felt confident in this reassurance, which helped me to face the situation.

From a young age, I was really determined to learn how to meditate. Of course right away as soon as I started meditating with Guru, my meditations got better. I remember sitting in front of my shrine for hours. This was way back in my first few months on the path, and I had a deep and real spiritual experience. I came downstairs, and my mother looked at me and said, “There is something different about you. Did you get a haircut?” She could not understand. I had really had an enlightening experience. So I went to our group meditation, and after the meditation Guru was still in a very high state of consciousness. He eventually came down from his height and said something like, “Oh, now some of you think that just because you have had a spiritual experience, you have realised the highest. No, no, no. You have a long way to go.”

I knew right away that Guru was talking to me. I felt very embarrassed, but it was also good because Guru made it clear that this was only the beginning. It was nice, because Guru usually does not like us to share our spiritual experiences with other people, but this one particular time he said, “If you have had a spiritual experience, then you can come up and tell about your most profound experience.”

So I went up and spoke about my experience, although I did not say what had happened—that Guru had exposed me (although no one knew it was me). I just said that the experience and its effect went on for a few days, but then it went away. Guru responded, “No, no, no! It did not go away. It will always remain carved on the tablet of your heart.”

I had been divorced from my husband for about seven years. He was absolutely dreadful in his relationship with our two children and was providing very little financial help. I was so furious with him that I could not speak to him. If he phoned, I would just pass the receiver to one of the children without saying a word.

One morning I decided that I had had enough. It was time to contact a lawyer and pursue him legally for proper support.

I sat for my 6:00 a.m. meditation, and there was Guru, just staring back at me from the Transcendental photograph on my shrine 1. I immediately felt that he did not want me to call a lawyer. I was determined to go ahead with my plan and stared back at the photo. However, I had the strong inner feeling that Guru simply would not budge.     

Finally, in my heart, I asked Guru, “I can see that you don’t want me to proceed, but what shall I do?”

Immediately came the inner reply, “Forgive him.”

“Forgive him?” I asked in astonishment. “He’s been so bad, absolutely horrible and totally irresponsible. He doesn’t deserve to be forgiven!”

Again Guru said, “Forgive him.”

Finally, I gave in. I said, “All right. Since you whom I love so dearly are asking, I shall try to forgive him.” I sat at my shrine, entered deeper into my meditation, and tried to let go of my anger.

• 1. the picture that we, as Sri Chinmoy’s disciples, use as a focal point for our meditation practice

I became a disciple when I was living in Toronto. In March of the following year, I was invited to New York for a weekend with some of the Toronto disciples who were driving down. It would not be the first time that I had seen Guru, but it was my first time in New York. I had written a poem for him and asked a fellow disciple, with whom I was staying in New York, how best to give it to him. She suggested that I order some flowers at the Garland of Divinity’s Love, a disciple-owned flower shop, and put the poem in a card to be delivered with the flowers.

When I entered the shop, I was immediately impressed with the beauty of all of the flowers inside—especially the enormous roses and the exquisite “gratitude” orchids. Nevertheless, I was a bit shy, as a fairly new disciple, and felt that it would be somewhat ostentatious for me to send Guru such big flowers, as if to say, “Look at me!” I told myself that I should order something “modest.” And anyway, in my mind, the flowers were merely the vehicle for the delivery of the poem. So I chose some simple purple asters (the flower of my birthday month) with some lovely smelling eucalyptus branches.

While waiting for Guru to arrive at that evening’s function, I could see my own flowers with a number of other arrangements on the table by his chair, which was on the stage. As soon as he came in, he sat down, looked at the flowers (though he did not read any of the cards), and began to meditate in silence.

After some time, he said, “Anyone who has ever written a poem for me, come up and read.” Quite a number of people went up and formed a line on the stage. One by one they went up to the microphone and read a poem from the designated book. I did not go. The disciple who had recommended to me that I send the flowers was encouraging me to go up, knowing that I had included my poem with them. But I still felt very shy, and felt that it was not appropriate for me, as such a new disciple, to go up with all the others. I said to myself that I should be “modest”— again using the same word that I had while in the flower shop.

Guru was always far over the horizons of my comprehension—and what I could comprehend was always wonderful and breathtaking.

I often marvelled at those hundreds of times that Guru walked alone onto a concert stage before audiences of up to 18,000 people, folded his hands together over his heart, and simply by standing there, through the force of his love, the power of his meditation, his abandonment to God, brought a hushed, pin-drop silence to the entire auditorium. His tranquility, absolute poise, and the great achievement of his God-realisation were felt by everyone.

Then I would marvel at how he would sit in front of an unfamiliar piano or pipe organ with absolutely no idea of what he would play, no sheet music, no keyboard training, no mind or anxiety, entirely trusting in the higher worlds of music to pass through his fingers⎯the same surrender to God.

Guru’s personal example in this area of his life—which he also demonstrated in everything, everywhere—taught us much. He wanted us to understand our own capacity to uplift and serve the world, to live cocooned in God-trust, our confidence and power resulting from our growing oneness with him and God.

When I was around 20 years old, I went through a difficult period in my young life. I had just graduated from school, a new chapter of my life was beginning, and I was quite unsure of what to do with myself.

Before I went to New York for Guru´s Birthday Celebrations in August 1996, I wrote him a long letter, telling him all my thoughts and worries and, most importantly, about my “not so perfect behaviour” of the past which was not up to the standard of a good disciple.

When I arrived in New York, the Celebrations were in full swing. As usual, there were many activities and functions with hundreds of disciples from all over the world. Guru was, as always during these days, very busy. I was quite uncertain if and when Guru would say something to me about my serious letter.

Then one day at Aspiration-Ground (the private tennis court where we all met), after Guru had finished playing tennis, he went down to the gully behind the court where he sometimes did his sprinting training.

I was sitting in the bleachers, when quite unexpectedly one of Guru´s attendants approached me to give me the message from Guru, that I should wait about ten minutes, then join Guru down in the gully.

Have you ever had the feeling that everything is just perfect?  Where every moment feels almost larger than life? With Guru it was like that—every single second was so precious and beautiful.

Guru loved to listen to songs when he was in the car. He would often listen to a tape or a CD of someone singing songs written by Rabindranath Tagore. One day a few disciples, including me, were driving in the car with Guru when a song by Tagore came on that Guru loved. I watched in awe as his right hand danced here and there while Guru sang the song along with the singer. It was exquisitely beautiful, with his hand just dancing in the loveliest motion.

On such occasions Guru would always get something for us to eat—like a piece of pizza, something sweet, or some other kind of snack. He would give it to us as prasad—food specially consecrated by a spiritual Master—with his own hand, which always felt like an extra-special blessing.

Guru had absolutely no need for himself. All he wanted was to give joy to us. Even on a simple car trip he always wanted to give something to us, and this was quite moving. 

One moment
With the Master
Is a soulful hope
And a fruitful promise.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, Part 27