Sri Chinmoy Stories

I was going to school when I was 15, and I was sick with the flu. So, after a week in the bed, I was fine. But I was still lying in bed. And so, I was reading a book from Albert Camus, “L’Étranger.” And the story is that he has — the hero — has killed somebody by — not really willingly — but he has killed somebody and he will be condemned. He’s condemned to death, and it’s the morning before they execute him.

And so he’s in the prison. He sees out of the window the day dawning. Funny, soon they will come to get him, but he doesn’t feel sad. He feels the joy of the starting new day, the starting new life. He overcomes the fear of death and he identifies with the bird who are singing and the day, the day’s light, and he feels vast and happy. He feels that his own life will go, but life as such will continue. He has so much joy that life is going on.

At the same time, I was listening to a piano concert from a French composer. There is a height in this concert, where the orchestra dies down and leaves only the pianist play with one finger a melody. And it was a victorious melody, and I heard it at the same time, at the very same moment, when I was reading that the hero in this story was feeling vast and joyful that life continues. The melody is going like this: “Da da da da da da da da da.” Really victorious melody.

When I heard this and read this, I started to breathe heavily, like, “hah hah hah hah.” I don’t know what happened, but suddenly I was not any more in the bed, but I was traveling through a tunnel. Very, very far away there was a dot of light. We were traveling very fast through the tunnel towards this dot of light, which slowly, slowly became bigger. We approached, it became very big, and we are just about to reach the light. At that moment, a thought came to me, very powerful: “Maybe you will die when you go out of this tunnel, and maybe you can still stop.” But immediately, a very strong energy came to the fore from inside and said, “No, let’s go!” I was entering into this light out of the tunnel, and the next moment I was floating like on clouds in a vast, wide space. I was conscious; I had never been conscious like this. I felt at home, completely comfortable and well. Everything was light, only white light everywhere.

I don’t know how long I was there, but afterwards, I remembered this of course, and I wanted to go there again. It felt exactly like when, as a disciple, I had a very good meditation. But I was not used to that; I was 15 and I had no idea about meditation. I asked my brother, who was four years older and a very intelligent person. He didn’t know what this was. He just told me, “According to Sartre, this is an existential moment.”

So, every evening when I came back from school, I was lying on my bed and trying to enter this world which I had experienced. And then I could observe something that happened in my brain: there was like a light going from one side to the other, and at some point it met a string from the other side, and then there was a little lightning. When that connection was done, I was able to think new thoughts. And this happened quite a few times, and I was getting a whole new world inside. It seemed to me I could observe how my capacity to be aware and be conscious was expanding.

One evening, I saw a face of a person, of a man, and behind it a group of people, but not clearly. One group was white, and one group was colorful, but I couldn’t see precisely, it was not sharp. Only the face was sharp. This face was very beautiful and also quite young, and it was clear to me this was a yogi, and this was my teacher. I had never read about yogis, I had never heard about yogis, but this was clear to me: this was an Eastern yogi who was here to teach me. And later, when I became disciple, it was clear that I had seen Guru and I had seen the disciples: the boys wearing white and the girls wearing colors. From that time on, when I was entering into this inner world, I could solve problems. So if I had any kind of problem or I wanted to know something, I could just enter it and the next morning I knew the answer.

When I was 15, it was 1962, and it was the time when Guru prepared for his journey to the West. It was Guru who gave me this blessing to make me conscious, and who even revealed himself to me so I could see his face. But there was no disciple in Switzerland in 1962. I think Kailash became disciple somewhere around in the beginning of the seventies. I was going through many life experiences as a young person until I was like 25. I slowly came to the realization that I needed to work on myself. At that time, I came back from the first year in the mountains and was looking for a path, a teacher who could teach me how I could improve myself. It was the fall of ’73, and I was able to see a film about Auroville, and I saw Sri Aurobindo, and in this film I saw for the first time people who were leading a spiritual life, who were meditating regularly.

This was a very striking experience, because I could see in their face there was light and there was something I had never seen in other people. I asked, “Who is Sri Aurobindo?” and I bought the book, “Integral Yoga,” but they said, “Oh, he has left the body many, many years ago, twenty years ago,” and I was so sad! But at the exit of this art museum where the movie was shown, my friend who was a sitar player — a hippie from America who gave me sitar lessons for hosting him in my home — he told me, “Look, this is something similar.” And he pointed at the poster: “Meditation With Music,” and that was exactly what I was finding very interesting, so I went there.

There was a boy who was taking us to a corner where there was a little picture and some candle and a flower, and he sat down and we were sitting in the dark. And he said, “Now let’s meditate.” I had no idea what to do! I was just sitting in the dark on the floor. And then this boy reached over to a tape recorder and pushed the “On” button, and then some guitar music started to play. This was probably the music for meditation. But it was just a person playing acoustic guitar, but because the tape recorder was old, it had a wave in the speed. So it made “aaah aaah aaah.” So, I try to be with this music and get something out of it, and then it was over.

After, the boy said his name was Kailash, and we had the first discussion how to behave when you meet a seeker. He said that you have to remain in your own world and you shouldn’t mix with his world. I objected, I said, “No, you have to go with him and identify with him, and then slowly bring him over to your world.” He had some posters and he wanted to go postering, and I asked him, “What is this for?” and he said, “It’s for the next event.” But of course, this was in ’73; there was no “Meditation” book, there was no meditation classes, we had no idea at that time how to find new disciples. So, I invited him to go postering together because I had a Vespa — a motorbike — and I invited him to sit in the back and he just had to tell me in which places he wanted to put up posters. So we went postering together — I was driving and he was putting the posters in the places he wanted to put one. So this was the story of our first dispute and the story of our first manifestation together. We became brothers, Guru’s children on his Path.

When I was at home, at that time I started to practice Hatha Yoga. So, every morning there was an exercise at the end of an hour-long Hatha Yoga session where I had to go up with my feet and the head was down. And each time I had my feet up, I saw up there a Transcendental! Every morning. I had bought a book when I was in this first meditation with music event, and the book was called “Eastern Light for the Western Mind,” and I read one talk every day. It was like wonderful Light for me.

So now, when I saw the Transcendental, I went back to this place a few times. And then it became clear to me that this was really for me, and I asked how you can become a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. He told me I can give a picture and write a few lines, and I did that, and I gave him this, but I was terribly afraid Guru would not accept me because I was such a beginner, such a nervous, young, critical boy. It was close to Christmas, and Kailash said he can go to see Sri Chinmoy over the festivities days, and when he came back, beginning of January, he told me that now I’m a disciple: Guru had accepted me.

And then something unbelievable started, because in my meditations I started to really experience something after about two, three weeks. I felt inside my heart that Guru was actually there and he tried to bring me in. And then, an incredible development started, where every day I had like a deep, new experience. I was at that time still a ski teacher. So, in February, I had to be one week with some children, and I was supposed to teach them skiing in the Swiss mountains. I was there in a nice wooden house in the mountains. And one night I was waking up — it was maybe 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, pitch black — and I was becoming very conscious; I had never been so conscious. It didn’t stop. I became more and more conscious, and then I saw Guru’s face. And from his third eye, a streak of light came into my heart in a color like yellow, green, something like this. Now I know it’s the color of love. It entered into my heart and made me feel completely at home. It expanded and suddenly I was water; I was a pond of water. And the water was falling down, all a waterfall into the next pond, which was much bigger. Guru’s face had disappeared, but I was the water of this pond, and the next pond was so big, and the whole pond water fell down a big waterfall into a big lake. That water again fell down as a waterfall into the ocean. I was every drop of that ocean, and I was floating as far as the ocean went. There was no limit, there was no… no end of this. It was just water, drop after drop after drop, and every drop was love. It was incredible, the ultimate experience of Truth. My body had long gone. I was expanding and expanding in this love-flow-oneness-ocean-vastness.

Next morning when I woke up, of course this was right away back. I didn’t go skiing with the kids that day. I told them, “You, the older one, should teach them,” and I was staying in front of this wooden house, and I was there sitting meditating all day. And I was just crying the whole day. Tears were running down, I was kind of realizing I had experienced the highest Truth. The Ultimate had come to me in Guru’s blessing, in Guru’s deep, deep love. This was so strong that I felt like my life, my self, I was like an old trunk, an old tree who was growing before not straight, but winding, and it was getting old, and now it was kind of splitting open. This old trunk opened, and from the very depths inside, a new plant, a few leaves grew up straight up, and very beautiful fresh green. And from that day on, whenever I meditated, I had a goal to reach. The meditation was measured inside by the experience I had when Guru gave me his deep love.

Of course, I went back to the mountains as soon as it was possible. When the snow went, I was back in the Swiss mountains, but this time alone. This time 1500 meters high above sea level — it’s quite high — at the end of a valley, alone on a Swiss Alp, in a house made from granite and big tree trunks. Very strong, but no cement in between, so the wind would blow through the stones. I was living there from spring to fall, but late fall. One day, I felt this has to be a day when it’s my first day of God, and I think only of God the whole day, from morning early till late night. I had learned that Guru gave an exercise, japa yoga, where you repeat the name of God. So I repeated the Name of God the entire day, and at the end of the day, when I looked into the fire — because the fire was the only warm that you could get — I was very happy. I was calling it my first day of God.

At that time I was reading every day one lecture from Guru from the book “Eastern Light for the Western Mind,” and I was listening to Guru reciting his poems of “My Flute.” It was no electricity and no water inside this hut, but I was feeling very comfortable. When I heard Guru reciting his poems from “My Flute,” I was deeply immersed in it. In the morning I was getting up when it was still dark and I could see the stars, because I went to bed early, because there was nothing except to see the fire in the evening. I went outside to a source of water, and I washed myself, and then I was like opening, looking at the stars, and made a prayer. And this time I prayed that in my future life I would be able to do what the Supreme wants me to do, and not anymore how I wanted to change the world. Because I was working as a scientist, I was entering into politics, and the only result was that the world has rejected me and I was ending up on the top of a hill. I read from Guru that he said, “Don’t try to change the world, you will sadly fail. Love the world and you will see that the world has been changed, changed forever.” Guru gave me the recipe. He showed me my Self. He showed himself what love is and he was teaching me how to love.

This is the kind of wish I had now, not to do any more what I was thinking, but please, please, make me do what You want. So in the fall of that year, when it was getting more cold and first snow fell, I got a note from Guru, and this note from Guru said, “On my Path, we don’t go to the Himalayan caves. Please come back.” I felt also that the time was coming when I was going down from the mountains back to civilization.

In Zurich, I was back in civilization and it was very strange experience. In the mountains, I had started every day, 5:00 in the evening, to practice japa yoga together with breathing, so I had very, very strong experience from this exercise. Five hundred to twelve hundred and back to five hundred and so on, making a curve, and after about half a year, it became so strong! So, every thought that I had was very loud, and when I was being with people, I thought they could hear my thoughts because they were so loud! But of course they couldn’t hear. I had to get used again to be with people and to be a social being. I had stopped to be interested in anything in the outer world, because everything in my first year of meditation turned inward, and I had really deep inner experiences, but I was not interested in anything in the outer world.

So, now I was back and I was asking Guru to please show me what I should do. And I would not go and work for anything and do something unless I would be sure that this was what Guru wanted. So, nothing happened, my meditation was fine, but there was no kind of indication what I should do. Maybe after six or eight weeks, in the evening meditation there was a very clear, nice woman’s voice: “Tomorrow you will find your job in the newspaper.” After morning meditation I was speeding to the kiosk, bought the newspaper, ran back to my kitchen, opened it, and there it was: my job! And it said, “Advertising and sales manager in an art magazine.” I applied and they immediately accepted me, and now I had the job. I was learning everything about magazine, printing books, publishing, because this was a big printing house. I was going there dressed up in my suit with tie, and always at lunchtime I was — when the others went eating — I was opening a book and faking I was reading, but I was trying to meditate at lunchtime.

In my home time, beside meditation, we were talking about Guru’s manifestation, and at that time, there was the idea that Guru might get the Nobel Prize for literature. How would it be when Guru would get the Nobel Prize for poetry and literature and there are no books which look well? At that time, when we came to New York and bought Guru’s books, Guru’s books were not sellable condition: the books were cut not straight, but a little bit unstraight; some, when you open them, the pages would fall out; there was no back cover with the proper text about the author and there was no picture there; the whole appearance was not professional. And I was in the right place to learn everything about book production and book publishing; I was managing a company like this.

So I started to publish Guru’s books in German. Kailash and myself, we were translating. I was creating what was called at that time, “The Sri Chinmoy Ferlag,” which means “The Sri Chinmoy Publishing House” in German, and I sold them also. I went to the bookstores and sold them, all books that I produced. The first book we made, put together, collected, copied and collated and glued together, all the disciples at that time in the Zurich Centre. With meditation in the beginning, meditation at the end — very handmade books. And then when I was in the bookstores, and I learned what they really wanted and how it should be done, I published the first books, like the “Primer,” the “Meditation” book, and a few others.

In most bookstores, when I came to sell them the spiritual books, they started a section with spiritual books, because this didn’t exist before. And when I came to New York to visit Guru in Celebration, I was always put in a house of American disciples who had something to do with publishing Guru’s books; it invariably happened that way without my doing. So I showed them the books that we did. Of course, I brought always a book or two for Guru, and I showed them this before I gave it to Guru, and how they looked, and they probably learned from this. Slowly the books in English became sellable.

Guru enjoyed a lot that I was publishing his books. I remember one day, after having sold books in Germany, in Austria, in all German speaking towns, we came to Celebration and we made a play about this. Mrittyunjoy played the person who was working in a bookstore, and I came and offered him Guru’s books. The lady — Mrittyunjoy — said, “Oh, this is a sect, we don’t buy anything. Go, go, go!” and she kicked me out of the store. And Guru was laughing and laughing! I explained that each time I’m successful to put one of Guru’s books — even one — into a bookshop, then I felt so nice because this book could be found by a seeker, and from this book, he could find Guru in the outer world.

At some point I was fired from that job because they didn’t have money anymore in this art magazine. In the same day, I found another job also as a manager for selling books, but this time also in an art, but graphic art: the maker of advertising art, and illustration, and photography of the whole world. And I had to sell to the all advertising agencies in the developed world: in English, in Japan — Japanese — in French, in Italian and in German. In this place, I learned everything about advertising, because my previous people who had this job, they left a big library from the very beginning of advertising in America till the present day, and I was reading all this literature in the evening. And I used it for making advertising for selling Guru’s books.

I really was taught everything about selling Guru’s books, because Guru was guiding me. This relationship — which had brought me to ask for Guru’s will, and not to do anything else — this relationship was the pattern that I could grow with Guru. And this pattern continued throughout my life, and Guru always was treating me with this beautiful inner support. So we could continue for hours and days, telling stories from this unfolding relationship of service to Guru. I just want to add you one little thing.

When Guru came to Zurich in June ’74, after giving a lecture at the university, he was in the Japanese Club offering an evening of songs and poetry to the seekers mostly, and a few disciples. After meditation, I had again a supremely deep experience, this time very different. And afterwards, I was so blissed out. I was staying sitting when Guru told people to go and eat; I was still sitting there. When the room was empty, I was sitting there. Guru nodded at me and said I can come closer, and I could ask him three questions. Because I had seen Guru this day for the first time, I had many experiences, and now Guru started the direct outer relationship. I went close to Guru and I wanted to ask my first question, but instead of words, came out a sound out of myself, something like this: “Uunh.” We were all surprised. Guru broke into a smile and he told me, “Now you can ask the other two questions.” Then I asked how much to meditate and these things, and Guru answered.

But later, this experience of course was asking for an answer. What was this? It was like a deep recognition of Guru like my “tsar,” my superior. Guru lifted this secret when I was in New York on the Christmas. One year after I became disciple, I was in New York and I had the chance: Guru invited me to come to his house before I would fly back home to Switzerland. I came into Guru’s house, and Guru stood there and he came to me and gave me a pin with the Golden Boat. And then he said that we have been together many times.

With this, I started to meditate on it and I started to feel, how can it be? Because I feel not like a developed, highly refined soul, I feel like a beginner. I feel like a warrior. I was always marveling how around Guru were highly developed souls who were so refined, so fast in their thinking and feeling. I was no match for that. I was kind of slow in my thinking, I was slow in my feeling, I was not correct in my feelings, I was quite undeveloped. But, I had this “uunh.” And so, I discovered from what Guru said, that I was probably serving Guru when he was Moghul emperor, or something like this, or even before. So this explained many, many puzzles which I otherwise could not explain.

Whenever I was in New York, I saw how difficult it was to be in Guru’s presence, and how many… how many difficult things you have to perform in your inner life and also in your outer life. I was really admiring the local disciples in New York who were able to perform this day after day. For two, three weeks at the time it was okay, and it was very great and inspiring, but I was quite happy that I could go home after this time! Also, I saw that there was a lot of outer communication, and I was not used to this outer communication a lot. I was more listening inside what I should do, how I would do something, it was all inner. And I was actually quite happy that the Supreme made me having an incarnation in Switzerland, and I was able to go for Celebration a few times, but otherwise, work, and develop, and live in Switzerland.

So you can see from my story that Guru really has full mastery and full harmony for caring for his disciples, for his children. He purely put everyone in the right place, and he knows the souls who come to him later and start spiritual life with him. But he has put them in the right place on the planet, so that they would be able to blossom in the environment and in the circumstances which would fit them. Because we are really in the beginning; most of us are, like me, small, small seeds, which grow a little bit, become a little plant, and then slowly grow into plants, and in the future, tree.

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