I came onto the path through a series of "coincidences." In 1983 a friend suggested I join the meditation group run at the Sri Chinmoy Centre by Sipra Lloyd. The name rang a bell: that semester, Sipra had attended the evening Mandarin classes that I was teaching, though she had dropped out after the fourth week. I decided to give her a call some time, but since I didn't have her phone number, I forgot about the idea. A few months later I dialed a wrong number while trying to telephone a friend. The voice at the other end remarked, "I know your voice; you're Marion, the Chinese teacher, aren't you? It's Sipra here." Soon I was attending the weekly meditations regularly. However, in 1984 I decided to go to China for a year. I got married there and brought my new husband back to Australia. Life was very busy and I didn't find time to go back to the Centre. In 1987 we moved to Brisbane. There I saw a poster for Sri Chinmoy Centre meditation classes stuck to a lamp post and felt a pang. One of these days I would make contact again. Several months later I was walking along a main shopping street when I noticed a stairway going up between two shops. There was something enticing about it, and I decided to find out what was at the top. I found myself in an old arcade, and someway along it was a glass door with familiar posters and a bright blue sign which read "Oneness-Life Press." The Press was owned by Animesh, the head of the Brisbane Centre, and one thing led to another. I had come home again.

Marion (Melbourne)

When Garden of the Soul was first published, I wanted very much to read it—especially because it is a story book—but the end-of-semester pressure at school was so great that I didn't dare. Then came my oral exams. It was March before I returned to Garden of the Soul. The day after my exam I came home and picked up the book with a thrill. I read the first story, about a bird named Krishna. The bird grows tired of its cage and one day plays dead. When the owner opens the door of the cage to find out what has happened, the bird suddenly comes to life and flies—free. The story brought back a flood of memories about the blue and white parakeet my brother had as a child. It was a family pet adored by all, with free run of the house. My brother was home from school in those days, and so he was with the bird all day. He spent hours and hours trying to teach the parakeet to talk. The bird never did learn to talk, and so my brother called it "dumbbird." One day "dumbbird" rode outside of the house perched on the shoulder of a friend. For days little "dumbbird" sat in the tree in our yard. We all begged him to come back inside, but he never did. Like the bird in Garden of the Soul, he flew away. The story struck me so powerfully that I didn't read further that night. The next morning was Saturday. I went to "Runners Are Smilers" and, coming home, I opened the back gate. There on the bird feeder in the middle of the backyard was a lovely blue and white parakeet. I blinked, not believing my eyes, but the bird was real. As if that was not enough, in the afternoon a second parakeet joined the first one—both blue and white. The two were perfect twins and they lived for three days very happily in the backyard. Sulochana worried over their safety and she set out a brass cage with bird seed inside, but they never came into the cage. After three days they disappeared.

Saudamini (New York)

Guru arranges many "coincidences." Years ago I went to Thailand and met a saintly Cambodian monk who asked me to look up an American friend of his back in the United States. Upon my return to the States, I could not find this friend. Two years later, at Thanksgiving dinner at a relative's house, the friend just showed up, halfway across the world! But it doesn't end there. About 15 years later I attended a concert Guru gave in Providence, Rhode Island. Several prominent people had been invited to be honoured by being lifted by Guru. One of the guests turned out to be the Cambodian monk, now in exile, living in Providence as the Supreme Patriarch of Cambodian Buddhists. We had a warm reunion.

Nayak (Seattle)