Going to India
After a year or so, Guru told us that it was time to move my yoga centre because we now needed a more spiritual home for our yoga classes. He told us to find an appropriate place and he would make sure that it was suitable. He was about to leave on his first trip back to India since his arrival in America.
Around this time, my husband’s teaching job allowed us the opportunity to plan a trip to India too. Guru specified that we must begin our travels on January 25th to guarantee a safe trip for my husband. That meant we would have to leave on our trip before Guru’s return.
A prelude to my trip
When I was ten years old, my mother took me to see Uday Shankar and his Hindu Ballet (everything Indian was called ‘Hindu’ in those days). An aside: Uday Shankar’s younger brother, Ravi, was playing in the company’s orchestra. I am sure that I still have the programme from that concert tucked away somewhere.
The following day I went out to Woolworth’s Five and Ten Cent Store, where I found some little silver jingle-bells. I strung them on shoelaces and tied them around my ankles, then jingle-jangled around the house, rippling my arms and moving my head from side to side. I was completely captivated by my new exposure to Indian dancing. That was when I changed my childhood ambition from being a bakery lady (so that I could eat all the cake and cookies that I was never permitted) to being a ‘Hindu’ dancer.
That goal was fulfilled while I was a dance major at Bennington College. During World War II, to save on the cold Vermont winter fuel costs, the college closed for three months in the winter and gave us a shorter summer break. Most of the students used this three-month break to work or study in their field of interest.
While taking classes at The New Dance Group Studio in Manhattan, I used to go out for an ice cream soda after class with a new friend. One day she said she would skip the refreshments because she was going to a Hindu dance class. She was going where?! "I’ll go with you!" I cried. She could not have shaken me off if she had tried.
I watched the lesson, in the big, dark, exotic Caravan Hall, which Bhupesh Guha had leased with his partner, Sushila, for the time they were to be in New York. It was large enough and oriental enough to make a perfect place for performances, as well as for their living quarters.
Afterwards, the Indian dancer offered to teach me Indian dancing if I would agree to learn to play the drums for his performances. He might as well have said, "If you will eat this big piece of chocolate cake, I promise to give you an ice cream sundae." I still have no inkling as to why Bhupesh Guha thought I would be able to become a drummer in the one month that remained before his first US performance, as I had never touched a drum before.
Actually, the drumming, along with the dancing, came to me naturally, and for the three months of my winter field period I danced and drummed in heaven, rehearsing all day, every day and dancing as well as drumming in his concerts. I had about three hours of mostly private instruction in dance every morning, or occasionally with other members of a small group, if a performance was coming up. After my lesson I would follow my teacher up a ladder into a small loft in the Caravan Hall. The walls of the loft were hung with Indian instruments and tapestries. A fascinating variety of drums stood on the floor. We would have lunch and then after that there were a couple of hours of one-on-one instruction on drums. One memorable performance of Bhupesh Guha and Sushila, along with their small group, was in a variety programme which included Zero Mostel. I was thrilled to be in the same programme with him.
My trip to India
When I met Guru, although I was already teaching yoga and had been meditating on my own for some time, I knew nothing much about India except that I was eager to go there. My husband’s sabbatical leave presented the golden opportunity.
I asked Guru which fabulous places I should visit, never realising that, since he had spent most of his life in the ashram, his acquaintance with interesting itineraries was not much greater than mine. The Taj Mahal was already on my sparse list. Guru did suggest that I try to see Anandamayi Ma, a realised soul who lived in Benares (Varanasi). Visiting her proved to be the highlight of my Indian adventure.
I had been a disciple of Sri Chinmoy for one-and-a-half years when I left for India. I am not sure that Calcutta is very different now than it was in 1969, except for the addition of lots of cars and trams and tourists. The city was kept clean then by the thin, bony, always hungry sacred cows who wandered the streets freely, eating anything they could find, including discarded paper. I quickly learned to keep a keen eye on their whereabouts after a bovine head appeared over my shoulder and grabbed a hard-to-come-by piece of melon out of my hand one day.
The locals scooped up whatever cow flop they could find and plastered it against the walls of the buildings to dry. Later the patties were used as cooking fuel, over little fires they built on the sidewalk.After our arrival in Calcutta, we headed for a travel bureau to decide which sites we would visit while in India. The woman we spoke to there was extremely friendly and helpful, especially when she learned that we were mainly interested in visiting spiritual sites. She did not mention Anandamayi Ma, so I expressed my intention of going to Benares to see her. To my surprise the travel agent quickly told us that it was no accident that we had come into this particular travel bureau. Here we had unknowingly stumbled upon one of Anandamayi Ma’s most intimate friends, who had also been her secretary for many years.
The woman smiled and said, "Anandamayi Ma is not in Benares now and her staff there are instructed to say nothing to anyone about her whereabouts. I am probably the only person in India who can tell you where to find her. She has gone to Poona for the season. I will give you the address of her head-quarters in Bombay." What an auspicious beginning to our journey!
We first went by train down to Madras, sharing space with all manner of strange baggage, including crates of chickens. The train had no windows—or, rather, it had huge windows with no glass in them. The hot sand blew in and covered everything. We coughed for days afterward. At each stop, people sold bhajia, buffalo milk and other food, passing it in through the windows. The ever-present beggars also reached their hands through at every stop.
Near Madras, we visited the wondrous natural rock temples that seemed to grow right out of the ocean along the shoreline. The water had washed away the ground around them. I have not been able to find any information about these rock temples. I am afraid the water may have covered them completely by now, since they were not very tall. Unfortunately I was not yet a photographer in those days, so I have no pictures.Of course, we went to see the magnificent Taj Mahal and we took a trip in a shaky little plane that had all the passengers praying to their various deities. Guru had guaranteed our safe journey, so we sat there thinking, "Stop worrying. This flight is blessed!"
Nobody I met in India seemed to know Hatha Yoga or meditation. Indians were constantly asking me to teach them. One woman, who had a Guru but said she couldn’t meditate, followed Guru’s basic instructions that I had offered her. The next day she thanked me profusely for the best meditation she had ever had.
After the Taj Mahal, we went to a lot of places, including the Ramana Maharshi Ashram, which was a wonderful place to meditate despite temperatures of 114 degrees Fahrenheit; Rishikesh, the famous place of pilgrimage, which is one of the many sources of the Ganges; and a long bus-ride across a huge desert.
When we finally got to Bombay, it took some searching to locate Anandamayi Ma, but we were lucky. It turned out that she was at the headquarters that day, and we found her on a long porch, reclining on a sofa, surrounded by devotees.
Anandamayi Ma was an elderly woman who looked remarkably like my grandmother. Her heavily oiled brown hair, with a few gray highlights, hung loosely. Like all her women disciples, she wore a white cotton sari. After this Darshan, I was able to arrange for an interview with her. Anandamayi Ma spoke no English, so a slender gray-haired disciple was assigned as my interpreter.
While I was waiting patiently for the interview, I noticed that my translator was getting very fidgety as the time passed. She finally told me that she kept a daily vow of silence from noon until 1:00 p.m. and now it was getting uncomfortably close to noon—so close, in fact, that when we went in, Anandamayi Ma gave her disciple dispensation to miss her silence hour that day.
Anandamayi Ma welcomed me with a warm smile, asking me a few questions. When I told her that I was teaching yoga, she said it was not a good thing for a seeker to be doing. I did not answer, as I did not want to be disrespectful, but thought to myself, "I know, but my Guru has told me that he wants me to teach; otherwise I would not be doing it."
After a brief silence, she smiled again and, obviously reading my mind, said, "Of course, if your Guru has told you to teach, then it is quite all right." At one point, she said that she saw my Guru standing right behind me. When I asked her to describe him, I could tell that she had seen my Guru.
A few times Anandamayi Ma spoke to me at considerable length, but a brief summary is all I received from her translator. Dispensation or no, the disciple was too eager to get on with her silence hour.
I only recently learned that Guru and Anandamayi Ma had enjoyed inner conversations while walking back and forth past each other on the beach. (Maybe at the Ashram?) In view of my interpreter’s eagerness to end this interview, there was, unfortunately, little further conversation with Anandamayi Ma. I was simply grateful for having had the good fortune to meet with her at all.
Early stories
Selfless Service at Guru's house
One early summer day in 1970 Guru announced that he was starting a selfless service project in the Centre. Those who were taking part would meet at Guru’s house in Jamaica every Saturday at 10 AM, bringing whatever equipment was needed for their own particular project. Most of these were light craft projects of one sort or another: candle-making, clay modeling, macrame, leather burning (me), painting, collage, etc. At the end of the summer we would have a small crafts fair.
We worked on the porch and in the living room and, since indoor space was limited, some were in the backyard. This was part of our spiritual sadhana, another opportunity for us to meditate and make progress in Guru’s presence.
Toward the end of summer some people began another project: bringing Guru’s first book, a volume of inspiring aphorisms called Meditations: Food for the Soul, to various bookstores.
On our last Saturday, in the beginning of October, the sky was overcast and by afternoon it became quite threatening. Once the sky had turned quite dark, a disciple came in and asked Guru if those who were working in the backyard should come in, since it seemed that it was surely about to rain. Guru asked if there was space for a few more in the living room. As some of the regular crew had gone out with the book, there was room, so Guru said, "Tell them to come in." As soon as the last person had gathered his stuff and come through the door, the downpour struck.
It was then that it occurred to me that we had had this crafts project at the Centre every Saturday for a whole summer without one single drop of rain. No coincidence, I am quite certain!
The first Sports Day, Alley Pond Park
Our very first annual sports day, in 1970, was a low-key, casual event in a lovely park setting, with a makeshift track along a path through the woods. The whole day was a lot of fun. It was a humble beginning of something that grew into a more elaborate annual event and continued for many years.The sky was overcast as we were walking across the grass in Alley Pond Park and it started to sprinkle lightly. A disciple told Guru that it looked like rain.
Guru looked up at the sky and said, "Do not worry! In fifteen minutes the sun will come out!"
It did. In fifteen minutes!
My first life-saving experience
One day I was driving from my house down a long hill on Eastchester Road when my brakes failed—totally. The light at the bottom was red and Eastchester Road ended at the bottom of the hill. So I had three unattractive options: turn right and hope that no car would come from the left, turn left across traffic that might be coming from both directions, or go straight through the red light and both lanes of traffic as quickly as possible, into the free driveway across the road from the intersection.
I was rapidly approaching my "moment of truth," so I inwardly chanted a spontaneous, "Guru, save me!"
He made the choice. I coasted into a right turn, pulling on the hand-brake with all my strength. No car came through. "Thank you, Guru!"
The Puerto Rico Centre, and Guru's dream
In the old days, Gurudev was invited to give a lecture at the University in Puerto Rico.After returning to New York, he received a letter from a lady in Puerto Rico who had missed his lecture and was eager to come and meet him. He concentrated on her and saw that she was to be the head of a new Centre in Puerto Rico, his first.
He called her and said that she didn’t have to come to New York; he would go down there to see her. That is how he first met Sudha, who devotedly led the Puerto Rico Centre for many years.
The disciples meditated in Puerto Rico on Thursday evenings, always at the same hour that we were meditating in New York. Sudha’s inner connection with Guru was so strong that the Puerto Rican members said that they saw Guru’s face in hers.
I went down to Puerto Rico to spend a few days with Sudha. We had many long, inspiring conversations about our experiences with Guru.
One day we were talking about repetitive dreams and what they meant. Sudha told me about a dream that she had had over and over again in the past. In the dream she received a message that there was an important package waiting for her at the post office, but when she eagerly went to get it, the package was never there. Now she was no longer having that dream, but still wondered what it meant and why it had stopped occurring."You have already received the package." I said. "The package came from New York, didn’t it? So you received it. The package was Sri Chinmoy!"
Guru saves my life
During a bicycle marathon we did in Central Park in the 1970s, I had an accident—I was thrown from the bicycle, and my shoulder hit a lamppost. My shoulder was pretty smashed up, and I had surgery which they botched. They had me exercise too soon afterwards, the reconstruction work all fell apart, and they said I needed surgery again.
This time, when they brought me into the recovery room, the doctor said, "Make a fist." I couldn’t move, and I discovered that I was paralysed. Nothing would move! I was conscious for four hours, in agony, while they kept coming over every 15 minutes to look at me and say, "She’s still out."
They put me on a ventilator since, because I was paralysed, my lungs weren’t working. At one point, all of a sudden, the ventilator stopped, and I started to suffocate. I couldn’t say anything or do anything, but inwardly I screamed, "Guru!"—and they got the ventilator going. About an hour later, the same thing happened again, and again I inwardly screamed, "Guru!"—and they got the ventilator going again. Finally, after about four hours (I heard somebody talking about the time), I came out of the paralysis.
At that point, the pain was so excruciating, and I saw no end in sight. I decided that this was my chance to discover that I really knew that I would come back again—I would leave the body. I concentrated on going, and everything turned grey, and I started to float down a long tunnel. The pain started to recede, and I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.
Then the respirator stopped again, and that’s when I would have died. It suddenly occurred to me, "If I go now, it’s going to go on the record: ‘She never came out of the anaesthetic.’ I’m not going to let them get away with that." I screamed, "Guru!"—and he got the respirator going again, for the third time. Then I started fighting—it took another half-hour before I was able to move my eyes. They saw my eyelids fluttering and knew I was no longer under the anaesthetic, and it was another hour before they finally took the respirator out of my throat.
And here I am, more than 30 years later. I could tell other stories, but that’s the most dramatic one, I think. Guru has saved my life many times.
Sri Chinmoy told the following story about Sarama, who was in the hospital at the time recovering from the cycling accident.
This time I meditated only on compassion, bringing down compassion. Here quite a few disciples—about twenty—have received abundant compassion. Somebody has received the most, although she is not here physically, and that is Sarama.
At one point I was looking just at the front of the room, where the disciples are not supposed to sit, and Sarama’s soul was there. I said to Sarama, "What are you doing? Why are you sitting in the ‘forbidden area’?" In a joking manner I said it.
She said, "I am not the body; I am the soul."
I said to her, "Where is the difference, good girl, between the body and the soul? For me there is no difference between the body and the soul, the substance and the essence."
Sometimes when I see the body, inside the body I immediately see the soul’s entire divinity; and sometimes when I see the soul, I see inside the soul the qualities and capacities of the body. There is no difference between the body and the soul.
This was Sarama’s message: "I have come here to swim in the heart-sea of your compassion."I said, "Swim as long as you want to; swim to your heart’s content. I will let you swim inside the heart-sea of my compassion."
This was Sarama’s soul. Nineteen other disciples have received compassion in profuse measure, but her soul has definitely received more than anybody else. When we meditate, the soul of somebody who is not physically present can come and receive. It happens; it has happened many, many times. I am very grateful and very proud of Sarama’s achievement.
Compassion, compassion! It is the divine compassion that keeps us in this boat, in the Boat of the Supreme. The moment the Supreme takes away His Compassion, we are worse than useless. In every way we become the worst possible failures. But when the Supreme’s Compassion works in and through us and we receive it devotedly and cheerfully, then the mightiest power enters into us. Adamantine will enters into us when the Supreme’s Compassion we receive and utilise for the Supreme.
Of all the Powers the Supreme has, His Compassion-Power is the most powerful Power. It is the miracle of miracles. No other miracle-power is as powerful as the Supreme’s Compassion-Power. When we receive the Supreme’s Compassion-Power and value it, then everything in us can be illumined, no matter how long it has remained in darkness within us.
Always we should pray to the Supreme–all of us–for His Compassion, more than anything else. His Compassion is everything to us. Once we lose His Compassion, we have nothing, we are nothing, we will remain nothing. But once we feel His Compassion and utilise it in a divine way, we have everything and we become everything.
Let us always pray to the Supreme for His unconditional Compassion. Let us pray to Him to inundate us with His unconditional Compassion. Let us pray for His Compassion and let us receive His Compassion. If we soulfully pray, then definitely He will grant it. And if we receive it and utilise it properly, then not only do we get something divine, supreme and immortal, but we do become that divine, supreme and immortal reality.
Always we should value the Supreme’s Compassion more than anything else. Everything He has, He is and He gives us, for He is all unconditional Heart; but if we can receive His Compassion, then everything we have.
The first yoga studio, and teaching meditation
The first locale of Yoga of Westchester was at our home on Eastchester Road, just a couple of blocks from New Rochelle High School, where my husband taught and my children attended school. After I had been teaching yoga for about a year, I began to hold a short meditation at the end of each class. I was happy to find that a few students wanted to stay and learn to meditate, so I covered a little table with an Indian cloth, set it with a flower, a candle and an incense holder and asked them to sit quietly with crossed legs. I suggested that they concentrate on the flame or the flower.
When the meditation was over, if anyone asked a question, I confessed that I knew very little and just gave a few tips that I had picked up from various readings. Something had kept pulling me to the Aum Centre (Guru, of course), and I did feel good at the end of each meditation, but when any of my students asked me a question I would still say, "I don’t really know much about that."
The interesting thing was that when I started coming to the AUM Centre in Manhattan and it came out that I was teaching yoga, people I was talking with would tell me, “Oh, Guru doesn’t want his students teaching yoga." I thought to myself, “Gee, he’s never said anything to me." Finally I thought, “Well, I’m going to ask him because if he doesn’t want me to teach, I won’t teach." I finally asked Guru one day, and he said, “No, no, I want you to teach more."
Then I realised what the problem was. A couple of my yoga teacher friends came to the Centre and he asked them not to teach. They wouldn’t stop, and they left the Centre. I guess he felt that in most cases teaching yoga is not compatible with the spiritual life, because you become the “Guru." In my case, I never thought of myself as a Guru; I thought of myself as a yoga teacher. And then of course when I met Guru, that was my first allegiance. As I said, if he had told me to stop teaching, I would have stopped. 1
After a while, there was a new development. One day as I was answering a question, a torrent of yoga philosophy began to flow from my lips. I found myself pouring out a wealth of information, saying things that I had not thought of or known myself, and had never come across before. I asked myself, "What am I saying? Where is this coming from? Is it right?"
After the Aum Centre meditations I would tell Guru, "Someone asked me (such and such) and I told them (this and that), but I don’t know where it came from. Was it correct?"Guru said, "Yes, yes, absolutely correct."
After a few weeks of this, he finally told me, "You do not have to ask any more. It is all correct." I then realised that I had become a channel for this information, which was really coming directly from Guru himself, and as I spoke I was learning Guru’s philosophy right along with my students.
As the classes expanded, we moved the location of our meditation to the farther end of the room. An extra benefit of the change was that it clearly showed the positive power of group meditation. All agreed that the meditations at first were not as strong in the new location, but we could feel the spiritual force building again and growing stronger every week.
A story by Rijuta: The first time I met Sarama, I also met Guru. It was the summer of 1968. Sarama, a dynamic and attractive woman in her early 40s; her husband, Aditya; and Guru came up to Canton, Connecticut, a few miles from where I lived at the time, to the home of a woman who had a yoga centre. I frequently took yoga classes there and heard from a friend of mine that a spiritual man had given a talk and answered questions the previous evening. I agreed to go to a similar session the following evening.
When I heard the name ‘Chinmoy’, it sounded Chinese to me but I didn’t think he looked very Chinese. He seemed quite unusual: he answered questions so truthfully and without hesitation, seeming to immediately pierce through to the inner core of my being.
At the time, I didn’t know anything about spiritual Masters and wasn’t consciously looking for one. Although my curiosity was piqued, I did not even think about the possibility of becoming a disciple, nor was such a thing mentioned.
After Sri Chinmoy gave a short talk and questions were answered, Sarama and her husband engaged me in conversation for quite some time. During our discussion, they told me that Sri Chinmoy had sent a ghost that had been bothering the homeowner for quite some time out into the trees. This news was my first introduction to what a spiritual Master was and the kinds of things he could do. Of course they told me many other important things, but this information was quite striking.
I did not realise until many, many months later that this evening would be so significant: the first time I saw my spiritual Master.
- 1. This story is excerpted from an interview with Sarama conducted by Sukantika in 2009, as part of an oral history project.
Sarama - my spiritual name
The Centre was small in the early days. It included Madhuri, Radha, Dulal, the owner of the building and half a dozen other men and women, plus Tanima’s mother, who was soon followed by Tanima herself. No one was referred to as a disciple. I am not even sure that the word was ever heard at the Aum Centre. I was not concerned about being a disciple myself, because with my lack of religious background, I didn’t really know what it meant, aside from the 12 disciples of Jesus.
At some point later on, one girl asked me how she would know if she were a disciple or not. The best I could tell her was, "If you feel that you are a disciple, you probably are."
Apparently I was not the only one who didn’t understand the whole thing. I overheard Guru offer one girl a spiritual name. Her reply: "Thank you, but I like Elizabeth well enough."
A few months later my husband said to me, "Why don’t you ask Guru for a spiritual name? I know you would like one." My answer was, "I’m sure that if I deserved one Guru would give it to me."His reply: "I’m going to ask for you." And so he did!
Guru’s response was, "I have had her name ready for three months. I was just waiting for her to ask."Yes, things were quite different in those early days! At any rate, Guru said we would both receive our names the following week, and that I should wear an orange blouse. We were not permitted to wear saris. I had always loved the color orange but it was not a trendy color at that time, so I had no orange blouse. Guru’s second choice was pink, which I borrowed from my daughter.
At that time there were no Centre photographers or stenographers to take notes as Guru spoke about the new name he was offering. The first thing he did was to spell out and pronounce the name slowly. He asked me to repeat it, and the words that followed thrilled me. I wanted them to be etched in my memory forever, so at the very first opportunity I wrote them down:
"Sarama, the Goddess of Intuition, Illumination and Realisation. Sarama is the Divine Dog, the Dog of the Supreme, symbolizing loyalty and devotion. I shall expect you to work very hard and realise God in this lifetime."
Well, I have certainly not worked as hard as I should have or nearly as hard as Guru hoped I would. One proof is that I am only now getting around to writing my story, as he requested of me years before his Mahasamadhi. If those words did not play out in my real life as they should have, I can always call them up for inspiration when needed.
As for my husband - long gone - his very inspiring name has been recycled.
The power of Japa
The holiday season was approaching when Dulal told us that Guru would be going to Puerto Rico for Christmas and he would spend a whole month there. Thursday meditation at the Aum Centre would continue as usual, led by Dulal. Following a lifetime devoid of even a smidgen of spirituality, I still was not quite sure why I was attending these meditations, so I decided to meditate at home while Guru was away.
Guru had a monthly publication called Aum Magazine. In one issue1 he gave a very interesting programme for doing japa which he said could significantly improve the quality of our meditation. This involved chanting Aum five hundred times the first day, six hundred times the second day, and so on up to twelve hundred times, then starting down, decreasing by one hundred each day until you arrive back at five hundred.
Please continue this exercise, week by week, just for a month. Whether you want to change your name or not, the world will change your name. It will give you a new name. It will call you by the name Purity. Your inner ear will make you hear it. It will surpass your fondest imagination.
Sri Chinmoy
This was a two-week sequence, so I would be able to go through the whole sequence twice before Guru returned. I started this chanting programme on my birthday and was eager to see if it would really improve my meditation. I used japa beads and kept count of the rounds with ten marbles, transferred one at a time from one little dish to another at the end of each time around the string of beads. At the two-week halfway point I had gone all the way up and all the way down without noticing any change, but I was determined to continue until Guru returned and give it the full opportunity to work.
I finally got a call from Dulal saying that Guru was back. I climbed the four flights of stairs and approached the half-open door to the Aum Centre as usual, but when I tried to enter, I was stopped by a powerful surge of energy pouring out, so strong that I could barely push my way through the doorway. As soon as I sat down, a wave of meditation enveloped me. I didn’t have to do a thing. Now I knew why I was still coming, and that the thousands of Aums that I had chanted had done their job unbelievably well.
As a matter of fact, the results were so spectacular that I decided I would continue repeating the Aum pattern until my NEXT birthday, 11 months away. I can hardly believe that I had enough determination to do it, but I did so, for a total of 13 months.
Very worthwhile. Try this faithfully, for one month. I am sure that you will be pleased with the results!
In New York, some of my disciples have done this exercise and are still doing it. They have achieved, I must say, considerable purification of their nature and of their emotional problems.
Sri Chinmoy
Referring to this exercise
- 1. The role of purity in the spiritual life, a talk given by Sri Chinmoy on 18 June 1966. It appears in AUM Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 7,8
Finding my way
My First Interview
The next Thursday’s dance class was canceled, so I didn’t go into the city for the meditation. The following Thursday, Guru was kind enough to give me the interview anyway.
I listened eagerly as he told me many things about myself and my past lives. He told me that I am a very old Egyptian soul, which explains the great fascination I always had for Egyptian mummies, hieroglyphics, art and artifacts. He also told me that I had been a devadasi, a Hindu temple dancer, in several incarnations. This was another boost to my acceptance of reincarnation, as I had loved dancing from my earliest childhood.
The third thing Guru told me was that my father had been an herbalist and that I had inherited an interest in herbs. In fact, I had always grown my own salad herbs—dill, basil and chives—in the backyard, as well as parsley, which usually was devoured by a voracious caterpillar resident. Some years earlier, I had a recurring dream in which I went into my backyard to a tiny garden plot, about 2' x 4', overgrown with weeds. I would rummage around and pick something, thinking: "I should really take care of this weed-paradise. What kind of garden would be so tiny? An herb garden!" They say that once you have arrived at the meaning of a repeating dream, you will stop having it. And I never had that dream again.
The fourth thing I learned was that my deity was Ganesh (me? an atheist? I have a deity?). I should sleep with my head to the north and should arrange my meditation so that I face south, because that’s where Ganesh is. Of course I had no idea who Ganesh was. When I discovered that he was the Elephant God I had often seen in Indian pictures, I was reminded of my childhood love of elephants. I lived across the street from Bronx Park, and on my frequent walks to the Bronx Zoo, I would head straight for the elephant house to feed them peanuts and stroke their trunks before going on to be entertained by the monkeys and the sea lions.
When Mom took me to the circus at Madison Square Garden, there was always a sideshow in the basement. This was in the hoary past when they still brought in oddities, such as the tallest man in the world (8 feet, his finger rings sold as napkin rings!), a sword swallower, a bearded lady and elephants. They actually brought a couple of elephants into the sideshow. Of course, there I was, as always, peanuts in hand and blissfully unaware of any animal cruelty issues in circuses.
Of the thousands of songs Guru wrote over the following years, there were many, many bhajans, or musical prayers. Guru formed a group of bhajan singers who still perform these hundreds of devotional songs. He wrote five short Ganesh bhajans, which I quickly adopted and have sung ever since during my morning meditation.
First Lecture at the Aum Centre
Dulal told me that Guru also gave Sunday afternoon lectures which I could attend. I should explain again that I was raised in a household devoid of any religion. All my relatives were also atheists, as were my friends. They didn’t smoke, they didn’t drink, they didn’t steal, but they were from old Russia, and I believe they unquestioningly accepted the doctrine that "religion is the opiate of the masses." I don’t recall ever having heard a word against any religion from anyone in our extended family. Religion simply didn’t exist in our lives, in our experience or in our consciousness. The subject never even came up. Back then I didn’t think that anyone really and truly believed in God or Jesus. I heard those names only occasionally, mostly as an expletive when my uncle hit his thumb with a hammer.
Now I was seated at Guru’s lecture, listening to him talk about God and more God and oh, still more God. I am sure Guru forgave my ignorance, but that was the last Sunday lecture I attended for some time.
Yoga of Westchester
I faithfully continued to attend the Thursday evening meetings, although I still wasn’t quite sure why I was going. As a young adult I had read books about Edgar Cayce, a series of volumes on yoga philosophy by Yogi Ramacharaka, and that wonderful classic, Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda. My fascination with yoga, vegetarianism and spirituality was growing rapidly. However, even though I had been meditating at home for over a year and had picked up a few techniques from books, I was aware that I didn’t quite know what I was doing.
I was introduced to a vegetarian diet when we visited a yoga ashram in Canada. Vegetarianism easily became a part of my life, along with the yogic principle of selfless service. I did my service in the camp garden. The evening meditations at the yoga camp were typically restless and fidgety, with interruptions from coughing. The audience included many people who had just come there for a much-needed relaxing vacation in the country. I had my guitar with me, and the music for one of Guru’s songs. I teamed up with a flutist and together we eagerly learned this lovely song.
One day, the Swami of the ashram invited us to sit on the stage with him and play at the end of the meditation. We played and sang, and Guru’s music brought down so much peace that the coughing and fidgeting vanished. Swami’s normally heavy breathing became inaudible and he continued the meditation far longer than usual.
After this two-week Yoga vacation, my fate was sealed. On our return home, Yoga of Westchester was born.
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