The Path to Happiness

Sahatvam Selbach, a student of Sri Chinmoy’s since 1984, talks about his journey towards a happier life.

Sahatvam with the World Harmony Run team in Turkey, July 2007

I think we all have – in a more or less conscious way – the goal to be happy. Admittedly, happiness might mean something different to each of us if we have to define it. That is alright, since we are individuals. On the road to our own personal happiness, we walk along completely different paths that can be rather adventurous, surprising and wondrous, and add excitement and diversity to our lives. Often, these paths have several tracks that we can walk on simultaneously.

In my school years, fom 11th grade on, I started developing an interest in spirituality. Since I was raised as a Catholic, I was looking for contacts in the Christian world. With the nice chaplain of our parish, we formed a small group that organized services, lectures, spiritual group travels and more. The mystic aspect and the message put into practice always inspired me most. During my studies I kept loose contact with this group, but slowly my studies became more and more important in my life.

At an international meeting in Germany, I met my future wife. She was studying architecture in Ankara, Turkey, at the time. Two years later, she finished her studies, moved to Germany and we got married. A “fresh breeze“ from a very different culture came into my life. Both of us needed a lot of tolerance and great openness. This was important for me and helped me later to accept things that would have been inconceivable then. I was still deeply rooted in my Christian world, whereas my wife was more progressive. She showed vivid interest in other religions, in healthy nutrition and many esoteric topics, and slowly I started to also be interested. We went to lectures by different groups and read extensively about reincarnation, spiritual Masters and other topics. My main interest was somewhere else though.

In the early 1980s, my life was mainly focussed on the question of how to find a job after passing my exam for the teaching profession. It turned out to be extremely difficult, since there were not enough vacancies either in public or in private schools. Only part-time jobs were available, but I couldn’t imagine myself doing that for a long time. I started to despair. All the doors seemed shut, and nothing was moving on my ’main track’.

One day, I saw a poster in the city advertising a lecture series on meditation. I said to my wife: “Wouldn’t that be something for you?“ We ended up going together to this lecture, given by a young woman (Vasanti) from the Heidelberg Sri Chinmoy Centre. She had simplicity and clarity, and was not imposing anything at all. We went on two evenings, but the third class fell on the same date as a lecture given by someone we had known for a long time. Thus we lost contact with the Sri Chinmoy Centre.

And now the marvellous part of the story starts. In October 1983, we visited the Frankfurt Book Fair to try to find the booth of the lecturer for whose talk we had dropped the Sri Chinmoy Centre classes. The fair was big, but we had plenty of time. Well, we did not find the booth we were looking for, but we discovered another one – the Sri Chinmoy Centre booth. We were surprised of course. What a coincidence! Coincidence? A conversation ensued – with the same young woman whose meditation classes we had attended. We felt a bit embarrassed because we had stopped going, but since we had planned to buy some spiritual books anyway, we bought a brochure about Sri Chinmoy’s path along with a recording of his flute music. “Thank you,“ “All the best,“ “Good-bye.“

Several months passed. During the day I applied at schools; at night I worked as a porter in a hotel. In addition, we went to different spiritual groups. We liked Sri Chinmoy’s flute music a lot. The brochure was very interesting and contained excerpts from Sri Chinmoy’s writings. Many things I read made a deep impression on me. I felt depth and unconditional surrender that I had never found elsewhere. The spiritual longing of my early years was directed towards the richness and authenticity of living spirituality, manifested in the form of a living spiritual Master.

From the brochure, we cut out and framed a photo of Sri Chinmoy in a very high consciousness. Thus he slowly became a member of our family. From time to time we listened to his flute music. Nevertheless, we were still looking for the one and only, the right path – the path to happiness. What did happiness mean to me back then? I needed a job. Not just any job but the one I had passed two federal exams for – quite an investment! And I was looking for some-one whom I could entrust with my life, my dreams and my goals. Someone who might know better what is good for me. High expectations!

I read about creative imagination and more about different Masters. I was looking for a breakthrough. I wanted my life to be in the hands of someone who would be able to show me the right path and to guide me. Very slowly I became more and more convinced that Sri Chinmoy could be that person. Again and again I read from his writings. The simplicity and depth of his words impressed me. I felt that he radiated the sincerity of living spirituality.

During these months we had no contact with the Heidelberg Sri Chinmoy Centre – only with other groups. Nevertheless, something had grown in silence within me – something that was stronger than everything else. In January 1984 I called the contact number in the brochure and asked how I could become Sri Chinmoy’s disciple. Back then it was the custom to write a personal letter to Sri Chinmoy, which I did on my birthday. I still have a copy of that letter. The letter described my personal situation, my inner and outer needs and why I wanted to join this path.

I anxiously waited for several weeks, since Sri Chinmoy was away on travel and did not receive my letter right away. Finally, on February 21st, a disciple of Sri Chinmoy called me to confirm that my wife and I had been accepted. Great joy and high expectations. Many unasked questions about what to do next. Life went on – often different from what I had expected – but always for my best, for my happiness. And that was exactly what I had hoped for.

I did not obtain a post as a teacher back then, but today, 24 years later, I accepted this challenge. But this is a totally different story, and many other things happened in between. February 21st is a day that I celebrate every year just as I celebrate my birthday, because on this day I started a completely new life on a new track.

Gunasagara’s journey

An account by Gunasagara Buch, a student of Sri Chinmoy’s for 25 years, of how she joined Sri Chinmoy’s path.

As soon as I learned how to read, I became a fervent reader. I read all the books I could get from my parents and later from the library. I often read books not only for children but also for adults. Three to four books in one week were not too much for me. When my parents gave me pocket money, I saved it to buy books. My grand-mother gave me a Bible on the day of my confirmation, and I read this grand book from cover to cover!

I used to walk past the only bookstore in my little home town to see the new books on display in the window. One day – I was fourteen or fifteen years old – I discovered a book there called the Bhagavad Gita. It was quite expensive, and I did not know what it was about, but nevertheless it attracted me tremendously. In the following weeks, I often looked at it and finally bought it. Naturally, I read it immediately. That is, I tried to read it, but I did not understand anything in the book! So after a while, I stopped reading it.

When I was seventeen or eighteen, I began to do Hatha Yoga. I bought a book and did the exercises quite regularly. However, my goal was not fitness of the body; I wanted to learn how to read the minds of my teachers to know what questions would appear in my exams! Unfortunately or for-tunately, I did not develop this skill, so my school marks were not as good as they perhaps might have been.

During my studies, I had many new things to do and to think about – especially how to become really happy. But the things I tried did not work at all, and this continued when I started working. So I began looking around for an alternative life. Because I was fond of the Buddha and had loved Japan since my early childhood, I tried Zen Buddhism. I read books and attended a weekend session with a Japanese Zen Master. But to sit in the lotus position for hours hurt 66 my knees, creating severe pain that lasted for weeks. I made another effort and went to a Zen weekend retreat. But on the second day, on my way to the session, I had an accident with my car and could not attend. After this event, I concluded that Zen Buddhism was not meant for me.

My next attempt was Tibetan Buddhism. Again I read books and went to several pujas in a nearby Tibetan monastery. During this time, I saw for the first time a poster of Guru in Cologne. Being in a high consciousness, he looked very strange in the photo. I said to myself that I never, never wanted to be a disciple of this man!

I was not so happy with Tibetan Buddhism. When I learned that a Buddhist retreat in Germany was something like a very long self-knowledge trip, I totally lost interest. Being a psychologist, I had enough of such things! One day, I found another poster, which announced a lecture by Kailash, a psychologist like myself. I went to this lecture, liked it, and attended a follow-up and some other lectures given by a local disciple of Sri Chinmoy. This lasted a few months. After some time, I was eager to become Guru’s disciple, but nobody asked me to join the Centre, and I was too shy to ask.

Then Guru’s big Cologne concert took place. I was there but I did not appreciate it very much, because the people sitting near me were very loud and restless. The next day there was a seven-hour meditation, and I was invited to participate. I came late because I had to prepare for a psychotherapeutic examination, but also because I was a little afraid of the seven hours. I entered the room during an intermission and 67 found a place where I could see Guru very well. After the intermission, Guru announced that there were only two hours left of the seven because he had already meditated two hours in the early morning. At the end of the meditation, he asked whether some people in the audience would like to become his disciples.

Two or three raised their hands. Not me! I did not dare to. Those who had raised their hands were invited to come to the stage to meditate with him. When they returned to their seats, Guru looked at three people in the audience and meditated on them. One of those three was me! It was really an experience. It stirred my whole being!

Soon after this event, the whole Cologne Centre went to New York to the April Celebrations, and I was left alone. As soon as they were back, I gave the Centre leader my picture and a letter for Guru asking to become his disciple.

The 27th of May was the day of days! In the Cologne Centre, there was bhajan singing in the evening. Even though I had a very bad headache, I went to the function. However, I was irritated by the food and the incense, and the songs intensified my headache so much that I left the Centre after a few hours.

That night I had an initiation dream – but it was not me who was initiated: I happily watched Guru pouring a bucket of cold water over my younger sister! The next day, I was informed by the Centre leader that, during the bhajan function, he had received a call from New York saying that Guru had accepted me as his disciple. And now, nearly 25 years later, my gratitude to Guru for having accepted me is still growing and growing.

God, etc

I am out here 2000 miles from home on a job to help workers lead a better life. But what I wanted to say is that coming into an empty hotel room after travelling on a plane in public circumstances for hours and hours, I felt a kind of desolation. A very nice Indian man who owns this motel drove the shuttle that picked me up from the airport and has already offered to cook me eggs for breakfast. That’s good, I have something to look forward to.

Coming into that hotel room, I felt a kind of deep loneliness that I could easily have boiled away with some useless TV (or worse than useless TV). In my last post I talked about getting to know God and the gratitude that I feel to Sri Chinmoy for giving me the big picture (G-O-D).

That is relevant here, because when I come out of my context in Seattle, when I leave my nice house with pictures of Sri Chinmoy smiling, when I leave behind the bird drawings and the books by my Guru lining the shelves, a lot of cues about spiritual life are gone, and the support system all has to come from within.

Within is sometimes there and sometimes not, so the quest can be quite desert-like rather than dessert-like at times.

So where is this all leading? I sat down in my nice hotel room (that Indian owner has done an excellent job on this place), I sat down on the floor leaning against the generically nice couch, I sat with Sri Chinmoy’s meditation picture in front of me–a picture that he personally handed to me (and to many others) during a Christmas trip, I sat with the TV just a few feet away over there, and a towel was draped over it to prevent me from even thinking about turning it on, and I just cried and cried for loneliness for the Supreme. Where are You, God? That is what I felt in this nice but nowhere place. I also felt tremendous pressure to go and rip that towel off the TV and anesthetize my mind with its desired input of entertaining junk.

Then I knew that I would also have to come to this site and see what my friends have to say. Just coming here and seeing the names of people I know and don’t know, that has made a big difference.

Well, I meditated for about a half-hour, and it did its magic. The TV god did not grab me, no. I felt that even my tears were a presence of Him (and Her). I felt, “this is going to be ok.” My quest to discover my Friend, God, my Protector, God, my All, God– that continues.

Nayak

Now, the funny thing is, if I want to go watch TV now, if I want to see what the rest of humanity is doing, if I want to see what moronic stuff, what humor, is out there, well, that’s fine.

So, what do we learn from this? We learn (well, I learn), that if the God touch is there then whatever we do has that God-touch. We also learn that if you call to God, He comes, She comes, It comes, They All come. That’s nice. I like that.

Nayak

Originally posted Sri Chinmoy Inspiration Group, 17th, 2008

TV Picture top right: Source: Flickr CC – Bonnaf

If He Is Not My Teacher

When Dodula first came to Kailash’s lecture, she was dressed in her black nun’s costume. To everybody’s surprise, she was one of the ten people who signed up for the follow-up. Kailash spoke the first evening, and I continued the following three evenings until the end. Kailash told me that in case this nun stayed until the last evening, I had better not speak about how to become a disciple, in order to avoid problems with the church. Sure enough, she was one of the few people who stayed until the last class.

Right from the beginning she was so open to Guru. She loved his Transcendental photograph; she said it was always smiling at her. She bought many books, which she also gave to her nun sisters and the Mother Superior. She also bought quite a few pictures of Guru and put them up in her little room.

When I was in New York, I was inspired to tell some of the experiences she had with Guru’s music and with the Transcendental picture in connection with the children she was teaching. The stories were as beautiful as fairytales, but they were real! Guru’s only comment was: “Is she not a disciple?”

I answered: “No, Guru, she has been a Catholic sister for 27 years!” Guru just smiled compassionately at my stupid answer. After a few weeks Guru came to Munich, and since Dodula came to our Madal Bal store every week, I told her, “Next time I will not be here; I will go to visit Sri Chinmoy in Munich.” She said that she had written a poem for him and asked me if I could translate it and give it to him. I opened the envelope, and there was a photo of her inside. I asked her why she wanted to give Sri Chinmoy a photo of her (since I never told her how to apply to become a disciple). She said that since she had so many pictures of him, she wanted him to have at least one of her, just so that he knew who was thanking him for all his blessings and help.

Then I had to tell her that Sri Chinmoy happened to be not only a peace philosopher, artist, composer and poet but also that he was a spiritual Master of the highest order who accepted his disciples through a photo. She had tears in her eyes and said, “If he is not my teacher, then who is my teacher? I learned from him much more in these few months than I learned in all my 27 years as a spiritual sister in the convent!”

When Guru saw her picture, he accepted her as a disciple and said, “Christ has stolen her heart and brought it now to me.”

Gunthita (Zurich)

More than I could ever have dreamed of asking for…

Anandashru Elliott has been a student of Sri Chinmoy since 1991, and first joined the Sri Chinmoy Centre in the small New Zealand city of Hamilton. This is her story of how she came to be a student, and how she discovered meditation.

New Zealand

Long ago, when I was a young farmer’s wife with two very small children, there was a time when I found myself in an awful ‘black hole’ of depression. I had never been particularly unhappy in my life before then, rarely saw a doctor, and thought one would just say, “Grow up, you have responsibilities now”. For many weeks I had been listening to the 15-minute programme, ‘A Faith For Today’, on the radio every morning. Weeping copious tears, I would pray and pray to really believe in the existence of God, and Jesus Christ—but please, please, not to remain indifferent any longer.

One morning after the broadcast was over I was washing up the breakfast dishes and crying into the sink as usual, when my view through the window and across the valley was silently rent down the middle with a slight zigzag shift, and the world changed. The view was the same, yet all looked subtly different, slightly shimmering. It seemed as though the trees along the distant horizon had joined hands and were dancing, for one thing—but my real understanding was inner. I saw, somehow, or rather understood, how everything IS. I saw how all things are connected and that love is the key, and I was swept along and upward in a joyous unfolding vision of how this could blossom into Heaven on earth one day, with love for one another spreading across the land and around the world until it encompassed all nations and all mankind; and all the time I found myself whispering, “Of course, of course!” as if in ecstatic recognition of something long forgotten.

This is the best I can do by way of explanation. At the time, I tried to write down all that I had ‘seen’—and could not. It was somehow impossible to express the wonder of it in ordinary words. One of my favourite talks on radio had been on Jesus’ teaching, “You are the light of the world…” I knew this parable but always assumed that it applied to His disciples only. Now I knew it meant me, and you, everyone on earth.

I was totally uplifted. I knew the light shone from my eyes, my face was radiant and my heart was overflowing with happiness and love. (This was not just a mood swing! I have never been depressed again in all the years that have passed since). I had been given far more than I had asked for. Now I did not just believe. I knew.

Today I feel that, in answer to my genuine, anguished cries, God’s Compassion came down mightily and temporarily lifted the veil of maya, or illusion, long enough to give me the answer I so desperately sought. Then the veil descended again, inevitably. The high consciousness also descended, slowly, without lots of prayer and meditation to maintain it, and I was left with just the essence of the experience to sustain me. I attended churches of several different faiths but could not find lasting inspiration anywhere and gradually just returned to ‘normal’, but that knowledge was always there, deep within—God IS.

But the search never ceased. I read every book on spirituality and any loosely associated subject that the Hamilton City Library could provide. The best one started off, ‘God is Love. God only loves. All God can do is love…’

And ended with, ‘Say Yes to God today—yes yes yes yes YES!’

There was a book on meditation that sounded interesting, and just what I needed, but I tried it only once, on my own. One day there was an advertisement in the Waikato Times, ‘Four meditation classes for $25.00’, so off I went. My only recollection is that we sat in a circle on the floor in a darkened room with a lighted candle in the middle. I found it weird, sitting in the dark with shadowy figures all around, and made no progress.

The following year a small paragraph appeared in the local mid-week paper; a lady called Subarata, from Auckland, would be coming to Hamilton to give free meditation classes. Feeling a bit dubious after the last strange experience, I wanted to give it another try but thought it would be nice to go with a friend, so asked my daughter on the off chance that she might like to come with me—and she said she would.

During the introductory meditation I concentrated hard on my breathing and the ‘little imaginary thread in front of the nose’, and soon found myself focused on a space, like a tiny rift between clouds, where it seemed something important was just out of sight, but which could be revealed at any moment. Entranced, I gazed yearningly at that space; time passed, then, as from a distance, I heard a quiet voice saying, “Now bring your attention slowly back to the room…” Oh, no, No, NO! But that was it. What else could you do?

I never saw that space again—the doorway to the ever-beckoning Beyond? But my course was now set fair towards it, toward my goal—and my Guru.

Though I did not know it then, again I would be given more than I could ever have dreamed of asking for.