Blessings from your 'family'

Every morning
The smiling Beauty of the Supreme
Awakens me
To participate in His Cosmic Play.

Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 2, Agni Press, 1998

When I had been a disciple of Sri Chinmoy for less than a year, I read this in one of his books:

Question: Can a spirit help a person?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes. Parents may come during a dream and tell you to do something good, or they will tell you the future, or they may simply warn you that something is going to happen. My mother died over twenty years ago, and now she is in Heaven. Hundreds of times she has come and helped me. Sometimes when I have misplaced something, and I am disturbed because I need that thing, my mother appears before me. Just as I see you in a physical form, I can see her, touch her. Then she tells me: “Look, it is there in that drawer.” I say: “No, it cannot be there because I have not used that drawer. I never use it.” But that is where I find it.

In India they say that if you put something down with your left hand, it will take hours of searching before you find it. Of course, there is another method. When I misplace something, if I concentrate I can find out immediately where it is.

Sri Chinmoy, Astrology, the supernatural and the Beyond, Agni Press, 1973

I remember it because we were then translating the whole book.

It is a very sweet story, and it becomes ever sweeter if you read more and more of his reminiscences with his family members and friends. They run a wide gamut of funny, illumining or awe-inspiring stories. By them, one can also follow how people who were close to Sri Chinmoy would many times have a small glimpse or even some inner realisation of who he was, despite the fact that some happenings were quite mundane (considering the unfathomable life of a spiritual Master), such as misplacing something in a drawer.

A few years ago I was walking with a disciple of Sri Chinmoy, someone whom I admire profoundly, and listening to stories of Sri Chinmoy's family members. At one point, he asked: "Do you ever feel that Yogamaya helps you?" Yogamaya was Sri Chinmoy's mother and lived until 1943. He himself said he felt it many times.

I couldn't find any answer, because I am simply ignorant of almost everything that happens on any and all inner planes. But, considering the height of the soul mentioned, I started to wonder if it did happen and I might simply not have noticed.

Lo and behold! That same year, six months before that conversation, I happened to be running the São Paulo marathon, which fell on April 8th, Yogamaya's birthday. I was feeling weak after one or two kilometers. It was a problem I had known for years, and there is no food, liquid or rest that would solve it. I had been taking some anyway since the start of the race, but to no avail. Usually it would take a few hours to get some energy back, and even then I would usually feel quite beaten up and just hope for the day to end soon when I would have such a crisis.

But, on that day, at about kilometer seven or eight, I was dragging along and considering retiring when I spotted a coconut stand. I thought, "Well, a drinking one coconut would not make anything worse." Here I was referring myself to a famous story were Yogamaya cured the infant Madal (Sri Chinmoy's childhood nickname) from a most serious case of smallpox (doctors had given up hope) by her prayers and washing her son with coconut water.

Lo and behold, after a few minutes, I started limbering up. Slowly I was able to run. My head was not dizzy anymore, and I got some tonus back to the whole body. I ran the rest of the marathon quite well for my standards, and did not really have to eat much to have energy to finish the race. I was just well in 5 minutes! I had to tell this story to my friend as he asked me if ever I felt Yogamaya helping me.

Today, however, is a new story! I had been celebrating Yogamaya's birthday alone (today is 8 April 2021), and had a wonderful day. Everything was so light, inspiring and full of promise - would you call this 'blessingful'?

A month before I had been looking for a book on Sri Chinmoy's sister Lily, which I thought I had, but couldn't quite find. Maybe I did not have this one. I needed it for a project about preserving Sri Chinmoy's literary legacy.

Then today I wanted to find a book about Yogamaya. I went to the library and started scanning all the books. Near the end, what did I find? The book about Sri Chinmoy's sister Lily which I had been missing! It was there all the time, I am sure, but in the previous month I looked twice, "carefully", and couldn't find it.

If we consider the story that opens this, with Yogamaya helping Sri Chinmoy to find a misplaced belonging, and that today is Yogamaya's birthday, that I have been feeling marvellous the whole day, a day which I value and felt to be helped before in that marathon years ago -- I just feel that Yogamaya has helped me out again by finding that book.

And it all goes together - a modest disciple of Sri Chinmoy celebrating his Master's mother's birthday finds a book about his Master's sister with the mother's help to do some service to the Master himself. What a sweet family reunion! I cannot be sure, but it definitely feels so.

We could read again the poem which opened this story:

Every morning
The smiling Beauty of the Supreme
Awakens me
To participate in His Cosmic Play.

-Sri Chinmoy, Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 2, Agni Press, 1998