'If I find a Master, he would have to tell me that all men are brothers.'

I started on my path long ago, when I was probably about two years of age in a crib, an infant's crib. I can remember to this day my saying. “I can beat God up at any time.” I looked across the room to see my mother crying, saying, "Please God, forgive him." That was my first spiritual experience with God.

During the following years, I could hear myself constantly repeating, "My Lord, if I should go mad or crazy, do not allow me to forget you."

Over the years something happened. At the age of 13, somehow I forgot God.

As the years went on, at around age 29, something happened. I was looking at a movie. A farmer who was farming his land was very successful. Three years passed. He had no crops. He fell to his knees and he cried to God and said, "My Lord, have I been so ungrateful as to not give you gratitude for those years my crops were successful?"

I was taken by that remark. Suddenly, God appeared back into my mind after all the years that I had forgotten him. I started praying to God intensely.

In the meantime, I was very heartbroken by many of the incidents I saw happening in the world—man's inhumanity to man. I felt that if God had not come to me in some form that I was going to commit suicide or leave this world. That was in 1971.

At that time, someone gave me a book called The Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. It brought tears to my eyes because I realised that there was some kind of communication between God and man, and that with a God-Realised Master, I could realise God. With tears in my eyes I thought, “If I could find the Master, he would have to tell me that all men are brothers.”

While I was studying in the library for my civil engineer's degree, I saw a flyer saying that Sri Chinmoy would be giving a lecture at Columbia University. I had seen Sri Chinmoy six months earlier at New York University. At that time, I said, “This man can never be my Master.”

When I went to Columbia University to see Sri Chinmoy, I was met by a consciousness I had never experienced before. I was inundated with that consciousness to such a state that I could not hear what Guru was saying. While in that state of consciousness, I heard a voice say to me, "Open your eyes." I opened my eyes to hear Guru’s final words as he was finishing his lecture: “All men are brothers.”

I went back into that state of high consciousness, swimming with delight. I heard another voice say, "Open your eyes, fold your hands and bow." I was sitting in the last row, first aisle. I opened my eyes and I saw Sri Chinmoy had come up the aisle and was standing no further than two feet from me. He came around to my back and placed his right hand on my right shoulder and his left hand on my left shoulder. The rest is history.

Guru apparently asked one of the disciples to get some information on “the young man that was sitting in the back row.”

The disciple came and got my information. The following week I was asked to come to Guru’s house. I went to his house and he was sitting on his throne getting ready to meditate. Guru finished his meditation and he looked around to see who was on the veranda. That was where I was. It was a crowded night. Students were packed tight sitting all over the place.

Guru got off his throne and made his way to the veranda, heading straight for me. He came and stood in front of me and meditated on me for what seemed to be anywhere between 30 seconds to a minute. He then looked at me and said, “You can come with me anywhere I go.”

That was it. I followed Guru from that point on to where I am now.

Faithful

Faithful to the end
My heart shall be.

Faithful from the beginning to the end
My life shall be.

Faithful from before the beginningless beginning
To long after the endless end
My soul shall be.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Lord, I ask You for one favour, Agni Press, 1975