After we moved to Queens, Guru said that I should have a yoga centre in Manhattan also. That was not easy. Rents were high and the one nice place that I found refused to rent to a yoga group!

I finally found a loft on 30th St. which had two large rooms for classes and a room for someone to live in. It would have been perfect except that the building was not open all the time and the hours did not always fit the class schedule we would have liked. Pam, who was in charge of the new Centre, had a key, so she could get in whenever she needed to, but it was not always convenient for the students. It was also a long trip back to Queens for me, after teaching an evening class.

We had one truly memorable event there, however. On July 13, 1977, Guru inaugurated the studio as a Divine Enterprise, naming it Yoga-Life Perfection of New York. Guru meditated with us and gave a few talks which have since been published in his book Everest-Aspiration.

The inauguration evening is still remembered by many New Yorkers as the night the lights went out throughout the city. What better place to be with no lights than a yoga centre, with Guru and lots of candles!

We meditated some more, sang and listened to more stories while waiting for the lights to come on again, but they didn’t. After a few more hours we decided to make our way home. Fortunately there were enough cars to take us back to Queens, because the subways were not running. Of course there were also no street lights or traffic lights working, so good Samaritans stood in the crossings to help control traffic. Happy news was that everyone got home safely.
 

Reminiscences of that evening:

Pulak: Sarama was inspired to open a branch of Yoga-Life Perfection in Manhattan in 1976, and for some time thereafter focused her attention on that goal, which, of course, involved me in all aspects of the renovation of the space. She found a loft on 30th Street near Broadway in early 1977, and although I was working for the United Nations Development Programme at that time, I used to go to her future yoga studio after work and on weekends, along with a few other disciples, to clean, construct walls, and do other necessary tasks. I was particularly in charge of designing the circuitry and rewiring the studio. Sarama was personally in charge of coordinating all construction activities.

Finally the work was complete in July 1977, and it was just at this period that Guru was composing and delivering the talks which were later printed in Everest-Aspiration, which he considered to be one of his most significant books. Guru set July 13th as the inauguration date for the studio, and everything was made perfect in time for Guru’s arrival at around 9 PM.

Sarama showed Guru through the studio and then about 60-70 disciples went to the back meditation room. Guru began the meditation, and called Sarama to come to the front of the room, where he blessed her. Then he began delivering several of the Everest-Aspiration talks: You and Your Perfection, Yoga and Oneness, Hatha Yoga, Intuition, Perfection and If You Have, Then Come to Me. Remarkably, most of these talks were inspired by Sarama or her enterprises, as ‘Sarama’ means intuition, and her two enterprises were Yoga-Life Perfection and Intuition-Perfection.

In the middle of one of the talks, suddenly the lights went out and there was complete darkness. I was shocked into action and went to check the fuse-box, but I could not find any problem there. Then I went to the front window and saw that all the lights were out in every direction. Others confirmed my discovery. I later learned that there was a black-out across the entire north-eastern U.S.

Guru calmly asked Sarama if she had any candles, and Sarama brought out a bunch of candles and lit them, mainly around Guru, as he continued delivering his talks in an even more deeply spiritually charged atmosphere. After finishing the talks, Guru stayed for a while speaking casually and joking with Sarama and others, creating a warm, family feeling at the end of the evening.

Arpan: Guru inaugurated Yoga-Life Perfection on July 13th, 1977, during his Everest-Aspiration talk series.

Pulak had done the wiring in the studio, and suddenly the lights and air conditioner went out during the talks. At that time Pulak got scared because he thought it was his fault! He went to the breaker box, and all the fuses were good. Then, when we opened up all the windows because it was hot, we saw that all of Manhattan had gone out. Actually, half the East Coast had gone out in the biggest blackout we had had up to that time.

Guru had a battery-powered pen with a flashlight on one end and a fan on the other end. As soon as the lights went out, he turned on the flashlight and the fan. It was as if Guru knew it was going to happen. Then Adhiratha and I and a few others took some food trays and started fanning Guru with them.

Shortly after I joined the Centre, one of the Manhattan disciples held a tag sale in her apartment to raise money for the Aum Centre, as we were then known. The sale raised over $300, which was quite successful, since there were only a few disciples at this point and only disciples (and seekers) donated and bought the sale items.

I suggested having a tag sale at my yoga centre, which was in a large house in Westchester. Guru liked the idea, so I solicited donations from my yoga students. They, and their wealthy families, responded generously. To make it more attractive we called it a ‘bazaar’ instead of a tag sale and we served homemade food.

Merchandise flowed in, everything from a mink coat to a blue sapphire ring, as well as lots of nice less-expensive items. By the end of the day we had quadrupled the amount raised in the Manhattan sale. Needless to say, Guru was delighted. He hinted that perhaps we could do it again soon.

A few months later we held our next bazaar. The well-known guitarist Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and his friend Larry Coryell came with their wives and gave a concert while volunteers brought all kinds of delectable prepared foods to sell. Guru was so happy with the results that he said, “Could you not have one every month?" And so we did—one Sunday a month, with the help of quite a few yoga students, many of them former hippies who had become disciples. There were so many workers on bazaar day that we set up a cooking crew to prepare meals for everyone.

People worked on setting up and pricing items all day Saturday, the day before the bazaar. A few of us worked right through the night. If we sent someone out on a late errand, we had to check on him if he took too long, only to find him “meditating" fast asleep in his car.

As for the pricing of the items for our sales, we were all pretty clueless. However, sometimes, looking over the prices that had been put on some items, my intuition would kick in and I would decide that this price had to be higher or lower—mostly higher, because everyone had the selfless tendency to give the stuff away.

One day I came across a long necklace of rough dark green beads on an ordinary piece of string. Someone had marked it 50¢, but I had a feeling that they might be semi-precious stones in the rough, so I changed the price to $4.50. At the end of the bazaar they were still there. Then, following another flash of my intuition (intuition is the other meaning of my name, according to Guru), Rupantar offered to take them into the city to be appraised in one of the auction galleries. The beads turned out to be real jade and he came back with $1300! It would be a boon to have my intuition work like that more often, but fortunately or unfortunately it is something sporadic, over which I have no control.

Don't rain on our bazaar!

When I told my students about an upcoming bazaar, they said, “But it’s supposed to rain!" The weather turned out to be cloudy, but otherwise just fine. I soon found out from those surprised students who had not come because of the bad weather that it had rained everywhere except on our bazaar.

Story by Rijuta: Periodically, Sarama had held bazaars at her home so around March 1970, we had the good fortune to help prepare for and participate in one. Bazaars always required much planning and Sarama relished this because she was serving her “Gurudev" in a unique way.The day of the bazaar arrived. Many of us had worked hard to prepare for the whole day’s festivities. We had entertainment, lots of food and many surprisingly good items for sale. Guru honoured us by being present for much of the afternoon.

At the end of the day, I was stationed at the front door to say ‘goodbye’ to our guests. On his way out, Guru stopped by and said, “So this is Carol …„ and blessed me on the head. I was surprised because I wasn’t familiar with this gesture, and least of all did I expect to be the recipient of the feeling of so much love.

I held in the tears until Guru departed, then ran up the stairs to an empty room and tried to compose myself and figure out what had just happened to me. When I discussed the experience with Sarama, she suggested that Guru’s blessing might mean that I had been accepted as a disciple.

I asked her how she knew this, because I had not even requested to become a disciple. She explained that her name means ‘intuition’ and this was her strong feeling.

After a couple of days I asked Sarama to find out if I was accepted as a disciple. Shortly after my question was asked, I received a definite "YES!" In this way, Sarama’s friendship, care and hospitality changed the rest of my life, for I had now become a disciple of my soul’s eternal friend, Sri Chinmoy.

A pioneer divine enterprise: I Need This Store

After a few months, the basement was loaded with so much merchandise that I said to Guru, “There is so much left-over stuff in my basement that one of the disciples could open a thrift shop and we’d have a steady income for the Centre." Guru’s response was, “Wonderful idea, Sarama. You will do it!"

As soon as I overcame the initial shock of being the “lucky one," I went store-hunting. I found a little empty shop on Main Street in New Rochelle, just a few blocks from our house. It seemed like the ideal place, but I didn’t see any heating system in the store. Well, there wasn’t any, but the owner of the building said, “Don’t worry about that. We’ll put in a blower system before winter."

Everybody came to work at the new store. Both yoga students and disciples continued to do selfless service. Many of the newcomers eagerly welcomed the opportunity for regular selfless service.

The store had a rotating schedule of volunteers, mostly from among my local students, many of whom had also become members of the Sri Chinmoy Centre. One of the neighborhood kids also pitched in from time to time.

After a major transformation, the likes of which we have become accustomed to by now, inauguration day finally arrived, and we eagerly awaited Guru’s announcement of the name of the store. He turned to me and said, “I hope you will like the name: ‘I—Need—This—Store.’ The ‘I’ in the name is the Supreme." I could think of nothing to say, as a thrill ran up my spine. I Need This Store was born!

A youngster who had been hovering about and helping us through all the construction was seeing Guru for the first time. He confided in me, “When I look at Sri Chinmoy, I feel as though my heart is being pulled out of my chest!" This young boy, who was about twelve years old, continued to spend a lot of time hanging out at the store after school. He was soaking up the “good vibes." I sometimes wonder what became of him.

Many of my students came from wealthy families who often donated very expensive belongings to the store. There were items like a gold cross on a gold chain, gold rings and earrings and other valuables. We felt that those items should not be on the top of the counter, so we kept them in an open box on a shelf inside the counter, behind glass. If someone expressed interest in any of the items, we took the box out to show them what we had.

One of the volunteers didn’t seem to realise that the expensive items were not on the counter for a good reason, so she decided they should be displayed more accessibly. Neighborhood kids used to come into the store quite often and one day, at closing time, the lady who was working in the store noticed a number of items missing from the box, which was on the counter.

The boy who had responded so deeply to Guru’s presence said that he knew who had taken the missing items. He also said that this boy, when he stole things, always carried them on his person until he was able to unload them. He said that he might be able to get the rest of the boys to help get them back. I asked him to bring the boys to the pizza parlor next door for a little talk. We sat at a table and I explained the whole philosophy of karma to them.

They must have been convinced, because they went right out, jumped the boy and brought back all the stolen stuff. He still had it all with the exception of the gold cross and chain, which he had already unloaded. An interesting aside on the young thief was that he was apparently the son of a New Rochelle police officer.

When winter came it was more difficult to get volunteers to come into the store. The owner never did put in the heating system that he promised. I felt that his partner simply didn’t want to spend the money. Our workers were catching cold and one even got pneumonia. Quite understandably, they were very reluctant to continue working there.

Moving from Bancker Place to Queens

There were more and more Sri Chinmoy Centre activities in Queens, and Sunil and I were driving down from New Rochelle at 5:30 A.M. for six o’clock meditations with Guru. Sunil, who lived in my house, would drive and I would sit beside him, poking him with my elbow whenever I saw his head nodding.

One day in September, 1973, I received a phone call from Guru: “It is time for you to move to Queens. Kindly sell your house in New Rochelle and move I Need This Store to Queens also." The next day I put my house on the market and went to Queens to look for a new home.

Breaking the Lease

The move would require breaking our five-year store lease. Since we had never received the promised heat, we had a good excuse for breaking it. When I told our landlord how many people had gotten sick because of lack of heat and that I intended to break the lease and move, he said, “Don’t worry—no problem." His partner was not so kind and understanding. When we moved out we owed $400 rent for the time that we had still been operating the store. We fully intended to pay that amount, but he was suing us for $900. I offered the $400. Rejected!

I rounded up a few workers who had caught everything from colds to pneumonia, and we marched into court, ready to testify. I know nothing about legal matters, but I decided to go in without a lawyer and just state the facts. We were greeted by their lawyer, who told us that our landlord had broken his leg and the court date would have to be postponed!

Fast forward to the next court date. I rounded up my crew again, and was greeted by the same lawyer as we entered. “I’m not handling your case," he said. “I asked to be relieved. You know they have already lost more money on you than they are suing you for.“ Soon the new lawyer appeared and informed me once again that—new excuse—this case would have to be postponed. My team was even more annoyed than I was and frustrated at the prospect of having to come in for the third time. As we were leaving, the lawyer cornered me and said, “You know, if you lose this case, it will cost you a lot more because you’ll have to pay the court costs as well." I gave him a big smile and exclaimed, “But we’re not going to lose!"The days went by and we heard nothing about a new date for the hearing. Then, lo and behold, I received a letter from the lawyer saying that the landlord would settle for $200! Was Guru behind this? Smiling, I quickly wrote out a $200 check, put it in an envelope, and mailed it before they could realise the favor they had done us! We never heard from them again.

I NEED THIS STORE in Queens

In Queens, the store was soon relocated to Parsons Boulevard (which by now should be renamed ‘Divine Enterprise Boulevard’!) in a store-front that had formerly been a butcher shop! The worst job of all was cleaning up a small room at the back, which was to become our jewelry room. It had been the room where they prepared the meat, and the meat hooks along the wall were surrounded by inch-deep layers of fat. Not a vegetarian paradise! I don’t recall who were the stalwart souls who undertook that job, but it was done to a T-bone.

Children are usually sensitive to Guru’s vibes. A couple of kids, a brother and sister, came after school and on weekends, hanging around and helping however they could, both before and after the store opened. Someone had made some button pins with Guru’s picture on them. The little girl wore hers all the time. One day she showed up without it and told me that her mother always borrowed it for bingo night, because it brought her good luck!

There was a big basement below the store, very handy for sorting and storing new merchandise.  I would stop by from time to time to see how things were going or if anything was needed. Once, as I was leaving, I remarked to the volunteer at the table, “It would be great to have a bell to signal someone downstairs when it gets busy upstairs.„ She heartily agreed. The store was big and it was quite impossible for one person to cover the three room-sized areas that needed to be watched. I returned to the store later and was greeted with a wide-eyed, “You won’t believe this!„ She said, “After you left, a man came to the door and gave me this.„ She held out a pair of bells, for upstairs and downstairs, along with all the wiring needed for connecting them. “He told me, ‘Here, you need this.’ "

One day the store received a little surprise package. Any package would have been a surprise, since I Need This Store didn’t usually get any mail. The package contained a nice wallet, which I recognized as having been for sale in the store. No note enclosed. A guilty conscience redeemed?

People donated quite a few paintings. We did not price them very high, but one painting with a somewhat battered frame gave me a strange feeling that it might be worth something, so I priced it at $60. A disciple from Europe bought it. I guess he knew more about artwork than any of us did. The next time he came to Queens, he told us he had sold it for $400! Well, at least the money stayed in the family.

We also had a donation of a guitar from Mahavishnu John McLaughlin. It sold for what was a good price in those days. I’ve been told that now it would be worth at least ten times as much!

The End of I need this Store

The years passed by—and the rent kept going up and up and up. Finally the owner of the building, who had probably amassed a nice sum of money from his job as head waiter in a fancy restaurant, said that he was taking the store back to open his own place. Guru asked me to find another site, but unfortunately rents had become astronomical by then. Reluctantly we decided that the era of I Need This Store had come to an end.

The day before we left New York (for India), our realtor found what sounded like the perfect place for our new yoga centre. It had not been advertised yet because the owner was not quite ready. We went to have at least a look at the outside.

Nobody was home, but while we were looking around, the owner’s son came home for lunch. When we asked to see the inside, he said, "If I let you in my mother will kill me!" I promised, "We will stay only a few minutes. We are leaving for India tomorrow, so we can see it now or never. If we buy it, your mother will not kill you; and if we don’t buy it, she will never even know that we were here. I promise."

He accepted my logic and allowed us to whiz through on a 10-minute tour. Every room was beautiful—it was exactly what we were looking for. We told the boy, "This is it. We want it."

Of course, we wanted Guru to see it and give his approval before we signed the papers, so we gave my daughter the Power of Attorney. Gurudev would be back soon and if he approved, she would sign the paperwork on our behalf.

Back to New Rochelle from India

Our new house, right in the centre of New Rochelle, was on Bancker Place, a street that was only one block long. With no through traffic, it was perfect for a yoga centre. There was a little park across the street, which made parking easy for our students. For many years, the house had been owned by a minister named Rev. Bancker. He must have been a very spiritual person, because Guru gave the house a 90 per cent rating and said that he would meditate there after our return, and raise it to 100 per cent. With Guru’s wholehearted approval we moved to Bancker Place.

Wide French doors led to an entrance hall and a beautiful curved stairway. This led up to three bedrooms, plus a master suite with two rooms and a bath at the end of a separate hallway. A pull-down stairway led to a large finished attic.The living room, visible from the entrance hall through more French doors on the right, would be our exercise room. It was large and had about 15 feet of lovely built-in leaded glass bookshelves along one-and-a-half sides of the room and a fireplace opposite. The dining room next to it, almost as big as the exercise room in our former house, would be our meditation room. The extra bonus that thrilled me was a second fireplace in an upstairs bedroom, which I immediately claimed.

The first evening we set up a shrine and held our first meditation in the new yoga centre. It was unbelievably powerful. As I sat there I could feel the room crying for joy that there was something spiritual happening in it after so many empty years. When we finished, my son, Abhi, told me that he had also felt the room crying, so I knew it was not my imagination. What a wonderful atmosphere for a yoga centre!

Guru was still virtually unknown in the outer world and up until the time of our trip to India, he had discouraged disciples from talking about him, except to very sincere seekers. Jharna-Kala (Sri Chinmoy's art) did not exist yet and the only music was ‘The Invocation’ and a few chants from the Upanishads. There were no books, only Guru’s monthly Aum Magazine. During the two weeks that we were in Hawaii on our way to India, I received my first letter from Guru, saying that the time had now come to spread his light.

In the 1960s many young people had been lured into the drug culture, looking for spiritual experiences. When they did not find what they hoped for through drugs, they turned toward yoga. Seekers were coming in droves. Sometimes they came in such large numbers that, one evening, I had to turn away eleven college students who had come for the first time. There was simply no more space.

The seekers were eagerly soaking up Guru’s philosophy at each meditation and spreading the word to their friends. Drugs were dropped, beards were shaved and these ex-hippies began to ask how they could become disciples of Sri Chinmoy.

Guru came to the house a couple of times to hold meditations and interviews. He meditated individually with each person who wanted to be his disciple in an upstairs room.

A reminiscence from Savita, one of Sri Chinmoy's students:

I did not have to travel to India to begin my spiritual search. In fact, my start began a few blocks from my home! Sarama’s Hatha Yoga Centre, Yoga of Westchester, was situated in her homein New Rochelle, N.Y.—a ten-minute walk from where I lived with my family. In my search to discover a deeper purpose to my life than the goals that my parents and society prescribed for me, I began taking Hatha Yoga classes with Sarama in the Fall of 1970 when I was fifteen. I greatly enjoyed these, but after attending the free meditation sessions that Sarama offered preceding or following the exercise classes, I realised that it was the meditation and spiritual lessons that I was seeking, more than the Hatha Yoga training.

Sarama led her students in chanting, reading from Guru’s writings and meditating silently on Guru’s Transcendental Photograph. I must say that I particularly loved the question-and-answer period that followed the meditations. Listening to Sarama speak about Guru was both inspiring and fascinating. She exuded a spiritual confidence—it seemed that there was no question that Sarama could not answer!

Story by Surabhi: In 1969 I was a senior at the College of New Rochelle, and I was interested in exploring meditation as a way of life. I was not happy with the fact that my classmates were getting distracted by drug experimentation, and I was starting to become disillusioned by the protests against the Vietnam War run by angry young professors. I was inspired by a 34-year-old student teacher named Adrienne Garnett, who was taking yoga classes at Bancker Place with a woman named Sarama. Since it was just a block away from my school, I went one evening, just for the meditation class after the yoga. I loved it! Sarama was a clear thinker with tremendous faith in the power of meditation and in her spiritual Teacher, Sri Chinmoy.

She taught meditation so simply that it was effortless. From that evening on, I did not miss a meditation session. Sarama invited me to clean her house twice a week in exchange for daily yoga classes as well as the meditation, and I began a radical change of lifestyle to vegetarianism and focus on the spiritual life. Even during Christmas break, I told my parents that I had a class, and did not go home. I hid in my empty dorm so I could continue Sarama’s meditation classes.

Then Sarama invited me to meet Sri Chinmoy, who was giving a lecture at a college. When I saw him, I heard a voice inside me say, “Welcome home to your real family". I got into an elevator to leave when the lecture ended, and Sri Chinmoy came into the same elevator. My vision changed and I saw him as Jesus Christ. (I had been brought up as a Catholic.) When the elevator doors opened, I hid behind a large poster display. I said to myself, “He knows I am hiding from him".

Sarama continued to guide me every day. When I graduated, she told me not to move back home, and she found me a place to live that was only a block from her house. I heard of the Centre, which was called the AUM Centre in those days. I wondered how to get invited to be a member.

Then one morning, while pondering this possibility after my meditation, I heard a voice inside my head. Christ said to me, “Take this new boat with this new Master, and I will be waiting for you on the other side". I practically ran to Sarama’s house and told her I must come with her to the meeting of the Connecticut AUM Centre.  She smiled and said, “I was waiting for this day".