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 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.

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.