
Saints and Angels
by Devabala Malits
Györ, Hungary
Some people are already like saints or angels when they come to our path, adopting Guru’s requirements very easily and swiftly; they are fully ready for the spiritual life. Others are not. You can decide which category I fit in.
Before I went to my first meditation lecture, given by an Austrian disciple, I had never even heard the word 'meditation.' But being a college student with a limited budget, the word 'free' pulled me with irresistible power to any cultural event in the city. Everything went well – the lecture and the classes – and soon I was able to report to my friends on the really high and sublime experiences that I was experiencing during my deep meditations. Of course, every word was a lie, but it served my purpose, polishing up my image as 'a nice guy who is a little different from others.' During the last class, the teacher started to speak about God, a field among many others in which I unfortunately considered myself a real expert. Plus, the opportunity to send a photo to Sri Chinmoy to apply to be his student scared me totally. This was Guru’s and my soul’s first attempt.
What followed for the next two years was a typical Hungarian college life in the 1990's, with a lot of fun, wild parties, drinking, not studying, and so on. The only thing unusual was my 'casino life.' I had a winning roulette strategy, which was boring and required a lot of discipline, but it supplied me for years with far more than enough money. I didn’t need a free meditation class anymore.
At one point, I saw the same poster on the same spot as two years earlier, and I remembered the most beautiful music that I had ever heard. This music had been played during the first lecture. Luckily, I considered myself to be a music expert, too. So I went to the class just to buy an audio tape of the music group Akasha. That was the only thing that I needed from those God-explaining people.
My plan – just to go to the class for the tape – didn’t work out. I started to take the same classes again, having the same fake incredible inner experiences. Shortly after that, I started to attend the nice meditation centre in the city of Györ. I went regularly, every week, without becoming Guru’s disciple, because of my reluctance to give my picture for the application.
The next important event was Guru’s concert in Bratislava, Slovakia, where I – as a self-appointed music expert – was not impressed. As an expert in spirituality and God, I had no feelings at all. I didn’t stay for the function following the concert. To show off to my disciple-friends, I decided to run during the night to the Hungarian border, with the intention of taking the first train the next morning to my city. On the map it looked like a short distance. On a small map...
Luckily, after a few hours of roaming, someone picked me up on the highway and drove me for the remaining 20+ miles. I spent the night at the border village train station. My normal state of consciousness, even at that time, was to feel good and be happy; but that night, in that train station, I felt more miserable than ever before or since. Not sleeping, but still having nightmares, I experienced a feeling of being torn apart by unseen forces – a kind of serious fight in me, for me, over me. Afterwards, I was totally exhausted.
After this experience, I decided to give up my „spiritual“ life entirely. But my determination to not visit our meditation centre lasted only for a month or so. After a few weeks of being back in the Centre, my position as non-disciple in the meditation centre had become inwardly intolerable, so finally I had to give my picture. I took my acceptance as Guru’s disciple for granted – something well-deserved – not really knowing what the whole thing meant. After it happened, I went on living my 'spiritual life', which had the components of not meditating at home at all, leading the same old exciting, undivine life, but going regularly to a meditation centre, packed with disciples who were endlessly patient towards me. God bless them all.
But quite soon, a great turning point came in the form of a fellow whose nose was totally flat as a result of a motorcycle accident. One day, right after meditation at our Centre, I went, as usual, to a rock concert with my non-disciple-friends. During the concert, for some reason, I started to wrestle with this flat-nosed guy on the ground, in the dust. My friends grabbed him, and my job was to flatten his nose to an even greater extent. But right then, when I raised my fist, very strong feelings of Guru’s presence, of being in the Centre, meditating, singing came to me. I didn’t quite understand what I was doing there, fighting with someone, just one hour after meditation at the Centre.
So, I just walked home, knowing perfectly well that at that Hollywood movie scene, I had irreversibly chosen the life for which I had come into this world.
The next morning at 6 a.m., the journey started.
Related stories
Sri Chinmoy's students describe their inner and outer experiences.

In the Right Place, At the Right Time
Eshana Gadjanski Novi Sad, Serbia
My Room
Preetidutta Thorpe Auckland, New Zealand
The Ever-Transcending Goal
Preetidutta Thorpe Auckland, New Zealand
Experience of the Peace Run in Oxford
Tejvan Pettinger Oxford, United Kingdom
God, Truth, Beauty and Guru
Sharani Robins East Providence, United States
It does not matter which spoon you use
Brahmacharini Rebidoux St. John's, Canada
I want what he has
Kamalakanta Nieves New York, United StatesSuggested videos
interviews with Sri Chinmoy's students

Meditation experience at Aspiration-Ground
Suren Leosson ,
Becoming a disciple of Sri Chinmoy
Tilvila Hurwit Tampa, United States
My typical day
Pranlobha Kalagian Seattle, United States
What drew me to Sri Chinmoy's path
Nikolaus Drekonja San Diego, United States
My road from meditation to the Olympics
Samunnati Lehonkova Ternopil, Ukraine
What meditation gave me that I was missing
Purnahuti Wagner Guatemala City, Guatemala
Except where explicitly stated otherwise, the contents of this site are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. read more »
SriChinmoyCentre.org is a Vasudeva Server project.