Give me the chance to uplift you

The first time I saw Guru’s face was on a poster in the Graduates Memorial Building in Trinity College Dublin. It was behind the glass of the Philosophical Society’s noticeboard; it was on a poster announcing a talk he was going to give on December 1, 1970. It was the Transcendental and it was the Transcendental that represented Guru on the front page of the Irish Times on December 2, 1970 in an article where a Guru was first called a Guru by a newspaper.

Guru’s first European tour was financed by Mahavishnu John McLaughlin, the famous guitarist. At the same time as Guru’s tour, Mahavishnu was also touring Europe. His wife Mahalakshmi and Alo Devi accompanied Guru and sometimes Guru’s visit to a city coincided with Mahavishnu’s. But in Dublin this was not the case.

Guru gave his talk as part of the Philosophical Society’s weekly meeting. The chairman of the ‘Phil’ was seated on a throne-like chair at the back of a low stage, almost dozing. Guru was standing in front of him to his right. He was standing near the edge of the stage and tapped it with his foot. He seemed to be in a trance. I don’t remember what the talk was about. It was abstract and lofty but did not appeal to reason or the intellect. It was obvious something unusual was happening.

At the end of the talk, Guru asked if Patrick O’Rourke’s friends were in the audience. We were, and we went up to the front of the room around Guru. He was then 39 years old; softness and sweetness were what I felt from him.

Guru asked if we would like to meditate with him. This met with broad agreement both from the friends of Patrick O’Rourke and several other people. Where to go? I happened to know that the top floor of the GMB was a large empty room so I proposed that. About 40 people trooped up the three flights of stairs. The room was empty except for the carpet. We all sat down on the floor in an arc around Guru. He meditated; we tried to meditate.

After the meditation of about 10 minutes Guru said,

"People say beauty is skin deep but I say beauty is Soul deep."

Guru asked if we would like to form a meditation group. He would meditate on us in New York and we would meditate in Dublin. I couldn’t see how that would work but a day of the week and a time was agreed upon: Mondays at 8pm.

Guru asked that the seekers who wished to be his students should write a short note, three to four lines long, telling him about themselves. Someone would collect them and bring them to his hotel, the Royal Hibernian in Dawson Street, which is no longer there. Guru said that he would read the notes and nominate one of us to be the leader of the group, though this did not have any spiritual significance, just someone to organise meetings and such like. A boy called Paul Eagan collected the notes of about 20 people and took them to the Hibernian. Guru wrote back short replies. He told me I would be happier if I followed his path and that I should learn to control my sexual desires. He asked Paul to be the leader of the group.

The first meeting we held was in the room at the top of the GMB. For me it was quite a striking experience. There is a poem of Guru’s Flower-Flames number 481 called No Peace for You.

No peace for you,
No satisfaction for you,
Unless you give me
The chance to uplift you
From the morass
Of your dogmatic empiricism.

Sri Chinmoy

I had been unable to understand how Guru’s meditating in New York could have any effect on what was happening in Dublin, but after this first meditation I was convinced I was mistaken.

The following weeks about 20 of us met in a room above the entrance portico of Trinity Chapel. The College Chaplain came one evening and said he felt the presence of the divine.

After Guru left, we all stopped using drugs. Several of us shared a frightening experience: the sensation that the world was going to end in the next minute or so. After some days this experience stopped. During the spring and summer terms the group met regularly. We received books from New York; Paul distributed them and wrote back to New York.

Sundar Dalton

Poem from Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames, part 5, Agni Press, 1979