Poetic transcendence

Guru always spoke about the importance of self-transcendence. But nobody in the universe actually did self-transcendence more than Guru.

One year, I went on our annual Christmas trip and was not able to do much in terms of what we call “manifestation”⎯promoting awareness of Guru’s presence and his spiritual philosophy. For some reason we were not allowed to do this type of work; I don’t remember the exact reason.

What Guru did with me instead was that every morning at 7:00 a.m., he would call me on the phone and dictate poems to me. He said that I should type them up secretly and not tell anyone. So every morning he would dictate, and it was a magnificent experience for me. By the end of the Christmas trip, I had thousands of poems. Guru said, “Please now, please bring them to me in folders.” So I did.

During the day, when he was in our meeting room, he would also dictate poems to the girls, and they would write them down and type them up. At the end of the trip, Guru asked the girls, “What is the grand total of poems that I have done on the Christmas trip?” It was a very big number⎯something like twenty thousand poems.

The girls were counting carefully, but like a mischievous boy Guru said, “I think you are missing many of them! Here are three thousand more you have not counted!” He brought out this big stack of poems that he had dictated to me and said, “Secretly I’ve been dictating poems every morning as well as during the day.”

Guru had such eagerness for self-transcendence!

May my self-transcendence-eagerness
Never end.

Sri Chinmoy 1

• 1. Seventy-Seven Thousand Service-Trees, part 32, Agni Press, 2003