divine chocolate: the guru parampara

(written in 2003)

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A miracle is not always an obvious miracle. 

People have a tendency, I believe, to think of miracles only in terms of experiencing a physical, tangible, visible result -- like the creation of holy ash in a saint’s hand, or a cross made from two rough pieces of wood bleeding liters of blood, or the sudden healing of an incurable disease. 

Sometimes a miracle, though experienced first through the physical eyes and the human mind, is an internal, private experience of the heart, or the soul. Often it’s an event you don’t even understand in the moment, but only later, after a period of reflection. 

Kaleshwar has said many times that the objects he manifests or teleports from one location to another, such as rings, necklaces, or gemstones, are like chocolates. Miracles are like chocolates for children – because it’s easier to get a child’s full attention, when you want to communicate something important to that child, if you first offer him a delicious chocolate. Once he’s eating the sweet treat, his heart is more open to you, and to your message. 

Those chocolates are the simple level, Miracles 101. A demonstration of a miracle, an unexplainable change in the state of physical reality, like the creation of a solid object – ash, jewelry, a Shiva lingam from sand or fire – where moments before, there WAS no such object, though amazing to the mind, is still chocolate for children. 

Divine chocolate, to open the heart.

But even though something in your heart opens the moment you witness a miracle like that, it may take months, or even years, to understand that it did actually open, and longer still to grasp what that heart-opening might mean.

Before I first met Kaleshwar in person, I had heard a great deal about the miracles he demonstrates. I was excited, skeptical, and interested to see one for myself.

Certainly, receiving a divine chocolate from a spiritual master like Kaleshwar was more than I imagined it would be: surprising, pleasing, enjoyable, special – and above all, sweet.  And he certainly got my undivided attention!

And of course, it’s a natural human response -- having eaten such a chocolate -- to want, immediately, to have more. 

In my experiences along this spiritual trail with Swami Kaleshwar, I’ve noticed that in the beginning, when I wanted more of the miraculous, ‘more’ meant ‘more quantity;’ but as I’ve progressed further along in spirituality with him, ‘more’ has really come to mean ‘deeper.’ 

I want to write about a deeper miracle I experienced with Kaleshwar a few years ago – a surprising dive into the mystery of who he is, who I am, and the infinite possibility in the relationship between student and guru. It was an occasion where, although I was in the same room with him for more than an hour, we never exchanged a word, or even a glance – and yet, it was one of the most profound and moving moments I’ve ever had with him.

Sri Kaleshwar & Shirdi Baba murthi

It was sweet, and deep, and timeless – and it goes like this:

It was a dark, cool night in India, some time after midnight. Unusually enough, I felt strongly drawn to leave the comfort of my room and stroll through the still, quiet ashram grounds to meditate in the temple.  The night was super-clear, and peculiarly hushed, as though a veil of peace had descended over the whole world. 

I came walking up the path and the two sets of stairs that lead to the temple, ready to take a seat inside and start my meditation.

At the temple doorway, I stopped, frozen in my tracks – because the temple, far from being, as I’d hoped, deserted at this late hour, was occupied by Kaleshwar himself, sitting in his chair, with a group of Western students at his feet. There was another group of students, all Japanese, sitting immobile, like statues themselves, on the stage, clustered around the statue of Shirdi Sai Baba, deep in silent meditation. 

Throughout the dimly lit temple, by the light of a couple oil lamps, I could make out a few silhouettes of maybe five other people, one here, one there, meditating.  

The peculiarly subdued quality of the night I’d noticed, walking toward the temple, was even more pronounced inside.

The surprise of seeing Kaleshwar there was so unexpected that I took a step back, and didn’t really stop to consider what it meant. I had the sharp impression – because of the quiet but pointed intensity and focus I perceived in the group around him – that he was involved in a private process of some kind with that group. 

In this ashram, it’s a golden rule to NOT step into, or ask about, or even pay any attention to, someone else’s process with the Swami.

I knew the rules, saw the situation at hand, and acted accordingly. I turned around and swiftly left the temple, thinking, “Oh, my god. I shouldn’t be here right now.”

As I was walking away, something strange happened. I kept seeing the scene in the temple, playing and replaying in my mind’s eye. I went down one flight of stairs, across the slates of the courtyard… thinking… “Okay, Kaleshwar is there with a private group of students, whew, good thing I left.” 

Then thinking… “But a few OTHER students are there, too, scattered around the temple and they’re obviously NOT part of that process…”    Another flight of stairs, and I’m still thinking… “…and the doors of the temple are wide open. ANYONE could just walk in and see that he’s doing something private...”  

A few more steps, and I slipped my feet into my sandals, and then it hit me…. “Hey, WAIT!  If he wanted this to be a totally private process, he’d have taken that group into some back room or another. Or, at least, the temple doors would be shut and locked! That ‘anyone’ could see what’s going on means…I’m Anyone, too!” 

And I dropped my sandals, turned back around and ran quietly back to the temple door. It was one of those cases where my feet were far ahead of my mind. They carried me back before I was fully aware of what I was doing, or that I’d even consciously decided to go back. The pull was that irresistible.

I stood outside the temple door, again, and looked in, sheepishly – yup, it was still the same scene. By this time, my mind had caught up with my body, so without hesitating, certain that I was welcome, so long as I remained respectful and unobtrusive, I walked in and sat down on my cushion, on the floor, in the very back of the temple.

My intention was to do my meditation process, but instead, I found myself watching the circle of people sitting at Kaleshwar’s feet and wondering what was happening. It was so darkened in the temple, and I was sitting so far in the back, that I could barely even see his face. I noticed some of the other students in the room, craning their necks as they, too, tried to catch a glimpse of what was happening. 

Suddenly I recognized – how, exactly, I don’t know – that trying to see the process wasn’t the best way to experience it. So I quit squinting and straining. I simply quit trying to see at all on the physical level; rather, I leaned back against the wall and heard my inner voice saying, “I’m just going to enjoy this energy as much as I can, to be open-hearted and to experience whatever’s going on, whatever my master wants me to experience, and not try to figure it out.” 

The moment I melted into that awareness – into the surety that I didn’t need to know WHAT Kaleshwara was doing, exactly, to receive the full impact of the energy he was creating  --  the whole beauty of the energy in that temple began pouring into me. It permeated my physical body, my heart, and I’m sure it was filling my soul’s cup as well. And it was delicious, peaceful, sublime, high divine energy – the kind Kaleshwar has beautifully, and accurately, described as “melodious energy.”

The group of Western students sat at his feet for what seemed to be about twenty minutes or so, although the vibrating, pulsing peace in the room was so strong that two hours could easily have gone by and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

Suddenly, Kaleshwar stood up and dismissed that group, probably to the upstairs Jesus temple. “Okay,” I thought, “That’s it. The process is finished.”  I watched the group file by, noticing how solemn their faces were, how one-pointed their focus was.

Even though part of me thought it was over, I didn’t want to leave the temple. I was vaguely aware of feeling rooted to the ground, like a tree. Even if I’d WANTED to leave, at that exact moment, there was no way my body was going to cooperate with the idea of leaving.

So I stayed there, sitting in the shadows at the back of the temple, watching, dazed, as Kaleshwar climbed the steps of the main altar, and walked right up to the statue of his master, Shirdi Sai Baba.

I don’t recall now if he made a pranam (that is, bowed his head until it touches the statue’s feet) to Baba or not. I don’t recall anything specific except the mind-bending surge of energy that came rolling down from the stage, from that statue, the moment Kaleshwar stepped near Baba. It was an oceanic wave, building, cresting, and breaking in the temple, and washing everything along in its path (including me) as it rolled on through the temple and out the doorway just next to me.

I think I actually gasped aloud.

Then Kaleshwar did something I’ve never seen him do, before or since: he stood right up next to the statue of Shirdi Sai Baba – looking very dark, his skin a night sky, starkly contrasted with his immaculate white clothing and the softer white marble of Baba’s face – and he leaned his head against Baba’s shoulder. So gently, so tenderly, he leaned, until his head was touching Baba’s head ever so slightly.  And he stood that way, unmoving, for what felt like, what must have been, an eternity.

It was as if all time had stopped still, completely, this frame frozen and stolen from Forever. It might have gone on for months, or decades, or centuries, even eons. What human being can really gauge the length of a divine moment? 

Meanwhile, waves of pure energy, of pure joy, of pure love, even more intense and more beautiful that the initial one, were emanating from the two of them, coming in like the tide, one after another, after another, and then spilling on out of the doors and windows of the temple.

No building on earth could contain those waves, that ocean, that love.

And in the middle of the utter peace and awe that welled up in me, in response to those blissful waves, I remembered Kaleshwar saying once, almost dreamily, the words half-whispered as if to himself (and we who happened to hear them seemingly incidental to their being uttered at all):  “I’m here doing this job now because I promised Baba many, many thousands of years ago that I would come and do it.” 

And as I looked at the two forms frozen in mute communion on that stage, I saw that promise come to life, vibrant and endless in its wordless expression of love. 

In the same moment I felt the weight of Kaleshwar’s promise, I also witnessed the absurdity of the temporary – the absolute absurdity of two impossibly enormous, shining souls, trapped (albeit voluntarily) inside two impossibly awkward forms: one a human male, slight in height but shyama sundara, as dark and beautiful as Lord Krishna himself, and the other a stone sculpture, a carved piece of marble in the shape of a beggar, a Muslim fakir, wearing an exquisite sari as a covering, and flower garlands, and a gold crown on his head… 

The one, a form in flesh, leaning delicately against the other, a stone form, leaning like a son, a student, a friend, a lover, a parent, a colleague, all combined.

At the same time I perceived the cosmic absurdity of those temporary forms, I experienced the depth and the breadth of the eternal, pure love between their boundless souls. It is that love, which has no beginning and no end, that love that is form and formless, that is creation and dissolution; that perfect divine, timeless love with which these two shining souls, Kaleshwar and Shirdi Sai Baba, had sealed a contract, a dharmic bargain, all those thousands of years ago. 

That love, that soul-to-soul perfect comprehension and communion and mutual surrender between the two of them, to bring an amazing new spiritual understanding to this planet… their promise IS that love. 

As I was experiencing – to my utter amazement – the play of that love, and that eternal bond between guru and student, student and guru, the love waves were still pouring in and through and outwards like the surf, touching the whole world in silent, and potent, blessing. It was completely overwhelming. 

The mysterious strength of that promise, made by Kaleshwar to Baba, seemed impossible and at the same time perfectly possible. Numbly, I began to wonder about what promises my own soul may have made to my own guru, Kaleshwar…

I’d begun to cry without fully realizing that I was crying. I heard myself sniffle out loud, the sound echoing off the walls and marble floor in the cavernous temple, and foggily, became aware that tears had been rolling down my face for some time, now.

The waves of that infinite promise were throbbing in my heart, and in that moment it was so open, expanded, and available that the more I received the energy inside, the harder I cried. The tears, and the receiving, were completely out of my control. It was a melting beyond all melting. 

Finally, noticing that my whole body was shuddering with suppressed sobs, I got up and left the temple, afraid that I would begin sobbing audibly and so disturb the experience of the other people still in the temple.

As I walked out of the temple and into the night, tears of pure joy still flooding my cheeks, the air fragrant with jasmine and other flower essences wafting by on the breezes, I realized that I had just experienced a profound miracle – the miracle of timeless, perfect love. 

The miracle of the Guru Parampara.

The gratitude in my heart was then – and still is – inexpressible in words. The British poet Wordsworth came as close as one can come to it, when he wrote, “My dear friend, need I say, that to the brim my heart was full….. I made not vows, but vows were then made for me.”

A doorway into the infinite splendor and glory of the vows of this planet, this guru, this lineage, this dharma, this love, this god, and my own soul, had been flung wide open for a few priceless moments. I’d seen the origin of an ancient promise, made by my guru to his guru, the flowing result of that promise, and my own dharmic connection to that promise, all at the same time. 

On the surface viewing, there was nothing remarkable in it – an Indian man leaning against a marble statue of another Indian man in a temple in the middle of the night.

Internally, however, it was staggering; a deathless pact between two giant souls, spilling out into this world and into my own life. Into my own heart. 

“You have to recognize what are the mortal things, and what are the immortal things,” Kaleshwar has told us many times. It may be simple enough to repeat, or to hear, a sentence like that, but to me it is a miracle, as a human being, to have EXPERIENCED something of the truth that lives in and beyond those words.

It is through Kaleshwar’s and Shirdi Sai Baba’s grace, that I was so so so unimaginably fortunate as to have been standing right in front of that door when it opened -- able and even invited to come in and to taste, for those few eternally frozen seconds, the real depth of the divine chocolate.  

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