Medication for Moscow

 

This is a very old story, back from when I began these studies and our children were still little. We were in New York for the holidays in April.

At the time, the Sri Chinmoy Movement was collecting donations for a children’s hospital in Moscow. They would take a caravan of trucks from Vienna to Moscow to deliver the aid. The Americans contributed a lot of medications that were packed up in good-sized boxes about 2 square feet each.  Guru asked each of his Austrian students to take a box or more so everything would get to Moscow.

Then someone informed Guru that this would not work, since Austria was terribly strict about people bringing in medications, even more than with hard drugs. If someone were caught with a box it could mean real trouble.  So Guru asked for all the boxes to be carried out to the tennis court—every last one. I was there when this happened, along with a few of the Austrian students. Once the boxes had been laid out in orderly rows on the court, Guru started walking around them. He went around and around, looking at the boxes, apparently meditating on them. I don’t remember how many times He circled them, though I’m sure I counted; in any case it was a lot. When He finished He told us not to fear: everything would work out, and told us to take the boxes. If anything happened, we were to say our mantras and speak the name of God, whom He always called ‘Supreme.’

So we ended up taking three enormous boxes. When we got to Vienna, I told Marami (my wife) “You take our personal baggage and the kids, and I’ll take the three boxes!” I set them on a cart and headed for the exit. Since Guru had assured me nothing would happen, I was sure the customs officers would be busy with something else, as had happened so many other times, and I would just waltz right through. But once the automatic door slid open in front of me, I saw that three customs officers were standing right in front of me, their hands behind their backs, staring right at me. Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and began stuttering to myself, but couldn’t manage even one decent Supreme. When the officers spotted me with my boxes, two of them stepped toward me. They took about three steps towards me, just as I was about to turn left and head for the exit. As they reached my cart, they stopped, and—as if in response to some unheard order—began backing up, putting their hands behind their backs again. They went back into their row, and I made my way out. It could have been a scene from a film, but unfortunately in my cold fear I couldn’t really enjoy it. It was odd, as if Yoda had given them an order.

Once we left the building, there was Ashru (another disciple of Guru) waiting with a van. We loaded up the boxes of medications. If memory serves, there were about 40 of them. Not a single one was inspected.

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Excerpt from the book: MY MASTER MY HOME

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