I Meet a Bona Fide Saint in New Jersey!
I Meet a Bona Fide Saint in New Jersey
Just after I finished writing Bless the Child and sent off my manuscript to the publisher, an acquaintance whom I didn’t know well, told me a world famous Jain Monk, revered by millions as a Saint, was coming to an Ashram in New Jersey.
She said his name was Guruji, he could bilocate, and had performed so many miracles that devotees worldwide revered him and sought his blessing. She asked if I’d go with her to a gathering in which he’d give his blessing to the assembled crowd, but to do so we’d have to be on the road by 4 a.m. Then she added gratuitously that I was the only person she knew who might be willing to get up that early!
New Jersey? Really?
If this Guruji really could bilocate, I asked myself irreverently, wouldn’t he pick a better place than New Jersey to land in? But a Saint is a saint, and if I heard St. Francis of Assisi was going to be in Jersey you’d better believe I’d make my way through the Lincoln Tunnel. So off I went.
My companion said there would be little chance of actually meeting Guruji but that was okay. Bless the Child had been an arduous three year journey into the mysterious and arcane, so getting an energy reboot from a Saint seemed a blessing in itself.
I had absolutely no idea when I hopped into the car at 4 a.m. that day, how profound a journey I was really embarking on.
I Meet Guruji
We arrived at the ashram – I sat on the ground, looked around me and thought ‘Good Lord, now I know where all those people from Woodstock went!’ Déjà vu to the 60’s, this was a dje
llabah and Birkenstock crowd with plenty of gorgeous sari’s thrown in, but it was also interspersed with men and women who appeared very prosperous, couture-clad and mainstream — many with Jaguars, Rolls and drivers waiting in the parking lot!
That made me curious. I didn’t yet know that the Jains are reputedly the wealthiest and most successful business people in India, but it was clear to me that the rapidly gathering early-rising crowd was educated, intelligent and from a Kellogg’s Variety Pack of International backgrounds.
As I had no notion what to expect other than a long day and a picnic, I was content to find a spot with the crowd gathering on a hillside and await whatever the day would hold.
A Guru Sighting
A tall elegant man in a long white garment appeared and I could tell by the excited murmuring around me that this must be Guruji.
He smiled, waved to his audience and then, to my complete astonishment walked directly to where I was sitting, and motioned for me to follow him. Who me? I thought, startled into speechlessness – not something that happens to me very often. I felt embarrassed, as if I should explain myself to him. You’ve made a mistake! I wanted to say. I’m not a devotee of yours. I don’t deserve this attention. I don’t even know what a Jain is! (Other than that I vaguely remembered that Ghandi had somehow used Jain philosophy to defeat the British Empire!)
In truth, I didn’t even know how to pronounce his real name, Acharya Sushil Kumarji Maharaj, I merely knew the affectionate honorific of Guruji, used by his 15 million followers. But I didn’t know any of this then.
Opening the Floodgates
Before I could open my mouth to put my foot in it, I was suddenly flooded with an intense certainty that I was in the presence of great holiness and great power. Don’t ask me how I knew this… it just flooded every cell. So I followed him quietly and tried to figure out what he was saying in very heavily accented English.
He headed for a meadow, beckoning me to follow – I trailed him like a puppy. You may ask me questions, Guruji said portentously. I found I didn’t have any. What was that about? I wondered, shocked at my tongue-tied condition. Here I was, a devoted seeker after spiritual answers, with a direct conduit to the Divine, and suddenly I had no questions?
Later, I realized that aside from my being gobsmacked by being alone with a genuine Saint, when you’re in the presence of great holiness, you simply feel, as Robert Browning said, ‘God’s in His heaven, all’s right with the world.’ I’d had a near death experience 30 years before that day – when I died on an operating table (briefly, thank goodness!) and found myself in some heavenly bright white place, just like the supermarket tabloids describe for near-death experiences. That place felt much like
Guruji’s serene force-field in the ashram meadow.
The Message
He began to speak in a deep, rich, heavily-accented voice, with an almost playful lilt to it. He told me about my life in great detail. Now, remember, he didn’t know me from Adam’s housecat – the woman I’d come with couldn’t possibly have passed on the intimate details of my life, she simply didn’t know them. And he’d never even asked my name. Yet in the course of the next half hour, Guruji told me more than enough about my past, present and future to leave me reeling.
To wit:
That my husband’s soul had taken a different path from mine, and I’d no longer be permitted to be married to him! I’d be divorced within a year, after a two decade marriage.
That I had a medical problem that needed healing. (He said he’d heal me and did.)
He catalogued myriad unexplained psychic events in my childhood.
He told me of the healing work I’d be doing shortly.
He said that my seemingly healthy father would die before the year was out.
As if that wasn’t enough to knock me for a loop, then he told me he had called me to him so he could place me under his protective wing!
That sounded lovely, but exactly why would I need such high-level protection, I asked. To my astonishment he answered, “ Much of this book was channeled. This was a soul’s task you accepted before coming into this incarnation, in order to get certain information into the world. The book can be read at many levels of consciousness, from simple story to spiritual primer.
“Bless the Child will have several life spans – the first is coming shortly and will bring success but not as much as the second wave will bring. And there will be further waves after that. The book will start its second life three years from next June. It will go around the world to 46 countries and do its work for years to come. Long after you and I are gone, this book will remain.”
To keep the record straight, exactly three years from June, Paramount bought my book to make it into a movie which was seen in 46 countries and my story became a sort of underground favorite in many of them!
Guruji, The Miracle Worker
“You channeled a message that was meant to be in the world at this time and for some time to come” Guruji continued. By writing it you fulfilled a soul-task well.” I was still reeling from his previous statements. “This is why you were sent to me today and placed under my guidance – other teachers will be sent to you as time goes on.”
He was right about that, as well – the next were a Tibetan High Lama and a Dakini (Female Messenger of Wisdom) and I’ve been privileged to study with other extraordinary teachers from many cultures, over the years since this happened.
Guruji told me a great many mind boggling facts that day, but lest you think he didn’t do any real magic, let me set the record straight. Before nightfall, I saw him heal the sick and troubled, cause an immense marble statue to appear to come to life and dance, and I saw hundreds of people from all over the world gather to celebrate the birthday of this amazing monk.
Later, I discovered that Guruji and Mikhail Gorbachev had founded the International Green Cross Movement together, and that in the world of international religion and politics Guruji was on a first name basis with the Pope, the President and the Dalai Lama.
A Jain Book
He told me I had one more soul task to accomplish – in return for his benevolent intervention on my behalf, I was to write a book on Lord Mahavir and Jainism
. Lord who? I said. I don’t know a thing about Jainism! I felt foolish and awestruck by all I’d witnessed.
Guruji smiled and said he would instruct me. In the weeks that followed he gave me an armload of books to read on both subjects and told me to come to him for instruction as often as possible.
The last day I was with him, I spied a photo of him on his desk that seemed to embody him to perfection, and asked if I might have a copy. “I’ll send this one to you,” he promised, as he waved goodbye. He said he would be traveling home shortly. I wrongly assumed that meant India.
To my dismay, a month or so later, word reached me that he’d died. Or, in more Jain-like language, Guruji had left his body.
Guruji Didn’t Forget and Neither Will I
You can imagine how devastated I was at the loss of this extraordinary new friend, especially since much of what he’d prophesied had already begun to manifest in my life, just as he’d said it would.
My marriage was over, my beloved father was gone… and for the next year I was in the throws of moving to a new home and a new state. To be honest, I shelved my promise to write the Jain book.
Guruji Sends Me a Message
Then one night, a lovely visitor came to my door, who smilingly said, “I’m the channel for Guruji. He told me to tell you that he promised you a certain photograph and you promised him a book.”
She handed me a brown paper-wrapped parcel and, of course, it contained the exact photo I had seen on his desk at the ashram. It has hung in my bedroom ever since.
I studied Guruji’s books and wrote the book he’d asked for as best I could. I gave it to the Jain Community as a love offering. What became of it after that I do not know and never asked. But I’ve often wondered since, if perhaps Guruji gave me the task of writing this book, not for publication, but as a gift of knowledge for my own soul.
Whatever the truth of it, the blessing I sought from this remarkable Jain Saint has been compounded over and over in the years since, and the trip to New Jersey that I almost didn’t take, has provided one of the greatest blessings of this lifetime.
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Knowing you all theses years and your fearless spirit in the face of a deep and winding path I am grateful to know of this protection ang guidance you have I look forward to reading this book as Bless the Child was a deep and moving somehow personal journey for me
Your books are wonderful, but it’s your real, day to day life that’s truly fascinating and miraculous. May you continue to walk with saints and bask in their blessings.