When it comes to happiness, we need a holistic approach. Human beings are complicated and all the different ‘bits’ of us need to be nourished and in ‘good shape.’ I think of us in four ways – Body, Mind, Emotion and Spirit.
Since I understand the real essence of who we are to be spirit – our own soul and its relationship with what Native Americans call the Great Spirit, Christians call God, Muslims Allah and so on, I recommend that while we need to look at the wellbeing of body mind and emotions, and have all the ‘bits of us’ in ‘balance’ we begin with a quick look at our spiritual lives. What do we do to nourish and connect with our deepest inner reality?
I was blessed at quite an early age to meet my spiritual Teacher Sri Chinmoy.
About Sri Chinmoy
Born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in the small village of Shakpura, East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1931, Sri Chinmoy was the youngest of seven children. In 1944, after both his parents had passed away, 12-year-old Chinmoy entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India. Here he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice – including long hours of meditation, practising athletics, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.
In his early teens, Chinmoy had many profound inner experiences, and in subsequent years achieved very advanced states of meditation. In 1964, he moved to New York City to share his inner wealth with sincere seekers in the West.
Sri Chinmoy sees aspiration – the heart’s ceaseless yearning for ever higher and deeper realities – as the spiritual force behind all great advances in religion, culture, sports and science. By living in the heart and aspiring for continual self-transcendence, men and women can bring forward the best in themselves and find their path to true satisfaction. In his words:
“Our goal is to go from bright to brighter to brightest, from high to higher to highest. And even in the highest, there is no end to our progress, for God Himself is inside each of us and God at every moment is transcending His own Reality.”
“Our goal is always to go beyond, beyond, beyond. There are no limits to our capacity, because we have the infinite Divine within us, and the Supreme is always transcending His own Reality.”From the Editor’s Preface to – Sri Chinmoy, Run and Become, Become and Run, part 8, 1982
I have been practising meditation and mindfulness as a student of Sri Chinmoy since I met him as a student in 1973. He has saved my life on several occasions but here I will share just one example. I like this one because it was well documented and witnessed. If you have a strong spiritual life of your own, you will have your own stories to tell! Miracles are not widely shared. Indeed Sri Chinmoy himself cautioned about sharing our deepest experiences. He said that many people would not be able to believe us, so their scorn or derision could ‘pollute’ the sacredness of the experience. Other people might be jealous or try to ‘explain the experience away’ (as many Christians do who live in the mind and find it difficult to accept that there is more to life than meets the eye and science simply does not know about or engage with much that is absolutely real. Anyway, here is one of my own sweet miracle-experiences.
My own experience of the power of spirit
In 2004 I had a subarachnoid haemorrhage. That is a brain haemorrhage. half the people who experience this, die within 24 hours. Another half of those who survive, die within a week. Mine was a ‘Textbook Case.’ I was shown the x-rays that showed the break in the blood vessel and my spinal fluid was full of blood and the pressure was absurdly high. I think that is why the pain was so severe. I could’t bare any light. I could barely speak. I could no even sip water – anything that I tried to swallow was simply vomited back, with unbearable intensification of my head-pain. I have never been so ill in all my life. My son gave me a tape recorder, so I could listen to my spiritual Teacher’s music, but even that added to the pain. Instead I spent the first night whispering instructions for my funeral onto tape.
Over the next ten days, on constant hydration, with the drips in my arms making them swell up and add to the pain, my condition slowly improved. I was given painkillers but as the effects of the painkillers wore off and I wanted more, I was informed that I had to wait. After some time I came to refuse the painkillers because they prevented me from managing the pain myself. I used prayer, mindfulness and conscious breathing – and I held my spiritual Teacher’s photo day and night. I just placed myself in his heart and at his feet.
After ten days, by which time I had lost over two stones in weight (about 30 pounds) – my condition had improved enough for the specialist doctors to begin to assess what they could do to treat my situation. They inserted a tube into the artery in my leg and moved it all the way to my brain. Then they used it to inject dye which would enable me to x-ray my brain.
We need a Holistic approach
I could write a whole article about this experience, but to cut it short, I spent over two hours in the MRI scan machine. Before they started, I had to sign to say I understood that I might die or have a stroke as a result of this process. I had to lie absolutely motionless. It was very cold. At intervals I was asked to stop breathing – but they never told me when I could start breathing again. That was quite stressful in itself. What an experience. A few times the pain was so extreme that I was sure I was dying. I wept, not because I was afraid to die – I just felt I was holding my spiritual Teacher’s hand and I felt totally safe and ready for this new journey. I wept because I had not been able to say Goodbye to anyone. My son and mother were in the next room. My sisters and my husband were travelling to see me. But I had not been able to say goodbye.
Eventually the ordeal ended and I came out of the CT scan machine. I was completely paralysed. OK. I had not died. But I must have had a stroke… It transpired that it was not a stroke – just the effect of being immobile for so long in the cold. Eventually I was returned to my bed.
Spiritual Power ?
Next day the top consultant came to see me. He said that I had suffered severe trauma but he was sorry – I was being discharged. He needed the bed for someone who he could treat. It transpired that while I was in the machine the previous day, they had taken over 100 x-rays of my brain. Everything showed that it was in great shape. There was no sign that anything had ever been wrong with it. They re-examined the earlier x-ray which showed the breach in a blood vessel which was leaking – and could find no sign of that now. They were mystified – but one way or another there was nothing they could do and they needed the bed for another patient.
I asked the consultant if he had ever come across spiritual power. I had a very good spiritual Teacher and my son had immediately informed him of what had happened to me. The consultant drew himself to his full height and said, stiffly, ‘I have occasionally come across situations that medical science is unable to explain.’ I smiled and said, yes. I have a very good spiritual Teacher – and he has known about this, since it first happened.’
I was so thin and weak that I could barely stand and I needed help even to get out of bed and walk as far as the bathroom. I went to stay with my mother for a while – and she ‘fed me up’ but I have put on weight but not muscle. That was 18 years ago and I have still not regained my fitness – but that is up to me. I am now exploring strategies to improve both exercise and diet and dreaming of climbing Ben Nevis – the tallest mountain in the UK. I appreciate that I need also to improve my routines of rest and sleep, but it is good to see progress and to remember that only a holistic approach can bring optimum health.
That is why I approach the subject of the physical body in a holistic way. The health of our physical body and our feelings about how we look, how we care about ourselves, have a strong influence on our happiness. Happiness is intricately bound up with the interplay of body, mind, emotions – and spirit. Never dismiss the power and importance of spirit.