"Are they praying to him?" I asked my brother.

"No," he whispered. "They are aspiring to the Infinite in him."

The Guru sipped from a gla.s.s which he held with his pinky pointing out.

"Well," I thought. "As long as they aren't praying to him."

Suddenly Chinmoy belted out, "Aummm.

Auuummmmmm. Auuummmmmmmmmmmm." After five minutes of meditation, the Guru folded his hands and bowed to the audience.

My brother whispered, "He is offering his meditation to the Infinite in us."

"That about evens the score," I thought, feeling better about the whole business of guru worship.

Chinmoy signaled a disciple who placed a box of oranges before him.

He stood behind it and nodded to the audience, which began forming a line.

At first I thought he was just giving out oranges. But by filling the fruits with spiritual light, my brother explained, the Guru was really giving darshan.

One by one, the disciples looked into Chinmoy's eyes with out-stretched hands. When they received the darshan they touched the orange to their heart chakra, bowed, and walked reverentially back to the benches.

When it came my turn, I approached slowly so that people would think I was spiritual. "When Guru flickers his eyes,"

I recalled my brother telling me, "he is entering the perfect awareness of Nirvakalpa Samadhi." I looked up. Chinmoy smiled, flickered his eyes, and pulled from the box...nothing! He had run out of oranges.

"An omen!" I thought. I was unsure, though, what the delay exactly meant. Nonetheless, I decided to take advantage of the situation.

I focused my gaze on Chinmoy. Soon everything in the chapel, except for his shiny face, seemed to disappear. Then, borrowing a technique from the Castaneda books, I squinted and crossed my eyes until Chinmoy transformed into swirls of shimmering light. "Wow!" I thought.

For a moment, the distorted image before me reminded me of the Transcendental.

When Chinmoy came back into focus, he shot a glance at the side of the chapel. A disciple brought him a fresh crate. After the second flickering, I took the orange with both hands, touched it to my heart chakra, and bowed. I walked away feeling grateful.

A wave of joy washed over me. I saw the disciples, including my brother and Atmananda, gazing lovingly at Chinmoy. I felt touched by a power which seemed greater and more romantic than that of the world of reason.

"How many people get a gift from a *fully* enlightened guru?"

I wondered.

"Don't just stare at it," my brother reproved, explaining that oranges were poor retainers of Spiritual Light. "Eat it!"

Moments later, the Guru announced in a lilting voice, "Atmananda, pleeeez bring."

Atmananda led the five or six potential initiates to the front of the chapel. He had found, inspired, and persuaded them through his lectures. While Atmananda watched the Guru initiate them, he did not return to his seat. Instead, he remained in front, several feet away.

Chinmoy rapidly oscillated his eyes at the new recruits. His eyes were still flickering when he placed his hand on each of their foreheads.

When his eyes returned to normal, he flashed a smile at Atmananda, at the new disciples, and at the rest of the audience. Then he left the chapel in a flurry of whites and saris.

As I watched him leave, I felt secure that he and Atmananda knew a lot about the unknown. I glanced across the room at the disciples.

I realized that I wanted to be part of their fellowship.

My brother and I found Atmananda outside, addressing a group of Stony Brook Chinmoy disciples.

"Do you want to go with us to Au Natural?" he asked us.

At that moment I would have gone with him anywhere, partly because I was not keen on going home, and partly because he was so compelling.

There was something about him that felt nurturing yet electric, casual yet happening.

"Yes!" we chimed.

Atmananda organized rides, gave directions, warned us about potholes and drunk drivers, and suggested that we maintain a meditative consciousness, lest we lose the Guru's light.

Then he led us away from the other Chinmoy disciples, from the chapel, from the campus, and onto the streets.

I watched the blur of city lights from the back of Atmananda's Saab, which hurtled through the streets at a velocity close to that of a New York taxi. He skillfully avoided potholes and drunk drivers.

He told my brother of his plan to have Stony Brook disciples advertise his free public lectures by placing posters in Manhattan. I relaxed, believing he was in control.

At Au Natural, a yogurt shop, Atmananda introduced me to the Stony Brook disciples. There were Anne, Dana, and Suzanne, the sari-clad women from his lectures. There was Tom, a dark-haired young man who was as tall as Atmananda and who seemed easygoing.

There was Sal, a balding young man who seemed intense. There were other Chinmoy disciples milling around, but the Stony Brook group stuck together.

I expected the conversation would be spiritual, seeing as how we had just meditated with a fully enlightened guru. To my surprise, Atmananda and Tom recalled an episode from The Twilight Zone.

"And he totally disappeared."

"Into the fifth dimension."

"Yeah, he really got zapped."

That night, when I got home, I wondered if Atmananda should have been more meditative. But I recalled that Don Juan often acted absurd, funny, and irreverent. He did so to balance the utter seriousness of The Path, as well as to shake up Castaneda's pre-conceived notions of what it meant to be a seeker. "Besides," I thought, quoting Atmananda, "who says spirituality can't be fun?"

The following week, I wondered if Chinmoy would accept me as his disciple.

I asked my brother what my odds were.

"If you are drawn to Guru," he said, "the chances are you have studied with him in past lives. But if he sees that he's not the right teacher for you, he'll guide you inwardly to the right one."

I wanted to believe what my brother and Atmananda had been telling me.

I wanted to believe that the Guru installed disciple-specific, invisible channels through which peace, light, and bliss could, if the disciple were receptive, inwardly flow. Yet I was not sold on the theory of reincarnation. Nor was I convinced that Atmananda was fully accurate when he claimed that Chinmoy was the Cosmic Boatman, an avatar [incarnation of a Hindu deity], and the most advanced soul ever to have incarnated anywhere in the entire universe.

"Why would the messiah live in Jamaica, Queens?" I wondered.

But then I felt bad. After all, the Buddha and Christ probably didn't live in such fancy neighborhoods either. I also realized that my doubts were based on the premise of rationality, the very nature of which Atmananda had taught me was limited, flawed, and often destructive.

"I suppose Chinmoy *could* be the Cosmic Boatman," I told myself as part of a compromise.

Days later, after one of Atmananda's public lectures, I grew curious about my earlier vision of the snow. I asked Atmananda to explain.

"Your third eye chakra is opening up a bit," he explained matter-of-factly. "You are seeing into another world. It is not unusual to have this type of experience if you have meditated in past lives."

"Thanks, Atmananda!" I said.

"Sure, kid," he said, suggesting that I sit back and enjoy the process.

Except for occasional doubts, I had been enjoying the process.

I enjoyed hanging out with the Stony Brook disciples. They were not only fellow seekers, but they seemed to have a good time.

Atmananda, in particular, was fun to be around. He sometimes made me feel important and powerful. I enjoyed his lectures, during which he quoted The Bhagavad-Gita, The Bible, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Star Wars, Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Th.o.r.eau, Roethke, and Carlos Castaneda.

One time he even recited my favorite pa.s.sage from the Castaneda books, the one about traveling on paths that have heart.

Now convinced that I had found a home in Atmananda's world, I decided to seek initiation from Chinmoy.