I remember vividly when I first met Swamiji. I was living in the Palo Alto community, having just moved in about two months prior.
This was many years ago, during the time when Swamiji still resided in America, long before his move to Italy. He was visiting our community, I believe, for an Easter celebration—and we had a magnificent, joyful gathering ahead of us.
A few months before his arrival, I had taken a leap of faith and written him an email. I wanted to express how deeply his music touched my soul. Years earlier, I had played the flute semi-professionally, but I eventually dropped it entirely. The music world, unfortunately, was heavily saturated with a vibration of intense competition, an environment that drained my inspiration. So, I walked away from my instrument.
One afternoon during his visit, I was walking out of my apartment down a concrete path. I looked up, and there was Swamiji walking down an intersecting path. Our ways met perfectly. Seizing the moment, I said softly, “Swamiji, thank you so much for the music that you’ve given us.”
He stopped, looked at me, and asked, “Are you the one who wrote me the email months back?”—and then, he said my name.
I stood there completely frozen, thinking, “Yes… wow. How could he possibly know?” But Swamiji knew these things. He perceived reality on a remarkably deep, intuitive level. He genuinely knows each one of us. I came to realize that even if you have never physically met him before, your soul has met him. He is always there with you.
Rekindling Music as a Spiritual Practice
During that very first encounter, Swamiji strongly encouraged me to play the flute more. In fact, he requested that I play for him that very evening. I remember being entirely bowled over by the powerful, radiant vibrations he emanated—especially his profound kindness. He helped me see that music was an essential element for me to cultivate, not to abandon. Music opens the heart.
At that time, I was working as an engineer. I lived almost entirely in my analytical mind, constantly calculating, measuring, and rationalizing. Swamiji showed me that music was the precise spiritual practice (sadhana) I needed in my life to establish balance, and that meeting completely rekindled my creative fire. The vibration of kindness radiating from him was so intense that my nervous system could barely process the shift; I went home and slept for ten continuous hours just to integrate all that spiritual energy.
The True Meaning of Kindness
Through him, I learned that true kindness does not necessarily mean outward sweetness or a syrupy, polite exterior. It is a much deeper, cosmic quality. Swamiji taught us a foolproof way to discern whether we are practicing kindness correctly: look for an expansive feeling within.
If we act or speak under the guise of kindness but feel a tight, contractive sensation in our chest, that is not genuine kindness. That is the superficial variety—the kind where we wear a polite smile on our face while harboring “red hot chili peppers” of resentment or judgment on the inside.
A Lesson Beyond the Analytical Mind
Another profound way Swamiji projected kindness was in his role as the Guru, cleanly channeling a higher divine reality. We were preparing for a concert at the Ananda Village, and the musicians held a meeting with him beforehand to discuss the repertoire. I was scheduled to play a beautiful flute piece titled “Krishna’s Flute.”
True to my analytical, engineering mindset, I was completely caught up in trying to get the technical execution perfectly right. I kept probing him with technicalities: “Swamiji, is the rhythm meant to be played this way, or is it that way?” Looking back, I was just a talking head without a heart—approaching a sacred piece with dry, mental analytics.
Swamiji stopped, looked directly at me, and said firmly:
“You do as I say!”
In that moment, I was bowled over again—but this time, in a way that felt incredibly uncomfortable. However, because I had already experienced his vast consciousness, I had developed a deep faith and trust in him. I knew that whatever came from Swamiji was exactly what my soul needed to look at, whether it felt comfortable or not.
Prior to that moment, my only life experience with strong, direct speech was when someone was acting out of human anger. Naturally, when people spoke harshly to me in the past, my habit was to get defensive, fearful, or upset. Recognizing this old reactive pattern surfacing, I knew I needed to take this straight to meditation.
Discipline Enveloped in Love
During the brief break between our rehearsal and the evening concert, I sat in deep meditation. I closed my eyes and asked internally, “What is truly going on here, Swamiji? What am I missing?”
The immediate result of his sharp words was clear: it had instantly knocked me completely out of my analytical head and directly into my heart center—even if my physical heart was racing at top speed! I was no longer an engineering mind over-analyzing the notes; I was fully present in my feeling nature. That in itself was a magnificent lesson.
But as I dove deeper into the meditation, seeking the underlying truth of the interaction, I was suddenly overwhelmed by a massive wave of pure love. I experienced firsthand that when the Guru delivers a hard blow to the ego, it is completely enveloped in love and kindness. I could feel his profound kindness permeating the entire disciplinary action. I felt a surge of immense gratitude. Over the years, I received many more of those precise adjustments, and I truly needed every single one of them.
Swamiji wrote an article called “Kindness in Truthfulness.” In it, he says the most important truthfulness is self-truthfulness. But this kindness in truthfulness is about seeing the bigger picture. We don’t have to say, “That person really needs to hear this, and I’m going to just tell them, because if I tell them, they’ll change their behaviour and I won’t feel uncomfortable anymore.” So we go ahead and say that truth—but what happens to the heart? The heart feels pinched.
This is our biggest clue. When we’ve done something out of unkindness, our heart pinches. Okay—we’ve made a mistake, the heart pinched, and we can know better next time.
Watch the heart. If we watch the heart, and watch how it’s feeling—is it expansive or contractive?—then we’ll know whether we’re on the right path towards kindness.
I’m so grateful that we all get to live in and celebrate the love and kindness of Swamiji together. God bless you.
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(If you would like to watch the full video please click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4-ETXEvBZc)