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One woman who met Gurudev at the Wainwright House retreat wrote of the effect he had upon her during those days:
"I went to Wainwright House deeply disturbed by the illness of one friend and by the death of another. As Gurudev spoke, I began to feel restored and revived. He advised us to glide into meditation. It is said that things come to us when we are ready for them. Probably I was prepared for Gurudev by the summers in my adolescence when I sat out in the garden of my parents' home reading Lao-Tse and Omar Khayyam, Shakespeare and Tolstoy, Tagore and books on cosmic consciousness. As I looked at the narrow, provincial world around me, with people giving over their whole lives only to acquire a few possessions and whose minds were prejudiced against other races and religions, I thought, 'I love not them the less, but I love these Chinese and Indian philosophers and poets the more!'
"Gurudev is indeed as he calls himself, ‘a sojourner of the infinite.' In his creamy white tunic, with his powerful leonine presence, he looks twenty years younger than he is and emanates such a serenity and joy in living that many individuals including myself are drawn to sojourn with him and would be glad to in the next life as well! He is always with his presence, his inner divinity, but at the same time makes himself accessible to everyone. It is good not to have to go to the Himalayas, so to speak, but to have the Himalayas come to New York!
"How many of us know anyone who is leading a fully satisfying and creative life, with both the exterior and interior modes flourishing? How many of us know someone able to cope with and be strengthened by opposition, who is at peace with himself, with others, and with the earth? Whom do we know who accepts suffering and wrongdoing as a challenge to our growth in awareness? Do we know anyone who is living richly and roundedly, who is both able to give in his receiving and receive in his giving? Such a one is Gurudev Chitrabhanu. Right now what our scientific western world needs desperately is exemplars. Gurudev is a model of humanity who can restore our hope and confidence, who has developed fully the dimensions of his life, who is an inspiration for our being and becoming and who is able to communicate his experiential
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