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and the lyrics to “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” among others, seemed utterly irrelevant to Guru and the Center. At no meditation had Guru ever even mentioned Christopher Columbus, let alone his ships. And though Guru sang hundreds of songs, he never once requested “Yankee Doodle Dandy.” The complete lack of Guru in the curriculum troubled me. When I asked my parentswhy the school didn't teach about Guru, they explained that other children weren't as lucky as I was to study at Guru's inner school. I felt sorry that the entire student body was being deprived of a real education, and it solidified my worries that what filled my days in class and what filled my nights in meditations had nothing in common. School's pencil-and-paste busywork clearly squandered my precious Guru time. For other kindergartners, learning to spell their families’ names might have been a significant goal, but for me it was only a distraction from my one and only goal— God-Realization.
    Long before I could say “applesauce” or “shoelace,” God-Realization was part of my earliest repertoire. It was something that Guru guaranteed his disciples, and since I was, after all, the Chosen One, I figured not only did I have a right to it but I should get it before anyone else. Guru said he was the only God-realized person currently alive; he was the sole authority on the subject. Since Guru never went into details to describe what God-Realization was, I tried to figure it out on my own. I imagined that it entailed gaining superpowers—seeing through walls, talking to animals, skipping sleep forever—and that when it came, everything before it would be irrelevant. Guru convinced us his realization meant that he was fully united with the Supreme, giving him the ultimate authority to speak, act, and command all disciples on the Supreme's behalf, erasing any distinctions between Guru and God.
    According to Guru, in his past lives he was also God-realized, but when a person is reincarnated, even avatars have to start their spiritual search over again in order to regaintheir oneness with God. The way Guru spoke about his God-Realization made it sound as though it was as easy as locating something temporarily misplaced. In this lifetime, Guru said, he realized God when he was eleven years old. Even though I was nearly six years old, eleven seemed pretty young to have figured out everything. To catch up to Guru, I had only six years. That was stressful enough, but to make things worse, meditation was the only guarantee of God-Realization.
    I didn't know how to meditate.
    Every night, except Mondays, my parents dutifully brought Ketan and me to the meetings in Jamaica, Queens, where Guru had us sit for periods of silent meditation, lasting anywhere from ten minutes to twenty-four hours. I never knew what to do. Of course I knew I was supposed to sit still with folded hands, and I also knew that I was supposed to enter my heart chakra, leaving my mind behind, but that was where it became foggy. I imagined the heart chakra as a shiny red house, shaped like a heart made from red metal like the slide at the playground. I would pretend to walk up to the house and knock on the big door; it would make a loud, echoing noise and that would be it. I never got anywhere.
    I then tried songs—Guru's, of course. When that failed, I moved on to lists; if I was at a meditation, I counted the flowers on the stage, sorting them by shapes. I checked the color of the women's saris: how many blue, how many green, how many white. Then I utilized my fingers to tally the number of stufties that Ketan and I had at home. After that, I scanned the disciples around me, counting how many were asleep, their heads bobbing up and down, then snapping back toattention when their folded hands fell into their laps or their chins landed on their chests. My father was almost always asleep when I looked over at him.
    I never asked my parents what they did during meditation or what I was supposed to