STORY OF THE MONTH
(May 2026)


"Love God, No Matter What"

(A True Story of Faith & Courage)

""Love God, no matter what."

These were the final words of my wife Cheryl to our eighteen-month-old daughter. And these words perfectly summed up Cheryl's attitude as she prepared to die - she loved God no matter what befell.

No matter that she was only thirty-seven and was losing a husband and an infant daughter. No matter that cancer had devastated her body, despite her many months of unceasing struggle against it. No matter that she was now in constant pain. No matter. She loved God.

The seeds of Cheryl's love, her trust and surrender to God, had been sown long before. Years of daily meditation and dedicated service to others through Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF) helped her to form a personal relationship with God and a deep inner attunement with her guru, Paramahansa Yoganandaji.

From the time I first met her, I could see that her goal in life was to know God. And in the closing months of her life, that desire transformed her in a way that can only be called awe-inspiring.

It was while Cheryl was pregnant with our only child, Valerie, that she first discovered a small lump on her breast. The doctors took numerous tests, which continually indicated that the lump was not cancerous.

But despite the doctors' assurances, a biopsy six weeks after Valerie's birth revealed that there was indeed a malignancy, and that it had already spread into Cheryl's lymph system. The doctors sadly informed us that she had almost no hope of surviving.

Cheryl's first reaction, of course, was one of fear and denial: "Oh, no! This can't really be happening. I've just had a little baby and now I'm told I have an incurable disease!"

She knew what that meant, because her mother had died from cancer about eight years earlier. So she was naturally very open to hearing about a more positive approach to treatment, which is the way a friend of ours described a nutritional therapy program that had healed her of an "incurable" connective tissue disease.

In addition to the actual therapy, the program stressed the power of positive thinking and reliance on God's healing power. It sounded very hopeful to us.

Cheryl had a long meditation, praying deeply to God and Guru. Afterward, she told me that she had decided to go ahead with the nutritional therapy.

Cheryl followed the therapy program, first at the clinic, and especially later when we went home. The therapy put Cheryl through an intense process of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual discipline. It was extremely unpleasant, and there is no way to describe how trying an experience it was for her.

The program took the entire day, every day, to complete. Day after day, week after week, it went on without a break: non-stop war, war with the body. And more than that, it was war with the ego - with fears, negative emotions, attachments, and wrong attitudes.

Cheryl told one of our friends: "The battle is not only physical. God is putting lots of situations and people in my path to teach me spiritual lessons: what garbage to drop, what treasures to keep. I don't know if I'm learning my lessons, but I'm trying. No, I'm doing! I'm throwing the word 'try' out of my vocabulary."

Sri Daya Mata, whom we had had the blessing of knowing during the course of our service to SRF over the years, reinforced this realization when she wrote to Cheryl:
"Through your constant striving for right attitude, faith, and surrender, you have allowed God to help you take that step toward greater attunement and awareness of His presence."

It was a supreme test - especially when it became clear that the therapy wasn't improving her health. After five months of the nutritional treatment, we had to accept the fact that it wasn't working for her, even though we had seen it cure several other people. 

Finally, I drove her to a hospital and called in the doctors, cancer specialists, who said she needed immediate surgery and that she had little hope of surviving.

So, we were right back where we were before the nutritional therapy, faced with the surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy that had been Cheryl's greatest fear.

But now there was a great difference.

The preceding months of intense striving for right attitude and surrender to God had brought her a wonderful, almost constant sense of His loving presence. She was no longer afraid of anything. Sick as she was, she remained cheerful and happy - so much so that the doctors and nurses were mystified. They kept finding excuses to come into her room, trying to figure out how she could possibly be so happy!

Cheryl came through the surgery beautifully and responded exceptionally well to the chemotherapy, so well that in May, four months later, a CT scan showed her body free of visible cancer. The doctors called it a complete remission.

But it was not to last.

In September, thirteen months after the first diagnosis, she noticed several more lumps. Tests showed the cancer was active again and had spread to several areas. This time the chemotherapy had little effect, and by mid-November, the doctors felt she had only a few days to live.

Up to that time, Cheryl had thought she would recover. When I let her know that she would not be coming home, she just looked at me and quietly said, "Okay...."

Shortly after that, she wrote her final words to Valerie:

Dear Valerie,
I've been afraid to write you a final letter because I haven't wanted to consider my disease final. But I have to look at this realistically and know that it is final, and that Master is looking out for us despite these hard times....My advice to you is just sweet and simple: to love God no matter what. He loves you.

All my divine love, Mom.

At this opportune time, Daya Ma wrote again, saying:
“Go on gently holding to your beautiful attitude of faith and courage, knowing that great progress and reward are yours. We are here to become united with God, and your soul is waxing in His light and beauty, because of your faith in the midst of trial. Divine Mother and Gurudeva are pleased with you, dear one, and They are blessing you without measure.”

When the end finally came, Cheryl was listening through headphones to 'I Will Sing Thy Name', one of Self-Realization's tapes of devotional chanting.

I noticed her breathing getting slower and slower, and lightly touched her at the point between the eyebrows, the spiritual eye, as I tried to meditate. When her breathing stopped altogether, I took off the headphones and stopped the tape. She had made the transition to freedom in the middle of the chant, "Jai Guru"-"Victory to the Guru."

Cheryl passed away after her year-and-a-half battle in December, 1984. I was with her in the hospital room when she passed. The room was permeated with joy as soon as she took her last breath. I stood at her bed and soaked in that joy for twenty minutes, after which I informed the nurses that she was gone.

An hour later, as I waited in her room, I was summoned to the nurses station to answer a phone call. I wondered who might be calling, as I had not had time to phone anyone with the news of Cheryl's passing.

When I answered the phone, the voice on the other end of the line said, "Mr. Hart, please hold."

Then another voice on the phone said to me, "Mr. Hart? This is Daya Mata. I was just meditating and felt our dear Cheryl's passing. She is with Master as we speak and is in great joy. I want you to know that Cheryl had fulfilled Guruji's wishes throughout her life, and especially during her illness. Do your best to tune in to that great joy that Cheryl is feeling as a result of her surrender to God and her Guru. Master bless you and Valerie, dear one."

I had always believed that omnipresent consciousness could exist and great ones do possess it. But that day was my firsthand experience that the stories such as those from ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ are still being enacted today through those great souls who are in charge of his organization.

Four months later, Daya Ma asked me to bring my twenty-one-month-old daughter, Valerie Faye, with me to Mother Center. We spent some time with Ma in her sitting room on the third floor of the SRF International Headquarters building. My little Valerie had the "mother of all mothers" consoling her as Ma bounced her on her knee, giving comfort and love."
 
(This story first appeared in the Jul-Sep 1986 issue of Yogoda Satsanga Society Magazine, and was republished in Jan-Mar 2015 issue of YSS Magazine with some more updates from Mr.Hart)

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Notes:

* Sri Daya Mataji was the third president of SRF/YSS from 1955-2010

* Mr.Ron Hart is a Southern California-based jazz pianist, composer, and founder of PureBeam Music with a career spanning over 60 years

* My Reminiscences of Sri Daya Mataji by Ron Hart Written in 2014 :

In 1973 the SRF volunteers from the temples that existed then (Hollywood, Lake Shrine, San Diego, Fullerton, and Encinitas) were invited (all at the same time!) for a meditation in the Mother Center chapel with Sri Daya Mata, and for light refreshments with her afterwards.

All of the volunteers were able to fit into the chapel, and we had a lovely meditation with Ma. When the meditation concluded, we lined up and Ma greeted us one at a time in the reception hall.

Each devotee would take their turn walking up to Ma, extending their hands in the pranam position, and say something to Ma. Ma would place her hands around the outstretched hands of the devotee while looking deep into their eyes and confer a blessing.

When my turn came, I had been silently rehearsing the greeting I would give to Ma, which was "Namaste." When Ma took my hands in hers, my mind went completely blank and I was staring into those depthless eyes and receiving the equivalent of 1,000 volts of pure joy through my body.

When I could not utter a word, Ma said to me, "Master bless you, dear one."

I was visibly shaking from the incredible influx of energy from Ma's grasp as I joined the other volunteers who had made a large semi-circle behind Ma.

We were each handed a little paper plate of cookies and given a cup of cocoa. I couldn't lift the cup to my mouth due to my shaking, so I just stood there. All the volunteers who had already greeted Ma were standing there with me and they were still shaking as well, unable to drink or eat.

That was my first encounter with Sri Daya Mata, which is just as real to me today as it was those many years ago.

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