Video by kedarvideo
Sri Chinmoy began weightlifting on 26 June 1985 at the age of 54. His rapid progress and remarkable achievements soon caught the attention of the weightlifting community. Here, five-time Mr. Universe Bill Pearl hosts, and officiates at, a public event to celebrate Sri Chinmoy’s weightlifting, held on 27 November 1998.
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Sri Chinmoy held his first 7-hour public meditation, All Angels’ Church, Manhattan
Meeting with the President of India
The Meditation Group Singers and Sri Chinmoy met with Giani Zail Singh, the President of India, for a brief session of prayer, meditation and spiritual discussion on 30 October. Mr. Singh meditated with the group and listened attentively as the singers sang a song composed by Sri Chinmoy in his honour. “I really feel l that your prayers are like those of my dear ones,” the President told the group near the close of the meeting. “(Hearing) your words will help me live up to the expectations you have for me.”
Mr. Singh was in New York recovering from open heart surgery. The Meditation Group wishes him a speedy and vigorous recovery. Photo: Richard Howard
Published in Secretariat NEWS, United Nations Headquarters New York, 30 November 1982
An interview recorded for
Immediately after Sri Chinmoy played the organ at the Sydney Opera House on 30 November 1987, he was interviewed in the organ console by David Rumsey, Chairman of the Department of Organ and Sacred Music at the New South Wales Conservatorium of Music and organist with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.
David Rumsey: Thank you very much, Sri Chinmoy, for coming to the Sydney Opera House this evening and playing for us. You have a very unique style of playing the organ. As many other musicians have said, you combine a kind of Eastern as well as a Western-style. Your own style is, perhaps we might say, Eastern; whereas, the organ itself is very Western. For many centuries, the organ has served the Christian church as a spiritual kind of musical instrument. Do you also find spirituality in the organ?
Sri Chinmoy: Yes, I find spirituality in the organ, more than I find it in any other instrument. Here I see that the organ is not only the king of all the musical instruments but it is also the queen of all the instruments. It is extremely powerful and it has a very subtle, delicate touch at the same time. When you think of a king, you think of somebody who is very powerful, like a sovereign, and, when you think of a queen, there is softness and sweetness, a delicate touch. So the organ combines both God the Man and God the Woman.
David Rumsey: So, in your music, you are finding an expression of God which comes from within you and is expressed by the organ, sometimes as king, sometimes as queen?
Sri Chinmoy: Yes.
David Rumsey: Those are very beautiful sentiments. I have seen you on videotape speaking about soulful music. Do you find the organ is, what we might call, a ‘soulful’ instrument?
Sri Chinmoy: It is soulful and, at the same time, powerful. Sometimes the soul does not express power. But I see that the soul of the organ expresses power as well. In the case of an individual, he can express his inner capacities through power or through love or through other divine aspects. But the organ has the capacity to express many divine qualities at the same time.
David Rumsey: Do you find that, through the organ and the sounds that it makes, there is a kind of awakening of spirituality, an expression of spirituality?
Sri Chinmoy: Not only the awakening, but also the expression and revelation of the inner being.
David Rumsey: Since you are a poet as well as a musician, I find it very interesting to compare the inner spirituality of poetry with the inner spirituality of music. In the Western tradition, for example, they have gone almost separate paths in the last two or three hundred years. Maybe four hundred years ago, music and poetry were rather more similar and, when we go back to the ancient Greeks, music and poetry were almost one and the same. Now, in your poetry and music, do you find a similar kind of spirituality?
Sri Chinmoy: Yes. In my case, I find poetry and music go together. Poetry has the vision and this vision is expressed through music. We have the vision, let us say, of tomorrow’s dawn. But, although we have the vision, there is no way to reveal and manifest that vision. Music expresses the vision that poetry embodies. First we have the vision of reality deep within us and then music brings that vision to the fore.
David Rumsey: Regarding the improvisation which you just played, did it have a particular title or any particular ideas?
Sri Chinmoy: No, there was no particular idea. I do not use my mind. I see myself as a child playing in my own heart-garden. In the garden, there are many beautiful plants and I play hide-and-seek. I move around, I play with the leaves and plants and flowers. I enter into my heart-garden and I enjoy nature’s beauty deep within me. So, I do not use my mind. A child does not use his mind. He just plays with the flowers, with toys or dolls. In my case also, I play with the flowers, leaves and fruits.
David Rumsey: It is just creativity, just being creative.
Sri Chinmoy: Creation for creation’s sake. There is no set method, there is no hard and fast rule that I have to do this, I have to do that. A child uses his heart, he does everything spontaneously. So, in my case also, I try to do everything spontaneously, like a child.
David Rumsey: Your spontaneity comes through very clearly in your music. You have also been quoted as saying that music is next to meditation for a spiritual person, or words to that effect.
Sri Chinmoy: Music and spirituality must go side by side. A Truth-seeker and God-lover pays more attention to God the Creator. Twenty-four hours a day he is ready to pray and meditate. He wants to embody God’s infinite Light. A seeker is more conscious of God, fortunately or unfortunately, than a musician. A musician has the universal language deep within him but he does not know that the source of the universal language is silence. Language is not the source. Silence is the source. Sound is not the source. The source is silence. Meditation helps us to dive deep within. Silence is the source and sound is an expression.
When we enter into a temple, we see the shrine inside it. For me, meditation is the shrine inside the temple. Music is the temple. Without the temple, there can be no shrine and, again, without the shrine, there can be no temple. So, music and spirituality have to go together. Spirituality reminds us of God the Creator and music reminds us of God the Creation. Universal beauty we get through music but silence, Transcendental Silence, we get from meditation. They are like the obverse and reverse of the same coin. But we have to know which one has to be brought forward — the inner divinity or the outer reality. Inner divinity has to come forward to express the outer reality.
David Rumsey: Over the last two or three thousand years, there have been periods of Western civilisation — such as the times of the ancient Greeks and the Renaissance — where it has been considered important to look at all the things that make up a completely rounded person, a whole man: intellectual life, sport, music and so on. Many people have spoken of you, with all your interests, as a kind of Renaissance man.
Sri Chinmoy: I am jack of all trades, master of none!
David Rumsey: I think it is not just a question of being a jack of all trades, though. It is something that you have been able to use, in a sense, to transcend yourself. You set yourself a certain goal and you move in a certain direction — just as, in music, you have taken up the organ only relatively recently. Previously, you have played the Indian esraj, the bamboo flute and many, many other instruments.
Sri Chinmoy: Tomorrow I will be playing about thirty instruments in Melbourne.
David Rumsey: Do you find that the organ, then, is a kind of transcendence in your own life?
Sri Chinmoy: In my case, the organ seems to be the highest peak. I have been playing quite a few instruments for the past ten years. Sometimes I play up to one hundred instruments. Usually I play thirty instruments in my concerts. But the organ is like the highest pinnacle, it is the culmination. When I play the organ, I feel myself complete. It is something deep within me. It is like the blossoming of the tree, a fully blossomed tree. Whereas, when I play other instruments — flute or cello or violin or viola — there I see a few beautiful flowers on a particular branch, a few most beautiful flowers. But, when I play the organ, I feel that the whole tree has blossomed fully and gloriously to my satisfaction. Here I feel my hunger, musical hunger, is satisfied completely.
David Rumsey: Well, Sri Chinmoy, thank you very much for granting us this interview. You have been very gracious and thank you very much once again.
Sri Chinmoy: You have been extremely kind to me. My heart is all gratitude to you. I have heard so much about you and I am extremely, extremely grateful to have been allowed to play here and to be here with you. My heart is all gratitude to you.
David Rumsey: Thank you, Sri Chinmoy, thank you very much.
Published in Sri Chinmoy Answers, part 38
Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert (574) and his New Year’s Message for the year 2000, at Martin Luther King Jr. High School in New York. Beside him are two photographs of the 700-lb. lift he achieved early that morning.
Sri Chinmoy at dinner with Charman Lal Sharma, UNESCO Deputy Director-General for Management, at Annam Brahma restaurant in Jamaica, New York.
– Sri Chinmoy |
Sri Chinmoy offers this prayer at 9:11 a.m. before lifting 350 lbs. with each arm simultaneously — a total of 700 lbs.
Published in My Morning Soul-Body Prayers, part 11
Sri Chinmoy meets with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican for the third time.
“I am very grateful for your visit. God bless you and your contemplative activities.” — Pope John Paul II
Sri Chinmoy lifts Charman Lal Sharma, UNESCO Deputy Director-General for Management, in the garden tent at Annam Brahma restaurant in Jamaica, New York.
