November 15

 

The Severn-Wye Bridge, uniting England and Wales, is inaugurated as a Sri Chinmoy Peace-Bridge in Aust, Southern Gloucestershire, England, UK.

 

 

Photo by Pulak Viscardi

 

President Bill Clinton shakes hands with Sri Chinmoy during a meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas. The President thanks Sri Chinmoy for the gift of a song he had composed about him. The previous day, November 14, Sri Chinmoy’s students sang the song as the President was leaving the Governor’s Mansion for his morning jog.

 

Commenting on Sri Chinmoy’s passing in October 2007:

“Throughout his many years, he enriched the lives of countless others and served as a model of generosity and discipline to those he met, fostering an atmosphere of compassion, harmony, and unity.... His legacy of kindness, reflection, and resolve will endure for many years to come.” — Bill Clinton, 42nd President of the United States

 

November 14

Photo by Adarini Inkei

 

Sri Chinmoy offers a Peace Concert at the Philadelphia Civic Center in Philadelphia, Pensylvania.

 

No More the Berlin Wall

Lyrics:

Peace, peace, peace.
No more the Berlin Wall!
Fondness-oneness-equal.


Published in One Germany, One Soul, One Heart

 

East Germany, No More!

Lyrics:

Peace, peace, peace.
East Germany, no more!
West Germany, no more!
Division-night has bowed
To oneness-fulness-core.

Sri Chinmoy dedicated this song to President Mikhail Gorbachev, the liberator of East Germany.


Published in One Germany, One Soul, One Heart

 

Behold, Nowhere Barrier

Lyrics:

Peace, peace, peace.
Behold, nowhere barrier, nowhere barrier!
A German soul is a oneness-warrior.


Published in One Germany, One Soul, One Heart

 

November 14

 

Sri Chinmoy meets the Prime Minister of Great Britain John Major, Baroness Shreela Flather and ;Academy-Award-winning actor Ben Kingsley, at the observance of Jawaharlal Nehru’s birthday, India’s first Prime Minister, at India House in London, UK.

 

November 14

Sri Chinmoy At The Vatican:
Unprecedented Ecumenism

 

Spiritual history was in the making recently in Rome as the Pope met with Indian spiritual master, Sri Chinmoy, director of all-faith meditation sessions for peace at the United Nations and U.S. Congress. Having already met once before with Pope John Paul II and three times with his predecessor, Pope Paul VI, Sri Chinmoy was warmly greeted by the pope on October 14.

Sri Chinmoy offered the pontiff a special series of songs especially composed for him, stat­ing, “Holy Father, I have come to you for your very special blessings. You are the salvation-king. I have set to music some of your most powerful utterances made by you in America.”

The pope, obviously deeply touched, offered Sri Chinmoy his gratitude: “Nice, nice, nice! God bless you and your divine activities.” In an unprecedented display of spiritual ecumenism, the previous day Sri Chinmoy had been invited to play on the organ at St. Peter’s Basilica during a special celebratory mass. He per­formed for 5 minutes at the beginning and 15 minutes at the completion of the mass.

Caption:

Sri Chinmoy meets the Pope.


Published in Big Red News, November 14, 1987

 

November 13

Photo by Maral Siegel

 

Sri Chinmoy offers a public demonstration of his weightlifting in a programme called ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart: The Body’s Fitness-Gong, The Soul’s Fulness-Song’ held at York College in Jamaica, Queens, New York. Just one of his impressive feats is a seated two-arm lift of 400 lbs., which he performs 100 times.

On this day, Sri Chinmoy would lift a total weight of 215,808 lbs. — a glimpse of the enormity of his achievements is summarised in the schedule of the order of lifts used at the event.

 

November 13

Is Spirituality Man’s Birthright?

A talk by Sri Chinmoy
at ‘Yoga of Westchester’, New Rochelle, New York

 

Birth is the soulful creation of God's Vision. This very birth is nothing short of cremation when it is wanting in mounting aspiration as the years advance upon the individual soul.

Man is God's spontaneous revelation. Man is God's colossal pride. Man is the song of God's glowing fulfilment.

Spirituality is the breath of God and the life of man. Spirituality tells man what God truly is and what man can unmistakably be.

"Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul." — Splendid is this mighty utterance of Thoreau. Now we have to know what the real necessities of the soul are. The soul's necessities are human aspiration and human liberation. The soul never can be nourished without human aspiration. The soul never can be fulfilled without human liberation.

Is spirituality man's birthright? The answer is in the loftiest affirmative. The modern world with its rank atheism, stark sophistication and wild snobbery tells us that a spiritual person is a monkey without a tail, a donkey that brays day in and day out. Indeed, a spiritual person is an object of merciless ridicule. He is a matchless fool. But once and for all, I wish the modern world to see eye to eye with Winston Churchill. This great man had undoubtedly a sound mind. He said: “The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.” Now the fool in me has something to offer to you present here, and the world at large.

True, spirituality is the birthright of each human being on earth. But if somebody consciously and deliberately criticises the message of spirituality, misuses the power of spirituality, abuses the capacity of spirituality and ignores the living reality of spirituality, to say the least, certainly he cannot dare to say that spirituality is his birthright.

Needless to say that a spiritual figure knows what the right thing is. He also knows the right time and the right people — disciples. To him, the only right thing in the spiritual life is constant aspiration, the only right time is NOW and not the beckoning hands of the far-distant future. And the right people are those who do not have an iota of blighted doubt that God can be seen, felt and realised and that each human being will eventually grow into God's transcendental Vision and His absolute Reality. What Lincoln says is most applicable to a genuine aspirant. He says: "I am not concerned whether God is on my side or not, but I am concerned whether I am on God's side."

Time is precious. Even a child of yesterday does not have time to eat a piece of candy when it is offered by his mother. Let us not waste time. Let us try to determine as fast as we can, what is right and then who is right? To be right, always right, is abundantly more difficult than to be the President of a nation. To be right, spiritually right, is infinitely more difficult than to be the sole Monarch of the entire world.

What is right? Self-discipline. What is right? Self-discovery. Who is right? A man of self-discipline. Who is right? A self-discoverer.

In the spiritual life an aspirant has to know that it makes a difference whether the inner world and the outer world run abreast or not. He sees that these two worlds are like the North pole and the South pole, infinitely apart. He has now to split the difference between these two worlds on the strength of his aspiration's oneness with the inner world and on the strength of his soulful concern for the outer world. To his widest surprise, he will soon discover that the outer world and the inner world are the obverse and the reverse of God, the Golden Truth.

Finally if he feeds his Aspiration-Tree with his implicit love, sterling devotion and unconditional surrender to God, the Supreme Pilot, God Himself will grow and preserve the Realisation-Tree in the aspirant's devoted life and liberated soul through Eternity.


Published in AUM – Vol. 4, No. 7, 27 Feb. 1969

 

How to Conquer Fear

A lecture delivered by Sri Chinmoy
at the American College in Paris, France

 

Our body is limited; that is why the body has fear. Our vital is unconscious; that is why the vital has fear. Our mind is obscure; that is why the mind has fear. Our heart is not aspiring; that is why the heart has fear.

To free our body from fear, what we need is the glorious experience of our soul. To free our vital from fear, what we need is the dynamic and conscious expansion of our soul. To free our mind from fear, what we need is the transforming illumination of our soul. Finally, to free our heart from fear, what we need is the fulfilling perfection of our soul.

Man’s fear does not allow him to see the face of reality, the Ultimate Reality. Man’s fear does not allow him to reach the Golden Shores of the Beyond. Man’s fear does not allow him to fulfil God for God’s sake. But God, the Author of all good, has boundless Compassion, Concern, and Love for mankind.

God’s Compassion saves man.
God’s Concern liberates man.
God’s Love fulfils man.

When we unconsciously think of fear or cherish fear, fear smilingly shakes hands with us. When we consciously think of fear or cherish fear, fear triumphantly embraces us. But when we unconsciously think of our inner courage, God cries with His divine Cry, for He feels that here He has a chosen instrument of His.

Now, earth is afraid of Heaven’s Transcendental Light. Heaven is afraid of earth’s abysmal ignorance. God says to earth, “My son, do not act like a fool. Heaven’s Transcendental Light is not going to blind you. Heaven’s Light is not going to expose you. On the contrary, Heaven’s Light is going to illumine you. Heaven’s Light is going to transform you.”

God says to Heaven, “Do not be a fool. Earth’s abysmal ignorance cannot bind you. It cannot destroy you. On the contrary, earth’s ignorance will be offered to you. It is you who will transform the face of earth.”

God says, “I need both of you—Heaven and earth. Heaven! The message of realisation you will have to give to earth. Earth! The message of manifestation, My divine Manifestation, you will have to offer to Heaven.”

Fear comes from our deep-rooted ignorance. We do not see the light with our inner vision. We see the light with our outer, human, limited, earth-bound understanding.

Let me tell you a short story. An old man walking along the street one evening came across a rope. There was no light, and he thought the rope was actually a snake. He was all fear, and let out a scream, running as fast as he could. While running, he fell down and broke his leg. Some friends nearby heard him shouting and screaming, so they came with sticks. He was shouting all the time, thinking that there was a snake there. When his friends came, they too thought that it was a snake. In the dark they started striking the rope and, unfortunately, began hitting one another.

The shouting continued, and soon another party came with a light and discovered that it was just a piece of rope and not a snake.

Similarly, in our human life, when light enters into our physical consciousness, every kind of fear is bound to disappear. We are wanting in light. That is why fear, at every moment, consciously and deliberately looms large in our life of desire and in our life of aspiration.

But if we are sincere enough to go deep within and feel that inner courage belongs to us, inner courage can dawn at any moment. It is more than willing to come to the fore. Bringing this inner courage to the fore is the conscious awakening of our inner being. Everyone has this inner being. But, unfortunately, very few of us want to feed it. We feed our body in order to strengthen ourselves. We study books to feed our minds. We do many things to energise our outer being, but we do practically nothing to feed our inner being.

It is in our inner existence that we can grow into an adamantine will and, when we use our adamantine will, which we can easily have at our behest, we can conquer the very breath of fear. Here on earth our inner adamantine and indomitable will can and will reign supreme. Only one thing we need: a conscious awareness of the Divine Light which is ours. It is our birthright to realise and fulfil this inner Light.

There can be no fear, there cannot be even an iota of fear when we live in the effulgence of our soul. To live constantly in the divine effulgence of our soul only one thing is needed: a conscious inner cry. This inner cry is called aspiration, the mounting flame deep within us. When this flame rises up towards the highest, it illumines everything around it. Darkness is transformed into light, fear into strength, doubt into certainty, ignorance into wisdom, and death into Immortality.


Published in My Rose Petals, part 1

 

November 13


Turning the globe
Spiritual leader lifted 43 tons


Spiritual leader Sri Chinmoy practices different sports, among them also weightlifting. At the 14th anniversary of his weightlifting this 68-year old sportsman and the initiator of various peace activities held an exhibition named Lifting up the World with a Oneness-Heart in New York. He invited many sportsman, diplomats and friends and he lifted them. Among those, who were his  “weights” — first they had to climb up to a special platform and then he lifted them overhead — were nine time Olympic Champion Carl Lewis, baseball player Steve Finley, 8-time Ironman Triathlon winner Paula Newby-Fraser, boxers Jose Torres and Donny LaLonde, basketball coach Jack Curran and TV star Joe Franklin (on the photograph). Many body builders and 15 United Nations ambassadors were present.

Sri Chinmoy — he is also the initiator of the Peace Run, which was in Slovenia at the beginning of November — lifted also Sport Boat, an elephant and some “usual” weights. By some information he lifted almost 43 tons in a few hours. “I just simply like to make people happy and with each new achievement I try to inspire them.” he said after the exhibition. Published in Delo


Translated from an article on page 7 of Delo Chronicle, Slovenia’s daily national newspaper.

 

November 13

 

Sri Chinmoy meditates before beginning his ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’ programme at Aspiration-Ground in New York, during which he lifts surfer-singer Jack Johnson, who dedicates one of his songs to Sri Chinmoy at his Roseland concert that evening.