The Day I First Met Sri Chinmoy

My recollections from my first trip to meet my spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy are most precious and I am so grateful that I kept a dairy. As I turn the pages a chain of wonderful moments come flooding back and I am often moved to tears as I relive the many beautiful and poignant experiences.

After a 31-hour journey from Adelaide, I arrived at Parsons Boulevard, Jamaica (a suburb in the New York City borough of Queens), on a cold, bleak and windy Saturday morning on 14th November 1981. It was a little before opening time so I waited by the front door of a store run by Sri Chinmoy’s New York students.

After a few minutes a car pulled up and four beaming smiling faces greeted me. They were Canadians who had overnight driven down from Ottawa to visit Sri Chinmoy for the weekend. I felt an instant oneness with them. We drove to a nearby diner (restaurant) and from there to a local high school track where we ran a few laps and then proceeded to Aspiration Ground (a strikingly beautiful and spiritually uplifting outdoor meeting place where Sri Chinmoy meditates, has played a lot of tennis, lifts weights and meets with his students and visitors).

At Aspiration Ground about 50 students gathered … some local, others from Canada, Europe and Australia. I eagerly waited for a first glimpse of my spiritual teacher. Sri Chinmoy arrived around 8:00 am and proceeded to play tennis. Guru played with a variety of his students for about 75 minutes … some young, some eternally young ... some beginner/ average tennis players, others very good/ professional standard. Sri Chinmoy's tennis is played in a profoundly relaxed and free way and he would uniquely adapt to each new player, using the game as a teaching vehicle for the lessons of life. I wrote in my dairy …

"Guru seems extraordinarily detached from the game yet has excellent concentration, touch, timing and oneness with the ball."

After tennis we sat on the court just a few metres in front of Sri Chinmoy and he meditated with us for about 10 minutes. I wrote in my dairy …

“I was very tired yet a very pure, serene calmness engulfed me.”

In the afternoon, along with about 40 other visiting students, I went to a house warming that Sri Chinmoy invited us to attend. I arrived 15 minutes early and felt a spontaneous joy as I waited under the clear blue sky in the crisp, chilly late autumn air. I was also struck by the inner poise and serenity in the other students. I wrote …

“We gathered in the lounge and Guru meditated with us for about 15 minutes … a most beautiful experience … I felt my soul being brought into my body … I could see his aura and I felt exquisite light passing through me … such sweetness.“

After meditating Sri Chinmoy remarked that the house was very well presented and that the meditation by the group was good.

In the evening I went to the lovely New York Meditation Centre, that Sri Chinmoy had named “Progress Promise”. Here we meditated with Guru and watched several spiritual plays performed by his students. After the plays Sri Chinmoy gave us food that he had meditated on … known as ‘prasad’ (an Indian word meaning blessed food).

I stayed in a house nearby owned by a friendly New York student called Pulak. Pulak is my age and very kindly let me stay at his house for a month – rent free. I shared a room at different times with students from Canada, United States, Switzerland and Germany, and was constantly touched by their warmth and affection.

I clearly remember that day, watching Sri Chinmoy arrive, and the lingering impression I felt from our first outer contact. It was like meeting a timeless, eternal fatherly-friend who had an ancient familiarity about him that touched a deep, vast, sublime part of myself that I had long forgotten existed. I sensed that he saw far more of my good qualities and human potential than I did; that he knew and understood me extremely well and that his only concern was for my personal growth and abiding happiness.

In mid December 1981, just before I left New York, I wrote in a letter to Sri Chinmoy …

“I am returning to Adelaide tomorrow and I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude for the endless amounts of love, generosity and inspiration that I have received during my visit … I have felt very close to you at times and I have also felt a strong inner cry for oneness with you.”