Table of Contents
Part I
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- 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?
- David Rumsey: Regarding the improvisation which you just played, did it have a particular title or any particular ideas?
- David Rumsey: It is just creativity, just being creative.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- David Rumsey: Do you find that the organ, then, is a kind of transcendence in your own life?
Part II
Part III
- My simple desire was to work on the train
- Question: According to what I have read, the life span of the universe includes quite a number of cycles which are composed of yugas. I was wondering if the Supreme incarnates on earth in every single cycle of yugas or only in this particular segment?
- Question: Does the presence of an Avatar on earth bring about a sharper focus between darkness and light? Does he bring things to a head in that particular era?
- Question: Why is there such a big difference between the capacities of various human beings?
- Question: Should a disciple bring his bad qualities forward when he is in front of you?
- Question: Spiritual Masters come to transform the world. Do the wrong forces in the world at large deliberately challenge a spiritual Master?
- Question: Sometimes, when you get called for a special inner problem, I have observed you touching your third eye. I am curious as to what you are doing at this time.
- Question: Can you turn off all your inner vision faculties and just see the world as we mere mortals see it? Or do you constantly see all these other layers all at once?
- Question: Do you suffer when the disciples inwardly offer you their thoughts and problems?
- Question: Recently it happened twice that I knew in advance what you were going to say. Once I saw someone going out of the room and I felt that you would call her for some reason. A few seconds later you asked for that disciple. Then another time I knew in advance that you were going to offer somebody their spiritual name. I was wondering, is this intuition or is it tapping into something?
- Question: Is it you doing that?
- Question: When we have an intense problem, is it better to pray to God to save us or should we concentrate on bringing in the opposite quality?
- Question: Sometimes the customers in my restaurant think that I can read their minds because I identify with them so much. I assure them that I do not read their minds. It just happens.
- Question: When you see us, if we have doubt or insecurity or any wrong forces or good forces, is it a matter of seeing something in our aura or are you seeing our thoughts or are you seeing the actual forces in us? How is it that you read our consciousness?
- Preserve silence, silence, silence
- Mantras are not the sole monopoly of Sanskrit
Part IV
- These birds are a new creation, the creation that will sing the song of Immortality in the life of mortality
- This is the supreme secret: the more you think of your soul, the faster you can make progress
- Like a fountain offer your aspiration and dedication spontaneously and sleeplessly
