UN meditation leader on visit

The director of the United Nations Meditation Group in New York, Sri Chinmoy, who is visiting Australia at the request of his disciples in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth, spoke last night at a meeting at University House, ANU.

Sri Chinmoy is the head of an international spiritual organisation with about 60 centres throughout the world. He is the author of more than 250 books of spiritual poetry, essays, plays, stories and lectures and has painted more than 100,000 mystical paintings.

He teaches a mystical approach to God based on love, devotion and surrender to the Divine Will. He said yesterday that he and his disciples tried to see and feel the presence of God and worked for mankind through prayer and meditation.

Sri Chinmoy, 44, came to the West in 1964 after 20 years in a spiritual community in his native India practising intense spiritual disciplines. He spends about two months every year travelling to centres around the world “inspiring my students” and has lectured in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. This is his first visit to Australia.

He has already addressed meetings in Perth and Sydney and will go to Melbourne today. About eight of his 30 Australian disciples are travelling with him.