Introduction to first edition

In the introduction to his book on the great Indian spiritual master Sri Ramakrishna, Christopher Isherwood wrote that for the purposes of the book he would describe Ramakrishna simply as a “phenomenon,” avoiding more contentious labels such as “saint,” “avatar,” or “holy man.” Certainly in discussing Sri Chinmoy, a great contemporary spiritual teacher, the adjective “phenomenal,” in its present-day sense, would seem an appropriate one to use!

Sri Chinmoy was born in what was then Bengal in 1931. His parents died when he was a child, and he went with his brothers and sisters to live in an ashram, or spiritual community. There, he recounts, at the age of thirteen, he attained a profound spiritual realisation. He spent the next 20 years in the ashram, deepening and expanding this realisation. Then in 1964, obeying what he called an “inner command,” he came to live and work in the West.

Since then his progress has been well documented. His “mission” has been to show that spirituality has to “come down from the Himalayan caves” to function amid the hustle and pressure of twentieth-century urban life. (He himself lives in New York City!) He embodies a uniquely dynamic synthesis of East and West, combining “the spirituality of the East and the dynamism of the West.” He is a prolific author and poet, painter and musician. He has also dedicated himself tirelessly to working for world peace, through his lectures, his worldwide Peace concerts, and, since 1970, his twice-weekly Peace Meditations for delegates and staff at the United Nations headquarters in New York. Since his youth, he has been a keen athlete, and his own fitness programme includes running, tennis and weightlifting. By his own example in these fields, he has inspired races and other sporting events in his name all over the world.

All of this activity has brought him into contact with some of the world’s best-known names in sport, the arts and politics, and his influence can be said to be both profound and far-reaching. He is among the best-known and most respected of spiritual teachers ever to come from India to the West.

Clearly the early life of such a man, the family he grew up in, the influences which shaped him, his earliest inklings of spiritual awakening, would all be of considerable interest, just as in Isherwood’s book on Ramakrishna, the tales and anecdotes of the master’s childhood made endlessly fascinating reading. It is the aim of this little book to give such insights into Sri Chinmoy’s early days. Told entirely in his own words most of the stories gathered here appear in print for the first time. (The others appeared in AUM magazine in the late sixties and early seventies.)

The first section, on his earliest childhood, contains stories told recently. They have all the simple directness and charm, the warmth and intimate sweetness of tales to a gathering of family and friends. There is great humour in them, but also a poignancy, especially in the stories of his remarkable parents who died when he was so young.

Accounts of his own brushes with death — a series of astonishing escapes — form the second section of the book. Like the grateful passengers in one story, miraculously rescued from a sinking boat, we have to agree that it was this child’s “fate” to be saved!

The third and last section of the book is perhaps the most intriguing of all. Most of these pieces were written by Sri Chinmoy at an early age. In an intensely heightened and consciously poetic language, he describes profoundly visionary experiences — meetings and sweet exchanges with personal forms of his “Beloved Supreme.” These are both beautiful and deeply moving.

The final two stories in this section were written in the seventies. They recall experiences from his teens and introduce two significant figures from the pantheon of Hindu gods. And it is clear that these gods are not mere mental constructs, or allegorical figures, or anthropomorphic projections. As the great Vivekananda once declared, “They are the forms which the Bhaktas have seen!” At the same time, Sri Chinmoy reminds us that these realities are our own. “It is we who have to embody Angi, the flame of aspiration, in the inmost recesses of our hearts.”

And inside this aspiration, he tells us, is our realisation, our fulfilment, our endless awakening to who we really are.