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?

Sri Chinmoy: Yes. In my case, I find poetry and music go together. Poetry has the vision and this vision is expressed through music. We have the vision, let us say, of tomorrow’s dawn. But, although we have the vision, there is no way to reveal and manifest that vision. Music expresses the vision that poetry embodies. First we have the vision of reality deep within us and then music brings that vision to the fore.