User:Amir Shanti

Sri Chinmoy Biography
Born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in the small village of Shakpura in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1931, Sri Chinmoy was the youngest of seven children. In 1944, after both his parents had died, 12 year-old Chinmoy entered the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community near Pondicherry in South India. Here he spent the next 20 years in spiritual practice – including long hours of meditation, practising athletics, writing poetry, essays and spiritual songs.

In his early teens, Chinmoy had many profound inner experiences, and in subsequent years achieved very advanced states of meditation. In 1964, he moved to New York City to share his inner wealth with sincere seekers in the West.

Sri Chinmoy sees aspiration – the heart's ceaseless yearning for ever higher and deeper realities – as the spiritual force behind all great advances in religion, culture, sports and science. By living in the heart and aspiring for continual self-transcendence, men and women can bring forward the best in themselves and find their path to true satisfaction. In his words: "Our goal is to go from bright to brighter to brightest, from high to higher to highest. And even in the highest, there is no end to our progress, for God Himself is inside each of us and God at every moment is transcending His own Reality." Today, Sri Chinmoy serves as spiritual guide to students in some 60 countries around the world, encouraging a balanced lifestyle that incorporates the inner disciplines of prayer and meditation with the dynamism of contemporary life. Sri Chinmoy's life is an expression of boundless creativity. His vast output spans the domains of music, poetry, painting, literature and sports. His contributions in each of these fields have been striking and far-reaching.

He regularly travels throughout the world to offer free concerts, lectures and public meditations, to meet with his students, and to meet and discuss spirituality with world and community leaders. Sri Chinmoy does not charge a fee for his spiritual guidance, concerts, lectures and public meditations.

Sri Chinmoy's Path
Sri Chinmoy's path is a path of the heart. He puts great importance in developing the heart and at the same time on manifesting the inner spirituality in the outer world. Sport in general and running in particular play an important part in his teachings. Sri Chinmoy is the inspiration between the World Harmony Run a relay run through over 100 countries. The World Harmony Run seeks to build friendship and harmony between different people around the world.The Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team organise many running races and are known for their careful organisation.

Sri Chinmoy is very creative in different fields. Over 1400 books, mainly aphorisms and poetry, have been published. He has composed a great number of spiritual songs and performs them also on many different instruments at his concerts. He calls his colorful abstract art "Jharna Kala", fountain art, and recently he has spent a lot of time drawing soul birds. Also in the field of sports he has been active and has become known specially for his lifting of very heavy weights.

"We are all seekers, and our goal is the same: to achieve inner peace, light, and joy, to become inseparably one with our Source, and to lead lives full of true satisfaction.

To live in joy is to live the inner life. This is the life that leads to self-realisation. Self-realisation is God-realisation, for God is nothing other than the Divinity that is deep inside each one of us, waiting to be discovered and revealed. We may also refer to God as the Inner Pilot or the Supreme. But no matter which term we use, we mean the Highest within us, that which is the ultimate goal of our spiritual quest.

A spiritual person should be a normal person, a sound person. In order to reach God, a spiritual person has to be divinely practical in his day-to-day activities. In divine practicality, we share our inner wealth. We feel the divine motivation behind each action and share the result with others. Spirituality does not negate the outer life. The outer life should be the manifestation of the divine life within us."

~Sri Chinmoy, The Wings of Joy

Controversies
As in any other path there are some controversial points, though most of them are personal experience, usually not very adequate.

Quotes
"God is extremely simple. It is we who think of Him as someone complicated. God speaks the simplest language, only we don't understand Him. We are all deaf. We have been deaf for millennia. Poor God, He has been talking constantly, tirelessly, but we do not have time to listen to Him."

"Our path is the path of simplicity. A child is simple; he loves his mother. He does not have to love anybody else: his mother is his whole world. He devotes himself to his mother. If his mother asks him to do something, he listens to his mother. A child is so simple that he tries to do everything to please his mother; and in pleasing his mother, he is doing the right thing and reaching his highest goal."

"In the ordinary life, if someone loves another individual, then he spends most of his time with that particular person. He devotes his precious time to that person. If it is real human love-not divine love, but human love-then he sometimes surrenders to the other's whims even if they are absurd. He surrenders because the two of them have formed an inner and outer bond on the strength of their love. So if one loves another person, then one is ready even to sacrifice one's precious wisdom."

"God loves us. He loves us constantly and unconditionally. No matter what we have done, what we are doing or what we shall do, He will always love us. God loves us much more than He loves Himself. If we use our thinking and doubting minds, this may seem hard to believe. But if we use our loving and surrendering hearts, then we are bound to feel that God loves us infinitely more than He loves Himself. Why does He love us so much? He loves us because He feels that His Dream remains unfulfilled without us, His Reality remains unmanifested without us; without us, He is incomplete."