About the Sri Chinmoy Centre

The Sri Chinmoy Centre has centres in around 60 countries around the world and is a place where students of Sri Chinmoy meet for meditation, music and other spiritual activities. It was founded in 1970, by spiritual teacher Sri Chinmoy, a noted poet, musician, artist and sportsman.

The Sri Chinmoy Centre is a non-political organisation, and only seeks to inspire their local communities through activities such as offering free meditation classes, running events and concerts.

Question: When people come to you with political problems, how do you advise them?

Sri Chinmoy: I do not do that. I tell them that I am not competent to speak on politics. My forte is spirituality, so whoever comes to me should come with the idea of learning how to concentrate, meditate and contemplate. I am a perfect stranger to politics, but I know something about spirituality, Yoga and inner illumination. On the strength of my own realisation, I speak to them on what I know. When they come to me with political questions, I say I am the wrong person to answer them. 1

A sincere, genuine seeker must be careful of how much he is involved in politics. Spirituality, inner life and inner discipline are his first and foremost business. There are billions of people in the world who can be involved in politics, since they are not involved in spirituality. But sincere aspirants should remain far above the world of politics, in the Lap of the Supreme. There they will constantly grow into light, peace, bliss, confidence and universal harmony. 2

Sri Chinmoy

Sri Chinmoy teaches that spirituality should be based on simplicity, harmony and an acceptance of the world around us.  He encouraged his students to follow a balanced life, which includes seeking all proper medical treatment and respecting local laws and regulations.

He felt that in order to change the world we should seek to change ourselves first, and that cultivating inner peace is the most effective way to bring about world peace.

When we pray and meditate, we develop or acquire peace of mind, let us say. When we have peace of mind, then we can come into the outer world to solve our problems. The outer world is full of problems, but our inner world is inundated with peace. How can we get in touch with this inner peace? That we do on the strength of our prayer and meditation.

The inner life is not the life of isolation. The real spiritual life, the real inner life, will never tell us to leave society and enter into the Himalayan caves; far from it! We dive deep within early in the morning. Then, when we enter the outer world, we bring forward what we have received from within and we try to offer this to the world at large.

Early in the morning we pray and meditate to acquire some inner wealth: peace, joy and bliss. Then, we go out to our respective offices and mix with our friends or colleagues. Perhaps they did not meditate or pray, and they are totally lost in the hustle and bustle of life.

When they see right in front of them life’s multifarious activities, they are simply lost. But because we pray and meditate, no matter what happens or what we do, we remain unperturbed; we remain calm and quiet. The inner life we practise through our prayer and meditation, and the outer life we practise through our dedication to the cause of humanity. 3

Sri Chinmoy

• 1. Sri Chinmoy, Politics and spirituality: can they go together?, Agni Press, 1977
• 2. Sri Chinmoy, Politics and spirituality: can they go together?, Agni Press, 1977
• 3. Sri Chinmoy, Inner peace and world peace, Agni Press, 1992