The great sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar became a very dear friend of Sri Chinmoy. Both Ravi Shankar and Sri Chinmoy hailed from Bengal, India, and they shared the same mother tongue. Over time, Pandit-ji and Sri Chinmoy became extremely close, having claimed each other as true brothers after their remaining blood-relative brothers had passed away.

In the fall of 2005, I was at Sri Chinmoy’s home when I received a phone call from Ravi Shankar's wife, Sukanya. Her voice was trembling with unusual urgency: Ravi-ji was on his way to a hospital in Manhattan, where he was staying at the time, suffering from breathing difficulties. While Sukanya was simply calling to inform Sri Chinmoy, I immediately reassured her that we were all at her service.

Pandit-ji had been suffering from a weak heart for about a decade. Although Sukanya did not give any inkling of how serious his present condition might be, as soon as Sri Chinmoy heard the news, he immediately left for Lenox Hill Hospital where Ravi-ji had been admitted.

Sri Chinmoy quickly walked into the emergency room, sat down, and went into a very lofty consciousness amidst the chaos of the ER. It was in this high state of meditation that Sri Chinmoy remained for over an hour. Sukanya, who was by Ravi-ji’s side, knew Sri Chinmoy was there and was very grateful for his presence.

To win one gold medal at the Olympic Games is an extraordinary feat. To win nine gold medals is practically unheard of! And yet that is exactly what the great American athlete Carl Lewis accomplished, earning him many accolades, including the title “Best Olympian of the 20th Century” from Sports Illustrated.

In November 1983, the renowned Grammy award-winning music producer Narada Michael Walden brought Carl to meet Sri Chinmoy at his New York headquarters. This was nearly a year before Carl’s first Olympic competition in Los Angeles, at a time when Sri Chinmoy was intensely involved in running as a way to keep the body fit and as a form of spiritual discipline. Carl very sympathetically coached Sri Chinmoy in sprinting, and Sri Chinmoy wholeheartedly encouraged and guided Carl in his stellar athletic career, travelling to several Olympic Games.

Try to feel that the whole earth is behind you and that you are getting blessings, love, concern, determination and oneness from the entire earth. You have to convince your entire being that the whole Olympic stadium is for you, because you are not representing any particular country or race, but the entire earth.

Sri Chinmoy
advice to Carl before the 1984 Olympics

In December 2003, Sri Chinmoy set forth on a journey to Indonesia with a few hundred of his students from many countries. It was part of their annual Christmas and New Year’s travels to various countries. Their first destination was the beautiful green island of Java, the main island among the thousands of islands of Indonesia.

Indonesia has a very rich and ancient culture, with Islam layered over its previous religious traditions of Hinduism and Buddhism. The dynasty of rajas (kings) in Indonesia originally came from India. Sri Chinmoy specially wanted to spend some time in Solo, capital of the ancient Kingdom of Surakarta.  Although he had visited Indonesia on several occasions before, this was his first visit to Solo, the historic royal city of Indonesia.

Well known as a consummate diplomat and visionary, Vladimir Petrovsky served as United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs (1992) and the Director-General of the UN Office at Geneva (1993-2002), as well as First Deputy Foreign Minister of the Soviet Union (1986-1991). Sri Chinmoy first met Vladimir Petrovsky in 1991, and a special friendship developed between the two.

In 1992, Mr. Petrovsky was appointed to the position of UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs. In early April of that year, Sri Chinmoy heard that Mr. Petrovsky and his wife had recently moved to New York. Sri Chinmoy requested me to pay them a welcome visit. The Petrovskys had not yet properly moved into their apartment, which was still full of unpacked boxes, but even in the midst of all this chaos, they were extremely hospitable.

Mr. Petrovsky said to me, “I find this a very auspicious sign. We have just come to New York, and Sri Chinmoy wishes to offer me a message. In fact, I am about to leave for Libya tonight to meet with Colonel Gaddafi (who was then the leader of Libya). I have a very important mission to achieve when I meet with him. To tell you the truth, I do not have any fear, but I definitely have trepidation. I know these negotiations are very, very serious. I would like to succeed for the UN, and I am not sure I can. Again, with your having come to find me and to tell me about Sri Chinmoy’s very special encouragement and prayers, I am certain everything will be fine.”

I learned that Sri Chinmoy’s friend Irina Malikova of the Gorbachev Foundation, a close assistant to President Gorbachev, was not at all well. She went for a biopsy, and afterwards I called her, at Sri Chinmoy’s request, to ask the outcome. She described on the phone her experience during the operation and asked if I could please ask Sri Chinmoy the spiritual significance.

Unfortunately after her biopsy Irina could not come out of the anaesthesia for four hours. She experienced what seemed like a strange dream with unusual beings taking her down a long tunnel. She could see at the end of a tunnel what seemed to be a large illumined hall, and the beings kept saying “Come with us, go with us, you will like this.” She felt herself rushing backward down a long tunnel going faster and faster.  

All of a sudden, larger than anything she could ever imagine, she saw Sri Chinmoy blocking the tunnel. He stopped her and told her, “Put out your hands and take hold of this.”When she did this, Sri Chinmoy placed in her hands what Irina described as a crystal, very translucent, of an unearthly, beautiful blue. Then he loudly commanded,  “Say the magic word.” At first Irina did not respond.  At the top of his voice, Sri Chinmoy again commanded, “Say the magic word — NOW!” At that moment, she screamed out the name of her small child, “Dmitriy, Dimitry!” When she did this, she went rushing down the tube in the reverse direction with the greatest speed. The next thing she knew, she was opening her eyes on the operating table, with the doctors and nurses looking over her, with a big light shining behind them.

When I asked Sri Chinmoy if he would please give his interpretation of this experience as she had requested, Sri Chinmoy said, “Her soul was about to leave her body for the other world,” and that he had given Irina back her own soul. He said to Irina, “Do you remember the blue bird when you first came to see me? At that time I showed you your soul.” Irina remembered that the first time she saw Sri Chinmoy, at Aspiration-Ground in New York, he took her to the Sri Chinmoy Track where she noticed a beautiful blue bird. When she described it to others, they said they had never seen such a bird at the track.

When Irina came to New York later that year, everywhere we went she would try to rediscover that particular blue colour, because she said this crystal was an incredibly beautiful blue.As it turns out, she says that she has never been able to recapture that beautiful blue colour.

You could see the photo of this car accident in almost every newspaper in Switzerland: our van pierced by a crash-barrier that rose up behind the car into the sky more than 10 metres. This experience was like a nightmare from my childhood in which I found myself in a cruel, hopeless situation and desperately fought to wake up. But this time it was not a dream, and it was Sri Chinmoy who eventually freed me from this abysmal abyss with his loving care.

I tried to get out of the van, but my right leg wouldn’t move. When I tried to lift it with my hand, my fingers found themselves between flesh and bones, covered with blood. I was so shocked and horrified that I didn’t notice that a bar from the destroyed seat had speared me.

Enough facts for despair. I was extremely lucky that I had already been a student of Sri Chinmoy’s for almost two years—long enough to have a lot of faith in him. Otherwise I would have perished miserably then and there.

In the hospital, when the doctor who was standing at the left side of my bed started to elaborate on the “facts of the situation”, my wife Usha, whose presence I then became aware of, interrupted him at once. Smiling bravely at me, she said to me that she had been able to talk to Sri Chinmoy about my accident. His compassionate message for me said I shouldn’t worry because everything would become again like it was before. This was definitely the happiest moment of my life. Of course, there were still many tough moments to come, but he would always be there to save me.

About three years ago, my mother was diagnosed with a very serious form of cancer that was quickly spreading. To be certain, she went for the opinion of three prominent cancer specialists in Puerto Rico. All of them concurred: she definitely had a serious form of cancer.

I became increasingly worried—I love my mother dearly and her suffering and imminent death were torturing my heart. Over the years I have met excellent physicians and naturopaths who have been very successful in treating cancer as well as other so-called “incurable” diseases. It was my hope to bring my mother to New York for such treatment.

Her main physician told her that she needed radiation, chemotherapy and most definitely surgery. I asked my mother to please hold off with all those therapies until I could consult with the doctor I had in mind, and to send me copies of her records. When I read her blood analysis, panic struck me hard, for it became real that my mother was very sick.

I had not wanted to tell Sri Chinmoy anything until I had all the information, but now pressure was mounting, and my mother was scheduled for surgery within a few weeks. Finally, I wrote Sri Chinmoy a letter explaining everything I told him that I love my mother very much and that I was not ready to lose her, but I also told him that I was praying for God’s Victory-Will in whatever form it would express itself.

Sri Chinmoy’s reply came immediately: “Ask her to please postpone the surgery for one month.” I immediately telephoned my mother and pleaded with her to please listen and follow Sri Chinmoy’s advice. She agreed.