Sri Chinmoy was born into a deeply spiritual family in Bengal, India in 1931. He entered an ashram or spiritual community at the age of 12 and soon proved himself to be a spiritual prodigy.
In a matter of weeks after joining the ashram Sri Chinmoy very quickly achieved a profound state of enlightenment, then spent the next 20 years perfecting and evolving his realisation so that he could serve the world at large. He called his teaching and spiritual practices the “Path of Love, Devotion, Surrender”.
In 1964 Sri Chinmoy moved to New York and established a small group of followers who devotedly practised his form of meditation. He was invited to offer twice-weekly meditations at the United Nations and gradually built a worldwide following with meditation centres in many countries.
Sri Chinmoy developed various means of inspiring people to discover their own spiritual nature. As a poet, artist, athlete and peace lover, he engaged with people in ways that made spirituality seem completely normal, natural and practical.
Sri Chinmoy encouraged his centres around the world to offer free meditation classes in the traditional and time-honoured way of passing down the knowledge of the ancients — as a gift from one heart to another. It is in this spirit that we offer our classes.
Sri Chinmoy entered into Mahasamadhi in October 2007. His work and the light of his being still flourishes in the world and in the activities of his centres.
Timeline
1931 – born in East Bengal, India. He was the youngest of seven children.
1943 – became a permanent resident of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram, a spiritual community in southern India.
1964 – moved to New York to offer his spiritual teachings to seekers in the West.
1966 – opened his first meditation centre.
1970 – held the first of his regular twice-weekly meditations for staff and delegates at the United Nations.
1970 – embarked upon his first lecture tour in Europe.
1974 – created his first artwork in the West, in a series of over 140,000 paintings, which he titled Jharna-Kala or ‘Fountain Art’.
1976 – visited Australia for the first time, giving a series of university lectures in Perth, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide.
1979 – ran his first marathon and ultra-marathon.
1984 – offered the first of his international Peace-Concerts, attended by thousands.
1985 – began his extraordinary weight-lifting career.
1987 – inaugurated the first international Sri Chinmoy Oneness-Home Peace Run.
1988 – began a programme of lifting people of goodwill, called ‘Lifting Up the World with a Oneness-Heart’.
1989 – inaugurated the Sri Chinmoy Peace-Blossom programme, in which prominent sites around the world are dedicated to peace.
1991 – began drawing a series of bird drawings called ‘Soul-Birds’, which now number in the millions.
2007 – after a lifetime of dedication and selfless service, he left the body at the age of 76.
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