Meetings with Luminaries

Honouring Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury and His Wife, Mariam

Ambassador Chowdhury: I do not know whether it will be appropriate for me, but I will first offer you my greetings in Bangla, in honour of Sri Chinmoy (speaks in Bengali).

I just offered in “our language,” if I may say, my deepest appreciation and thanks to all of you – in particular, Sri Chinmoy – for our being here this afternoon. Speaking for myself and my wife, Mariam, our spirits feel so uplifted every time we come here.

We get physically uplifted by Sri Chinmoy, but in the process, our inner self gets uplifted. That is the charm, that is the magic that we always have when we come and visit him, when we see him and meet with him, and get his blessings. That is always a great pleasure.

But I also feel so wonderful to see all of you from time to time when I have an opportunity to visit you. You have always been absolutely gracious to me, my wife and our children – now our grandchildren also. I am so thankful to all of you to receive your love and affection, and I wish all of you the best of everything.

I will add one more thing: that all of you have given such strong support to Sri Chinmoy in his work for world peace and for the good of humanity. I think that is remarkable. And with Sri Chinmoy leading all your efforts, it makes us very proud that we have in him such a noble heart that feels for the rest of the world. I believe that his service to the cause of inner peace in each one of us and global peace for the world is something which eminently deserves the recognition of the world. In my humble way, as I serve in the world’s most universal organisation, the United Nations, I pay my tribute to Sri Chinmoy on my own behalf and on behalf of the United Nations.

Please accept our most heartfelt gratitude and appreciation for the good work that you do and will continue to do for many years. And please count me as one person who will support your work in the coming years too. Thank you. (Thunderous applause from the gathering.)

Sri Chinmoy: You are my dearest brother and dearest sister. To be of service to one’s dearest brother and dearest sister is like bringing down Heaven on earth, for here our oneness is something most valuable in every sense of the term.

You two are dreamers of peace, lovers of peace, like me. We are all dreamers of peace, we three. Today we are dreamers, but there shall come a time in the near future or distant future when our dreams will be manifested as realities.

Ambassador, you have been serving the United Nations for many, many years. I know and I feel, I feel and I know that your service to the United Nations is most exemplary. You cry for the poor, for the needy. You cry for the upliftment of poor human beings in every way. This is the very best way that you can serve humanity. Millions of people appreciate you, admire you, plus love you, for you have a very, very big heart, and for that I am all love for you, all admiration for you.

I take both of you as true members of my family. When you are in trouble, I most sincerely feel that I am inseparably one with your sufferings. I pray and pray and pray, and I do everything that is possible on the strength of my aspiration and dedication to offer my services most lovingly, most self-givingly, plus most proudly to you both.

Ambassador, it is you who introduced me to Shankar, one of the most eminent writers in Bengal, in Bengali literature, and for that I shall remain eternally grateful to you. He has written such nice things about me. Thousands upon thousands of people have heard about me in Bengal. I hope in the near future he comes to visit us. Unfortunately, he does not appreciate my weightlifting! He personally has told me. But I shall make a special request to him that in his forthcoming biography, I would like today’s performance to be included.

He takes me as a spiritual person. For him, a spiritual person should only meditate, pray and help humanity in a different way, with our heart, with our prayer and meditation. But my philosophy, our philosophy is the acceptance of the world. If I do not accept the physical aspect of life, then I am not valuing something so important in our life. The physical and the spiritual must go together.

Some of my predecessors, let us say great, greater, greatest spiritual Masters, did not value the physical aspect. Sri Ramakrishna, Sri Aurobindo and others were meditating and raising our consciousness higher than the highest. But I feel the body is the temple. If you do not keep the temple clean and pure, then inside, the gods and goddesses, the deities will suffer. So, for me, the inner life has to be brought forward. Otherwise the inner life, which is oneness with God’s Will, will not be manifested in our outer day-to-day life.

We shall pray, but we shall pray for what? For personal liberation, or for the improvement of the world? You can remain in Bangladesh or here. Why do you go farther than the farthest to such poor countries? Your heart compels you to go. The child is crying upstairs on the third floor, and the mother is on the first floor. When the mother hears the child is crying, does the mother say that since the child is hungry, let him come downstairs? No, the mother goes upstairs where the child is crying. Here, our heart compels us to go to various countries. I was just in Turkey, Bulgaria and Thailand. Everywhere I go, I try according to my limited capacity to be of service to those people.

Prayer and service must go together. Otherwise we will only remain in the Himalayan caves to pray, pray, pray! If we do not love one another, if we do not serve one another, then what are we doing? This is what I am doing — serving. Out of His infinite Bounty, God has given me the capacity to be of service. I have written considerably, I have painted, I have created many drawings, I have composed songs. People may say that I am a jack of all trades, master of none. But I wish to say that a flower is only a flower, a real flower, if there are four or five petals. If there is only one petal, we cannot appreciate the flower. Yes, all the petals may not be equally beautiful. One may be shorter. But the flower needs a few petals. A tree is only a tree if there are branches on the trunk; otherwise it does not look like a tree.

I feel that the physical aspect is also one branch of our real life. We cannot ignore it. Some-body can excel in sports, running, jumping and throwing, which I did when I was young. But now my capacity is only in lifting heavy weights. I cannot run, I cannot jog, I cannot even properly walk. But with the little capacity that God has given me to be of service to humanity, I am doing it gladly, gladly.

And I am not confined to the human world. This morning, I lifted seven horses individually and then three together. Earlier this year, in Thailand I lifted 13 elephants, from baby elephants to heavier ones. The heaviest one was 8,600 pounds or some-thing like that. It is all to give joy. When we have a dog or a cat, they come and play with us, we play with them. We give them joy when we play with them, and they give us joy. If you have a dog, they also get joy when you play with them. Similarly, when we enter into the animal world, the animals, such as those elephants, get joy.

By the way, on the 29th of June, I will be lifting the world’s tallest horse, which is eight feet high! That particular horse is now in Texas. When it comes here for the Good Morning America television show, they have made the arrangements for me to lift the tallest horse.

We love human beings, we love animals — any creation of God we have to love with all our heart. Otherwise, if we say, “Oh, they are inferior,” no! Superiority and inferiority, these things do not exist when we are in the world of oneness.