A Visit to New York

On 10 October 2002, before the evening function in their honour at Public School 86, Ravi Shankar and Sukanya were Sri Chinmoy’s guests at Annam Brahma Restaurant. Their conversation was mainly in Bengali, but following are excerpts from a few stories and comments in English.

Sri Chinmoy: I was a young boy many, many years ago when you played in Dilip Kumar Roy’s⁵ house at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. I was only a matter of four or five metres away, right in front of you. I was fourteen or fifteen years old. Whoever imagined that we would be meeting like this so many years later?⁶ According to our philosophy, there is no such thing as impossibility. Now, when I am in your presence, I feel that, indeed, there is no such thing as impossibility. Everything is possible, everything is possible by God’s Grace.

Ravi Shankar: Thank you. That was a wonderful time I had at the Ashram. Two days I stayed there at Dilip Roy’s house.

Sri Chinmoy: Dilip had some problems with his throat, so Sri Aurobindo advised him not to sing anymore. When I was sixteen years old, I believe, I wrote a poem on Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. I had started writing poems at the age of twelve. To my great astonishment, Dilip liked the poem immensely. He came to my house early in the morning around nine o’clock with my poem. I do not even know how he got the poem. Although he was not supposed to sing, he started singing for me because he liked it so much. He was singing and singing, and then he was humming and singing under his breath. I could not believe my eyes, I could not believe my ears, that he would be so kind as to come to my place to sing! I still have that poem about the Mother and Sri Aurobindo.

Ravi Shankar (referring to an occasion when his elder brother Uday visited the Ashram but was not able to dance for Sri Aurobindo): Do you know any of Sri Aurobindo’s views, why he didn’t listen to music or see dance?

Sri Chinmoy: His philosophy is the acceptance of life and then the transformation of life. We accept life as it is now. Then we need transformation, transformation of the body, vital, mind and heart. But first we have to accept life as such, and then we have to transform it. That was his view, to bring down light from above.

Then for fifty years or so, he was in one main room. You can say that he practised sadhana, austerity. In his writings he has said, “You must accept life, accept life.” But in his day-to-day life, he renounced everything. He did not care for what was happening all around. But the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram manifested his philosophy. She accepted life – singing, dancing, everything. She herself used to play the organ. They were complementary souls. It is like the obverse and the reverse of the same coin. Mother took the work of manifestation, whereas Sri Aurobindo took the sadhana of realisation. He said, “Realise, realise the Highest,” and Mother said, “While realising the Highest, let us manifest. While going up, while climbing up the tree, if we see there are mangoes, let us pluck the mangoes and bring them down. Let people enjoy the mangoes.”