LA FORTALEZA San Juan,
Puerto RicoAdministrative
Bulletin No.: 3228
A PROCLAMATION
BY THE GOVERNOR OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICOTO EXTEND A WARM AND SINCERE WELCOME TO THE ESTEEMED SPIRITUAL MASTER, SRI CHINMOY, AND TO DECLARE HIM DISTINGUISHED GUEST AND HONORARY RESIDENT OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PUERTO RICO
WHEREAS : Sri Chinmoy is the central figure behind a profoundly spiritual and creative movement throughout the world and whose direct Realisation of God has been manifested in and through his unending services to humanity;
WHEREAS : Through meditation, the Master is constantly invoking the highest Peace, Light and Joy into the world which he has expressed in his outstanding accomplishments in the fields of art and literature, proven to be of a deeply inspiring and instructive nature to man's spiritual search;
WHEREAS : His example and teachings based on his inner vision of the Divine and unlimited potential within every human being, and his spiritual work of drawing this to the fore in others, has brought a new life of dynamic service and growing inner satisfaction to countless individuals;
WHEREAS : Being Director of the United Nations Meditation Group, Sri Chinmoy has displayed his outstanding capacity in guiding and inspiring those in the highest ranks of world power to strive for peace and universal brotherhood;
WHEREAS : Sri Chinmoy came to Puerto Rico in 1966 where he established his first Center for meditation and has since constantly brought the fruits of his unending accomplishments and services to the people of Puerto Rico, thereby being an invaluable aid to their spiritual progress;
WHEREAS : Sri Chinmoy, who has rendered such unparalleled selfless spiritual service to uplift the consciousness o* the people of Puerto Rico, is deserving of our highest recognition, respect and gratitude:
NOW THEREFORE: I, RAFAEL HERNANDEZ COLON, Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, with deepest pride and satisfaction declare Sri Chinmoy DISTINGUISHED GUEST AND HONORARY RESIDENT OF PUERTO RICO, and deserving of all the courtesies and privileges befitting such designation.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, to be affixed at the City of San Juan, this 19th day of July, A.D., nineteen hundred and seventy-six
RAFAEL FERNANDEZ COLON
GovernorPromulgated according to law, this 19th day of July, 1976.
JUAN A. ALBORS
Secretary of StateSri Chinmoy meditates in the Central Park Bandshell.
— photo by SaramaAmerica’s achievements of the past two hundred years, although they are on the physical plane, the vital plane and the mental plane, were founded on her inner cry. Otherwise, no nation, in two hundred years, could surpass all the nations of the world put together. America’s sincere inner cry and the response from above made those achievements possible. The inner cry is spiritual and the response from above is spiritual, so two spiritual things were combined to shape America’s history.
A few minutes later I saw another hostile force which was not as powerful as the first one, and later I saw three or four. They all wanted to devour America’s glory. They wanted to see America bow down; they wanted to humiliate America. And this they want to do not only through America’s outer life, but also through America’s internal life. They wanted to create some serious internal disagreements so that some states would fight with other states. Some severe internal conflict like the Civil War would again have taken place to destroy America’s achievements, America’s joy, America’s glory and America’s pride.
Fortunately, the Supreme and I are on the side of America, so there is no hope for these hostile forces. But I wish to say that the greater America becomes, the more she will be challenged by the outer world and the inner world. The hostile forces don’t want anybody or any nation to remain at peace or to increase peace. The greater one becomes, the stronger the opposition. The more we try to reveal divinity, the more we suffer from humanity or from wrong forces. When one is on the verge of achieving something inwardly great, he gets tremendous opposition from the inner world. I did realise God without tremendous inner opposition, but now the Supreme wants to reveal and manifest Himself in and through me, and I am getting opposition at every second not only from those who are unaspiring and from undivine forces in the earth atmosphere, but also from those to whom I am trying to give everything that I have and everything that I am.
The Supreme wants me to give at least an iota of Light, Peace and Bliss to the world, and every day my power is increasing, but the opposition is also increasing like anything. Ten years ago, when we started our mission, we had very few disciples — ten or fifteen disciples. Manifestation did not start at that time, and we had little inner opposition. At that time I used to hold the highest meditations, absolutely the highest. Since then I have not descended from my spiritual height, but no matter how sincerely, how powerfully I meditate, no matter how high I go, the receptivity is next to nothing. If I meditate for five minutes, in five minutes I bring down an absolute sea of Peace, Light and Bliss. But when I see how much has been received, it is only twenty drops or thirty drops or fifty drops. This lack of receptivity is nothing but opposition. You may say, “I am not receiving, but how am I opposing?” But the very fact that you don’t want to make yourself receptive to what I have to give you is opposition. What more opposition do I need? When I am bringing down something and giving it to you, if you say you don’t need it, then you are opposing my purpose, the purpose of the Supreme, who wants to operate in and through me.
America’s achievement is extraordinary. What America has done in two hundred years, no other nation has been able to do, nor will other nations be able to do it. They don’t have the necessary inner cry. Because of America’s inner cry, America got the Compassion-Smile from above. But once you receive something, you have the capacity to receive more. America can receive much more. In two hundred years America has done so much on the physical plane, vital plane and mental plane. The next hundred years can easily be years of spiritual achievement. In a hundred years, if America accepts the spiritual life and gives all value to the spiritual life, if America makes outer achievements of secondary value and gives spirituality utmost importance, again America’s inner cry and the Compassion of the Supreme can make America run the fastest. During the next hundred years America can achieve what no other nation can achieve. It is entirely possible. The only question is whether Americans will do it or not. God alone knows.July 19, 1976
Sri Chinmoy
85-45 149 StreetJamaica, N. Y. 11435
Dear Sri Chinmoy:
I regret the delay in writing you this letter, but I had to leave the country on business the day after our Festival,
The NEW YORK BICENTENNIAL HERITAGE FESTIVAL was a very great success and I must say that your disciples who participated in it (as staff members under the direction of Mr. Steve Hein) were the persons responsible for making the Festival work. We had no practice, no rehearsals, not even a dry run. Indeed, I met for the first time the entire staff the morning of the Festival. Despite this, and because of the efforts of your people, the Festival went off exactly as it was planned and without any problem. What was accomplished that day was probably the best organized event ever to take place in Rockefeller Center and it was made possible by the efforts of your disciples.
I thank you again.
Sincerely,
NEW YORK BICENTENNIAL HERITAGE FESTIVAL
John Stevens
Director 502 Park Avenue New York, New York 10022 (212)688-2929 Telex No. 426798But we are dealing with the world of aspiration, with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality. If one aspires to realise the infinite Consciousness, the eternal Reality, the immortal Vision within himself, naturally it will take much, much longer than just to fulfil an earthly desire. Therefore, a seeker will need quite a few incarnations in order to attain his highest aspirations.
Since God will never leave us unsatisfied, since God wants to fulfil Himself in and through us, we will keep on progressing until we reach our goal. Each incarnation is a forward march. It is like a rung of the spiritual ladder. Each incarnation, for a seeker, is a great opportunity, an added opportunity, to make progress toward realising, revealing and manifesting the Highest. It is through the process of reincarnation that we ultimately reach our destination.With divine emotion we identify ourselves with the Eternal, with the Infinite, with the Immortal. If we are one with Infinity, Eternity and Immortality, then there are millions of things we will not do because our divine pride will make it simply impossible for us. If we have wholeheartedly taken the side of Light, we cannot change and go take the side of darkness.
Divine emotion is the emotion that liberates us and brings us the message of Vastness. This emotion gives us the feeling of oneness with each and every individual. This divine emotion, the emotion that makes us free and vast, is good. But the emotion that binds us to the outer life, to the human feelings, should not be encouraged. Divine emotion is founded on oneness, on something vast, on something illumining and fulfilling, and that emotion should be welcomed, for only that kind of emotion is necessary to reach our destination.An inner voice will give you a message, and inside that message will be action and reaction, or action and the result thereof. The result of the action will come in the form of either success or failure. If you feel that you will be able to take either success or failure — whatever comes — with the same type of cheerfulness, then you can rest assured that it is the inner voice that is guiding you. If the so-called inner voice is a mental hallucination, or something from the ego or desiring vital, then you will want to accept its message only if you see that it will fulfil your vital demands. Otherwise, you will want to discard it. At that time you will be like an opportunist. If the result seems like it will be satisfactory, according to your understanding, you will accept the voice. If it seems like it will be unsatisfactory, then you will reject it.
But the message of the inner voice will give you the necessary strength to be cheerful regardless of results. Even if the result comes in the form of failure, you will be able to identify yourself with God’s Will to such an extent that you will see failure not as failure but only as an experience. And success you will see not as something to boast of or to glorify yourself with, but as an experience that God wants to give you. So if you are able to assimilate the result of your action in a divine way, and from the result proceed toward your destination without any wrong inner movements, then it is the dictates of the inner voice that you are hearing.
The inner voice is the messenger. It only brings messages directly from above, and fulfils God’s Will. Whatever message is brought down by the inner voice, the seeker will accept cheerfully and soulfully. If he can do this with no regard for the so-called success or failure, then the seeker can rest assured that the message has come down from the highest Authority. If one really loves the highest Authority, no matter what that Authority offers, one will be satisfied with it. That is the only way to become inseparably one with the Supreme.There are many ways for us to achieve happiness in life. We can acquire happiness by seeing, by feeling, by acting and by becoming. When we see truth within and without us, we can be happy. When we feel love within us, we can become happy. When we act devotedly and soulfully, we can become happy. And when we become perfect instruments of our Inner Pilot, we can become happy.
What is truth? Truth is something that holds us to the real in ourselves. There is something eternally real in us, and truth holds us to that eternal Reality within.
What is love? Love is something that expands and at the same time transcends. It expands our aspiration, and it transcends our realisation. Our aspiration expands and expands. It wants to become one with the universal Reality. And our realisation transcends and transcends. It goes far beyond the Goal that we have already achieved.
When do we act devotedly and soulfully? When our action is service to mankind or to the Inner Pilot in each human being. This service brings us the message of perfection. Perfection is not a vague term; it is a reality. And this reality we can see face to face when we serve the divinity in each human being.
When do we become perfect instruments of God? We become God’s perfect instruments when we become conscious representatives of God, conscious limbs of God, when He can perform His cosmic Task in and through us gloriously, triumphantly and proudly.
In the world of desire we try to possess material wealth, mundane things. Again, if we enter into the world of aspiration out of curiosity, then we try to possess and grab peace, power, light, bliss and so forth. When we try to possess, we may be able to possess an iota of peace, an iota of light, an iota of power or some other divine qualities. But if possession always looms large in our mind, then no matter what we get, we shall misuse it. We shall exploit the compassion of the divinity within us. When we possess material wealth, we quite often misuse it. We do not have the inner light to regulate our life, to moderate every second of our existence; therefore, we squander and misuse our material wealth. What we want to possess and get happiness from becomes a veritable curse to us.
Similarly, when we try to possess spiritual wealth, power, peace, light and bliss to use for our own purpose or to gain world acclaim, then real happiness remains a far cry. Peace, light, bliss and power are divine qualities, divine capacities. These capacities enter into us for the fulfilment of the divine within us, not so that we can use them according to our own sweet will.
Many of the people here, by virtue of their aspiration, have received something in the course of time. Let us say it is power, since peace is power, light is power, delight is power, creation itself is power. But they are apt to misuse it. How do they misuse it? They misuse it when they use it to glorify themselves. But if they allow these qualities to utilise them, then they glorify not only themselves but also the Absolute Supreme, who is the only Owner of these qualities and capacities.
Happiness can never be found in possession, either of earthly qualities and capacities or of heavenly qualities and capacities. Not in possession, not in dominion, but in cheerful union with the higher realities can we have happiness. Earthly qualities are all negative and destructive. Fear, doubt, anxiety, jealousy, insecurity — these are earthly qualities. But heavenly qualities are all positive and constructive. Peace, light, bliss, love of God, love of truth, self-giving, sacrifice, the feeling of constant oneness with the rest of the world — these are heavenly qualities. If we can identify ourselves with these heavenly qualities, then only will happiness be ours. Happiness will claim us as its very own then, and only then. There is no other way.
13 July 1976
United NationsUsually it is the good souls, great souls, that take rest in the soul’s world for only six or eight months or a year. Ordinary souls take six, eight or ten years. But sometimes an ordinary soul, not with tremendous animal propensities, but ordinary — that is, not very high or very aspiring and, at the same time, not very bad, with a little aspiration but not much — sometimes these souls want to come back to earth very quickly. If it is God’s Will, or if any spiritual Master intervenes, then they can come back sooner. These human souls are not of the lowest; they are of the common run. They have desires, earthly desires, and they are tired of heavenly life. They go to Heaven, and after two or three years they become tired of heavenly life; they are fond of earthly life.
Our Sarama had a mother who died not quite three years ago. Her mother kindly descended a few months ago. Her mother was tired of heavenly life, and she was able to descend because she had a Guru and her Guru did her a favour. She has come back very soon, not because she has led an animal life, but because she was aspiring slowly, like the Indian bullock-cart speed. She felt that here on earth she would be happy. Again, there are other souls among our departed disciples who want to come back as soon as possible, not to take part in our mission, but to lead an ordinary earthly life. So in some cases my compassion did not work. Only in Trishna’s case I have offered my help. But it is good to take a few years’ rest. Here on earth we work so hard. We deserve some rest in Heaven.These things are on the negative side. Although the physical will is positive when it keeps you sitting quietly, it is not enough. Physical will can be used to feel that you are receiving energy from above. When you are using the vital will, you have to feel that you have spread your wings to cover each and every one in the whole world. And when you use the mental will, you can see that your intense life of aspiration has entered into the entire world. If you use the psychic will, which is the heart’s will, then you will feel that you have become inseparably one with the rest of the world.
Now, which will do you want to utilise during your meditation? During meditation it is always safe to use your psychic will, heart’s will, oneness. If you establish your oneness with God, with me and with the disciples, then you are safe. Psychic will is the will of freedom. If you want freedom from bondage or ignorance, or from anything else, then oneness is the thing that you need.If somebody has realised God, he may not want to go into the field of manifestation and work hard again. He may come into the world or remain in the world not to help mankind, but to enjoy — not in an ordinary human way, but as an observer. You have played your game extremely well for so many years. Then you go to Heaven, and when you come back you may not want to participate in this sort of game again. Spiritual people can say, “I’m not going to play at all this time. I will just watch.” If someone has realised something very high, if he has gone to the top of the Himalayas in spiritual height, then he can say, “Let me take rest here on earth as we take rest in Heaven.” There are some spiritual Masters who have done this. After realising God they have stayed on earth for 20 or 30 years longer, but they didn’t enter into the field of manifestation. They only watched. They ran fastest until they reached their destination. Then they wanted only to look at others to see how they are running, and to enjoy observing the speed of others. But if God wants them to reveal and manifest Him, and instead they just observe, then they are making a mistake. It is all right only if God has sanctioned them, saying, “My son, you have worked so hard. Now if you want to take rest for a few earthly years, I grant you that opportunity.”
But for those who have not yet realised the Highest and who want to realise the Highest, each second is of paramount importance. If they don’t have a goal, then they can take rest, but if they have a goal, they should take it seriously and run toward it. It you have an important destination, how can you take rest before you reach it? Each second counts. There are many people all over the world for whom there is no goal. For them every day is the same, and nothing is serious or important. But if one has a goal, then one does not want to waste even one second.
At the same time, we should be wise. If we take life too seriously without having the necessary capacity to deal with life successfully, then we will commit suicide. If someone wants to get his Master’s degree and he feels that if he does not get it his whole world will collapse, then he has taken life too seriously. At this point he has to be very wise. He has to know that there are thousands and thousands of M.A.s on earth, and if he does not become one of them, it will not be a terrible disaster. He may not get this degree, but there are millions of other people on earth who have not got it either, and who are satisfied without it. What human beings need is patience. If you do not succeed in your efforts this time, then try again later on. If the next time you also fail, then believe in reincarnation. In your next life you can start studying again. Many people have done many undivine things, many absurd things, when their earthly desires were not fulfilled, just because they have taken life too seriously.
People who have the inner cry, the aspiration to realise the highest Goal, should not waste time, but again, they should not set a date. If I have just started praying and meditating today, I must not say that the day after tomorrow I must realise God, and that if I don’t realise God the day after tomorrow, I will take my life. If I am sincere, I will say that although it is my sincere wish to realise God the day after tomorrow, I know that God is all Compassion, and at His own Hour He will grant me realisation. It is not at all advisable to fix a date, but if my desire compels me to set a date, then by that date the wisdom must dawn that it is not my choice but God’s Grace that will grant me realisation.
One has to know what kind of aspiration one has. If he has burning aspiration, then he should cherish it and must not waste one second in reaching his goal. He will tell himself, “With this intense aspiration I will try always to run the fastest. At God’s own choice Hour He will give me realisation.” This is the best attitude for an aspirant to have toward life.The only thing is that there is no such thing as a spiritual problem. The problems that affect your spiritual life are all mental problems, vital problems, emotional problems, physical problems. Doubt is not spirituality. If one is suffering from doubt, he cannot say he is having spiritual problems. He is having mental problems. We use the word ‘spirituality’ for everything, but to say ‘spiritual problems’ is wrong. Spirituality has come into the world to save us, not to create problems for us. It is the forces that stand against spirituality that create problems. What is spirituality? It is man’s wisdom and God’s Compassion. So how can one have spiritual problems?
If one does not have faith in God or in his Guru or in himself, it is not a spiritual problem, it is a mental problem. And if one is living an impure life, it is not a spiritual problem but a vital problem or an emotional problem. If one has no self-control, is a very greedy fellow and cannot control his weight, then he has a physical problem. If you use the term ‘spiritual problem’, then you are blaming the wrong party.
When anything goes wrong, very often people blame their Guru or blame God. But if they were sincere, they would not blame their Guru or God; they would blame themselves, because they had made friends with doubt, they had made friends with fear, jealousy and insecurity. These things are problems to those who welcome them and embody them, but they are not spiritual problems.
To come back to your question, you can know in five minutes when you observe a person at a distance and not face to face. Also, your heart of love can tell you, because your heart will not get any response from that person. When you are speaking with a fellow disciple, that means you are offering your love, you are opening your heart’s door wide to him. And what do you expect? You expect him to enter into your heart so that you can give him concern, love and joy, but he does not enter. You have kept your door open in vain, expecting your guest, but the guest does not come. So you will know that something is wrong with him; otherwise he would have kept his appointment. Your oneness-heart is wide open, and you are eagerly waiting for the guest whom you’ve invited. But he does not appear.
You can know that a person is having problems, either in the physical plane, the vital plane or the mental plane. But spiritual problems do not exist. Spiritual is like God Himself. We say “spiritual problems” because we are practising spirituality and we are accustomed to using that term. But all our problems are either on the physical, the vital and emotional or the mental plane.Mahakali is my favourite one of the four. She is the Goddess of Speed and Power. Each Indian family has a presiding deity, and this deity can be male or female. Our family deity is the goddess Kali, Mahakali, so she is the one I am extremely fond of. Also, she has helped me many times. In my teens, when I was practising very hard for sports, she helped me considerably. Once, after I had run the four hundred metre race, I lost consciousness and my soul left my body. In five or ten minutes the doctors would have pronounced me dead, but Mahakali took my soul and brought it back into my body. If this goddess had not shown me that infinite Love and Compassion, I would have gone back to the soul’s world. So all of my disciples should be extremely grateful to her.
Like that, there are other goddesses working. It is up to the individual to invoke them. If an individual likes one, then he will invoke her, and if another person likes some other goddess, then he will invoke that one. But in essence they are all one. They are not like four women — if you please one, the others will be displeased. They are like limbs of one body. If somebody needs my arms for some help, if somebody needs my legs for some help, or my eyes or my nose, the other parts of my body are not disturbed. Similarly, these gods and goddesses are absolutely one.WASHINGTON
July 23, 1976
Dear Mr. Chinmoy:
Your thoughtful birthday greeting was deeply appreciated. It is always nice to be remembered by friends, and your kindness made this a very happy occasion for me.
Sincerely,
Gerald R. Ford
SRI Chinmoy
Room 3001United Nations
New York, New York 10017The Blue Centre has a significant role to play. Each of you has my special blessing on this auspicious occasion. Each of you can make very fast progress if you believe in the Supreme in me, and if you believe that the path you have chosen is the right one for you.
I am extremely grateful to Sunil. His service has all the gratitude of my heart. Now I also want to be extremely pleased with each and every individual disciple. My fervent wish is that you mix with good disciples in other Centres. This will help your aspiring consciousness and expedite your spiritual progress. Please make it a special point to mix with others.
It is also my request that the girls will wear saris to the meetings and the boys will wear white, if possible. When the boys wear white, it brings forward their spiritual purity, and the sari brings forward the divine qualities of the girls. Just by wearing saris and whites you will not realise God, but they do aid your spirituality. Read my writings and poems, sing my songs and participate in all the activities that you are invited to participate in. Every activity of our Centres means an opportunity, especially when we have family gatherings or when you are invited to the New York Centre. In this way, let everyone shine in the spiritual life. My soulful blessing, gratitude and my oneness-heart I offer to each of you.Sri Chinmoy: No, I call it God’s unconditional Grace or Compassion. In my family nobody was an artist. Everyone was in the literary line. They didn’t have the capacity even to appreciate painting.
Mr. Geldzahler: Did you have images in the back of your mind when you began?
Sri Chinmoy: No, I had no liking for any particular painting, or style of painting. I grew up in a spiritual community, and I had no opportunity to see much art work. I once visited an art museum, but my ignorance did not allow me to appreciate the paintings.
Mr. Geldzahler: It is like learning a language. It takes awhile to learn how.
Sri Chinmoy: Yes, you have to develop the capacity.
Sri Chinmoy: (Pointing to his pastel birds) It takes only a few seconds to do these, but I like them very much.
Mr. Geldzahler: I am nervous about choosing paintings in front of you. I don’t like this fluorescent lighting at all. First of all, it makes a reflection, and also I feel it brings a bad vibration down. It is unnatural. (Pointing to Sri Chinmoy’s second largest painting.) This one is very successful. (Speaking about painting No. 27,001) I like that one very much, but it doesn’t need the heavy gold frame. I would like it better without the frame.
Sri Chinmoy: After completing 27,000 I did it in front of my students. And that one (pointing to another painting) was number 100,000. This one (pointing to the rose) was the first painting I did on that rainy day in Ottawa when I started. I did this one (referring to his largest canvas) about four days ago. Would you kindly advise me in regard to it? How can we store it?
Mr. Geldzahler: Keep the surface unvarnished. If you go to move it around, cover it with clean cloth and roll it around a tube. Plastic, if it gets very hot, may stick.
Mr. Geldzahler: (Putting orange dots on paintings he was selecting as possibilities for the traveling exhibition.) Can we put two dots if we like a painting very much? This one is just perfect. ... I think this one has real energy. (Commenting on a vertical painting in the series done for eleven years in the West) I like the landscaping in this one very much, but to me the horizontal ones are more successful than the vertical. How do you do them?
Sri Chinmoy: I stand on a chair so I can reach the top. As a matter of fact, sometimes we change the position after I have done them. We see how they will look better.
Mr. Geldzahler: As I’m choosing, I see one and I look down and see another .... How strong that one is! ... I was just at an exhibit of two thousand paintings, but of course by two thousand different artists. But here it is a different experience. Twelve thousand paintings by one artist! It is a much more unifying experience. ... Again, I maintain that if I went through them again I would make a slightly different selection. (Speaking about the calendar paintings) You have the most consistent success in that format in which the works are divided by the month. But I don’t want to pick too many of these because I don’t want to make the selection unbalanced. You work on them in a very unified way. When they’re not in crayon, when they’re in paint, these are the most successful. They’re the most consistently good, and my tendency would be to pick a lot of them. But you’ve done so many other kinds that I want my selection to be balanced.
(Yvonne Hanneman pointed out Sri Chinmoy’s earliest drawings.)
Mr. Geldzahler: These have the charm of the work of a student thirteen or fourteen years old. It would be an interesting thing to exhibit them, but it would take a block of words to explain them. I don’t know if you would want that.
Sri Chinmoy: I’d like to know your opinion on one particular kind of painting. (Pointing to a yellow circular fan-brush painting) I am extremely fond of this kind of art.
Mr. Geldzahler: The references are the brain, the cabbage, the cauliflower, the flower, what you see when you look at the sun and then close your eyes. In art that kind of configuration has appeal.
Sri Chinmoy: When I do it I immediately feel that a flower is blossoming.
Mr. Geldzahler: I noticed that that circular form appears very often in your work. It is the moment when the flower opens.
(Harit asked Mr. Geldzahler to comment about the largest painting.)
Mr. Geldzahler: It is extremely hard to talk about this one. I don’t know what to say. It is much more unified than most of the others around it, which is unusual for such a large painting, and part of the reason is that the white is allowed to remain visible. It’s not clouded or dense or impenetrable. It sweeps one way and then the other. It is unified in that way. And all the way around it has not only an edge, but a way of referring or moving.
Harit: It has an infinite quality.
Mr. Geldzahler: But it’s also finite, and that’s important. There is something eternal going on, but it also has to law a shape about it, otherwise no one would be able to understand it.
Sri Chinmoy: Here it is quite dense, and here it is different.
Mr. Geldzahler: It’s fine; it folds in. In order to see this painting it would be much more interesting if it could be carried down there and seen from a distance. (After the painting was moved) One can see the unity better from a distance. You can see that the area that is light blends with the darker parts above it and around it. You can’t be sure of it when you stand too close.
I’ve explained to them how to store this big painting. Some of the big paintings at the Metropolitan have to be carried out the front door and up Fifth Avenue. It’s like a sail, and if there is a wind blowing...
Now it looks like a completely different painting. So you have made two paintings — one from close up and one from far away. I’d like to see how it looks in natural light. Can we have the fluorescent lights turned off?
(After the fluorescent lights were turned off.) I think this is much more subtle. Fluorescent light makes everything even, highlights everything evenly, whereas here the dark and the light all look different. This kind of light doesn't emphasise the white so much. It brings forward the colours. Now the colours are the unifying factor instead of the white spaces.
Sri Chinmoy: It has much more strength now. It is my own painting, so now I am bragging.
Mr. Geldzahler: Before, the point was that the white part was unifying it. Now the point is the contrast of the different colours and the brush strokes. It is stronger and more subtle.
Picasso said you have to know when to paint and you have to know when to stop painting. The trouble with many art students is that they keep working on a painting and working on it, and never know when to stop. This one is amazing. One universe; compact.From:Sri Chinmoy,AUM — Vol.II-3, No. 7, 27 July 1976, Vishma Press, 1976
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