There are many Indian Masters who went
to West and propagated the message of India, after Swami Vivekananda.
Philip Goldberg in his much-acclaimed
book "American Veda' termed him
'The Olympian Guru'. Born as Chinmoy Kumar Ghose in 1931, Sri
Chinmoy was orphaned at 11 and spent next 20 years in the ashram of Sri
Aurobindo in Pondicherry, South India. Set his foot on New York in 1964 and
worked as a clerk at the Indian Consulate before known to the world as Sri
Chinmoy, the leader of a spiritual community in Queens.
Compare to other Gurus of his
generation, it is said that Sri Chinmoy had relatively few disciples. He is such a prolific writer with more
than 1,500 books, 115,000 poems and 20,000 songs. His core philosophy says that a sound
body may lead to higher elevation in
spiritual life which can be emanated from the fact that he used to participate in marathons and
ultra-distance races. All through his works, he taught the Vedantic
message of oneness.
Though his childhood is full of rough
weather as his parents had passed away in much younger age, but something positive in
life was in store for young Chinmoy who took shelter in Sri Aurobindo ashram, Pondicherry that
changed his destiny. His following verse inspires me a lot:
"Our goal is to go from bright to brighter to brightest, from high to
higher to highest. And even in the highest, there is no end to our progress,
for God Himself is inside each of us and God at every moment is transcending
His own Reality."
After a fruitful life of 76 years, Sri Chinmoy attained Samadhi on 11th October 2007 in New York city.