Sri Chinmoy sought to make his life a testament to what humanity - even one single person - can achieve if he or she honestly believed in the infinite potential inside themselves.

Whilst Sri Chinmoy was here with us, his students, so much of our lives was spent trying to keep up with his output that it was very hard appraise the true extent of his service. It is only now, in the months and years following his passing that one can begin to appreciate the expanse of a life lived solely for the wellbeing of others.

Born in 1931 in the village of Shakpura in what was then British India (now Bangladesh) , Sri Chinmoy grew up in a family immersed in the ancient Indian spiritual tradition. Even before he was born, his eldest brother Hriday had left for to embark full-time upon the spiritual quest. Shortly before his arrival, his second eldest brother, Chitta, had a dream in which he was told a very high soul would come into the family.

Both his parents passed away within months of each other when he was only twelve years old. Previously, the head of the spiritual community where Hriday was staying had granted his mother's request that all her children could join him there in due course; and so Chinmoy found himself at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in southern India, thousands of miles from where he grew up. And at this young age, Chinmoy's spiritual life really took off in earnest. Soon he had established a daily practice which included at least eight hours a day of meditation, as well as participating in the other spiritual activities of the community. He very quickly attained high meditative states, and tried to give expression to them through writing songs and poetry in his native Bengali, which exude the newness and freshness of rapid self-discovery.

The prevalent philosophy in the ashram was one of integrating spirituality into everyday life; a philosphy which extended to sports and athletics. In time, Sri Chinmoy emerged as the foremost athlete in the community, setting a best time of 11.3 s for the 100m dash.

Throughout his life, Sri Chinmoy always spoke of his ashram years with great fondness and joy, and one suspects that he would have been content to stay there for the rest of his life, immersed in ever higher states of meditative bliss. However in 1964, he travelled from India to New York, prompted by what he called an "inner command" received in the depths of his meditation to share his meditative endowments with people in the West, many of whom at that that time were just beginning to awaken to the possiblilities that meditation could bring. People began to come to meditate with him, and in 1966 he opened his first meditation centres in New York. In 1970, at the invitation of then Secretary General U Thant, he began holding twice-weekly meditations for the staff and delegates at the United Nations building in New York.

In the 43 years Sri Chinmoy believed with all his heart that meditation was not something to be practiced isolated away from the world; for him meditation was a living thing that could be brought into all facets of human endeavour, that could provide the inner inspiration and energy to bring one to the fulfilment of ones highest potential. And in the 43 years he spent in the west, he sought to demonstrate to that simple tenet to the fullest extent possible. As mentioned, Sri Chinmoy had been writing poetry and music since his teens; in the mid-seventies he began to create large quantities of mystical abstract art. A few years later his encouragement of sports as an avenue for self-discovery led to the founding of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team, which has since grown to be one of the largest endurance sports organisations in the world. Sri Chinmoy himself was very active in long distance running in his mid forties, before moving into the field of weightlifting.

The type of meditation Sri Chinmoy taught was very simple - moving beyond the mind and entering into the heart, that place in the middle of our chest where we feel the core of our being, and from where stems our feelings of goodwill and empathy towards our fellow man. Sri Chinmoy also founded several grassroots initiatives to achieve this same purpose of bring people together through other means. In 1987, Sri Chinmoy founded what was to become the worlds largest peace relay, the World Harmony Run, in which runners visit over 100 countries across the globe passing an Olympic style torch which serves as a focus for peoples shared dreams for a better world. In 1991, the Oneness Heart Tears and Smilles was set up with the specific aim of trancending the sens of superiority and inferiority that can sometimes characterise donor-recipient situations.