The Inner Promise: Paths to Self Perfection

Sri Chimoy was born in Bengal, India in 1931. At a very early age he began those meditative practices which perfected him in self knowledge. He came to the United States in 1964, worked for the Indian Consulate and gradually drew to himself people who felt his power and light. The number of people who have been drawn to him has grown steadily over the decade. His has by no means been a wildfire popularity, and though today he has meditation centers in Europe, in Canada and throughout the United states, his following is not large. Only those who are made ready for him, for his purity, his intensity and his height, does Sri Chmoy call disciples. But in his writing, his lectures and public meditations, he makes himself fully available to both the aspiring and the curious. Every year he travels to Europe and to campuses in America and Canada, speaking to audiences small and large, providing inspiration for those who can receive it. Each of the pieces in this book was delivered to such an audience. Each talk was preceded by silence, the silence not of a speaker waiting for his listeners to settle, but of a meditation master filling a room with his stillness and peace. All Sri Chimo's talks emerge directly from high meditative states; they bear the fullness of his highest consciousness. For that reason they require from us more than the usual act of passive reading. We must enter into, admit, as best we can the consciousness that is in these pages. Sri Chimoy speaks slowly. His voice is musical. Often his sentences spine brief harmonic patterns, He never talks for long, always spontaneously. Always his words point to feelings, point to possibilities of awareness, they map out or evoke states of consciousness, aspects of nature, and condition which offer us a clearer sense of identity --- excerpt from book's Preface