'We speak only of how we can serve the world'

When he is with me, we never discuss politics.  We speak only of how we can serve the world, how we can raise the standard of humanity with our goodwill, peace, prayers and meditations.

Sri Chinmoy
speaking about his relationship with President Gorbachev

Sri Chinmoy’s warm relationship with President Mikhail Gorbachev spanned several decades, with 25 meetings and over a hundred letters expressing mutual encouragement, appreciation and support.

On August 18, 1991, there was an attempted coup by Soviet leaders against President Gorbachev, and the President and his family were trapped in the Crimea. Sri Chinmoy took the situation extremely seriously and turned his entire focus to the Gorbachevs’ safety.

There were more than a thousand of Sri Chinmoy’s students gathered in New York for their traditional celebration of his birthday, and he and his students were meditating and praying most intensely for the President and his family. For the first time in more than 20 years, Sri Chinmoy cancelled many of the scheduled activities, except for silent meditation, prayer and spiritual singing.

One evening, Sri Chinmoy interrupted some of his students who were singing his spiritual songs.  With great urgency in his voice, Sri Chinmoy said,  “Kindly stop singing right now!” and he began to meditate most intensely.

Later, Sri Chinmoy said that President Gorbachev’s soul had come to him and told him that he only had three hours to live.  The coup plotters were going to kill the President. Sri Chinmoy explained that he had inwardly changed the mind of just one guard who was cooperating with the coup.  This guard did not do what he was ordered to do, and so President Gorbachev’s life was saved.

Raisa Maximovna’s Right Eye

Some time after the attempted coup against President Gorbachev, Sri Chinmoy saw his wife, Raisa Maximovna, on television, walking down from an airplane. He became extremely concerned and exclaimed, “Her right eye, her right eye! What are the doctors doing? Are the doctors not helping her?”

Sri Chinmoy asked me to call Irina Malikova, a close friend of Sri Chinmoy who at that time was in charge of International Relations at the Gorbachev Foundation. Sri Chinmoy wanted to know how Raisa was feeling. Irina had been travelling with President Gorbachev and Raisa Maximovna in Latin America. I asked, “Irina, how is Raisa Maximovna doing?”

Irina replied, “She is fine. She recently had a medical check-up. The doctors said that she is fine.”

Nevertheless, Sri Chinmoy was becoming more and more concerned about Raisa Maximovna because he clearly saw inwardly that she was not well. Several times Sri Chinmoy asked me to call Irina and to ask her to beg the doctors to re-examine Raisa Maximovna’s right eye. Again and again, the doctors said they could not find anything wrong with Raisa Maximovna and they kept repeating, “No, no, she is fine.”

Only some time later, after Raisa Maximovna started to have terrible trouble with her vision, the ophthalmologists finally discovered that something was indeed seriously wrong. In fact, she was beginning to lose her eyesight.  After the doctors started treating her, Raisa Maximovna was able to regain her vision and full health.

Once we had a meeting in Philadelphia. She had only tears and tears in her eyes. She said,  ‘Sri Chinmoy, not every day, not every hour, not every minute but every second I send you my love and my gratitude.’

Sri Chinmoy
on his friendship with Raisa Maximovna