Introducing a Peace Concert for 19,000 people

Guru asked me to be Master of Ceremonies (MC) for the concert in Montreal, which turned out to be the largest Peace Concert in the world. By that time in my years on the Path, I knew that at least I should bring a necktie and a suit because you never know what Guru might ask you to do.

On the morning of the concert, someone calls me and says, “Guru wants you to be MC tonight.” Oh, wow! MC for a concert of 19,000 people in Montreal! And so, during the morning I try to prepare. What I want to say is: “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Concert of a Lifetime!”

All I need to say is Sri Chinmoy will now offer the Concert of a Lifetime. That is what our ads said, and that was one of the things that have made it successful. But I want to deliver my welcome in my best consciousness, so I try to prepare a little speech with the proper intonation and smile and everything else. And then some of my friends are saying, “Oh, you should do this, Utsahi; you should do that. Oh, it's too long; it should be shorter.”

Anyway, so I have all these tensions, but basically I just want to be calm and happy while presenting my Guru to this huge crowd of people. So I am showered and dressed in white and just about ready to go when Prabhakar says, “Utsahi, Guru wants to see you.”

I arrive in a room adjacent to the hall, and Guru is sitting there in his beauty with flowers around him, very poised. And he says, “Utsahi, how are you?” He is the one giving the concert, but he is asking me how I am! Anyway, he says, reassuring me, “Don't worry. Everything will be fine.”

Every day
The Master is His torrential Heaven-blessings,
His Heaven-love
And his Heaven-concern
For his disciples.

Sri Chinmoy 1
 

• 1. My Christmas-New Year-Vacation Aspiration-Prayers, part 53, #63, Agni Press, 2007