SIPRA SPEAKS OUT WITH A FIERY TONGUE
BRISBANE, Australia — Sipra, a 39-year-old schoolteacher, has never been one to mince words, and when she decided to express her spiritual teacher’s philosophy of self-transcendence on April 2, she set off a lot of sparks.
She set a new world record for fire-eating by “consuming” 7,095 burning sticks in two hours, breaking the previous record of 6,606.
“The mind is always limiting,” explained Sipra, a disciple of Sri Chinmoy. “But when we get out and do something, we find we do have the capacity to transcend ourselves beyond that limit.”
She was aided in her feat by the inner presence of her spiritual Master, Sri Chinmoy, whose photograph she frequently glanced at and whose music was playing on a small tape recorder. Also of help were the heaping spoonsful of ice cream fellow-disciples handed her whenever she burned her tongue.
Sipra did the fire-eating in honour of the upcoming anniversary of Sri Chinmoy’s arrival in the West from his native India on April 13, 1964.
Published in Anahata Nada, Volume 10, Nos. 2-5, February – June 1983