December 17
Weightlifting Questions
answered by Sri Chinmoy
Question: Do you concentrate more than once on each metal plate before you lift?
Sri Chinmoy: How many times I concentrate and meditate! First, I do lots of easy exercises, along with concentration and meditation. Then, when I am ready to do my heavy lifts, before each lift I look at my picture of Mother Kali, who embodies tremendous power, and feel my oneness with her. In front of her picture I concentrate and meditate. Then I look at myself in the mirror and concentrate and meditate. After that I place my hand on the bar and concentrate. Then I look at each metal plate and try to inject my light there for the divine victory. After that, again I face myself in the mirror and concentrate and meditate most powerfully. Then I hold the bar and concentrate and meditate once more on each metal plate. That is why it takes such a long time.
Question: As the weight gets heavier, the bar tends to bend, so it seems to really take more effort to lift it.
Sri Chinmoy: You are absolutely right. When it bends it seems heavier. The weight is already heavy, but anything that is not straight or firm is more difficult to lift. Also, I could have lifted it higher if it did not bend this way. When I lift the whole thing off the rack, I lose a little height because it bends more.
Question: How is it possible for you to make the jump from 1,500 to 2,000 now, whereas before you could only go from 70 to 90 and then 100 pounds?
Sri Chinmoy: That is my progress report. I always advocate progress. Sometimes when the boat is nearing the shore, it either capsizes or it increases its speed. In my case, luckily the boat didn’t capsize; it reached the shore very fast. As Bill Pearl has said, I have no preconceived ideas about weight and what is or is not possible to lift. So if you are not afraid of something, you just try it. If nothing bad happens, you are lucky. Otherwise, you may be miserable to the end of your life. Luckily, I was protected by my Beloved Supreme. Otherwise, any day some accident could have happened. After 1,300 pounds the bar was bending like anything. When I did 2,000 pounds, it was bent so much that many people thought it could break.
Question: Guru, while you are lifting a very heavy weight, do you feel that you become one with the weight, or is it like an opponent that you are challenging?
Sri Chinmoy: The weights are not opponents, but I feel that inconscience has challenged my aspiration and my realisation; it has challenged God’s Omnipresence. This metal has no aspiration, almost no light. So there I want to enter with my love. It is not with my physical power but with my love-power, which is oneness-power, that I enter into the metal. But you have to know that my oneness-power embodies tremendous will. It is not like the Battle of Kurukshetra in which two parties are fighting. No! Only one party has challenged God’s Light with ignorance or inconscience, and the other party is trying to conquer it not by force or aggression, but with love. The inconscience of the weights has challenged me, so I try to become one with them with my inner love.
Question: When you keep making these enormous jumps in weight, what actually is progressing? Is it your receptivity to light, is it your human capacity, or is it that you are getting more help from Above, or what?
Sri Chinmoy: It is not my receptivity to light or my receptivity to God’s Compassion that is progressing. It is just the opposite. I am experimenting with the receptivity of inconscience; I am trying to see how much of my light the inconscient metal can receive. Before I lift, on each metal plate I concentrate two times. Suppose there are twenty plates — ten on each side. First I hold the bar at the centre. Then I concentrate on each plate on the left side and establish my friendship with it for the divine victory. Then I go to the right side. On each plate I have a special way of concentrating.
On the one hand, the Divine or Supreme in me is blessing me with Compassion, and I am receiving. On the other hand, I am entering into this inconscient plane and seeing if the weights can be made receptive. If they were not receptive, nobody could lift them. But because these weights were receptive to me, I was able to lift them. Perhaps they would not be receptive to anybody else in the world at this time. Ask anybody in this world and let them try! I am not bragging; I am only saying that as I happen to be receptive to the higher light, even so — by God’s Grace — the weights have become receptive to that light in me. Otherwise, who can jump from 1,300 pounds to 1,500 pounds just like that? When it is such high weight, people will take two or three weeks, if not months, to increase only ten pounds.
So because my receptivity was good, the divine Compassion acted through me and I was able to offer my light to God’s creation. There is so little of the divine light in God’s creation — next to nothing. But there I found an iota of receptivity, and because the weights were receptive, I was able to offer them light. If the metal had not cooperated, I could not have lifted it. So it is our mutual achievement. And it is through love-power that I did it, not through adamantine will-power.
On my face you do see determination-power and will-power when I am lifting. But it is love-power that actually makes it possible for me to lift these weights. Sometimes determination-power can be destructive, but in no way is mine destructive. While I am lifting you see my ferocious face, uglier than the ugliest. But it is not destruction-power that you are seeing; it is only adamantine will-power on my face, because I have to energise my arm.
I have to use a special kind of will-power — electric will-power I call it — on my arm, especially on my wrist. I have many, many types of will-power, but this one is absolutely my strongest and fastest. I keep a very special concentration on my arm, especially my wrist. Ninety per cent of the weight is supported by my arm. People will say, “Your shoulder, your back, your legs and many other muscles are also working.” But I know how much my leg muscles are working. Next to nothing! As I am lifting, my whole body is supporting the weight, but in no way are my chest or shoulders or legs actively helping me. My right arm is holding ninety per cent of the weight, and my wrist is holding at least seventy-five per cent of that. People will laugh, since my wrist is narrower than the narrowest. But I know that at least seventy-five per cent of the weight my wrist is holding. So I am always extremely careful with my wrist. All my dynamic energy and will-power are in my right arm and wrist. Otherwise, this tiny wrist would be crushed to pieces.
People say the world is not progressing. Always people say, “Oh, my grandparents were saints but everybody today is a rascal.” Always we feel that the past was golden, that the past had all the glory. Not only Westerners but even Indians will say that there is no occult power or spiritual power in the world today. Any kind of miracle they will immediately deny. Even if they see it with their own eyes, they won’t believe it. So now they can see it. With both the video and the camera I will be able to prove what I have done, but some people still won’t believe it. These people will never believe anything But again, some people who see my lift will be inspired by it to go one step forward in their own lives. I am for those people. I am not trying to prove to the unbelievers or disbelievers that I have done something. Far from it! Only I am trying to be of some inner service to people who want to go one step forward. They don’t have to lift 2,000 pounds, but perhaps they will take the inspiration that I am offering and make the effort to do something in their own lives which they previously thought was too difficult or impossible. In any field they can get inspiration to do something better than what they have been doing.
Question: Guru, for you, using spiritual power is almost as easy as drinking water. But when you lift heavy weights it seems that you really have to struggle and afterwards you seem to feel a real sense of achievement.
Sri Chinmoy: You have to see on which plane of consciousness I am operating. Here I am dealing with gross matter. The physical plane has the least receptivity to light, but still the weights are receiving. If I am operating on the psychic plane and you are praying and meditating, at that time it is not so difficult for me to raise your consciousness because you are already in a higher plane, and you are consciously trying to receive. If you are already up a little bit, then it is easier for me to lift you further. But if your consciousness is in the abysmal abyss, then don’t I really have to struggle to lift you up even an inch? When I am dealing with the inner plane, already the standard of receptivity is higher. But the weights are all on the gross material plane, so it is with utmost difficulty that I manage to offer light to them.
Again, when human beings who have been aspiring for many years fall, it is almost impossible to raise their consciousness. On the aspiration-tree at one time they were very high, but now they have descended considerably. So to lift those people even as much as I lift the weights is almost impossible. These metal plates are responding to my aspiration and dedication more powerfully than some human beings. Instead of going up like the weights, some human beings have gone down and they do not want to go up again. They are not incapable, but they are consciously and deliberately unwilling to receive light any more. So you can see the difference. With their extremely limited capacity the metal plates were aspiring, and that is why it was possible for me to do something.
Question: Why do you do your serious weightlifting in the early morning?
Sri Chinmoy: The early morning, before sunrise, is the best time. That is the choice time, the Hour of God. The world is still sleeping, and you are not affected by its hustle and bustle. This is the time for you to do anything that you feel is sacred.
The soul is always conscious and always ready to do something significant for God no matter what time of day it is. But the best time for the heart to receive direct help from the soul is either during deep meditation or just after you have gotten up, before the clamour and turmoil of the world can destroy your poise. At that time the soul and the heart are more powerful than the doubting mind, the aggressive vital and the lethargic body. All the worries, anxieties and other negative forces of daily life have not yet entered into you. The mind is calm and quiet, and a calm, quiet mind is of supreme importance when you want to do something really significant.
So anything that is most significant, anything that is momentous in your life, you should always try to do in the small hours of the morning. Or if you cannot do it then, the next best time is around nine or ten o’clock at night. But if you do it at night, first the mind has to be emptied, whereas in the early hours of the morning the mind is already empty. So it is a great advantage if you can do very special things in the small hours of the morning.
Published in Aspiration-Body, Illumination-Soul, part 2
