Marty Gallagher: Earlier you were saying how you went and touched the plates and became friendly, as it were, with the plates. What other things do you do before you lift? What do you think or not think?
Sri Chinmoy: Before I lift, I do not think at all because, in general, thinking weakens us. When we are lifting heavy weights, we need the power of concentration. It is like this: let us say I am inside my room and I hear people knocking at the door. I have no idea whether they are my friends or my enemies. So what do I do? I say to myself, “Whatever I have to do inside my room, let me do first. If these people are my real friends, they will wait for me. If they are my enemies, their pride will come forward and they will say, ‘It is beneath our dignity to waste our precious time here’. Then they will go away. But my good friends will be sympathetic and say, ‘Perhaps he is doing something very important and that is why he is not opening the door’. So they will wait for me indefinitely.”When I am lifting heavy weights, at that time I do not allow any thoughts, whether good or bad, to enter into me. I only pray for God’s Grace and then surrender to His Will. I fold my hands and say, “I would like to become a faithful and devoted instrument of Yours.” Human power is so limited; it cannot lift more than a few pounds by itself. It is the divine Power in me, which I have brought to the fore through my prayer-life, that has enabled me to go from 40 pounds to 7,000 pounds.
We have to believe in a higher Power. If we do not believe in a higher Power, then we cannot go beyond our capacity. It is like being in a tug-of-war. When one individual is fighting against another individual, it can be very difficult since each may have the same strength. But if more people come to their rescue and begin pulling with the other contestants, then each team will have greater capacity.
Similarly, when I pray and meditate, I feel that somebody else is helping me, whereas an ordinary man feels he can only rely on himself. When he is under the weight, he thinks that he is lifting it all by himself. He has practised for so many years and developed his strength and he feels that everything depends on this physical strength. But in my case, I feel that I am only an instrument. There is some other power that is coming to help me. That power I call God’s Grace.
