Question: Borg never won the U.S. Open and Lendl, of course, has never won Wimbledon. Is it a karmic thing, just bad luck or just not being good enough at the time?

Sri Chinmoy: Sometimes the players are overconfident. Because they have won three of the four Grand Slam tournaments, they feel that easily they are going to win the fourth. Again, sometimes after winning three tournaments, they lose all their confidence and fear comes. After covering hundreds of miles, when somebody sees that he is finally near the shore, the beauty or the enormity of the shore frightens or puzzles him.

Also, negative forces can come into the picture. Sometimes people who were eliminated right in the beginning are dead set against somebody's winning the Grand Slam. Or people who used to be good players many years ago become very jealous if they see that someone is about to win the Grand Slam. They didn't get that kind of joy and that kind of prize when they were playing, so they don't want anyone else to get it. They use their negative power and put out a tremendous wrong force.

If someone becomes a good player, ninety per cent of the people do not want him to get any better. Only ten per cent want him to improve. I am not only talking about the players who are his rivals. It is a human tendency not to appreciate others' good qualities. We always try to destroy the good qualities of others even though we know perfectly well that we have accomplished nothing ourselves. I am lame, let us say. But if I hear that Carl Lewis or someone else is doing well, then immediately I will put out a negative force, saying, "Let him lose, let him lose!" And this negative thought enters into that person like a current.

Another reason why some players don't win the Grand Slam is that the destination itself does not want them. The destination — the Grand Slam — has its own consciousness and sometimes it does not want certain individuals to reach it. So when the destination sees that so and so is approaching, it just recedes. The destination should be neutral, but sometimes it is not.

Again, the destination does not have the capacity to actually decide whether or not somebody will reach it. If God is the destination, then God can decide. But if the destination is the finish line of a race or something like that, it cannot decide who will win. The destination in this case has its own limits. Again, God is inside the destination. In fact, God is the destination of everything.