Part III — Press conference at the Cebu Midtown Hotel

PBP 17-19. 5 January 1993.

Question: To be able to lift with just one arm the weight of 7,000 pounds is seemingly as impossible a task as trying to establish peace among the peoples of the world. Is it possible for you to explain how you are able to do such a feat, which is scientifically and logically impossible?

Sri Chinmoy: First of all, from the very depth of my heart I wish to thank you for asking me this question. Your question is, for me, more illumining than the answer could ever be. Impossibility is a word that we find in the English dictionary. But this particular word we do not find in our heart's dictionary. Our heart recognises no such word. In our heart we are all the time expanding our own reality and growing from the finite into the Infinite. There what we are dreaming of today is becoming the reality of tomorrow.

There is the reality of the mind and the reality of the heart. When we live in the reality of the mind, we are constantly separating ourselves from others. We sing only one song: my and mine. We know only one truth: division. When we live in the heart, we are constantly expanding on the strength of our oneness with everything around us. There is no division in the heart; there is only multiplication. At every moment we are multiplying our capacities and our inner divinity.

If I ask my mind whether I can lift 7,000 pounds, immediately it will say, “Impossible!” I do not need anyone else in the world to doubt my capacities. My own mind is by far the best doubter. It will do the job better than anybody else. But when I am in the heart, with the heart and for the heart, there is no such thing as impossibility because of the heart’s oneness. When I am in the heart, I become one with each and every human being on earth. If countless human beings are with me and for me, then lifting 7,000 pounds is not a difficult task.

So through my prayer and meditation I am able to expand my love for my fellow citizens of the world and enter into the Universal Consciousness. For the Universal Consciousness to lift up 7,000 pounds is absolutely nothing. It is like lifting up a grain of sand.

We pray and meditate so that we do not remain in the mind-reality, which is constantly dividing us. We want to remain only in the heart-reality that claims the whole world as its very own. If we remain in the heart and sing the song of universal oneness, we will be able to accomplish everything. The capacity of our heart far transcends the capacity of science. Our prayer-life and meditation-life can take us far, far beyond the domain of scientific capacity.