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.