Marty Gallagher: How do you know the moment to actually grab the bar and lift?

Sri Chinmoy: There are various ways I can know. I do not lift the bar until I feel that my thought process has completely stopped and I have become another plate. When I am touching the plates one by one before I lift, I am establishing my friendship and oneness with them. I identify myself so completely with them that I feel I have become the weight itself. If I have become the weight — if I am the body and the weight is my hand — then I can easily raise it.

Marty Gallagher: So many of our lifters lift with aggression and that is why they need huge bodies to lift the weights; whereas, if they were harnessing their real capacities, think of the weights they could lift with these huge bodies!

Hugh Cassidy: Yes, isn’t it ironic that most of the lifters in the world are the ones who challenge the weight? They’re not the ones who become friends with the weight.

Sri Chinmoy: That is their mistake. A challenge is like a special kind of anger. If I am angry with you, my nerves are weakened. Each time we challenge someone, we inwardly weaken ourselves. But if we establish our oneness with someone, then we get that person’s strength.

That is what we are doing with our prayer-life and meditation-life. When we pray and meditate, we are getting God’s Strength. It is not that we are stealing it; only we are establishing a free access to it. If you and I have become friends, then immediately you will give me what you have and what you are and I will also give you what I have and what I am. So both our capacities are increased. If I challenge you, I will come with nine dollars and you will show that you have eleven dollars. But if we show our oneness rather than our rivalry, then my nine dollars and your eleven dollars become twenty dollars.