Part IV: Questions Asked by Reporters in Greenwich, Connecticut

//These questions were asked by reporters in Greenwich, Connecticut, on 23 September 1986 when Sri Chinmoy lifted an elephant using a modified calf-raise machine.//

Interviewer: Sri Chinmoy, please explain to me what you hope to show people by lifting an elephant.

Sri Chinmoy: First of all, I would like to make it very clear to you that I am not a bodybuilder; I am not a weightlifter. I am a truth-seeker and a God-lover. I pray to God and meditate on God daily, and I always wait for His inner Guidance. For the past fifteen months, my Inner Pilot, God, has been telling me not to neglect the body but to be of inspiration to the world of strength. That is to say, we have to accept the body as something most important in our life. The spiritual figures of the hoary past neglected the body and the world. They remained in the Himalayan caves or in the forest — in isolated places. They felt that the body is useless and that a seeker cannot derive anything good from the body. But I do not see eye-to-eye with them.