Editor's preface

On 3 November 1988 Sri Chinmoy completed his great project of lifting 700 individuals overhead with one arm. Celebrations were planned for 7 November at the tennis court in Jamaica, New York, where most of these lifts had taken place.

Sri Chinmoy’s students arrived on that day only to discover his power rack set up once more for lifting. This time, however, it was Sri Chinmoy who stepped on the scales to be weighed in.

His dream was to lift his own body weight 100 times in continuous sequence, alternating left and right arms, as had been his pattern since the very beginning of this programme.

Sri Chinmoy’s body weight was 155 ½ pounds. In addition to the metal weights loaded onto the platform was a lifesise wooden cut-out of Sri Chinmoy. Where standard plates sometimes fail to carry the full impact of their weight to an audience, this vivid representation of Sri Chinmoy’s body weight emphasised the magnitude of his undertaking.

At 10:08 a.m. Sri Chinmoy began to lift. After each series of twenty, he took a short break to change his Indian garments. Their luminous colours are reflected in the division of pages within this book.

Barely sixty-eight minutes had passed before Sri Chinmoy stood, holding the weight aloft for the hundredth time. His dream had been realised within the narrow compass of earthly time. Using the powerful symbolism of lifting up his own weight, Sri Chinmoy had brought before our eyes the mystic meeting-place of man’s limited outer strength and the Supreme’s infinite Power. And he had revealed, beyond all shadow of doubt, that when the Highest takes up the body as its instrument, no man-made limitation, physical or mental, can remain unchallenged.