Question: When you offer your prayerful concerts, thousands of people attend, but when you lift, you lift only one person at a time. I was wondering if you do something for more than one person when you are lifting.

Sri Chinmoy: When I see a drop, let us say, it is up to me whether to take it as a single drop or whether to take it as a vast, infinite ocean. Today, here in Sanya, I have lifted one person only. So you can say it is a drop. But again, while I was looking at this lady and while she was on the top of the machine, I was establishing my oneness with humanity. Humanity is not one person. Humanity is made up of countless, countless people. While I was lifting her, you saw only one person. But my love of God is such that when I lift one individual, I feel that my consciousness has spread out and touched the length and breadth of the world. In this way, I am getting satisfaction. One individual I take as many, many, many.

And again, if I am lifting a number of people, not only on this machine but on other machines, I try to establish oneness between all the individuals. To me, they are one. Ten people or twenty people may be there, but I take them as one. Then I get tremendous joy. When you look at the ocean, immediately you see how vast it is. But it has become the ocean because of millions and millions of drops. If you want to separate them, you can.

Similarly, when you want to see God as one, then immediately from the many you bring Him to one. Ten or twenty individuals, I take them as one. But again, if I want to take God as many, then when I lift one person, I think of the vastness-ocean.

We have to do both. When it is one person, I try to think of it as many. When it is many, I think of it as one. God the One and God the Many — when I lift, this is the feeling that I get.