Part 5
Sri Chinmoy had tried to lift his 300-pound dumbbell 213 limes-and failed each time. But still he had not given up. Each morning, he confronted it anew, his enthusiasm and de-termination unquenched. Finally, on August llth, the great dumbbell became airborne and Sri Chinmoy earned his long-awaited victory. To many, it was a victory for humanity.
The very concept of failure was anathema to Sri Chinmoy. Shortly after this lift, he said: "In the spiritual life there is no such thing as failure. We may fail, we may descend, we may have the so-called outer experience of failure. But this is not the real failure. The real failure is only when we give up and say, 'This is an impossible task; no matter how many times I try, I fail.' If I entertain this wrong feeling and give up, then I have accepted failure and become failure itself. I shall fail only when I give up —never, never before! Not to give up under any circumstances should be the motto of our life."
On August 21st—just six days before his 55th birthday —Sri Chinmoy lifted 320 ½ pounds with one arm. It was double his own body weight. Failure was never to re-appear.
At a track meet prior to the Berlin Olympics, the legendary Jesse Owens broke five world records —all within the space of three hours. It was as if he had tapped into a divine source of energy, a rush of cosmic power, that took up the body as its instrument and hurled it further, faster and higher than any mortal had ever gone before.
For two hours, on Friday, September 5th, this same power
unveiled itself through Sri Chinmoy. On that day, humanity itself seemed to be lifted a little nearer to the sky.
Shortly after 8:00 a.m. in his home, Sri Chinmoy made four attempts at lifting a 330 ½ -pound dumbbell overhead with one arm. His own body weight was a mere 160 pounds. However, his physical frame seemed to be surcharged with power. Sri Chinmoy was successful on both his second and fourth attempts.
Just under one hour had passed. Scarcely interrupting his momentum, Sri Chinmoy drove to his nearby tennis court and commenced one of the most breathtaking manifestations of power that had yet been witnessed. The standing calf raise machine became the material hinge around which this power revolved, the visible channel of an invisible presence.
At the summit of his workout— which also happened to be the summit of human endeavour —Sri Chinmoy completed four repetitions of 1500 pounds. He then shattered all previous training records by performing enormous repetitions of lesser weights in a descending scale. The total workload came to an astronomical 106 tons 1200 pounds.
400 lbs x 3 reps.
600 x 2
800 X 2
1000 X 2
1500 X 2
1500 X 2
1400 X 6
1200 X 13
1000 X 26
800 X 35
800 X 30
600 X 43
600 X 43
400 X 58
400 X 61
As a final touch, Sri Chinmoy went to his seated calf raise machine, now loaded with 500 pounds, and completed two sets of ten repetitions.
It was just on 10:00 a.m. For two hours we had been given a glimpse of the future. “The day will surely come when a mightier race shall inhabit this earth. Like Sri Chinmoy, they will be able to link their finite, human strength with the universal strength, they will fill earth’s smallness with the unlimited power of the self and ride on the wings of dream towards the sun.
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