stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

78 STRIPPING THE GURUS
Weight-lifting is “the perfect analogy to the spiritual life,”
explains one devotee. “As the dead weight is lifted up, so also
a person’s lower, unilluminated being can be lifted to a level
of increased peace, light, and delight” (Rae, 1991).
Chinmoy’s publicized weight-lifting stunts (aided by a Nautiluslike
machine which does most of the work) have included:
• Lifting one thousand sheep (four at a time) in Australia
• Raising a Piper Arrow aircraft while balanced on one leg
• Hoisting the prime minister of Iceland, two San Francisco
49ers, four Nobel laureates, comedian Eddie Murphy
(speaking of “dead weight”), the Reverend Jesse Jackson, a
Ford pickup, an elephant and a small schoolhouse (separately)
into the air. Also, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu,
Muhammad Ali, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Yoko
Ono, Sting and Richard Gere (separately)
Nor are the man’s quantitative accomplishments limited to
weight-lifting. Rather, if Chinmoy’s followers are to be believed,
the man has written at least 1200 books, 62,000 poems and 14,000
songs.
In 1974 he wrote 360 poems in twenty-four hours, then the
next year batted out 843 verses in a single day. In one hundred
days from November 1974 to February 1975 he completed
10,000 “works of art”—pen-and-inks, abstract acrylics,
watercolors (Jackson, 1996).
Indeed, by the “avatar’s” own count, he has produced over four
million drawings of birds, and a total of more than 150,000 paintings.
Chinmoy is in his seventies, so four million drawings would
work out to over 150 per day, every day—or one every ten minutes,
if he had done nothing during a sleepless life except “draw birds.”
Impressive. Indeed, to do all that and still find time for meditation
or working out would almost require more than twenty-four
hours in a day.
Such record-setting “for God” seems to have rubbed off on at
least one disciple of Chinmoy’s, a Mr. Ashrita Furman, whose activities
have included