Transported by Ecstasy
by Sri Chinmoy
For the last three weeks I have wanted to be in a sweet consciousness while taking exercise and practising my weightlifting. Upstairs, while I am taking exercises for an hour and a half, sometimes I turn on Indian devotional songs dedicated to Mother Kali. When the music is too loud for me, I keep the tape recorder in another room. Then, when I come downstairs, I leave the tape recorder on deliberately. There also I hear a few songs and get tremendous joy. So soulfully the performers sing.
Usually I lift 10 pounds 50 times. But today, because I was listening to the music, I made two or three mistakes in counting. God knows when 50 was over. My left arm never aches after I do 50 repetitions, but this time it was aching like anything. So how was I counting? Only after 75 or 80 repetitions does my arm ache. So when I enjoy the singing, it is very dangerous!
After doing 10 pounds, I lift 30 and 40 pounds. I was on my fourth or fifth repetition lifting with a 40-pound weight and listening to the tape. How soulfully the singer was singing! I was so moved. Luckily, I didn’t drop the weight. I took my right hand and very gently put the weight down. If the singers are extremely soulful, you can become deeply absorbed in the music and drop everything. You people are great! You can listen to a tape while you run. But if I were to use some Bengali singing tapes, I wouldn’t be able to run at all because I would become so deeply absorbed in the music.
The singers’ souls have come to me many, many times. One singer, whose voice I like the best, committed suicide. All his songs were on Mother Kali. God knows who composed them. The songs were written by Tom, Dick and Harry — very simple devotional songs. In some songs, the poet is criticising Kali, asking, “Why are you so bad? Why are you not fulfilling my desires?” But all are full of devotion, full of purity.
For one week, I listened only to national songs, all about India. I liked them so much.
Published in My Weightlifting Tears and Smiles, part 1
Sri Chinmoy plays the esraj at a function honouring Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s daughter at Aspiration-Ground in New York.