Heeeeeelllll
And here's our guest tonight on Westchester Newsline.
Shreech and Nye, thank you for coming by.
We appreciate it.
What do you see as the spiritual mood of this planet right now, with all the recent events
that have been happening?
I strongly feel that the world is progressing, and the world has a sincere hunger for peace.
Sometimes we unfortunately enter into a wage war and so forth, but in the very depths of
our hearts, we are all longing for peace, a oneness whom?
Here we go! I think he's down!
Don't try it at home!
It's not the size of the stone that you lift.
Finally, another day, another world record for Shreech and Nye.
It's the reason why you lift that stone.
If he lifted you and me, he'd be lifting 200 pound dumbbells.
Well, you know, if you feel the weight of the world on your shoulders today, you're in good company.
Shreech is lifting for the world and all of its people.
You ask, why did he do it?
Well, it's because he can, and that's good enough for me.
You almost feel like gravity stops.
It's the gravity that does good just for the sake of doing well.
There are weight-lifters and there are spiritual leaders, very seldom the two actually meet.
If you become a spiritual person, you could accomplish anything.
The amount of poundages he was moving was unheard of.
But if you were to combine the Deli Lama and the Incredible Hulk,
you might just end up with something like Shreech in Moe.
Shreem Moe, unsreelievable.
Welcome back. We're looking at the power of spiritual healing.
Can this ancient notion be applied to modern conflicts?
Or is it naive to think that such archaic beliefs have a place in our technological society?
Observe what Shreem Moe does and a common theme becomes apparent, simplicity.
In the colourful acrylic paintings of birds, in the line drawings also of birds,
9 million of them to date, he says, and in everything, strength.
A strength that lets this 67-year-old fitness advocate perform feats
that most men half his age would not consider trying.
Shreem Moe uses these demonstrations to draw attention to his work for peace.
He says that physical and spiritual strength works in harmony to create peace.
It's a message he's brought to such notable figures as Mother Teresa,
Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela, who got a personal demonstration of Shreem Moe's ability.
Through races, concerts and meditations held each year around the world,
Shreem Moe calls on nations to remember that all people are brothers and sisters,
a philosophy that begins in the heart of each one of us.
A nation declares war on another nation, not because the nation is far superior,
but the nation feels in the depth of its heart that it is weak.
So he who is really strong will not fight.
So when you pray and meditate, we develop inner strength,
and this inner strength is nothing other than peace.
People may misunderstand me why I have entered into the bodybuilding and weightlifting,
only because of this.
I first heard about Shreem Moe back in 1986.
He had one of his disciples, and she came to our office one day with a whole list of questions.
Shreem was just born, she mentioned Shreem Moe and what he was attempting to do,
getting involved in weight training, and it wasn't long before she was back,
he gave another load of questions.
He was doing what I was asking her, suggesting he might do,
but I could see he was going step further and further.
After meditation in the morning, I take stretching exercise,
stretching exercise for 15 minutes or a given hour.
Everybody who comes through a field like bodybuilding,
if they have the opportunity to stand on the shoulder of the giants that came before them,
they're lucky, you know, it's a foundation of bodybuilding,
a cornerstone, you might say.
Bill Pearl's career span 20 years, and he never lost.
And even in the last contest in 1971,
he let the bodybuilding world know through every magazine at that time
that this would be his last contest, and if you wanted a shot at him, this was it.
A lot of people went in that contest to try and knock him off, and they couldn't.
I had the biggest chest in the world, it was over 60 inches with a 32 inch waist,
and the depth that I had, and the broad shoulders that I had,
it created the ability for Arnold to give me the name Big Mike,
and obviously to be mentioned with Bill Pearl and Arnold and Frank Zane and so forth,
I'm honored to be in that discussion.
And then you had Shree, and Shree was in his own category of strength.
Shree, Tim, he was my friend.
There are certain people you just get along with,
then there are certain people that you like,
and then there are certain people that you love.
He was one of the people that I loved.
I am a student of peace.
I feel that physical fitness is of paramount importance in achieving peace, peace of mind.
In the holy past, spiritual masters would sit in caves for 20, 30, 40 years
and meditate only for their own realization.
And they would give very, very little attention and importance to the body.
But Guru got the express command that now, in the current day,
that the body and the spirit must go together.
The fact that he was interested in lifting weights,
I found very unique among spiritual teachers.
He's the only one.
Age is in the mind, and not in the heart.
When he started his weight lifting career,
I don't think he had any intentions of following through
and doing what he did with his career.
When God wants me to be motivated,
and if he wants me to be a runner or tennis player, I would gladly do it.
And to please God in God's own way is the message that meditation offers us.
And as he saw that he was capable of doing more, he took on more.
But I don't think he started out with that intent at all.
I'm absolutely positive he probably didn't.
I'm almost sure he did.
At the beginning Guru starts off really innocently, really small, 40 pound lifts.
And then before you know it, Guru is doing 75 pounds.
It went up really, really quickly.
The heavier you're low, in other words, the more you take on,
the more effort you're going to have to put out to do it.
You have to expend really sincere, focused effort, a lot of effort.
And you lift it a short distance because that's all you have to lift it,
because that's the idea, and that's it.
When my son introduced him at the store, where I had a store in South Conduit Avenue,
he would say, here's one of our best customers.
He buys thousands of pounds of weight.
Is this guy crazy? Why is he doing so much weight?
The first time I met Guru, as Guru was walking toward me,
I honestly, honestly saw a light over his head as if it were a halo.
And he'd absolutely glowed.
And I was so shocked by this, I didn't know how to,
I didn't know how I was to bow, get down on my knees and say whatever I knew,
I was absolutely stunned just by him walking toward me.
I don't think I've ever seen him in my life.
My pleasure to be a small part of another of Guru's lifting marathons.
I can't describe in words what you're going to see this evening.
I've used every word that you could possibly manage to do.
The positive word on Guru, the last 15 or 20 years I've been involved with Guru.
And when you say, back, I think that a gentleman at the age of 73
is doing the things that I could not do in my prime,
well, what I had attempted to do back then,
I certainly would not attempt to do it now.
I have to understand that when Guru was lifting,
the technique didn't one thing he's ever done before in his life.
So he's not playing this game at a low end of the ladder,
he's at the very peak of what he is physically and mentally capable of doing.
And if you want to see a tremendous amount of success in Guru this evening
doing something he has never done before in his life,
the more help he gives to you, the better we're all going to be.
I could have a spectrum and at one end a strong man lifts.
Next comes Olympic weightlifting.
Next comes powerlifting and at the other end is bodybuilding.
Olympic lifters, you have rules.
In bodybuilding, in a contest, there are rules.
Powerlifting, there are rules.
Guru had no rules.
He did what he wanted to do and he didn't care what the other person did.
He played the game according to his rules, not their rules.
I don't even know if anybody could have done what he did.
From what I know about bone strength, especially in older people,
he was definitely pushing those limits in order to support 1,500 pounds.
That is pretty close to the limit that your thigh bone
literally can support without crushing.
You've got to look beyond the exterior.
What's the meaning of the message?
It's all about self-transcendence.
I do not have any set goal, but my goal is self-transcendence.
I always try to transcend myself.
I do not compete with the rest of the world.
I compete with myself all the time.
I try to become a better human being.
This is my ultimate goal.
I'm actually a six-time Canada's strongest man,
two times not America's strongest man.
I was the strongest man in the world in 2002.
Now there's no point going any lower than the world record is.
If I got a shot, it's now.
Very brave move in front of his home crowd.
7,000 people cheering him off.
The man from Quebec never been beaten on home soil.
He was a heart of Canada for the world record.
To me, I was impressed with his lifting,
but I was mainly impressed with his spirituality
and the energy that came out from him.
I felt peace.
I felt something deep.
I make a comment time and time,
and I would lift anything that was heavy, period.
I mean, he didn't have to hold it for 10 seconds or 50 seconds.
If a thing got up and down and there was air between whatever it was,
Gru was happy.
There were some times that I felt alarmed,
and then there he was putting himself under that weight,
and so it always worried me.
I guess that's the mother in me.
For the World Sport Finish Line,
an impressive weightlifting demonstration
by spiritual leader Shri Shinmoy in New York.
The 68-year-old advocate for peace
turned to weightlifting exactly 14 years ago.
Nine-time Olympic gold medalist Carl Lewis,
roughly 90 kilos on a 2,500-kilo elephant.
I'm always up for a big challenge.
I don't know what to expect when it comes to Gru.
Yes, just up.
No problem for Shri Shinmoy.
It's simply a case of mind or maybe soul over matter.
Hey, you can't take a picture.
I don't care how much leverage you're using.
You can't take a picture with an elephant.
Unless you have a midget elephant,
this is a big elephant.
To be lifted was amazing
because you really clearly felt the movement.
The satisfaction within.
I love this guy.
I can't get enough Shri Shinmoy.
People used to write to me and criticize me.
How can you give them publicity?
He's not lifting in.
It's using leverage.
It's using leverage.
But with the leverage, you need the strength.
A lot of times I say, oh, what a crazy,
but how they talked about,
the interviewer talked about how inspiring that was.
I mean, so the message got through
because it was guru.
I do believe we all have this strength inside us.
It's just a matter of getting there.
The distance is short when the load is heavy
because of the kind of preparation
and focus you have to have to do it.
My focus is only on one thing.
On the weight, all of the things that I'm lifting.
I do not allow even an iota of thought
to enter into my mind.
You know, when I think about people
that might be doing things like that,
I'm thinking about NFL linemen.
But he's so far out of the realm,
for example, just from a point of view of age,
let alone body size,
that it's a little hard for me to explain.
But I mean, the evidence is there,
so it makes it very interesting to try and explain it.
My philosophy is very simple,
never, never, never to think of age.
By virtue of my prayers and meditation,
I am able to bring down infinite grace from above.
I entirely depend on God's grace.
If you are wise enough,
then there is no such thing as impossibility.
Some people just looked at him
that he was trying to get publicity for himself
or whatever they missed the point
of what he was trying to accomplish
and what he was trying to say.
I think he was understood by people
who wanted to understand him.
To be appreciated by an organization like yours
is a real shutting down.
But I wish you good luck and success
in what you're doing.
It's in the interest of the entire humanity
and the world.
You can't just go to a newspaper or TV station
and say, I want to talk about peace and compassion.
They're not going to be that interested.
But if you're lifting a thousand pounds,
there's some interest there and people cover it.
A 70-year-old Syrie Chinmoy
literally lifts people up to inspire them.
It's all a part of his lifting up the world
with a oneness heart program.
He congratulates individuals for their achievements
with his special one-arm lift.
You are part of the spiritual force of love
that emanates from God
and which will transform the evil of this world
into its counterpart.
He's lifting everyone up.
It's uplifting to watch him do this.
It's uplifting in the sense that it helps us
transcend our own personal limits.
He's a great, great example for me in my training.
I have his picture all over my gym.
A lot of times I don't feel like working out.
I just look at the pictures and I'm back to doing my next set.
If you look through Guru's career of lifting,
when he was younger, first beginning,
he did most everything from a standing position
because his body was physically capable of doing this.
He hurt his knees.
He started doing everything in a seated position
because his knees would no longer support
what he's attempting to do,
so then he was lifting a great thing with two hands.
With time, one of his shoulders went bad,
he was lifting with one hand.
When the shoulder went bad again,
he started doing seated wrist curls
with a dumbbell that weighed 270 pounds
and looked like, which was ridiculous.
But he did feats and strength
that would heal the average person who trained him.
Guru did not give up.
He worked his body from the beginning.
I knew him from standing to seated
to only what he could still move
and he still did not give up on life
or give him all his attempting to do.
He did not give up.
I don't think people realize
not how difficult it is to lift all these things,
but over the period of time.
The fact that he spent four hours doing it
is an incredible feat of endurance
as well as strength.
To have the mental concentration and focus
to stay at a peak level for that time,
that to me was what was amazing.
So it makes you understand your own potential
by him achieving his own potential.
I think Street Timor's legacy
in the other weightlifting world
is that there are no limits.
But the toughest thing at the end,
that's what jumped out at me.
Had a small little car, they called it a little smart car,
but the thing still weighed maybe,
I don't know, 2200, 2500 pounds,
and the average person would just crumble.
My biggest fear was the guru
was not going to be able to do
what he was hoping to do.
It was a true 2200 pounds on his back.
He had to lift the car
because he had let other people know,
gosh, if the guru can lift the car, I can do anything.
It wasn't about him.
It was about everyone else.
Well, Bodhisattva is a being
who comes back through history
at times when his or her influence is needed.
And it's to help humanity.
And Bodhisattvas take a vow
that they will not enter final enlightenment
until all sentient beings are saved.
And I think Sri Chinmoy is very much a Bodhisattva.
There was a sort of,
if there's different degrees of mortality,
it was about as high up as you could get.
Never forget this humble man.
He was very humble.
Never forget him.
He loved people.
He loved to be around people
and to help people.
I have a photograph of a guru
in the next room there.
There is not a day goes by
that I don't wake up in the morning
and say hello.
And at night they don't say goodbye.
And like I say,
I have born the kiss every time I walk by.
You said you're an optimist.
You're hopeful for the future.
Why?
Because our source is all elimination.
If our source is all joy, all love,
all compassion,
how can you be otherwise?
A day will come
by virtue of our prayer and meditation,
feeling of oneness.
You know,
we shall be able to inundate the world with peace and love.
We shall be able to inundate the world with peace and love.
