 In the original definition of ki Mr. Reeve very clearly said that it did not depend on ‘pure physical size or muscular strength’ and is ‘independent of the mechanical efficiency derived from acquired technical skills’, so his comment on the lack of physical stature and weight lifting skills is irrelevant. If anyone can be taught to develop their ki, and ki can function as a force superior or equal to muscular strength, then ki practitioners should be able to lift heavy weights. Part 5 of the article by Harry Cook In the original definition of ki Mr. Reeve very clearly said that it did not depend on ‘pure physical size or muscular strength’ and is ‘independent of the mechanical efficiency derived from acquired technical skills’, so his comment on the lack of physical stature and weight lifting skills is irrelevant. If anyone can be taught to develop their ki, and ki can function as a force superior or equal to muscular strength, then ki practitioners should be able to lift heavy weights. Forget heavyweight lifters and look at the performances of lightweight women. In 1980 at the USA Womens Senior National Power Lifting Championships Joan Fruth [97 lbs.] did a 220lb. squat, 121 lb. bench press and a 254 lb. dead lift. Karen Gajda [132 lbs.] squatted 319 lbs. and deadlifted 369 lbs. This was improved by Ruthi Shafer in 1983 who squatted with 440 lbs., bench pressed 193 lbs. and deadlifted 468 lbs.
Could any ki adept come close to any of these lifts? And without any tension? I doubt it. If I am wrong it should be easy to prove. If we look at the lifts made in the past, before steroids and other chemical aids were available, we can still see some pretty impressive performances. W.A. Pullam, who weighed under nine stones [126 lbs.] did a 432 lb. deadlift in 1915 which was then a world record. In 1914 he did a right hand military press with 86 lbs., the following year doing 85 lbs. with his left hand. These lifts were the result of simple muscular strength produced by hard physical training, and took place over seventy-five years ago: can any ki practitioner duplicate them now ?
Issue # 241 of Strength Athlete magazine [August/September 1987] featured an article on Sri Chinmoy. Weighing just over 162 lbs [73.75 kg] and in his mid-fifties, Chinmoy claimed to have lifted 7,063.75 lbs. [3,210.7 kg] with one arm! Sri Chinmoy explains that ‘Great champions are of the opinion that 70 to 75 percent of weightlifting is mental preparation. But in my case 100 percent is due to God’s grace and compassion. As long as we remain conscious only of the body, we are not aware that physical energy has only one source, and that source is spiritual energy. When we go deep within through meditation, we see that spiritual energy is the source of physical, vital and mental energy.’
In a number of articles Chinmoy and his followers described a number of superhuman feats achieved through the inner energy released through meditation and other spiritual methods. In spite of all the claims experts in physical culture and strength criticised Chinmoy’s lifts. In the same magazine strength experts Nigel and David Webster said ‘Even if Sri Chinmoy wanted to impress with his supporting ability rather than his LIFTING ability why not show us what he could support on a standard Olympic or Powerlifting barbell, with one hand. Does anyone except his disciples believe that he can with one hand straighten his arm and support overhead weights far in excess of the world record BACK LIFTS of Louis Cyr and Paul Anderson?’ [i]
In issue # 243 of Strength Athlete Professor Terry Todd of the University of Texas observed ‘I have at many times been touched by the kindness and enthusiasm of Sri Chinmoy and several of his disciples, amazed by the organisation he directs, amused by his lifting and his approach to training and deeply dismayed by the claims made for his strength.’
Tjalling Van Den Bosch writing in # 244 of Strength Athlete stated that in his opinion if Sri Chinmoy ‘is so strong that he needs the attention in a magazine like Strength Athlete then he should compete in normal strong man competitions.’
Of course this is the obvious and commonsense answer. If Sri Chinmoy had entered an open powerlifting competition and performed the standard lifts with ordinary barbells his strength could have been compared with that of known strong men. If he had managed to out-perform the heavyweights for example, then his critics would have been forced to seriously consider his claims of inner power. Of course he did not do this, but continued to make absurd claims for the lifts he performed on his specially built pieces of equipment.
* ‘In self-defence, for example, if you stay calm and move the minds of the attackers in the way you want to, you can with very little effort move their bodies and avert or neutralize the attack.’
This is similar to the advice about the baseball bat and indicates just how uninformed some of those who rely on ki actually are about real fighting. Jack Dempsey, the famous boxer, has the following to say about self defence ‘Since a fist fight has no supervision, it can develop into a rough house affair in which anything goes. There’s no one to prevent low blows, butting, kicking, eye-gouging, biting and strangling. When angry fighters fall into a clinch there’s no one to separate them. Wrestling often ensues. A fellow may be thrown to earth, floor or pavement. He can be hammered when down, or even be ‘given the boots’ - kicked in the face - unless some humane bystander interferes. And you can’t count on bystanders.’ [ii] This is the reality. Dempsey’s advice in Championship Fighting: ‘Because of the danger in a fist fight it is imperative that you end the brawl as quickly as possible, and the best way to do that is by a knockout. The knockout is far more important in fist fighting than in boxing. You’ve got to knock ‘em out in fist fights.’ [iii]
Jack Dempsey gained his knowledge the hard way; in mining and lumber camps and in the professional boxing ring. He doesn’t talk about mind reading skills or superhuman secret energies: his advice is sound and practical and based in the real world. I know it must seem that I am attacking Mr. Reeve but I’m not; it is simply that he has expressed many of the ideas about ki/ch’i so well, and so he is very useful to quote. According to Aikido master Thomas Makiyama ‘To say one must master ki in order to understand aikido - that is incorrect. Ki must be looked at in terms of the Japanese word ki, as in the expression kiga ao, which means ‘our feelings are compatible.’ Aikido is a way of fitting in with a feeling - the feeling of your opponent’s force. The matter of ki has been used over the years to explain aikido, perhaps incorrectly.’ [iv]
Belief in ki sometimes leads to some tragic results. Masahiro Oki, a Japanese teacher of yoga and related arts, believed and taught that ‘Yoga begins and ends in breath and both Yoga and Taoism regard ki, or prana, as life itself.’ [v] In 1988 at the age of sixty-four he put his beliefs to the test. He became convinced that he had achieved some kind of cosmic unity and so decided to practise yoga under water wearing a jacket loaded with lead. He went to the Adriatic with a number of his students to demonstrate his ability to breathe under water. While seated in the lotus posture he drowned. Obviously he became so convinced by his own stories of superhuman powers that his common sense deserted him and he paid the ultimate price. It is possible that Masahiro Oki was inspired to try his feat by the story told by Ko Hung of his uncle Ko Hsuan who ‘whenever he was overcome by wine in the heat of the summer would incontinently retire to the bottom of a deep pool and stay there till the evening - this was because he could retain his breath and respire like a foetus in the womb.’
Water seems to hold some special interest for the practitioners of the internal. The stage magician Milbourne Christopher recounts one of his experiences. ‘I was in India in 1966 when the newspapers announced that Lakshamanasandra Srikanta Rao, a hatha yogi who in the past had eaten nails, needles, razor blades, and glass, and who had walked on fire, would walk on water in Bombay. Some of the five thousand spectators paid as much as $70 for the choicest seats. An oblong concrete tank, twenty feet long and six feet wide, had been built for the occasion and filled with water. The white-bearded mystic ascended the steps to the edge of the basin. There he paused and prayed. With complete confidence he stepped on the surface of the water. As the huge audience gasped, Rao sank immediately to the bottom.’ [vi]
As with the case of Masahiro Oki, all vestiges of common sense seem to desert these people when they try these stunts. This seems to be an attribute of the internal; logic and rational thinking are readily abandoned for myths and fantasies, and people risk and sometimes lose their lives in order to ‘prove’ that this power really exists. The great French Tibetan Buddhist scholar Alexandra David-Neel warned that ‘So long as improvised gurus are content to discuss philosophical ideas, it is only the pupil’s brain that is imperilled. When they become professors of physical exercises the danger extends to the health of the body.
This is especially the case as regards the gymnastics of breathing. All kinds of accidents befall those who adopt such practices inconsiderately: blood spitting, ruptured ear drums, and various other troubles.’ [vii] A typical example of this was reported by Paul Brunton in A Search in Secret India when he tells of a master of Yoga, Narasingha Swami, who could ingest powdered glass, powerful acids and deadly poisons such as potassium cyanide, without harm. Apparently he was able to do this because he could enter ‘a Yoga trance, and, by intense concentration of the mind, counteract the deadly effect of the poisons.’ He displayed his talents in Rangoon, Burma, but ‘owing to the press of unexpected visitors’ he omitted to enter the healing trance, and died.
Paul Brunton identified prana with some kind of internal energy. [viii] He published his account of his Search in Secret India in 1934, and enlightened his readers with the words of one of his gurus, Bramasuganandah [‘Brama’] ‘Have not our masters the keys to the powers of breath? They know how close is the connection between the blood and the breath; they understand how the mind, too, follows the path of the breath; and they have the secret of how it is possible to awaken awareness of the soul through workings of the breath and thought. Shall I not say that breath is but the expression in this world of a subtler force, which is the real sustainer of the body? It is this force which hides in the vital organs, though it is unseeable. When it leaves the body the breathing stops in obedience and death is the result. But through the control of breath it is possible to get some control over this unseeable current.’ [ix]
Brama’s master, Yerumbu Swami, was clearly a master of prana, as Brama told Paul Brunton that he was over four hundred years old! This pales into insignificance when Brunton writes of another wonder worker named Vishudhananda who was taught his marvellous powers in the wilds of Tibet by a master one thousand two hundred years old! [x] Obviously Tibet is the place to go if you want to acquire super-human powers. In A Hermit in the Himalayas first published in 1937, Paul Brunton reports ‘that among the advanced ascetics of the Lama kingdom there are quite a number who specialize in generating, by certain physical exercises and mental practices, an internal heat, a subtle fiery force which they call tomo [more correctly ‘tumo’]. In these exercises deep breathing is coupled with efforts of the will and imagination. First a secret invocation is chanted to receive the requisite magical power, and then the power of visualization is drawn upon and a subjective image of fire is produced. Then the flames are drawn up, to the accompaniment of deep breaths, from their supposed seat near the sex organ and sent to the head. The theory of these ascetics is that this imagined fire warms the generative sex fluid, which is then distributed along the arteries and nerves all over the body by other practices. Finally the ascetic passes into a trance in which he remains for some time with his mind fixed on the fire-mirage which he has created. My Tibetan informant claimed that this practice entirely drives off all sensation of cold from the body, and enables the man to feel a pleasant warmth pervading it although he be living in the depth of Tibet’s hard rigourous winter. In fact, he added, some ascetics deliberately sit in freezing water when practising their exercises.’ [xi]
[i] Paul Anderson is credited with lifting over 6,000 lbs. in the backlift.
[ii] Championship Fighting Jack Dempsey Nicholas Kaye Ltd. 1950 pp 20-21
[iii] ibid p 23
[iv] Black Belt magazine Vol. 19 # 4 April 1981 p 46
[v] Meditation Yoga Masahiro Oki Japan Publications, Inc. 1978 p 77. See also:-
* Practical Yoga Masahiro Oki Japan Publications, Inc. 1970
* Buddhist Yoga Rev. Kanjitsu Ijima Japan Publications, Inc. 1975
[vi] Seers, Psychics and ESP Milbourne Christopher Cassell and Co., London 1970 pp 249-250
[vii] Initiations and Initiates in Tibet Alexandra David-Neel Rider & Co. 1970 p 91
[viii] For an interesting study on Paul Brunton, and similar gurus, see Feet of Clay Anthony Storr Harper Collins Publishers, London 1997 pp 162-166
[ix] A Search in Secret India Paul Brunton Rider and Company, London 1974 p 89
[x] A Search in Secret India Paul Brunton Rider and Company, London 1974 p 198
[xi] A Hermit in the Himalayas Paul Brunton Rider and Company, London 1973 p 109
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