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It is now almost a month since I left New York after visiting my meditation teacher Sri Chinmoy, but the impact of that stay still lingers in my heart. I tried to write down a few of the more memorable moments in one post, but that post got way too long, so I decided to break it up into pieces instead.

First day - the balloon lift.

I awoke at 3.30 the morning after I arrived, meditated, pulled on every scrap of warm clothing I could find, and went out into the cold night air. A group of us were making the two-hour drive up to New Jersey in time for daybreak to watch Sri Chinmoy lift a hot-air balloon as part of his weightlifting programme to inspire people to greater heights in their own lives. As I had arrived late, I had to settle for a spot in the boot, which I managed to make more than comfortable - I even found time to write a couple of articles on my laptop.

We arrived to the lifting site. At this stage, we as Sri Chinmoy’s students have been witness to so many of his innovations and spontaneities that you might suspect we would be inured to it by this stage, but our teacher still finds new ways to surprise us. As we drove in, we could see that a hot-air balloon, shaped in the form of a pink rabbit, had been expertly guided onto the overhead lifting platform and sat there perched on the apparatus, as if expecting our arrival. The weight exerted by the balloon on the lifting platform could be controlled by the pilot adding or releasing air from the balloon. As dawn was breaking through the trees, Sri Chinmoy sat down underneath the platform and began a series of lifts which increased in weight as more gas was gradually let out of the balloon, leading up to a final lift of 369lbs. He then lifted another brightly coloured balloon, making its maiden flight that very morning, again in a series of lifts leading up to a final lift of 397 lbs.

Although Sri Chinmoy is noted for his vast volume of written philosophy collected in many books of talks, questions and answers, his philosophy lies much more in doing and in being a personal example of what he talks about. Just one event, like this one, captures so much of what Sri Chinmoy is all about: the yearning to always transcend and go beyond one’s present capacities, the reliance on his prayer- and meditation-life for the inner strength he needs, the constant effort to inspire others to also ‘lift’ their own standard higher - and also, in this case, the pure childlike joy of doing something completely unusual and imaginative.

And that was just the first day….