Jack LaLanne: Isn't Life Just Great!

Jack LaLanne: Isn't Life Just Great!:

"AC: What is your feeling, though, about the famous declaration of the enlightened person who says, 'Thy will be done'—in other words, 'It's not my will but the will of a higher power that does everything'?

JL: Well, I don't believe that. I believe we are put on this earth to do the best we possibly can with what we have. Again, there are so many things we don't know about—but if I left everything to fate, I wouldn't have anything! I wouldn't be getting to people. I've got to make it happen! And I believe this with my mind and my heart and my soul: What can't you do? Anything in life is possible if you make it happen.

AC: When you apply yourself in the way that you're describing and you discover this tremendous energy, do you ever have moments or experiences when you feel that there's also a power at work that is greater than yourself?

JL: Yes, but this power is in me. I'm using it. It's in you, too. And it's for you and me to bring it out.

AC: But in your book Revitalize Your Life After Fifty, you say, as you also did just a minute ago: 'You cannot be in my profession of physical fitness (connected with the mind and the body) and not believe that there is a Supreme Being that keeps this universe together.' What does that mean in practical terms?

JL: Well, when we look at the sun and the stars all around us here, our minds can't comprehend it—we just can't comprehend this. But I'm a great believer that if there is an earth made over, if there's a life again, then if I do everything negative in this life—if I break all of nature's laws and lie and hurt people—I'll never get another chance. But if I do a good job—if I do everything good in this life and I help myself and I help my family and I believe in everything I'm doing—then if there is another world made over, I'll be there, because I've earned it. Everything you do in life, you earn it, earn it, earn it—good or bad. How do you think you get arthritis, or rheumatism, or mental illness or all these different heart diseases? People earn them by breaking nature's laws. Would you put water in the gas tank of your automobile? Well, your body is a combustion engine, and thoughts are things!—they affect it, too.

...AC: So what you're saying is that to become truly spiritual, to experience genuine spirituality, you have to really act—you have to do something—and you have to be willing to give everything.

JL: Everything! Absolutely, no doubt about it; there are no free lunches. The whole plan about this is that you have the power to do it, but you have to take responsibility. I'm a normal human being, but the reason I'm normal is because I've worked at it! Like I said, there's a mental side to all this and you can't separate it from the physical. Too many people dwell on all kinds of things, but I work out seven days a week and that's my penance, that's my price to pay, that's to keep my mind down to where it should be instead of it running away. See, it's a psychological thing. You're actually punishing yourself, disciplining yourself—it all comes down to discipline. With my personality, I could be a runaway, out with a different woman every night, drunk every night, eating and doing things that—well, you know, you've got it in you, we've all got it in us. But that's why you've got to take control! So after I've done my workout in the morning, I've fulfilled my obligation, my price to pay for what I have. Nothing happens accidentally; there's always a reason, somewhere along the line.

AC: What about grace?

JL: What about what?

AC: Grace—the descent of the spirit. It's called "grace" when it seems that for no apparent reason the spirit visits someone—then they say it was an "act of grace."

JL: You see, that I can't get into, because that's never happened to me. Everything that's happened to me in my life is because of something that I've done to make it happen. Nobody's come out of the clouds. But your mind can play so many tricks on you. If you think something is going to happen—you know, don't dismiss the mind; it controls everything, right?—you can make yourself well or sick. There is so much that we don't know, and I don't think this Supreme Being that we've been talking about really wanted us to know everything. If we knew everything we wouldn't be inquisitive any more. That's why people who think they know everything lose their imagination. You need to get new thoughts, new challenges. It's like He's keeping that carrot—pardon the old saying—in front of the horse to keep it going.

...I'm not doing all this stuff so you'll say, "Gee, Jack, you're a wonderful guy"; it's because I've got to do the best I possibly can and set my standards high so that the people who come to my lectures will follow them. That's my responsibility, because I know that in all these billions of years of existence, there's just one of you and one of me. Doesn't that mean anything? So if you can't afford half an hour three or four times a week to take care of the most priceless possession on this earth, which is your body, then you've got to be a bit psycho.

Now a lot of people say, "Oh, I don't have the time." Or, "Oh, but I don't like it, Jack." But you know, I try to get to the gym by five in the morning, and I work out for two hours. To leave a hot bed and a hot woman to go to a cold gym—now that's dedication! And I've never heard this once—knock, knock, knock on the window in my gym: "Jack, this is Jesus, I'll work out for you today!" So that's the message we have to give all these people—that "we are fearfully and wonderfully made"—and we goof it up. If you're tired and pooped out all the time, do you have love and compassion in your heart for your fellow man? You don't even like yourself!

You know, that's the only thing that I get really sad about. I see a sea of millions of people going down with their own negative thoughts, going down for the third time in this big sea of iniquity and negativity, and I feel like I've got the life preserver, but all I can do is say, "Grab it!"