Thanks Nik. It triggers in my memory an anecdote I heard decades ago in the posh Chiswick Ashram, in London, populated by girls only. Open-house satsang was held there once or twice a week.
On this occasion an American premie, a young college graduate with some kind of engineering expertise apparently, was regaling us in his satsang with tales of his service exploits. His stories had an edifying moral of course, but no one cared too much about that because everyone loves true stories and he was an engaging, candid character. One was about how his mind wandered during meditation, giving him some of his best ideas, such as a novel garbage collection scheme. (I wondered at the time if he meant real garbage, because the term was also used in reference to certain types of computer data. I really wanted to ask him, but technical questions were not really the done thing in satsang.)
Another story on the same occasion was about the erection of lights and some of the audio speakers on a steel cable from one side of the stage area to the other, at a big program in Rome, 1977. The cable was positioned so that the suspended objects were right above the first two rows of the audience. This premie from his engineering knowledge had calculated that the combined weight and position of the objects was significantly greater than the safe tension load of the supporting cable (or was it a rod?). It could therefore be expected to break at any time, so that the objects would tumble to kill or maim audience members.
The premie explained that as a conscientious engineer he did his damnedest to blow the whistle and get this state of affairs fixed, but his position in the service hierarchy was not high enough to veto the structure. He was told that it was too late to get a stronger replacement, and there would need to be a reliance on Grace.
Grace was a term he had not encountered in his training on the loading of suspension bridges and other uses of steel in tension. However he spent his entire time as an audience member “furiously focusing on Holy Name”, as a kind of premie alternative to prayer, sweating profusely, and obviously avoiding the first two rows.
The fact that the cable had not in fact broken was taken by all of us listeners to be a triumphant illustration of the power of Knowledge, the Lord, and Grace, though the premie admitted to being still rather traumatised by the experience. As he put it, his faith was not strong enough.
I wonder if the rigging up of the cable was as a result of the sagging of the aluminium grid, which your article says was removed on day 3?
And if the person I have described is reading this, I am sure he will correct us on technical details, but be gratified that a discourse he gave in 1977 or 1978 is still remembered.