Shraddheyji: The Eternal Energy “Beyond the Microwave World” - Helen Clapham (best books to read for beginners TXT) 📗

and accuse him of claiming to be God. The title of the movie signifies that “Oh God, even if you come to Earth we are so trapped that we won’t be able to recognise you!” So how can we know? It’s good to know something that we can touch and see because that’s the way the sensory organs work. But in the spiritual world there is nothing we can touch and see, it is all manifestations and experience. So when we focus the iccha shakti inside us, slowly, slowly, our chakras open. The moment our chakras open, the iccha shakti can travel from one point to another.
Now there are various chakras. The Buddhists talk about 5, the Hindu tradition has 7, but why get into the details of names, how many petals and lotuses there are etc, which are again words which have no relevance unless we understand the significance of it. Chakra points are basically power points in our body. When we move from the lower source of spirituality to a higher source, that basically is represented by the chakras, the different stages you have to pass to reach the One Source. They start from the base of your spine to the top of your head. Science too acknowledges the importance of your central nervous system. Your brain sends a signal and your hand responds. Sometimes you don’t even have to think to perform a bodily function. Imagine how fast our brain is sending a signal to our hand for it to move, for us to understand everything. How fast our brain and our nervous system is processing everything! So the central part of our existence is our spinal cord. Everything that is happening inside us is controlled from there. That’s why if you have a spinal injury your body can fail you. Many people who have brain injuries go into coma. If you have a spinal injury, even a simple slipped disk, you cannot get out of bed. Your spine has to be in place, your bones have to be in place. Now these are all physical aspects, but what it is showing is the main aspect of our life. If anything happens to our spinal cord – which implies the kundalini shakti – then anything can go wrong in our lives. This existence can come to an end or be very painful for us. So it is very important to make that shakti go slowly and gradually. That’s why spirituality is all about taking small steps at a time and moving on towards the higher goal.
So when the kundalini starts rising it starts opening the chakras slowly. Now, for example, what does the first chakra, which is at the base of your spine, signify? It signifies the animal instincts, the basic instincts that we all have, in the form of lust, greed, etc. It is the animal instincts we have inside us. Animals fight over something; we also fight, we give in to our emotions, to our anger, we do things without thinking. How can we control that? By changing our nature. You sacrifice these negative things through tyag and tapasya – tyag means to sacrifice and tapasya is your sadhana, your penance. But penance has to be from within. I have to be ready to know what is wrong with me and to give it away. That is penance and sometimes it becomes very difficult to do. It is always easy to give ourselves up to anger, to give ourselves up to hate. If somebody pushes us we won’t look back smilingly at him. We will try and push him too, or that feeling will manifest inside us at least. That means there is still a lot of work to be done.
Once you have changed your nature, automatically that chakra is opened because you have constantly fought those feelings and once you have understood their nature they will not hold any significance in your life. For example, we were all fascinated as small children by a candle or by a lamp burning. We were so fascinated that at some point in time (it is now in our subconscious memory) we may have put our finger into that flame. It was so beautiful, it was giving light, it was attractive. The moment we did that, what was our experience? Pain! Our finger got burned. And this must have happened to us ages ago, at a time we don’t even remember. We felt pain, our finger got burned. But what was its effect? Once you know the true nature of something – we didn’t even know its name, we didn’t know it is fire – but once we know that this shining thing will give us pain, to this very day we don’t put our hand into a fire. You may try to be brave and do it very fast to show people that you can play with fire, but you will not put it in and keep it there, because it will burn you.
So when Knowledge shows you what maya is, what the illusion of the world really is, its influence over you is no longer there. We still see fire but we now know its true nature. We use it to light our homes but we do not put our finger into it. When we know its nature, its attractiveness does not have any influence on us.
So the moment these changes happen, the kundalini rises. Now there are two ways of making the kundalini rise. Your spine has two central ‘nadis’, two central channels of energy flow. You can call them veins, arteries, whatever names science has given it, but according to our spiritual tradition they are called nadis. One is Ida and one is Pingala. When they combine they form Sushumna which is supposed to be the central cord from where the kundalini rises. Because if the kundalini shakti is not centrally located you will never open the chakras. Say somebody trapped you in a coffin and put you 6 feet under the ground, the only way of getting out of there is up. You can’t go left, you cannot go right. So when you focus this shakti within you, it rises. You should not channel it into your Ida or your Pingala, but Ida and Pingala are the factors which will focus the energy into sushumna.As you do this you are beginning to overcome Nature. You are going from the sakar to the nirakar. You are leaving the world of forms, but if you haven’t overcome all aspects and all forms and all attributes of Nature in the bigger picture you can never reach what is formless.
If I am trapped in this room I can never experience what the open sky looks like. I have to make an effort to break away from this room, to step outside and stand under the open sky to have that experience. As we aim for the formless, for the True Source, it becomes very strange for us because we are given all these powers (siddhis) over Nature, over things which we can use to perform miracles. And many people use it for other aspects also. There is the left hand path to God and the right hand path to God. The left hand path deals with tantra, it deals with beings and spirits and this is another whole aspect we can talk about, but the main thing is that you can use that shakti to do good, to help other people, or you can use it to trouble other people. In a simple way a tantra can be, say, black magic or influencing another person’s mind or creating chaos in his mind so that he cannot make right decisions for himself and he sort of spins a spiderweb of his own destruction. All these things are present in this world. Not everybody follows them, but people who do also eventually have to face the consequences because your goal is not to attain siddhis.
You must have heard about Swami Vivekananda. He arrived in America for the Conference of Religions in Chicago but by the grace of his Master, Shri Ramakrishna, he went from strength to strength and became recognised worldwide. Even today people read his books in schools and colleges because they give us so much inspiration, so much courage, so much power just by reading them, because his mind was so focussed, so clear in what he wanted, how to achieve the goal. So naturally and spiritually he motivated a lot of people.
There’s a story about him that one day he was going to meet a certain master about whom he had heard and about whom his own Master had said, “When you visit that area you should go and see him. He will have a lot of things to teach you. “ So as he was approaching the ashram, which was situated on an island in the middle of a river, because he was a spiritualised soul, because he was a liberated soul, the master in the ashram felt him coming from miles away. He told one of his disciples, “Go, Swami Vivekananda is coming. Please receive him and very graciously bring him here.”
So before Swami Vivekananda reached the place where the boat was waiting to take him across, he noticed a very calm person walking over the water to meet him. But Swami Vivekananda saw that he also had an aura of pride about him. So he bowed and asked, “How many years did it take you to accomplish this siddhi? Because it is the shakti that has manifested and you have used it to control one element of Nature, you can control water with it, so that is the siddhi over water.” This disciple had been focussing his energies totally on raising the kundalini and when he had raised it a bit and got this power he stopped, because his goal was to gain this power. So he replied, “It took me 14 years. For 14 years of my life I channelised my power to get this.”
So Swami Vivekananda gives one rupee to the boatman who was waiting there and he takes them both across the river. He then says, “What’s the point of wasting 14 years of your life when I got that siddhi in one minute and with only one rupee!” It served the same purpose – of getting from one bank to the other. So the point has to be to reach the Ultimate, not to give in to other distractions that come in the way. That’s why spirituality becomes very difficult. The more you have, the greater the chance of losing everything. The higher you rise, the greater is the fall also. That’s why your base has to be very strong. If your base is not strong, then somewhere along the line you may be a great soul but changes can happen. Something can bring you down or and hold you or not let you go any further.
The Pingala Nadi is called the surya nadi, related to the sun, and the Ida Nadi is related to the moon. That’s why in all ancient religions either the sun or the moon is worshipped. Why? Because they have a direct link to the body. The link has two parts. One is gyan – knowledge - which is the path of the sun. What is the sun’s job? To illuminate and remove darkness. That is the path of knowledge – it removes the darkness of the world, what we call maya or the illusion of the world from our hearts, so our hearts are enlightened and thus we progress. So that is one aspect. The other aspect is of the moon, which is called the bhakti marg, which is the path of total devotion. No questions asked. When I went