Shakti – Energy🔗

Please understand, laziness is not spirituality. Spirituality is not a tamasic acceptance of life. Tamas means laziness and laziness is not spirituality. You have the energy to change whatever you can change in your life.

People ask me, ‘Swamiji, is life pre-destined or do we have a free will?’ Life is like a tape-recorder. If you don’t intervene it will go on as pre-programmed. But if you have the will, you can intervene and change things at any point with a simple effort.

Many times, we think spirituality means we don’t have to change anything. No! The whole Indian culture is suffering with this one misunderstanding. They think spirituality means nothing needs to be changed. I have seen in India, spirituality means, ‘Oh, God will take care of everything!’ When it comes to their personal life, they do everything. When it comes to changing what they need to change, they say, ‘God will take care of everything!’

The other day, one person came to me and said, ‘Swamiji, I am addicted. Please do something and help me.’ I told him, ‘Take responsibility, change your mentality. I will guide you. I will support you.’

After one week, he came back again, ‘No, no, no. I have surrendered to you. You only have to change me. I can’t do anything.’ I told him, ‘What do you mean by it? Do you want me to take your car keys and hide? Be intelligent. Be responsible. I can only guide you. You have to stand up.’

Stand up and change whatever needs to be changed. Having the courage, having the energy, having the strength to change whatever needs to be changed, is shakti. Take responsibility. Stand up; it is your life. Be little more intelligent. Be little stronger. Be little more open. Be little more available to the Truth.

How does desire or intention get actualized as action?

The undirected desire or pure and overflowing energy is called iccha shakti or the desire energy.

From the navel, energy comes as pure energy. In the heart region, the energy gets converted to the power of desire. This further gets converted into words in the throat region. The part in the throat which converts energy into words is the vak or the speech energy.

To give an analogy, the energy comes as loose cotton from the navel region. The cotton becomes thread in the throat region. Another analogy is, the energy flows like molten iron till the throat. The throat is like a forge where the product, the words, is formed!

Then the words move up to the brain. In the brain, the energy can stay as the power of knowledge or gnana shakti. Or the energy can get converted to a command. The command moves all over the body and moves you into action. This is the power of action or kriya shakti. For example, the desire energy to know about the head can remain as knowledge of the head. Or the desire energy can express as the power of action like moving the head.

If the energy is not channeled properly, the knowledge and action are disconnected from the power of desire. The knowledge and action should be in tune with the desire. Then it forms a virtuous circle of desire leading to better knowledge and action, which in turn leads to clearer desires.

For example, say you have a desire to make a million dollars. If it gets converted properly as knowledge, you will have a clear plan and you can do the right actions to become a millionaire. If the desire energy gets converted as too much knowledge and less action, then you will end up only thinking more and more, and building castles in the air.

If the desire energy gets converted as too much action and less knowledge, then you will end up working blindly. For example, you may work hard like deciding to drive a truck from Los Angeles to New York and earning money to become a millionaire. Can you become a millionaire this way? No! There is action but no knowledge.

So the proper conversion of desire to knowledge and action has to happen. The reason why this conversion doesn't happen properly is lack of awareness.

When you are honest and integrated with the desire, there will be deep awareness with no conflict, and the conversion will happen properly because you are in tune with your natural intelligence.

Desires can be self-contradictory. These fall in two categories.

The words we speak both outside and inside us, the thoughts that we radiate, are all very powerful. We underestimate the influence they have on us and others.

Let me give you a few examples of the power of words.

In his book The Hidden Messages from Water, the author Dr. Masaru Emoto talks about his novel experiments on water. He collected water samples from different sources and exposed them to various kinds of thoughts. Then he froze the water samples and studied their crystalline structure through a microscope with the help of high-speed photography. Thousands of these crystals were studied under tightly regulated conditions of temperature, cooling time and lighting.

Then he did various experiments on these water samples – playing different types of music to the water, talking to the water, reading out from ancient spiritual teachings, praying with a certain intention etc. He found that when the water samples were exposed to positive energy like healing music, positive words, positive thoughts, scriptural teachings etc, the water crystals that formed were very beautiful and graceful. The water exposed to negative feelings or thoughts did not form crystals but it formed an irregular structure which reflected the emotions of the person handling them.

Imagine, if words, sounds and thoughts can have this effect on water, what effect they have on the human body which is more than seventy percent water! Planet earth is also covered with over seventy percent water. Just imagine the tremendous effect our thoughts, words and intentions have on the planet and us!

This experiment actually inspired many people around the world to experiment with the power of words in many ways. For example, two containers of cooked rice were taken. To one container loving, positive words were spoken, and to the other container hateful, negative words were spoken. It was found that the container to which negative words were spoken grew mold much more quickly and abundantly than the container to which positive words were spoken.

Another real incident from history:

When India was under British rule, the British soldiers found that when they carried water from the river Thames from England to India in their ships, the water got spoiled even while on the ship. But when they carried water from the river Ganga back from India to England, the water not only stayed fresh through the voyage, but also remained fresh until they consumed all of it back in England! When scientists studied this surprising phenomenon, they found that this fresh water from the sacred river Ganga in Calcutta which was worshipped by millions of people from around the world, had the natural properties of neutralizing harmful bacteria and purifying itself.

When ten minutes of speaking to a glass of water can change its very crystalline structure, imagine what will happen when billions of people stand in the river and sincerely pray, in a tradition that has been continuing unbroken for over thousands of years! Naturally they have left their prayerful thoughts as imprints on this water which is so energizing and self-healing. The whole river Ganga has become energized.

uddhared atmanaatmaanam naatmaanam avasaadayet

aatmaiva hy aatmano bandhur aatmaiva ripur aatmanah

In Bhagavad Gita, there is a beautiful sloka,

If you raise yourself by yourself, you are the best friend of yourself. If you don't do that, you are the worst enemy of yourself.

One more thing, even simple things which you change will make a difference in your life. Please understand, you don’t know the power of simple changes which you can make. If you change simple things every day, small things every day, within a year or two, you will see great transformation. Suddenly, you will see the cumulative effect of those simple changes. Over a period of time they will cause a huge transformation.

For this cognitive shift to happen, you need to change your understanding. Change your understanding about yourself, the world and your life. You don’t need to do anything else. It may appear simple. But when followed it will cause huge transformation. Then the cognitive shift happens effortlessly.

One important thing that you need to know is when the cognitive shift happens, when you change your mental setup, the non-mechanical parts of your brain will be awakened. You see, the mechanical parts of your brain will be active from the moment of your birth just because you are a human being.

But when you start to understand the cosmic law, the great truths, the non-mechanical parts of your brain will be awakened. This is what is called the second birth, dvija, the rebirth. That is why, in the Indian tradition you are called dvija (twice born) when you are initiated into spirituality. It means that now you have begun to understand the law of the cosmos.

Once initiated into the truths, your thinking becomes new. It is not based on fear or greed like animals. Animals don’t need to think because all they do is function based on fear and greed. If you act based on fear and greed, the mechanical parts of your brain are more than enough for you. But to go beyond fear and greed, you need the non-mechanical parts of your brain to be awakened. Awakening the non-mechanical parts of your brain is called as the kundalini awakening.

People usually question me as to how the energy can be awakened by merely changing the understanding. You see, in your day to day life if you are trained to feel tired at a particular time, then you will feel tired when the moment arrives. You will feel tired even if you have not worked the whole day!

For example, let us say you usually get depressed at around 9:30 am every morning thinking that you have to go to office. Then, you can see that even on Sundays when you don’t need to go to office, you will be in a low mood, you will be depressed. You will tell yourself, ‘Oh it is Sunday today! I don’t have to go to office, relax.’ Even then, the low mood will not pass. You will still remain in a low mood.

Your mental setup is directly related to your kundalini awakening. When you use the shakti to change whatever you can change, to change your understanding, you awaken tremendous energy in you.

You can see the power of shakti when you want to break some long habit. If you fight with a single habit, any habit for that matter, it will release tremendous energy in you. Habit is energy used unnecessarily and in the wrong direction, both.

When you break a habit, even a simple habit like having a cup of coffee in the morning, you release tremendous energy in your system. That is why in our tradition, we had practices like fasting or keeping vigil throughout the night. It was to break our habits and create a new energy flow. Just bring in awareness into your habits. Bringing awareness is trying to change whatever you can. Expressing the shakti to change whatever you can is what I call the first technique of living enlightenment.