Balancing shakti and yukti🔗

In life, you need to balance both these energies.

Shakti without yukti is a dangerous thing! It is a monster-intelligence. Energy without the power of discrimination can be fatal. When it is expressed in the outer world, it leads to wars, it gives birth to Hitlers, to terrorism. It results in a purely materialistic society. This is what has happened to Western civilization! On the spiritual path, this imbalance leads to religious fanaticism and the obsession with siddhi (mystical powers). All these are expressions of shakti without yukti.

When only yukti is encouraged without shakti, it leads to a passive, unproductive civilization. This is what has happened in the Eastern cultures! The people are so accustomed to the idea that everything is a dream that they don't care to make any effort in the material world. Especially in India, you can see, people even look down upon material prosperity. Don't imagine that this is a sign of spiritual awakening! When a person feels completely fulfilled within, he may not feel the need for outer riches. That is a different matter. But if he just doesn't have the energy to fulfil his desires, it simply means that he is not using his shakti enough. True intelligence is knowing how to wield both these energies in a balanced manner.

Just as shakti, after a point, gives rise to buddhi, when yukti is awakened, it naturally gives rise to bhakti.

When you continuously work with this understanding that everything is constantly changing, naturally you hold onto the only thing that will never change - your inner Truth. This single-pointed devotion to Truth is what I call bhakti. Understand, bhakti is not just simple devotion. It is the surrender born of the ultimate wisdom, out of a clear experiential understanding of the Truth.

If you see the life of Krishna, the gopikas, the women who lived around Krishna, are known as bhaktas (devotees), while the women who lived around Krishna's self-styled rival Shishupala are known as daasis (slaves, or women of pleasure). Why such different names for two groups of women committing the same act? Understand, the women who lived around Krishna were perfectly aware that Krishna was a realized being, who was not bound by the pleasures of the senses. Not only that, they themselves had no need for any physical satisfaction from Krishna. They were with him purely for enlightenment. In Shishupala's case, the women who served him were bound to him only by fear, while he was bound to them by lust. The whole relationship was unconscious, based on fear and greed. It was a relationship based on possession, not on liberation.

Moreover, in the case of the gopikas, their devotion to Krishna was born out of the clear experiential understanding that Krishna (the divine consciousness) was no different from themselves (the individual consciousness). In fact, the entire leela (play)of Krishna and the gopikas is the beautiful play of the Lord and his beloved devotees, the Divine consciousness and the individual consciousness.

Sri Ramakshna beautifully calls such supreme devotion as gnana varishtha bhakti – the devotion that surpasses even enlightenment!

You may think, how can there be anything superior to enlightenment? In the Srimad Bhagavatam (the spiritual text that describes the incarnations of Lord Vishnu), the chapter just before the last speaks about gnana (realizing the Truth). The final chapter speaks about aashraya (taking refuge in the Truth). Understand, realizing the Truth is not the final step! Taking refuge in the Truth, surrendering to the Truth and living joyfully in the flow of Truth is the ultimate thing.

This is bhakti.

When bhakti blossoms in every moment of your life, when you entrust your life to the Truth, when you experience and express Truth every moment, in every situation of your life, it is jeevanmukti – living enlightenment!

It is the ultimate flowering of consciousness.

Q. I heard that many miracles happen in your presence, like healing and wish-fulfilment. Is there any science behind this, or is it just a placebo effect?

A. What do you mean, just a placebo effect? The placebo effect is the ultimate proof of the power of mind over matter! Do you understand the science behind the placebo effect? Some of these words have become so loaded with the wrong meaning that people just use them without even understanding them. Just the other day, a disciple was asking me, Swamiji, why is it that when a request for healing comes from a particular devotee, you always say that the person will be healed, but with some others you refuse to commit, even if it is only a simple illness? Understand, not only the person who is ill, but even the person who informs me has a role to play in the healing process! What the master does is nothing but awaken your body's natural healing intelligence. You don't know your own potential! You have tremendous power to heal yourself, physically and mentally. But nowadays people are so intellectual, they decide right away that healing is unscientific, it just can't happen. When you approach with that attitude, naturally you block the process. Fortunately, even today there are people who live through the heart, not through the head. Especially the simple people from the villages, they have such deep faith and devotion that they are completely open to my touch. Their very faith makes things happen. The innate healing power is awakened and they are healed.

The important thing is to have the ‘click’, the feeling of total connectedness with God or the master. Once the click happens, the healing itself is a simple job. Having faith is nothing more than extending your hand, so that the healing may happen. Only when hands are extended on both sides can the healing happen.

Fortunately, even today 33% of the population is heart-centered. These are the people who experience healing miracles. It is said that the Lord maintains this universe only for his bhaktas (devotees) who are surrendered to Existence.

Don’t think that surrender is only for weak and naïve people! Surrender is simply the recognition that a higher force is operating which can take care of your life. This force is operating at all times, whether you are aware of it or not. But it requires a highly refined, subtle intelligence to recognize this force and fall in tune with it.

Total surrender is equal to enlightenment! Total surrender means simply dropping the lower intellect, the fighting logic, and allowing the higher intelligence to take over. But until you are fed up with your own logic, your own cunningness and planning, you will not be able to surrender.

When Queen Draupadi was being disrobed in public in the court of the Kauravas, she started crying out to Lord Krishna for help. Again and again, she cried out, Krishna, help me! Krishna, help me!

But at the same time, she was clutching her saree (clothes) with both hands. Finally, when she saw that she was on the verge of being totally undressed, she just threw up both her hands and called out, Krishna, help me! This time, her prayer was answered instantaneously. Her saree reappeared miraculously and she was saved.

Later, Draupadi complained to Krishna, My Lord, why did you take so long to come and save me? Did you not see that I was alone and helpless?

Krishna replied, Draupadi, you were calling me, but at the same time you were trying to protect yourself. Till the very end, you thought that you could manage by yourself. But at the end, when I saw you totally open, I had to come. I had to appear and take care of you.

This is what we all do in our life. We say that we have faith, but actually Existence or God is only our Plan B! God or the universal intelligence is our last resort. Understand, the fish is always in the river, whether it chooses to swim upstream and struggle, or just floats peacefully with the current. The Existential energy is always available. Whether you want to tune yourself to it or not is upto you. It is purely subjective. Precisely because it is such a subjective experience, the causes and effects of energy healing and other such ‘miracles’ cannot be always correlated and quantified. That is why, in spite of thousands of recorded cases of healing, methods like spiritual healing are not part of mainstream healthcare even today. In the medical field, if you can show 33% improvement (e.g. reduction in cholesterol) after using a particular drug, that drug is approved as a medicine. Definitely, at least 33% of patients experience relief with healing. So ideally, placebo effect should have its rightful place in physical and mental healing. But unlike allopathic drugs, it needs the co-operation of the patient as well. The click has to happen.

Unless the human consciousness rises above logic, it cannot comprehend the working of the cosmic law. Until then, some part of the population will continue to dismiss spiritual healing and wish-fulfilment as cheap miracles or auto-hypnosis!

Q. Swamiji, how to practice Living Enlightenment?

A. Of course, I cannot give you a technique for living enlightenment, but I can give you some signs by which you can recognize whether you are truly on the path:

1. Enjoying the chaos of the cosmos within the frame of the body As of now, you are not mature enough to hold the chaos, the cosmos, inside the frame of your body. You need to put the chaos in order because you are not capable of handling the cosmos as is. The six feet frame of your body is not mature enough to hold the chaos as is, to experience and enjoy the cosmos as is. Being with a body, mind and brain that are awakened and tuned to experience the cosmos as is, is what is living enlightenment.

2. Living a conflict-free life Living enlightenment has nothing to do with married life or celibacy. It is just living a conflict-free life where your actions and knowledge are in tune with your desires.

3. Reduced number of thoughts Not being in the extremes of anything, not being caught in the extremes of emotions is what is called the Middle Path. Being in the middle path, the madhyapantha, suddenly you see a reduction in the number of thoughts that arise before any action starts. That is the period called ‘living enlightenment’. When thoughts completely drop and you are able to do all your activity without thoughts, you are enlightened.

Centered in sattva, positive energy, you will be able to perform all your activities, your profession, your business, your relationships, your whole life in a beautiful, effortless way. You will be able to manage everything just centered on positive energy. That is what I call ‘living enlightenment’ or jeevan mukti - even while you are living, you are liberated.

When you are centered in sattva, positive energy, you have a clear understanding of the jeeva, the self. You have the clear understanding of how to relate with the jagat, the world. Because of the clarity of the self and the world, naturally you will fall into the source, Ishwara, god. The very understanding will give you clarity. That clarity will automatically awaken the non-mechanical parts of your brain. When that awakening happens, a chaos will start happening in your routine. Your routine will start getting re-arranged by itself. Just cooperate with it. That is what I call ‘living enlightenment’.

If you don’t cooperate with the new ecstasy that is happening, with the new awakening that is happening, and if you force your same old dull routine on yourself, you may forget, or you may bring yourself back to the same old person, the same old dullness. Cooperating with the awakening that happens in you is what I call being a disciple or living enlightenment.

'Living enlightenment' is the right word! When you are living these great truths, you are enlightened, that's all. People think that having enlightenment means all responsibilities are taken away and that you don't need to do anything. They think it is a long vacation and you can just lie down on a beach, and that nothing needs to be done. You have a fantasy about what you want to have and all that you never had in your life. You project these and see them as enlightenment. You project your own concept of heaven and think that it is enlightenment.

'Having' enlightenment is a wrong word. 'Living' enlightenment is the right word. You are supposed to live the truths. Living the great truths in your life is enlightenment.

The master cannot hand over enlightenment to you. It is not something separate that he can give. He can only give you the tools for you to experience your enlightenment. He can only give the path. He can only give the truths. You need to start living these truths and experiencing them in your life.

Enlightenment does not mean you will leave your body and die. No! You will live with the five senses, but in a center that is beyond the five senses. Only your center will be shifted. The cognitive shift will happen within you. This is what I call jeevanmukti, living enlightenment.