that there are no desires at all. When we live in a secluded place, absolutely alone for
months and years, with no contact with people, with very few amenities for the
normal satisfactions of life, we will see what desires are there. If we live in Gangotri
for years together, we will have some idea of what the mind is. It will have silly
desires which are very strong in nature, and which get submerged on account of
other activities in usual social atmospheres.
In the practice of concentration in a secluded atmosphere, certain energies get
awakened to activity of their own accord. We dig up all the unearthed powers inside
by exerting pressure on every part of the body and the mind. We do not deliberately
exert any pressure, but these powers feel the pressure nevertheless because the mind
is pulled in one direction by the will which concentrates and energises the object that
is on hand. It is very difficult to describe in language what happens. We must take to
the practice and see for ourselves what it is. We will feel, after a time, that the whole
of our personality is pulled up, as it were, and there is no part of our personality
which we will not become aware of. Everything will become an object of our
awareness. It is not merely the mind, but even the body that will react, because we
are not merely the mind and not merely the body—we are a composite of both. Thus,
the whole organism gets awakened, and this awakening can result in anything.
This is the advantage, as well as the disadvantage, of meditation. When we awaken
all people into action, we do not know what these people will do. They may do
something very good, or they may do something very disastrous. What they will do
depends upon the control that we have, and the understanding that we have, of these
people. When the whole organism is awakened to action—what will happen? It will
rush in the direction of the impulses that were already buried inside. If the dam of a
river is broken, where will the water go? It will rush in the direction of the channel
that is in front of it. It cannot go somewhere else. The course of the river is already
set, and the water has no other alternative than to move along the course already
laid. So these submerged impulses, buried desires and unconscious urges become the
dry beds of the river along which the waters of energy will flow when the mind is
concentrated. Whether this result of concentration is advantageous or
disadvantageous, whether it would be pleasurable or miserable, will be known from
the course which it will take. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a person who
can brandish it in any manner he likes. If he is a very intelligent, trained soldier in
whose hands we have given this sword, he will use it for the appropriate purpose—in
the battlefield. He will not use it anywhere else; it will be in the scabbard. But if the
very same sword is put in the hands of a person whose mind is not under control, it
can be used for any other purpose—used in a confused manner. It can be put to
misuse. Similarly, this concentration of the mind is an impersonal energy that we
rouse in ourselves, which can be put to use either this way or that way.
We again come to the point of the necessity of the yamas and niyamas, which are the
beds of the river along which this energy will flow. How have we dug the beds and
laid the lines of the movement of this energy? To stir up the kundalini shakti, or to
awaken the energy inside, is not the only point to be considered. What will happen to
us afterwards is equally important. We can be in a catastrophe if the energies are
raised up like that, because they will simply burst like bombs; and they can burst
anything—including ourselves—unless there is the intelligence to manoeuvre these
energies. It is not enough if we have only power; we must know how to use that
power. A person who has power, but does not know how to use it, is a dangerous