person. Likewise would be the condition of a person who takes to deep concentration
and meditation without knowing how to conduct himself after the energies are
roused up. When the concentration continues for a protracted period, if we take to
this practice in right earnest and continue the practice for months and months, and
years, then some energies are bound to be roused—and they will be roused in any
person. But what are these energies that may be roused?
In the Tantra Shastra and certain other schools of teaching, we have been told that
there are chakras. These are only some words for untutored people, as these chakras
are nothing but certain knots of energy into which the mind has got tied up. It has to
be uncoiled. There are whirls of energy inside our system which are nothing but
psychic energies. They are not physical, material substances. They are whirling
configurations of psychic energy which are supposed to be coiled up in various
centres of the system. These chakras are affected the moment we concentrate the
mind with great force. Generally, the lower chakras get stirred up first—the higher
ones will not be affected. We can imagine what would be the state of our mind and
the condition of our living, etc., if we get attuned to the manner of the working of
these lower energies which begin to act when they are stirred up into action.
These chakras, called muladhara, svadisthana, manipura, etc., are potencies that
are inside us. The capacity of our ability to act is enabled by the particular chakra,
whatever that chakra be. We have various potentialities inside us; we can do so many
things. What are those things that we can do? The capacity in us to do certain things
is in the particular chakra in which we are located. The particular chakra that will be
stirred up would be that specific centre which corresponds to the level of existence in
which we are living. If we are only in the physical world, only the physical centre will
be stirred up. That means to say, if our consciousness is tied to the body too much—if
we are intensely body-conscious and if our intelligent life or inward psychic life is
very mild and not intense enough, if the physical consciousness is very intense and
vital urges are very vehement, if these are the things which we are used to in our life
and which we have put down due to force of will—they will be roused to action.
Generally most practitioners, even very advanced ones, cannot go beyond the first
two chakras. They move around the muladhara and the svadisthana, and cannot go
beyond that. The muladhara is stirred up in almost everyone, and when it gets
stirred up we will not know what happens. We will be a little bit titillated, and feel a
kind of satisfaction that some sort of an achievement is going to be effected early, and
we will feel that something is happening. But when the svadisthana is stirred, we are
in danger. This is what generally brings the yogi down to the level of an ordinary
human being—sometimes even worse than a human being—because the svadisthana
is the centre of desire. While the muladhara is the centre of gross physical living—we
may call it the animal living of a tamasic character—the svadisthana is of a rajasic
nature, and when it gets stirred up it will start blowing like a tempest. From all
directions the winds will blow. If desires blow like winds from all sides, what will
happen to us? They will not blow like an ordinary breeze. They will come like a
cyclone because they were sleeping and we have awakened them.
When we see a person who is sleeping deeply and we wake him up suddenly, he may
do something which is most unexpected. This svadisthana is a dangerous point,
more dangerous than the muladhara. As I mentioned, very few have gone beyond
that level; they can be counted on our fingers. Most people get caught up in the desire