Shiva Sutras. Chapter 2: The Energy Centres

“Om namaha sri shambave

Swatnaananda prakasha vapushaye

Athaha shiva sutra

Chaitainya aatma

Jnaanam bandaha

Yoniubargaha kalaasharira

Jnaanaadhishtana maatrukaa

Udyama bhairavaha

Shaktihi chakra sandhaane

Vishwa samharaha.”

This is because knowledge has caused you bondage. If this is not possible for you to follow then the “rishis” give you the next “sutra” which says:

“Udyamo bhairavaha.”

What is “udyama”? We ask people what job they do or what profession they are in? “Udyama” means effort, focusing all our energy into it. “Kaya, vacha, manasa” – the triad of body, speech and mind. When this triad merges together, the energy which arises then is the energy which uplifts us. That is “udyama”. Any work which is your base is known as udyama.

In whatever we do, we do not put our 100% into it. Even if we worry, we do it in bits and pieces, here and there, in between this and that. If you want to worry, sit down and worry 100%. Sit and worry about what if you drown tomorrow. Are you worried about disease and what to do if you fall sick? You will die that is all. If you die, then you will not have any worry at all. Everybody has to die anyway.

What is worry? It is not involving yourself 100% into anything. Whatever you worry about, worry big. All your worry is about today, tomorrow and the next ten years. So worry about what will happen to the world after 100 or 5000 years. There is already so much pollution in today’s world, imagine what will happen to the world in the next 15 to 20 years? If you have decided to definitely worry, then go ahead and worry, but do it in a big way. Drown yourself in worry. In between we get a ray of hope. Due to this ray of hope, we are dead even though we are alive. We keep dying at every step of our lives. There is a saying in Hindi that a dying person dies only once but a fearful person dies every step.

When will “Swaatmaananda prakasha vapushaye” happen to you in your life? When will your whole life be filled with bliss? For this we need to free our consciousness from these petty businesses that we keep doing to get some small thing here and there, and we need to be free from these small little worries. For that we need “Udyamo bhairavaha”. Put all your energy in any work that you do. When you have put all your energy and if the work does not succeed then you will not worry. What is the sign of worry? We have not applied all our energy. Suppose you participate in a running race or a game of football. If you have applied all your energy then you will not have any regrets that you could have done better. “What is the way for me to do it better? I have done it in the best possible manner and have finished it. If I succeed now then it is fine. Even if I don’t get good results out of it, then I am happy.” If you regret: “Oh! I have not done it,” it means that you have not applied all your energy, your 100%. You become “bhairava” when you apply all your energy through your mind, speech and body and do a work completely. “Bhairava” is completeness.

When there is no completion your mind gets into boredom, dissatisfaction and unhappiness. Every soul is waiting eagerly to become complete. There is no peace in life till that completion dawns. When there is some lack, some discomfort or boredom in life there is no sleep, no peace. Dissatisfaction keeps happening at every step. Just to get rid of this dissatisfaction, people throng to places of worship, religious institutions, visit temples and break coconuts, and attend discourses and “bhajans”. All this is done to move from dissatisfaction to satisfaction. It is to move from incompletion to completion.

Only a thirsty person will look for water to drink. Only a hungry person will look for a place to eat. If a person’s stomach is full, then his eyes will not go towards any hotel, even if there are hotels all along the road. Hotels are visible to only a hungry person’s eyes. Likewise people who are building houses or want to get their house painted can see hardware stores. Otherwise even if they walk along that road everyday, they will not see any of those shops. But if you need to buy clothes and jewelry then this rule does not apply, they are always visible to you. But for those who are satisfied even with these, the mind does not go towards them.

Don’t blame the mind by calling it fickle. The mind is not fickle. The mind needs completion and goes here and there looking for completion. When there is satisfaction the mind becomes happy and peaceful on its own. Our whole life is a struggle for satisfaction. But can any object or situation satisfy you? They cannot even give one quarter of the satisfaction. Satisfaction is your very nature. You are satisfaction. Just to make you realize this, you are made to do “udyama” (work). When “rajoguna” in your body increases, you cannot sit still and you will be restless, fidgety, doing this and that and going here and there. Even if you are sitting, you cannot simply sit without shaking your hands and legs, or you will be drumming the table. Otherwise, if you are sitting on a lawn, you will start doing monkey antics like pulling out the grass, the leaves, the creepers, plants and everything. This happens due to “rajoguna” – dissatisfied energy in the body and in the mind. In order to satisfy that mental and physical energy we need to do some “udyama” or work.

Some people think that by sitting still meditation will happen. No. Some people have this wrong notion that only people who do not do any activity sit somewhere and meditate and do bhajans. I tell you people who sit idle can never meditate. Only people who work well can go deep into meditation, but this does not mean excess activity. Some people work like they are possessed day and night. It is a great thing if they go to sleep. Otherwise if they sit for meditation they go off to sleep. Only people who work moderately can have good meditation. After having good sleep and after doing good work, the “sattvaguna” in us rises and only then can we meditate. “Sattvaguna” happens when “t¬amoguna”, boredom and laziness in us goes away. To attain a peaceful mind and a happy consciousness you should be relieved of your “tamoguna”, and the “rajoguna” in you should become peaceful. The “rajoguna” becomes peaceful when you put your 100% energy in any work that you do. By utilizing your energy in this way, the “tamoguna” in you is destroyed and becomes peaceful.

If on a Sunday or on a holiday when you decide not to do too much work and you sleep for a few hours more, or if you have had heavy lunch in the afternoon and then you go to sleep, when you wake up in the evening you experience heaviness in the body. The more you sleep, the heaviness in the body, the laziness, the “rajoguna” in you increases. You should sleep moderately. Sometime when you wake up from your sleep, your mind is very pure and calm. The “sattvaguna” in you increases. When there is increase in “sattvaguna” then your meditation will be good. To increase your “sattvaguna” you should work.

“Udyamo bhairavah.” “Bhairava” means the one who causes completion. “Bharana” is the one who protects. If you feel that there is some deficiency in you, the one who fills up that deficiency is “bhairava”. If we put our 100% into any work then we will not have any regrets and we will not have any fear or any anxiety. Then the mind is complete and awakened, fully in the present moment. In this awakened consciousness, again you come back to “Namaha sri shambave swatmaananda prakasha vapushe”. “Namaha” happens when the mind turns inwards and it becomes peaceful. For the mind which is in surrender, “sri” (wealth), peace, happiness, glory, prosperity and all these things happen. “Aananda prakasha vapushe” – the environment of bliss spreads and we come back to that point. There is no need for the next Shivasutra after having reached this point.

So if you are not able to do “Udyamo bhairavaha”, or, out of weakness you are not able to do 100% or if you feel that you have done it but the restlessness in you has increased then the “rishis” say in the next “sutra”:

“Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.”

Here a question arises. If it was only by doing hard work that a person rises to a high position then many people like these businessmen who sweat it out and work day and night, what do they work for? They work for profit but with that profit they also end up getting high blood pressure, ulcers and other diseases. The more and more you get involved in this world, your cravings and aversions increase. By working too much, your wants and don’ts increase. You develop jealousy and you feel: “They have got so much and I have only this much.” There is jealousy even among school children who study together: “I also wrote as much as she wrote, but teacher gave her more marks. She got first rank, but I got third rank.” If the person whom you love the most looks at somebody else and smiles, then you feel some sensation happening in the stomach. It means you have taken the world into you again!

We have filled our head with this world. Whether such things exist in this world or not, we keep imagining many things in our head. 75% of all the problems in your life are all imaginations arising out of your head. If you have not got happiness, bliss in your life, it is because you have created that sort of world for yourself. The word “vishwa” which means world is an amazing word. “Shwa” means yesterday or tomorrow. “Vishwa” means specially creating tomorrows and yesterdays in your mind. Whether it was that way or not, we blow it big in our minds and create it specially in our minds. By worrying about yesterday and imagining about tomorrow, we do not have any enthusiasm and bliss in our lives. There is only boredom. The sign of life is enthusiasm. But just observe your life and see in which direction it is flowing. Is the enthusiasm in your life increasing day by day, or are you losing enthusiasm in your life day by day?

Look at a small child or a little baby; you can see that they are full of enthusiasm. Every cell in its body is filled with bliss. But look at those who are a little older, the grown-ups. As they keep growing up older, their enthusiasm decreases. Is this process of losing enthusiasm known as life? We begin to die slowly. This starts from the age of 20 years. Nowadays dying begins at the age of 15 itself. You should understand that we start dying the moment we start losing our enthusiasm. By 50 years our life would have finished and we would have no enthusiasm at all in life and we call this life!

Nowadays, college students would have lost all enthusiasm during their student days. They would have experienced fully and would have become old. Old age comes very fast. You know what the modern instrument called television has done to our lives? It has brought old age into people very quickly. Life is being spent very fast. The previous generation would be enthusiastic even at the age of 50, 60 or 70 years. Only very few people who retain their enthusiasm exist like that now. You can observe this in big cities, in schools and colleges. How many people have peace and pleasantness in their faces? All of them have stern faces and walk around stiffly. Why do we need such lives? You can notice the same thing at temples. People are so fearful or they are walking up and down with their foreheads wrinkled in worries. There are very few people who are pleasant. Why is this happening? This is because we have created this sort of world around us. How do we come out of this life? Not by running away to the Himalayas or some place else. It is there in your body itself.

“Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.” You have various “chakras” (energy centers) in your body. Investigate these “chakras”. When you channel your meditation into this, then this world and all these worries in your head, thoughts and ideas are vanquished and you become peaceful. This is a very significant “sutra”. Have you observed what happens when all the different emotions, rage and disturbances arise in you? They are felt as different sensations in different parts of the body. When you get angry you can observe that there is a bursting sensation in the head, in between the eyebrows. When you feel sad you can observe that there is some sensation happening somewhere in the throat that feels like a choking sensation. When you develop hatred there is some sort of a sensation in the heart. When you feel jealous, you feel a churning sensation or a burning sensation in the stomach. There are seven energy centers or “chakras” in the body. All the “nadis” or the subtle nerves in the body are connected to these seven energy centers. That is why they are known as “chakras”. In these energy centers both pleasant and unpleasant sensations arise. When we are very happy, we say we had a bellyful of laughter and when we are satisfied we say our stomach is full. When we are happy, we feel a sensation in the “chakra” which is in the navel region. Similarly when you experience either love or hatred, some sensation happens in the heart region. Similarly sadness causes some sensation in the throat. Our throat becomes full when we are in gratitude. We use these terminologies in our daily life too.

Our life force is flowing readily in all these seven energy centers or “chakras”. When we experience stress and tension, blocks are created in those energy centers. Then flow of energy into those energy centers are decreased. Direct your attention into these energy centers and meditate on them. Then all the negative emotions melt away and you will be relieved of many problems and the “sattvaguna” in you will increase. When you are jealous, just focusing your attention behind the navel and meditating on it, will vanquish your jealousy. It becomes peaceful on its own. Sometimes we do a lot of work out of jealousy and we go on to prove that what we did was right. But all the activity happened because of the defects in the energy centers. Do you understand this?

“Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.” When you develop a treaty with these “chakras” and meditate on them, the world is vanquished and becomes peaceful. When you sleep everyday, your world is vanquished. You can never go to sleep with the world filled in your head. What is sleep? In sleep, you are the only one at that time. Only when you become one you go to sleep. You have not slept all those times when you held on to the world. Then you either wake up during those times or you fall. By meditating on the “chakras” you have won a victory from this. This is a very significant “sutra”.

You must have experienced this in the advanced course where we look into our “chakras”. You have to make some time for the advanced course for 4-5 days, once or twice a year. When you are in silence for a few days and you meditate then all your body and mind is filled with enthusiasm and they become purified, peaceful and happy. Thousands of people have done this and experienced this. Everybody has to do this. This is a truth which stands the test of all the three divisions of time.

The presence of the “chakras” in the body is true. But do not imagine some “chakras” sitting in the body, like the wheel of a chariot or some wheel resembling King Ashoka’s “chakras”. There is no need to imagine such things. The moment you try to visualize it pictorially, your imagination of it increases. In our country, our ancients were fond of flowers, so they said that there was so many petalled lotus in each “chakras”. What ever is very delicate and ever new, we compare it to a flower. In reality there is no flower there. This means to say that we can observe these “chakras” only when our minds become so subtle and delicate.

See, if a computer needs the right kind of temperature and environment for it to work properly, then our body which is much more sensitive is like a supercomputer and it also needs the right environment, which means that the mind should be so subtle. That is why you require “pranayama”. That is why it is said, when you do “pranayama” put all your attention into it and immerse yourself in it. “Udyama bhairava” – they said do good work. It is not that only by working you are going to get it. The rest that you get after you have worked, in that rest or “vishram” you will meet “Ram”. It means that the “Shivatattva” or the Shiva principle is there in that rest.

“Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.” Only when you tune yourself to the “chakras”, you can vanquish the world created by you. There is no other way of doing this. There is a story about a locksmith who was very noted for his work. No-one could ever make locks like him. Once when the king and the locksmith were strolling in the night, some robbers attacked them and handcuffed them. It was pitch dark and the robbers made away with the loot. The king then told the locksmith: “I am not worried since you are here.” At the break of dawn, the locksmith saw the handcuffs and started crying. He told the king: “It is not possible for me to remove this lock. This is a lock manufactured by me. I never do any job which is second grade. This lock can never be opened by anyone. The only alternative is to break the lock and even that is not easy. This is because I have manufactured this lock.”

Like this we handcuff ourselves and sit in this world of ours. Nobody has created your lock, your bondage; you have created it all. Wake up and see this. What is your world? What is there in your world? What is so great in all the activities that you do? We do so many things to maintain our lives and we think that all those are the ultimate. All this is our illusion. You work all your life for a few crumbs, but when it comes to God you say that it will all happen if God wills. To achieve worldly matters, you sweat it out to the maximum and apply every breath to it. But if you need to put some effort for the enquiry of the self, or to do some practices you say: “It will all happen if God wills. We need God’s grace for it.” Do you understand this? All that you get in the world is because of your “prabdha karma” (fruits of your past deeds) and not merely by your work or merely by your effort. This does not happen just by working. All the pleasures, objects of pleasure, comforts, housing, prosperity; all are because of the fruits of your past “karma”. Your mental clarity and the higher states of self-realization will increase by your effort. But we do the opposite. We are ready to sweat it out to the maximum and utilize all our breath for all worldly matters, but for doing meditation we say: ”We will do it if God’s grace happens on us.”

Vanquishing the world does not mean leaving the world and running away. It is foolishness to leave people, home, property and run away to hide in some cave in the Himalayas. That is not the way. You will not get any happiness or bliss by sitting in the cave. The world which you have created is in your head and only you can come out of the handcuff and release yourself from it.

That is why, “Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha”. The whole world is an energy center. See this with a new viewpoint. What is this world? It is energy. What is this body? It is all energy and every cell in this body is energy. All that we eat everyday is converted to energy. This energy is again going back to the world. All the five elements in this world is energy. This cycle of energy is going on.

The water in the sea becomes vapour, which pours down as rain and becomes the river. Rain occurs again because of the river. Water is being recycled. Whatever we eat is excreted and goes back to the soil again and the soil gets fertilized and the plants, fruits, flowers, vegetables and grains are formed. So what we eat goes back to the soil again. The body is formed out of the five elements. The body again returns back to the mud. Everything in the body is recycled. This is natural recycling. The whole world is a huge recycling machine and everything keeps coming back again and again. Even the air you exhale goes to the plants and trees and it comes back from the plants and trees to you, and again goes back to the plants. The same quantity of air is circulating constantly in this world. Every energy in the world is functioning in the same manner. It is the same with mud. There is no such thing as new mud. Not even a small thing like new mud can happen in this world. Scientists call this conservation of energy and matter. Energy is circulated by changing its various forms. The whole world is an energy cycle. Whatever our life is today, it will all be finished in the next 30, 40, 50 or 60 years. When this is over, the same soul, the same mind, the same breath gets recycled again and comes back in a different body, in a different form. Again the body undergoes recycling. Everything in the world undergoes recycling. All animals – dog, cat, parrot, owl, crow – everything dies and is born in different forms in different wombs.

The world is a cycle of various wombs. Now, if you are born as a man, you will again be born as a woman. People born as women will be born again as men. Whatever you fear or love, you will be born as that in your next birth. The rat which is afraid of the cat dies in the memory of the cat, and the rat will be born as a cat. If the cat is afraid of the dog or hates the dog, then it is born as a dog. If the dog hates a cow or a buffalo, or it is afraid of a donkey or a human being, the dog is born as that which it fears. Humans, especially in this century, are the only animals which frighten everything else in the world. So you can meet all types of people in the world who are like tigers, crows, snakes and scorpions. Some people even have names like Nagaraj (king of snakes). So if there are people like snakes, it is not their fault. The snake is very afraid of humans, and humans are very afraid of snakes.

“Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha,” See the world with this viewpoint – the whole world is the energy cycle of one infinite energy. The moment you realize that everything in the world changes, your mind becomes happy and comes to this Shivasutra:

“Swatmaananda prakasha vapushe.”

See this as an experiment. Everything is like an energy cycle. Everything is changing in this world.

Do you know why people go to the temple and apply ashes to the body? Many of us are not aware of its significance. All the devotees of Shiva keep applying three stripes of ashes all over the body – on the forehead, throat, cheeks, stomach and everywhere. It means, this body, this skin and all that is visible is all going to become ashes. It is only a matter of time. The ashes are applied to make you realize that the body and ashes are one, so that you develop dispassion firmly. This is done to remind you of the final and ultimate truth. This is done to remind you that this alone is permanent and nothing else, because searching for permanence in impermanence causes misery.

Today one young boy had come. He had fallen in love with a girl and they had both taken a vow: “I will not live without you and you will not live without me. We are not going to part with each other even if many “yugas” (ages) pass by.” That boy had gone around with some other girl in the past for a few days. He had been to a movie with her and had moved around with her for a few days. When the boy told the girl about his past, both of them became very upset. The boy had not told about this to the girl before thinking that it might hurt her and the girl felt cheated since the boy had kept this to himself until then. So that was it. Where is the “made for each other” vow and where is the bond which was not supposed to break even if many “yugas” passed by? “Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.”

Let us not look for permanence in the impermanent. Looking for permanence in the impermanent causes you misery. That is why, as an indicator of Shiva, of all that is auspicious, we apply ashes. This is the importance of ash application. Wherever you see, whatever work your hands are doing, whenever you look at your hands, the ashes should be visible. When you apply ashes to your forehead it is visible to others and you have to stand in front the mirror to see it. If you want to know what is written on your forehead, then this is what you are going to become ultimately – ashes. Everybody is definitely going to die, right from the richest of the rich to the poorest of the poor. Death will visit them all. So come out of this world which you have created for yourself. “Shakti chakra sandhane vishwasamharaha.” Look into this and understand this very well, that the whole world is an energy cycle. Then there will be no duality in the mind. Everything will become peaceful. Then “swatmaananda prakasha vapushe” happens.