Brahmacharya
Quotes
-
Swami Vivekananda
- Power
comes to him who observes unbroken Brahmacharya
for a period of twelve years.
Complete continence gives great intellectual and spiritual power.
Controlled desire leads to the highest results. Transform the sexual energy
into spiritual energy. The stronger this force, the more can be done with
it. Only a powerful current of water can do hydraulic mining.
- Swami
Vivekananda attributed his phenomenal mental powers to a lifelong
observance of brahmacharya.A
few days ago, a new set of the Encyclopedia
Britannica had been bought for the Math. Seeing the new shining volumes,
the disciple said to Swamiji, “It is almost
impossible to read all these books in a single lifetime.” He was unaware
that Swamiji had already finished ten volumes
and had begun the eleventh.Swamiji: What do you
say? Ask me anything you like from these ten volumes, and I will answer
you all.The disciple asked in wonder, “Have you
read all these books?” Swamiji: Why should I ask
you to question me otherwise?Being
examined, Swamiji not only reproduced the sense,
but at places the very language of the difficult topics selected from each
volume. The disciple, astonished, put aside the books, saying, “This is
not within human power!”Swamiji: Do you see,
simply by the observance of strict Brahmacharya
(continence) all learning can be mastered in a very short time — one has
an unfailing memory of what one hears or knows but once. It is owing to
this want of continence that everything is on the brink of ruin in our
country.
- His
childhood friend: Whatever you may say, I cannot bring myself to believe
in these words. Who can come by that oratorical power of expounding
philosophy which you have? Swamiji: You don’t
know! That power may come to all. That power comes to him who observes
unbroken Brahmacharya for a period of twelve
years, with the sole object of realising God I
have practiced that kind of Brahmacharya myself,
and so a screen has been removed, as it were, from my brain. For that
reason, I need not any more think over or prepare myself for any lectures
on such a subtle subject as philosophy. Suppose I have to lecture
tomorrow; all that I shall speak about will pass tonight before my eyes
like so many pictures; and the next day I put into words during my lecture
all those things that I saw. So you will understand now that it is not any
power which is exclusively my own. Whoever will practice unbroken Brahmacharya for twelve years will surely have it. If you do so, you too will get it. Our Shâstras do not say that only such and such a person
will get it and not others!
- The
chaste brain has tremendous energy and gigantic will power. Without
chastity there can be no spiritual strengthContinence
gives wonderful control over mankind.The spiritual leaders of men have been very continent and
this is what gave them power.
- I
heard him say on his wonderful power of retentive memory in this manner. “If
a person can be continent for twelve years, he can have extraordinary
memory. One must be celibate and keep his brahmacharya
absolutely even in his dream.“
- From
Mrs. George Roorbach’s reminiscences of Swami
Vivekananda at Camp Taylor, California, in May 1900:“In my first speech in this country, in Chicago, I
addressed that audience as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America’, and you know
that they all rose to their feet. You may wonder what made them do
this, you may wonder if I had some strange power. Let me tell you that I
did have a power and this is it — never once in my life did I allow myself
to have even one sexual thought. I trained my mind, my thinking, and the
powers that man usually uses along that line I put into a higher channel, and it developed a force so strong that
nothing could resist it.”
- If
one is a slave to his passions and desires, one cannot feel the pure joy
of real freedom.
- During
the period of sickness, abstain from anger and from lust — even if you are
householders.
- This
hideous world is Maya. Renounce and be happy. Give up the idea of sex and
possessions. There is no other bond. Marriage and sex and money are the
only living devils. All earthly love proceeds from the body. No sex, no
possessions; as these fall off, the eyes open to spiritual vision. The
soul regains its own infinite power.
- Is
there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the
differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the
identification with the body, and stand up!
- The
satisfaction of desire only increases it, as oil poured on fire makes it
burn more fiercely.
- Soul
has no sex, it is neither male nor female. It is
only in the body that sex exists, and the man who desires to reach the
spirit cannot at the same time hold sex distinctions. (CW ,V.4, P.176)
- Every
boy should be trained to practice absolute Brahmacharya
and then, and then alone faith and Shraddha will
come. Chastity in thought, word and deed always and in all conditions is
what is called Brahmacharya. Unchaste
imagination is as bad as unchaste action. The Brahmacharin
must be pure in thought, word and deed.
- First
of all, one must completely mould one’s religious life in solitude, must
be perfect in renunciation and must preserve Brahmacharya
without a break. The Tamas has entered into
you — what of that? Cannot the Tamas be
destroyed? It can be done in less than no time!
- What
we want are Western science coupled with Vedanta, Brahmacharya
as the guiding motto, and also Shraddha and
faith in one’s own self.
- As
we get further and further away from the animal state, our sense-pleasures
become less and less; and our enjoyment, in a rapidly increasing consciousness
of scientific and psychological knowledge, becomes more and more intense;
and “knowledge for the sake of knowledge”, regardless of the amount of
sense-pleasures it may conduce to, becomes the supreme pleasure of the
mind.
- All
the misery of the world is caused by this slavery to the senses. Our
inability to rise above the sense-life—the striving for physical
pleasures, is the cause of all the horrors and miseries in the world.
- The
lower the organism, the greater is its pleasure in the senses. Think of the lowest animals and the power of touch.
Everything is touch. … When you come to man, you will see that the lower
the civilization of the man, the greater is the power of the senses. … The
higher the organism, the lesser is the pleasure of the senses. A dog
can eat a meal, but cannot understand the exquisite pleasure of thinking
about metaphysics. He is deprived of the wonderful pleasure which you get
through the intellect. The pleasures of the senses are great. Greater than
those is the pleasure of the intellect. When you attend the fine
fifty-course dinner in Paris, that is pleasure
indeed. But in the observatory, looking at the stars, seeing . . . worlds
coming and developing — think of that! It must be greater, for I know you
forget all about eating. That pleasure must be greater than what you get
from worldly things. You forget all about wives, children, husbands, and
everything; you forget all about the sense-plane. That is intellectual
pleasure. It is common sense that it must be greater than sense pleasure.
It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is
practical religion — the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce!
- Every
bit of pleasure will bring its quota of pain, if not with compound
interest.
- It
is a land of dreams; it does not matter whether one enjoys or weeps; they
are but dreams, and as such, must break sooner or later.
- He
whose joy is only in himself, whose desires are only in himself, he has
learned his lessons.
- Everything
in this life is fraught with fear. It is renunciation alone that makes one
fearless.
- And
if this Maya is so beautiful, think of the wondrous beauty of the Reality
behind it.
- The
lower the organisation, the greater the pleasure
in the senses. Very few men can eat a meal with the same gusto as a dog or
a wolf. But all the pleasures of the dog or the wolf have gone, as it were
into the senses. The lower
types of humanity in all nations find pleasure in the senses, while the
cultured and the educated find it in thought, in philosophy, in arts and
sciences. Spirituality is a still higher plane. The subject being
infinite, that plane is the highest, and the pleasure there is the highest
for those who can appreciate it. So, even on the utilitarian ground that
man is to seek for pleasure, he should cultivate religious thought, for it
is the highest pleasure that exists. Thus religion, as a study, seems to
me to be absolutely necessary.
- Knowledge
should be acquired in that way, otherwise by educating yourself in the tol of a Pandit you will be
only a human ape all your life. One should live from his very boyhood with
one whose character is like a blazing fire and should have before him a
living example of the highest teaching. Mere reading that it is a sin to
tell a lie will be of no use. Every boy should be trained to practice
absolute Brahmacharya, and then, and then only,
faith — Shraddha — will come. Otherwise, why
will not one who has no Shraddha speak an
untruth? In our country, the imparting of knowledge has always been
through men of renunciation. Later, the Pandits,
by monopolising all knowledge and restricting it
to the tols, have only brought the country to
the brink of ruin. India had all good prospects so long as Tyagis (men of renunciation) used to impart knowledge.
- In
our everyday life we find that the less the sense-enjoyments, the higher
the life of the man. Look at the dog when he eats. No man ever ate with
the same satisfaction. Observe the pig giving grunts of satisfaction as he
eats; it is his heaven, and if the greatest archangel came and looked on,
the pig would not even notice him. His whole existence is in his eating.
No man was ever born who could eat that way. Think of the power of hearing in the lower animals,
the power of seeing; all their senses are highly developed. Their enjoyment
of the senses is extreme; they become simply mad with delight and
pleasure. And the lower the man also, the more delight he finds in the
senses. As he gets higher, the goal becomes reason and love. In proportion
as these faculties develop, he loses the power of enjoying the senses.
- But
whatever be the order of genesis, the celibate
teachers of the Shrutis and Smritis
stand on an entirely different platform from the married ones, which is
perfect chastity, Brahmacharya.
- Founders
of all good undertakings, before they launch on their desired work, must
attain to the knowledge of the Atman through rigorous self – discipline.
Otherwise defects are bound to occur in their work.
- Our
motherland requires for her well-being some of her children to become such
pure-souled Brahmacharins
and Brahmacharinis.
- Teach
the boys the system of Brahmacharya.
- In
order to attain to ideal Brahmacharya one has to
observe strict rules regarding chastity in the beginning. For minimum 12
years, one should keep oneself strictly aloof from the least association
with the opposite gender as far as possible. When spiritual aspirants are
established in the ideal of Sannyasa and brahmacharya, they will be able to mix on an equal footing
with worldly men without any harm. But in the beginning 12 years, if they
do not keep themself within the barriers of
strict rules, they will all go wrong.
- People
here (in USA) have found a new type of man in me. Even the orthodox are at
their wit’s end. And people are now looking up to me with an eye of
reverence. Is there a greater strength than that of Brahmacharya
— purity, my boy?
- What
can be a higher end than God? God Himself is the highest goal of man; see
Him, enjoy Him. We can never conceive anything higher, because God is
perfection. We cannot conceive of any higher enjoyment than that of love,
but this word love has different meanings. It does not mean the ordinary
selfish love of the world; it is blasphemy to call that love. The love
for our children and our wives is mere animal love; that love which is
perfectly unselfish is the only love, and that is of God. It is a very
difficult thing to attain to. We are passing through all these
different loves — love of children, father, mother, and so forth. We
slowly exercise the faculty of love; but in the majority of cases we never
learn anything from it, we become bound to one step, to one person. In
some cases men come out of this bondage. Men are ever running after wives
and wealth and fame in this world; sometimes they are hit very hard on the
head, and they find out what this world really is. No one in this world
can really love anything but God. Man finds out that human love is all
hollow. Men cannot love though they talk of it. The wife says she loves
her husband and kisses him; but as soon as he dies, the first thing she
thinks about is the bank account, and what she shall do the next day. The
husband loves the wife; but when she becomes sick and loses her beauty, or
becomes haggard, or makes a mistake, he ceases to care for her. All the
love of the world is hypocrisy and hollowness.
- Describing
the Indian ideal of Brahmacharya in the
student’s life, Swami Vivekananda said: “Brahmacharya
should be like a burning fire within the veins!”
- The
Sanskrit name for a student, Brahmacharin, is
synonymous with the Sanskrit word Kamajit. (One
who has full control over his passions.) Our goal
of life is Moksha; how can that be ever attained
without Brahmacharya or absolute continence?
Hence it is imposed upon our boys and youth as an indispensable condition
during their studentship. The purpose of life in the West is Bhoga, enjoyment; hence much attention to strict Brahmacharya is not so
indispensably necessary with them as it is with us.
- Obedience
to the Guru without questioning, and strict observance of Brahmacharya — this is the secret of success.
- A
man who wants to be a perfect Yogi must give up the sex idea. The soul has no sex; why should it degrade itself with
sex ideas? Later on we shall understand better why these ideas must be
given up. The mind of the man who receives gifts is acted on by the mind
of the giver, so the receiver is likely to become degenerated. Receiving
gifts is prone to destroy the independence of the mind, and make us
slavish. Therefore, receive no gifts.
- Competitions
for life or sex-gratification are only momentary, unnecessary, extraneous
effects, caused by ignorance. Even when all competition has ceased, this
perfect nature behind will make us go forward until everyone has become
perfect. Therefore there is no reason to
believe that competition is necessary to progress. In the animal the man
was suppressed, but as soon as the door was opened, out rushed man. So in
man there is the potential god, kept in by the locks and bars of ignorance.
When knowledge breaks these bars, the god becomes manifest.
- In
his Raja Yoga, the Swami explains that through brahmacharya
sex energy is converted into a higher form of psychic energy called ‘ojas.’(Ojas, literally
meaning the ‘illuminating’ or ‘bright’ is the highest form of energy in
the human body. In the spiritual aspirant who constantly practises continence and purity, other forms of energy
are transmuted into ojas and stored in the
brain, expressing as spiritual and intellectual power). He says, “The
yogis say that part of the human energy which is expressed as sex energy,
in sexual thought, when checked and controlled easily becomes changed into
ojas, and as the Muladhara
(lowest of the six centers of consciousness) guides these, the yogi pays
particular attention to that centre. He tries to take up all his sexual
energy and convert it into ojas.
- It
is only the chaste man or woman who can make the ojas
rise and store it in the brain; that is why chastity has always been
considered the highest virtue. A man feels that if he is unchaste,
spirituality goes away, he loses mental vigour and moral stamina. That is why in all the
religious orders in the world which have produced spiritual giants you
always find absolute chastity insisted upon. That is why the monks came
into existence, giving up marriage. There must be perfect chastity in
thought, word and deed; without it the practice of Raja Yoga is dangerous,
and may lead to insanity. If people practise
Raja Yoga and at the same time lead an impure life, how can they expect to
become yogis?”
- Disciple:
Do you think, sir, the same consummation would be reached through the way Mataji is educating her students? These students would
soon grow up and get married and would presently shade into the likeness of
all other women of the common run. So I think, if
these girls might be made to adopt Brahmacharya,
then only could they devote their lives to the cause of the country’s
progress and attain to the high ideals preached in our sacred books.Swamiji: Yes, everything will come about in
time. Such educated men are not yet born in this country, who can keep
their girls unmarried without fear of social punishment.
- Of
all renunciations, the most natural, so to say, is that of the Bhakti-Yogi. Here there is no violence, nothing to
give up, nothing to tear off, as it were, from ourselves, nothing from
which we have violently to separate ourselves. The Bhakta’s
renunciation is easy, smooth flowing, and as natural as the things around
us. We see the manifestation of this sort of renunciation, although more
or less in the form of caricatures, every day around us. A man begins to
love a woman; after a while he loves another, and
the first woman he lets go. She drops put of his
mind smoothly, gently, without his feeling the
want of her at all. A woman loves a man; she then begins to love another
man, and the first one drops off from her mind quite naturally. A man
loves his own city, then he begins to love his country, and the intense
love for his little city drops off smoothly, naturally. Again, a man
learns to love the whole world; his love for his country, his intense,
fanatical patriotism drops off without hurting him, without any
manifestation of violence. An uncultured man loves the pleasures of the
senses intensely; as he becomes cultured, he begins to love intellectual
pleasures, and his sense-enjoyments become less and less. No man can enjoy
a meal with the same gusto or pleasure as a dog or a wolf, but those
pleasures which a man gets from intellectual experiences and achievements,
the dog can never enjoy. At first, pleasure is in association with the
lowest senses; but as soon as an animal reaches a higher plane of
existence, the lower kind of pleasures becomes less intense. In human
society, the nearer the man is to the animal, the stronger is his pleasure
in the senses; and the higher and the more cultured the man is, the
greater is his pleasure in intellectual and such other finer pursuits. So
when a man gets even higher than the plane of the intellect, higher than
that of mere thought, when he gets to the plane of spirituality and of
divine inspiration, he finds there a state of bliss, compared with which
all the pleasures of the senses, or even of the intellect, are as nothing.
When the moon shines brightly, all the stars become dim; and when the sun
shines, the moon herself becomes dim. The renunciation necessary for
the attainment of Bhakti is not obtained by
killing anything, but just comes in as naturally as in the presence of an
increasingly stronger light, the less intense
ones become dimmer and dimmer until they vanish away completely. So this
love of the pleasures of the senses and of the intellect is all made dim
and thrown aside and cast into the shade by the love of God Himself.
- If
the performance of Yajnas is the corner-stone of
the work-portion of the Vedas, as surely is Brahmacharya
the foundation of the knowledge-portion.
- The
nerve centre at the base of the spine near the sacrum is most important.
It is the seat of the generative substance of the sexual energy and is symbolised by the Yogi as a triangle containing a tiny
serpent coiled up in it. This sleeping serpent is called Kundalini, and to raise this Kundalini
is the whole object of Raja-Yoga. The great sexual force, raised from
animal action and sent upward to the great dynamo of the human system, the
brain, and there stored up, becomes Ojas or
spiritual force. All good thought, all prayer,
resolves a part of that animal energy into Ojas
and helps to give us spiritual power. This Ojas
is the real man and in human beings alone is it possible for this storage
of Ojas to be accomplished. One in whom the
whole animal sex force has been transformed into Ojas
is a god. He speaks with power, and his words regenerate the world. The
Yogi pictures this serpent as being slowly lifted from stage to stage
until the highest, the pineal gland, is reached. No man or woman can be
really spiritual until the sexual energy, the highest power possessed by
man, has been converted into Ojas. No force can
be created; it can only be directed. Therefore we must learn to control
the grand powers that are already in our hands and by will power make them
spiritual instead of merely animal. Thus it is clearly seen that chastity
is the corner-stone of all morality and of all religion. In Raja-Yoga
especially, absolute chastity in thought, word, and deed is a sine qua
non. The same laws apply to the married and the single. If one
wastes the most potent forces of one’s being, one cannot become spiritual.
All history teaches us that the great seers of all ages were either monks
and ascetics or those who had given up married life; only the pure in life
can see God.
- The
circle of vision has become so narrow, so degraded, so beastly, so animal!
None is desiring anything beyond this body. Oh,
the terrible degradation, the terrible misery of it! What little flesh,
the five senses, the stomach! What is the world but a combination of
stomach and sex? Look at millions of men and women — that is what they are
living for. Take these away from them and they will find their life empty,
meaningless, and intolerable. Such are we. And such is our mind; it is
continually hankering for ways and means to satisfy the hunger of the
stomach and sex. All the time this is going on. There is also endless suffering;
these desires of the body bring only momentary satisfaction and endless
suffering. It is like drinking a cup of which the surface layer is nectar,
while underneath all is poison. But we still hanker for all these things.
What can be done? Renunciation of the senses and desires is the only way
out of this misery. If you want to be spiritual, you must renounce. This
is the real test. Give up the world — this nonsense of the senses. There
is only one real desire: to know what is true, to be spiritual. No
more materialism, no more this egoism, I must become spiritual. Strong,
intense must be the desire. If a man’s hands and feet were so tied that he
could not move and then if a burning piece of charcoal were placed on his
body, he would struggle with all his power to throw it off. When I shall
have that sort of extreme desire, that restless struggle, to throw off
this burning world, then the time will have come for me to glimpse the
Divine Truth.
- The
Hindu drank in with his mother’s milk that this life is as nothing — a
dream! In this he is at one with the Westerners; but the Westerner sees no
further and his conclusion is that of the Chârvâka
— to “make hay while the sun shines”. “This world being a miserable hole, let us enjoy to the utmost what morsels of
pleasure are left to us.” To the Hindu, on the other hand, God and soul
are the only realities, infinitely more real than this world, and he is
therefore ever ready to let this go for the other.
- Then,
of course, every faculty has been given to us by God for some use.
Therefore the monk is wrong in not propagating the race — a sinner! Well,
so also have been given us the faculties of anger, lust, cruelty, theft,
robbery, cheating, etc., every one of these being absolutely necessary for
the maintenance of social life, reformed or unreformed. What about these?
Ought they also to be maintained at full steam, following the
varied-experience theory or not? Of course the social reformers, being in
intimate acquaintance with God Almighty and His purposes, must answer the
query in the positive. Are we to follow Vishvâmitra,
Atri, and others in their ferocity and the Vasishtha family in particular in their “full and
varied experience” with womankind? For the majority of married Rishis are as celebrated for their liberality in
begetting children wherever and whenever they could, as for their
hymn-singing and Soma-bibbing; or are we to follow the celibate Rishis who upheld Brahmacharya
as the sine qua non of spirituality? Then there are the usual
backsliders, who ought to come in for a load of abuse — monks who could
not keep up to their ideal — weak, wicked. But if the ideal is straight
and sound, a backsliding monk is head and shoulders above any householder
in the land, on the principle, “It is better to have loved and lost.”
Compared to the coward that never made the attempt, he is a hero. If
the searchlight of scrutiny were turned on the inner workings of our
social reform conclave, angels would have to take note of the percentage
of backsliders as between the monk and the householder; and the recording
angel is in our own heart.
- But
then, what about this marvellous experience of
standing alone, discarding all help, breasting the storms of life, of
working without any sense of recompense, without any sense of putrid duty?
Working a whole life, joyful, free — not goaded on to work like slaves by
false human love or ambition? This the monk alone can have. What about
religion? Has it to remain or vanish? If it remains, it requires its
experts, its soldiers. The monk is the religious expert, having made
religion his one métier (a field of work; occupation, trade, or
profession) of life. He is the soldier of God. What religion dies so long
as it has a band of devoted monks?
Why are Protestant England and America shaking before the onrush of the
Catholic monk? Vive (long live) Ranade
and the Social Reformers! — but, O India! Anglicised India! Do not forget, child, that there are
in this society problems that neither you nor your Western Guru can yet
grasp the meaning of — much less solve!
- The
lower the animal, the more is its enjoyment in the senses, the more it
lives in the senses. Civilisation,
true civilization, should mean the power of taking the animal-man out of
his sense-life — by giving him visions and tastes of planes much higher —
and not external comforts.
- Sri
Ramakrishna used to say, “Whoever can give up the sex idea, can spurn at
the world”. He who has given up the sense enjoyments, the outgoing
tendencies of whose mind have been stopped, know for certain that God is
not far away from such a heart, His shadow has already fallen there, He
can no longer keep Himself away from such a devotee who cares not, for
anything else. Then he feels an ecstatic joy in every pore of his body. So
intense is the joy that caught in it he loses all outward consciousness.
He goes into trance and enjoys this ineffable joy in one continuous stream
of consciousness. If that highest bliss is to be attained at enjoyed
without any break, the desire for the fleeting pleasures of sense-objects
which ultimately lead man to terrible miseries should be mercilessly
eschewed-not that kind of hypocritical renunciation which lasts for a day
or two but the wholesale uprooting of even the last vestige of such
desires. If anyone succeeds in doing this, He will feel that what he was
so long enjoying was but an infinitesimal part that ocean of bliss
filtering in through one other of the sense-organs, and that now through
very cell of his body he is enjoying this infinite bliss – that this
flesh-and-blood body has been changed and transfigured into something
divine to be a worthy receptacle for the divine Bliss. Can perversity
go any further than this foregoing this infinite Bliss for petty
sense-enjoyments?
- The
Ojas
– The “Ojas” is that which makes the difference
between man and man. The man who has much Ojas
is the leader of men. It gives a tremendous power of attraction. Ojas is manufactured from the nerve – currents. It has
this peculiarity: it is most easily made from that force which manifests
itself in the sexual powers. If the powers of the sexual centres are not frittered away and their energies
wasted (action is only thought in a grosser state), they can be
manufactured into Ojas. The two great nerve
currents of the body start from the brain, go
down on each side of the spinal cord, but they cross in the shape of the
figure 8 at the back of the head. Thus the left side of the body is
governed by the right side of the head. At the lowest point of the circuit
is the sexual centre, the Sacral Plexus. The energy conveyed by these two
currents of nerves comes down, and a large amount is continually being
stored in the Sacral Plexus. The last bone in the spine is over the Sacral
Plexus and is described in symbolic language as a triangle; and as the
energy is stored up beside it, this energy is symbolised
by a serpent. Consciousness and subconsciousness
work through these two nerve – currents. But superconsciousness
takes off the nerve – current when it reaches the lower end of the circuit, and instead of allowing it to go up and
complete the circuit, stops and forces it up the spinal cord as Ojas from the Sacral Plexus. The spinal cord is
naturally closed, but it can be opened to form a passage for this Ojas. As the current travels from one centre of the
spinal cord to another, you can travel from one plane of existence to
another. This is why the human being is greater than others, because all
planes, all experiences, are possible to the spirit in the human body. We
do not need another; for man can, if he likes, finish in his body his
probation and can after that become pure spirit. When the Ojas has gone from centre to centre and reaches the
Pineal Gland (a part of the brain to which science can assign no
function), man then becomes neither mind nor body, he is free from all
bondage. The great danger of psychic powers is that man stumbles, as
it were, into them, and knows not how to use them rightly. He is without
training and without knowledge of what has happened to him. The danger is
that in using these psychic powers, the sexual feelings are abnormally
roused as these powers are in fact manufactured out of the sexual centre.
The best and safest way is to avoid psychic manifestations, for they play
the most horrible pranks on their ignorant and untrained owners. To go
back to symbols. Because this movement of the Ojas
up the spinal cord feels like a spiral one, it is called the “snake”. The
snake, therefore, or the serpent, rests on the bone or triangle. When it
is roused, it travels up the spinal cord; and as it goes from centre to
centre, a new natural world is opened inside us — the Kundalini
is roused.
- The
Yogi alone has the Sushumna open. When this Sushumna current opens, and begins to rise, we get
beyond the sense, our minds become supersensuous,
superconscious — we get beyond even the
intellect, where reasoning cannot reach. To open that Sushumna
is the prime object of the Yogi.
According to him, along this Sushumna are ranged
these centres, or, in more figurative language,
these lotuses, as they are called. The lowest one is at the lower end of
the spinal cord, and is called Mulâdhâra, the
next higher is called Svâdhishthâna, the third Manipura, the fourth Anâhata,
the fifth Vishuddha, the sixth Âjnâ and the last, which is in the brain, is the Sahasrâra, or “the thousand-petalled”.
Of these we have to take cognition just now of two centres
only, the lowest, the Muladhara, and the
highest, the Sahasrara. All energy has to be
taken up from its seat in the Muladhara and
brought to the Sahasrara. The Yogis claim that
of all the energies that are in the human body the highest is what they
call “Ojas”. Now this Ojas
is stored up in the brain, and the more Ojas is
in a man’s head, the more powerful he is, the more intellectual, the more
spiritually strong. One man may speak beautiful language and beautiful
thoughts, but they, do not impress people; another man speaks neither beautiful language nor beautiful thoughts, yet his
words charm. Every movement of his is powerful. That is the power
of Ojas.