Part 3: Quantum Spirituality🔗

They feared the elements as these elements could and did wreak havoc upon them. They desired them because they could not live without them.

These reasons have not changed in the many tens of thousands of years through which mankind has evolved. These reasons have become more sophisticated, but essentially they remain the same.

Man fears Nature because he cannot control Nature. However much science advances, it can never control Nature. Science may help in mitigating the risks of Nature, to run away before a volcano erupts and an earthquake sinks, but thousands and millions would still be affected by what Nature does.

Many animals have a better instinct in escaping from the ravages of Nature than man does. There are documented incidents about how animals and birds have fled before volcanic eruptions, tsunami strikes and earthquakes while humans slept on with no sensitivity.

Man deified what he could not control and what he could not understand.

This is how the Vedic and other early deities came about. Not from ignorance but from a need to protect oneself from natural calamities. So, men and women of all cultures offered prayers of protection and thanksgiving including various sacrifices to these deities. Agni was the Vedic god of fire, Vayu of wind, Varuna of the oceans and so on. Indra became the chief god.

A pantheon of gods was created to suit various needs and to fulfill various prayers. So it was with many other early religions and cultures, whether Egyptian, Sumerian, Mayan, Greek, Minoan or Roman.

Some individuals turned within themselves to understand the why of what was happening without. Their focus on the externals turned them inward and they found that they could get many answers to their questions by looking inward. They chose to shut their sensory perceptions to the external world and deprive their senses of the food in order to go inward.

These intelligent few focused inward and found a strange truth.

They found that that they were no different from Nature. They found that when they accepted that they were part of Nature, their entire life transformed. Nothing troubled them any more. There was neither fear nor greed. There was neither pleasure nor sorrow. They realized that they, the microcosm of Existence, a puny living being, were an inherent part and an integral part of the macrocosm, the infinite universe.

This realization, tat tvam asi, Thou art That, You are Existence, made them enlightened.

That is all that enlightenment means. It just means that you are Existence, that you are God, that you are divine, that you are what you have been worshipping out of fear and greed.

Once you realize this truth, there is no need to worship externally. But till then, human nature demands that you find some tangible form that you can worship. Even those religions that claim worshipping the form to be sinful do worship form in another manner. There is nothing wrong at all in worshipping a form, because that is how we start. We are so attached to our own form, to our own body, and so we need a form to start with.

Many educated Hindus come to me and ask, 'Isn't it foolish to waste so much money on temples and decorate the deities with jewelry?'

Isn't it foolish to decorate your body and that of your wife with jewelry when you know fully well that you will either be burnt to ashes one? Here you are deifying yourself; in the case of a temple you are deifying Existence in a form, that's all.

No one can come to you, pray to you and be comforted or healed. At least by going to a place of worship, whether a temple, a church or a mosque, millions of people get comforted and healed. So, which is more foolish?

Whether Hindus or Christians or Buddhists, when we worship a form, be it an idol, a cross or Buddha, what we worship is the energy behind that form; it is not the form itself. Hindus do not worship what you consider to be the terrifying image of Kali or the sweet innocence of Krishna. Through that form they worship the energy inherent in that form. This awareness may not happen to everyone, but it is the truth. When this awareness happen, the transition from idol worship to meditation begins.

Traditional temple architecture in the Vedic culture dates back to thousands of years. The construction of a temple is a labor of love, and the artisans who are engaged in this scientific art are a special breed. One of the objectives of our mission is to strengthen this art, which is in danger of being lost.

Those of you who have seen the Anandeshwara temple being built in our ashram in Bidadi would know that the stone pieces, the pillars, columns and beams were all fitted together without any need for cement or mortar bonding. The sanctum sanctorum, the garba graham of the temple where the main idol, the mula vigraha, is installed, is built with extreme care accompanied by Vedic rituals to energize the idol.

Many famous temples in Bharat, especially in South Bharat, are also the burial spots, jiva samadhi, of enlightened masters. They are doubly energized so to speak. Temples such as the ones in Tirupati, Palani, Tiruvannamalai, Srirangam, Nerur and others even today carry the energies of the great masters who are buried there. When people talk about miracles that happen in these temples, it is not unscientific and idle talk. It is just that science has not evolved yet to be able to explain these miracles.

There are legends associated with many of these temples. In the temple at Madurai, the idol of the dancing Shiva is seen as Nataraja (king of dance) depicted with His left foot placed on the ground and the right foot in the air in dancing posture. Traditionally, in most temples and bronze statues, Shiva while dancing his tandava – cosmic dance – has His right foot on the ground and His left leg raised high.

It is said that one of the Kings of Madurai in distant past was concerned about how much pain Shiva must be enduring during His eternal dance and requested Him to at least shift the position of His leg. Legend has it that Shiva obliged, and so, rested his left foot, raising His right leg high!

You may say that this is a myth; who knows what happened some thousand years ago? But here is an incident that happened just over a hundred years ago and well documented.

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa is one of the greatest enlightened masters of recent times. He officiated as the priest in the Dakshineswar temple of Kali not far from the city of Kolkata. The Kali idol has four hands. Two of Her hands are in the abhaya (protection) and varada (giving) postures. The third hand holds a sword that can be removed, and on the fourth She holds the head of the demon whom She conquered. This head cannot be removed from the hand.

When Ramakrishna first came to this temple as a junior priest, a devotee offered four conch bangles to the deity. This is a traditional offer amongst the local people and the priests would normally fit three of the bangles on Kali's hands. The fourth would be placed at Her feet as it cannot be fitted on the fourth hand without breaking the bangle. Ramakrishna took the four bangles inside to fit them. He was done and when another priest went near the idol, he could not believe his eyes; all four bangles were on Kali's four hands!

The priest asked Ramakrishna whether he had broken Kali's hand or the bangle while fitting the fourth bangle on Her hand holding the skull.

Bemused, Ramakrishna said, 'No. I asked Mother to put the skull down so that I could fit the bangle on her wrist. She did and I fitted the bangle. What is wrong?'

What is wrong?

An idol, what is believed to be a lifeless statue, came to life at the bidding of an ardent devotee. You need not believe this story from just what I have said. You can go to Dakshineswar and see for yourself as I did. I also did not believe the story the first time. I was a skeptic when I went there. The priest allowed me to go to the idol and verify. I found the bangle to be intact; it was a seamless bangle without a break. The hand holding the skull was made in one piece. Records show that the idol was not built with the bangle on that hand.

Now I know the truth of Ramakrishna's feat. I know how He did it. It can indeed be done by a devotee with the kind of faith Ramakrishna had. Often Ramakrishna used to say that he would check whether Mother was breathing, by holding a thread under the Kali idol's nostrils, and he would offer Her food only when She was breathing!

Idols are not mere statues; they are energy and their living energy can be demonstrated if one has the trust and faith.

This is an incident that happened to me, when I was on my monastic wandering days, the parivarajaka, before my Self-realization.

I was traveling in Western Bharat, in Gujarat, and was on my way to the ancient temple town of Dwaraka, where Krishna had ruled. I stopped at a village and stayed with an old widow. This lady had meager possessions. Other than the small hut she lived in, she had a cow, that's all. She sold the milk and survived. Most of what she earned went to feed the cow. She had a small statue of infant Krishna. She spent hours talking to the idol. She would complain to him about all her troubles and also tell him all her joys.

I stayed with her for a few days. She was a very generous lady who shared the little she had with me with great joy. When I was ready to leave after a few days, she wanted me to stay on. She said, 'I am so happy to have you. Krishna is also so happy that you are here. Please don't go. Stay on with me. You don't have to do anything. I shall take care of you baba.'

Because I wore saffron clothes, she called me baba, the traditional term that actually meant 'father', though I was so much younger than her. When I told her that as a monk I needed to move on, she started complaining to Krishna, 'Krishna, this baba does not care about us. He is leaving us. Please make him stay.'

I was getting irritated. It was bad enough that she talked non-stop with the Krishna idol, but now she was complaining about me to the idol. I had no belief that the idol was anything more than what it seemed to me, an idol, though she claimed that Krishna talked to her through it. I thought she was a little crazy. I went near her to take her leave and she held out her hand and held mine.

At that moment, as her hand held mine, I saw Krishna alive in that idol. Just as alive and real as any of you in front of me now. I promise you that this is true. I saw Krishna talking to her as she talked to Him. I saw Him in flesh and blood. After a few minutes she let go of my hand, and all I saw again was a plain idol.

To me she was an enlightened being who could converse with the Almighty. Her trust was so much that not only could she visualize Him in reality, but she could also make me see Him in flesh and blood! Such was her faith.

So please understand that idols are not mere idols. They are living energy.

When millions of people come to pray at these temples, the collective faith builds up the energy of these places of worship. They are no longer mere buildings, however big and grandiose they may be; they are in fact power stations, energy stations, far more powerful than nuclear reactors. One day, science would have the wherewithal to measure this energy and prove what I say.

In the days of the British rule in Bharat, the Britishers used to arrive in Kolkata (at that time it was called Calcutta) by ship. They used to carry water which they had to change at the Suez Canal on their way into Bharat, as it became undrinkable. However, on the return trip, they found that water from the Hooghly River, which is a tributary of the sacred Hindu river Ganga, remained unspoiled even after they reached England!

They were completely taken aback at the observation and decided to research the water. They researched and found that the Ganga water could remain pure and unspoiled, unaffected by bacteria for a long time. The Ganga river is worshipped as the Divine Mother – Ganga Ma – to millions of Hindus. She is their life-giving Mother. They believe that Her waters would liberate them forever, and they long to die in Her arms. They bathe in Her and pray to wash their sins off. Imagine the power of millions of people praying every day to Her. Imagine how energized Her waters would be.

Your education, or rather the lack of it, may prevent you from accepting the truth of this, but this is recorded. Many scientific experiments have been done on the waters of Ganga and these verified what the British soldiers experienced 200 years earlier.

Idols as well as waters are energy. So are the other three energy bodies: fire, air and ether. Air and fire you may even accept as being sources of energy, even if you are not sure how this works at the individual level. But ether, what is ether?

If I tell you that ether is the stuff of space, you will have a problem in accepting it. Space is vacuum, you would say. Understand that science today understands that the entire expanse that is called space, which is what occupies almost 99% of the entire universe, is not vacuum, it is energy. We may not yet know what form of energy this is or even how to use it for our needs, but surely it is known that this is energy.

If you go deeper and deeper into matter, you will find that almost all of it is space, not matter as we would imagine it to be. When you look into any material body through a high-powered microscope, what you find is space; what you may consider empty space.

How can it be empty, when you now know that matter is energy? So, this space too has to be energy.

From time immemorial, Vedic culture developed ways of tapping into these elemental energies. At the level of the earth, elemental energy was worshipped and tapped through temples and idols. At the level of water, the energy was tapped by ritual bathing using sacred mantra syllables. Fire was a major medium of worship in rituals such as homa and yagna and was the main visible form of individual worship. The energy of air was invoked through the sounds and vibrations of mantra (chants). The energy of ether was tapped through meditation.

At each level from earth to ether, the energy form becomes more subtle and more intense. The earth level energy is associated with the root center or the muladhara chakra, water with the spleen center or swadhishtana chakra, fire with the navel center or manipuraka chakra, air with the heart or anahata chakra and ether with the throat center or vishuddhi chakra.

Each of these elemental energies is also associated with our senses, gyanaendriya, and actions, karmendriya, in this manner. Smell and elimination are associated with the muladhara, taste and procreation with the swadhishtana, sight and locomotion with the manipuraka, touch with the anahata and finally, hearing and speaking with the vishuddhi. So, every single thing that we sense and act upon is driven by one of these energy forces.

When one is not aware of these facts, worship is merely driven by fear and greed alone. That is why over time, without understanding and awareness, rituals become superstitions.

A small story:

An abbot had a pet cat that was allowed complete freedom of the monastery. But at the time of worship alone, because it was sure to disturb the prayers, the abbot instructed his disciples to cover the cat in a basket during prayer time. This became a ritual. Everyday at prayer time, the cat would be in a basket near the abbot.

When the abbot died and another disciple took over, this practice continued. It continued till the cat died. When the cat died, it was a big problem; no prayer could be held till a substitute cat was brought; but substitute cats were not as patient as the original cat was. They all ran away at the first opportunity.

Soon, all prayers stopped at the monastery for want of a cat!

This is how rituals become superstitions and rule our lives. With awareness and understanding, these rituals have meaning, very relevant meaning. However, shorn of that understanding, they become mechanical and robotic. That is how most rituals are practiced today and that is why those who try to analyze these rituals find them meaningless and superstitious.

This takes us back into where we started. What is worship and why worship? If worship is about seeking that superior being or state, why so many methods and why is that many of them do not seem to be logical?

Understand that each one of us is driven unconsciously to find the source we come from.

You may realize this or not, you may understand this or not, you may accept it or not, but it is the truth and it is happening in every one of us every moment. This is why whatever else we achieve, materially, relationship wise, intellectually and in every which way, we feel dissatisfied. We feel that we have not reached, that we have not come home.

One of my devotees told me when I was giving him energy darshan, 'Swami, for the first time in my life I feel I am home!'

During the energy darshan, I am pure energy, pure existential energy. What he felt was that oneness with his source, the very Existence he has sprung from, and he felt he was home.

The same thing happens when you relate with other energy forms that we described earlier, that are earth, water, fire, air and ether. With each of these energy forms, when you embrace them with an open mind and an open heart, you merge into that energy form and become one with Existence. It is not difficult. It requires a deep longing, a deep seeking, utter honesty in seeking.

It is that or nothing. It is at that stage that the merger happens. It is at that stage that you realize where you came from. Worship is the process that leads you to this stage.

As I said earlier, any of the techniques relating to any one of the energy forms can take you there. Going to a temple and praying to the deity, bathing in a sacred river that millions have prayed before, worshipping the fire, chanting mantra and meditation, each of these techniques separately or combined will help you reach that stage and state.

All you need are two things: the desperate desire and the unflinching commitment.

In ancient times, people were less complex. Their brains were differently configured. Their entire mindset was more intuitive and less intellectual. Logic and reason occupied less importance than faith and trust.

Today, we are intellectually arrogant. We are in a state of what I call 'cerebral pollution'. So much intellectual knowledge bombards us from all around, all seeking to secure a mind space, all competing with facts of logic and science, that our mind becomes paralyzed.

Physical and grosser forms of worship are no longer understood by us and so seem illogical. The purpose of these techniques is no longer understood. Whenever I do a homa, a fire ritual, I explain it in this fashion:

The fire absorbs the energy of ether, akasha, through the energy of air. This is done with the help of the vibrational energy of the sacred mantra that are chanted. The energy that is absorbed in the fire, in the fire pit or homa kunda, is then transferred into the water stored around in pots. This water when sprinkled on people or deities or the ground delivers that energy to the earth.

The Taittreya Upanishad explains this process clearly. First there is the energy of the Existence, brahman, from which the energy of ether arose. From the energy of akasa, ether, arises the energy of air, vayu. From the energy of air arises the energy of fire, agni. From the energy of fire arises the energy of water, apu. From the energy of water rises the energy of earth, prithvi. From the energy of earth arise plants and herbs; from the energy of plants arise energy of food; and from the energy of food arise man and woman. The energy of man and woman is atman, Existence. The cycle is complete.

When people attend the fire rituals I conduct, they say that it is the first time they understood what it was all about. What was a superstitious and meaningless ritual that they had tolerated or walked away from in the past had become alive and energizing now!

I can tell you this: when done with sincerity, when done by an enlightened master, the energy of the deities automatically descends into the fire pit of the ritual.

The same is true of a puja, the ritual Hindu prayer. It is now obligatory for all our healers and teachers to do the Nithya Dhyan or the Life Bliss Meditation. All those who do it have shared so many experiences about its energizing power.

The end point of the Nithya Dhyan is the Guru Puja, homage to the master. It is a ritual, where one offers various things, such as water, incense, perfume, light, food and so on to the formless form of the master. It is almost like bathing, purifying, beautifying, feeding and worshipping the vision of the master. In this case, the master is Existence; the Existence is you. You are worshipping yourself; you are paying homage to yourself. Ultimately, you are the master; the ultimate master resides in you.

That is why all Vedic prayers, end with the statement namaha, which means I am not.

When one chants achutaya namaha, anantaya namaha, govindaya namaha and so on., one denies one's ego. You say, I am not what I seem to be. I surrender to the real me, the true form of mine, which is Existence.

Any worship, if carried out sincerely, results in surrender of one's physical identity and realization of one's true spiritual identity. In the case of meditation, dhyana, this happens directly by putting us in touch with the energy of ether. This is the largest and subtlest energy body in Existence and closest to the existential energy.

Meditation is the most powerful form of worship as it is the most direct route to Existence.

The most powerful forms of meditation are those that are formless; meditations that do not use a verbal or visual trigger, without any accompanying mantra or mandala, audio or visual aid. It is a different matter that when a powerful formless meditation is used, a sound, vibration or vision may be created which is the effect of that meditation. But no triggering device such as repeated chanting of a mantra or focusing on a visual entity is used in formless meditation. Such formless meditations take us directly into the seventh and final nirvanic layer of energy, of which I have talked elsewhere.

In our first-level meditation courses, which are now taught by our ordained acharyas (teachers), we have a meditation to energize the heart center, the anahata chakra. This is a formless meditation that involves deep breathing and humming; no visual or verbal triggers are used. This meditation is called mahamantra, or the great sacred syllable. When this meditation is done regularly, the sound of 'om' automatically arises from inside the anahata chakra. No amount of chanting 'om' will produce this effect; but the regular practice of this mantra will make it happen.

Dropping the form is very important at an advanced level of worship. For most people it may not be possible to start without form in any worship. When one is forced to do this, it is like skipping kindergarten and primary schools and enrolling directly into a post graduate program. It can cause harm. It can make people prejudiced.

Religions that force people into formless worship without an underpinning of the understanding can only do that out of fear and greed; not out of love, devotion, faith and trust. It may be called surrender but it is forcible surrender, not willing surrender.

Such worship leads to hatred and contempt for others who do not share your views. True spirituality has no place for hatred and contempt. True spirituality is about understanding and compassion. True spirituality is about embracing Existence and all its creatures as a Whole. True spirituality is not about saying that if you do not share my belief and accept my god as your god, you are an outcaste; that you are an enemy who I can kill. True spirituality is not about killing, it is about transformation.

At our advanced meditation courses leading to initiation as Nithya Spiritual Healers, the disciples are warned not to meditate on my form. The Nithya Healer's meditation requires them to focus on my form for a few seconds in order that their scattered thoughts and inner chatter can be controlled into one focal point. Once that is done, they are taught to drop that form. Only when they do that can the healing process begin.

Only when all form is extinguished can one move into existential energy.

Meditation is being in touch with oneself, one's deepest self. This state can only be reached by cutting off contact with the senses and putting the mind at rest. Meditation does not imply that you become deaf and dumb.

When you are deep in meditation, your awareness becomes acute. Some people make a lot of noise before going into meditation. They need to disconnect the phone, tell their children and spouse to be quiet, and still the slightest external noise can disturb them. This is not the way meditation is done.

You can be in meditation when you are active. Meditation is being in the present moment. Just to be aware of who you are, what you are, where you are and what you are doing in the present moment, in the here and now is meditation. Watching the sun set, watching a flower bloom, hearing a bird sing, watching a child at play, any one of these events can be a meditation. When you are in meditation, you just are.

In the advanced form of Healer's meditation, the meditation occurs as a result of the Ananda Gandha chakra (Fragrant Bliss Center) being opened at the time of initiation. Only an enlightened master can do this.

Ananda Gandha is the convergence point of all the seven chakras, the seven energy centers of the body mind system. Meditating on this Ananda Gandha chakra for the initiated is an easy and continuous process. One can meditate on a 24 × 7 mode, along with whatever else one is doing. The meditation keeps one in constant awareness and in the present moment.

Such meditation is worship of the highest order.

Meditation on Light

When you meditate on light, you fall in tune with an all-pervading, powerful energy. You become part of the current that sustains life.

Instructions

Duration: 21 minutes

Practice this meditation in the morning. With sunrise, all living things turn to the sun for energy. Become part of this great tide.

As soon as you wake up in the morning, you can practice this. Just lying in bed, close your eyes and inhale. As you inhale, imagine golden light pouring into you through your head. The light is pouring into you, right down to your toes. It is flowing out through your toes! Don't think that this is something you are just imagining. As you imagine, so it happens. The energy actually flows into you.

When you exhale, imagine the opposite. Imagine a great darkness climbing into you from your toes, and traveling up to your head. The darkness escapes through your head.

The golden light is male energy – strengthening and sustaining. The darkness is female energy – calming. You can also practice this at night, just before going to bed.

If you fall asleep doing it, it can be a beautiful experience.

Continue this for 2 or 3 months, and you will see great changes in yourself. This technique is excellent for moving your sex energy (muladhara energy) upward. Your lower back will feel free of the heaviness that is always there. Your energy moves up to the higher centers.

To summarize

1. Practice the meditation for imbibing light energy.

1. Intend that you will be energized in all that you do.

1. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total energization in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

1. Let go.

1. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be energized and be in nithyananda, eternal bliss!

Death is not final, it is but a passage

Master, I know that death is inevitable and that I shall die one day. But, I would like to die in peace not with pain. I also do not want to see my children die before me. Are these unreasonable and unrealizable expectations?

Three persons died at the same time and their spirits went up to the pearly gates.

The kindly person at the gate said, 'you have just won a lottery, all three of you. Whatever you wish that the people around your coffins now should think will actually happen. So, tell me.'

The first person said, 'I wish they would think, this person was such a wonderful person and she would certainly go to heaven.'

The second person said, 'I wish they would think that this guy did so much in his lifetime and he should be remembered forever.'

The third person said, 'I wish that they would look at my body and say: hey, this guy is moving, he is alive!'

No death, no religion.

Had it not been for death, there would have been no need for religions. Man would have had to invent another need then; perhaps boredom, which is what endless life would entail.

Human kind has wondered about what lay beyond death since time immemorial. It was the mystery of the unknown rather than any fear that made our ancestors meditate upon death, an event that at the closure of a breath took a person away, an event that made an animate being inanimate.

This made no sense. Birth at least made sense. Over time, just as animals did instinctively, humans too made the connection between the activity of the male and female mating and the creation of new life. Creation always made more sense. You rarely hear about senseless creation.

Yet, people constantly talk about senseless destruction. Birth, men and women could understand. They at least understood the process, though there may be no understanding of the miracle of life, and the mystery of the spirit underlying the mind body.

Man could watch a woman growing the baby in her womb and the baby being born. Arrival of the new life was a time of celebration, just like a harvest is, signifying the arrival of the new crop. There is something inherently wired in the reptilian brain of human kind that welcomed birth and feared death.

According to humans, death is ugly, mysterious and fearsome.

When the human evolved into a social creature with a family structure and along with it possessions, death truly became feared. No one wanted to die. To die was to leave one's loved ones; to die meant losing one's possessions, to die meant losing one's sensual pleasures, this is how it all seemed, since there was an opaque veil that lay between life and death.

Society was about structure and control. Death became a tool in the hands of leaders of societies. They used the mystery of death to control their subjects. It was difficult and impractical to try and convince anybody that they could survive death and live forever; all tangible evidences against this statement were in front of every one's eyes.

So, the next best attempt was to promise them a wonderful vista beyond death. This was, however, conditional. If you abided by the rules laid down by society and religion and did what you were commanded, this wonderful life after death would be yours; if not, you would suffer.

So were born the concepts of hell and heaven, and commandments, which guided one to heaven upon observance and trashed one into hell if violated. Tremendous ingenuity and creativity went into designing heaven and hell, angels and devils, nectar and brimstone.

Untold pleasures awaited those who obeyed, and unimaginable suffering lurked ahead for those who wandered from the straight and narrow path.

Sins were invented. Sex was the single biggest sin. Poor Adam and Eve became the original sinners and they passed their sins on to all humans. Even an infant became a sinner and purification rites were needed to dissolve the sins. Those who confessed to their sins and accepted redemption from appointed leaders would be redeemed, while others would suffer in hell.

Strange, but no enlightened master speaks of eternal hell, they all spoke of bliss, they all lived in bliss. And they also said that bliss was open to all. Knock and you shall enter, said the master; any one who believed in the truth of His statement could achieve it.

When followers spread the words of their masters, they did not have the experience of their masters. They did not have the truth of their master's experience behind them and therefore did not have the power of that truth. To make people believe and follow, they needed support. So, they developed rules and regulations, the Commandments.

The Ten Commandments were the direct experience and truth of Moses; similarly the Vedic scriptures were the truth of enlightened Vedic masters. But when the truth of the Ten Commandments and the Vedas needed to be conveyed to the general public, what resulted were the regulations, what we call smruti in the Vedic system.

In the Vedic system, it is accepted that these regulations need to change with times and that they are not infallible. However, in many cultures, these regulations too became scriptural and violating such regulations became a sin. They became tools to keep people in line.

Our mind is in constant contradiction all the time. We want to be healthy, but we keep thinking of the ailment. We keep saying I want to be free of this headache, this cancer, this ulcer and so on. One part of your mind firmly holds on to the image of the ailment, and however much another part of the mind may seek a cure, the ailment will stay. To be rid of a headache or some other ailment, you need to focus on well-being and health, not on the headache.

So it is with sins. You cannot stop sinning when someone one is dinning into your ears that you are a sinner and these are the sins you should not commit. Your unconscious mind will simply follow the easier path of sinning.

That is why you will never find Buddha, the enlightened one, speaking about sins and hell. He talks about dhamma, righteous living, and the middle path. He does not even say be good all the time. He knows human nature. He knows that it is a near impossible task. He was there truly to transform people. He was practical.

In a spiritual sense, one cannot talk about redemption, since this presupposes that you are a sinner. One should talk about transformation. You are not a sinner. You never were and you never will be. You are cast in the mould of divinity. Understand that.

I keep saying this again and again: you are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience; you are a spiritual being experiencing a human form.

When you focus on your spirituality and your innate God nature, your spiritual centers open up. Your energy centers awaken. You blossom into divinity. That should be the process of transformation; that is the process of transformation.

Can you reform a criminal by constantly telling him that he is no good, that he will always resort to crimes, and give him a list of crimes? This won't work and does not work as we see with our judicial system. We need to provide the criminal mind with alternatives; with transformational alternatives that will move the mind away from the very thought of criminality. So it is with sins. By constantly reminding a person that he is a sinner, you can only make sure that he remains one.

Spiritually this is wrong.

This behavior is not unique to any one religion. When I take my disciples on a pilgrimage to the holy spots in the Himalayan Mountains, we visit a number of temples. All these temples have official priests who are the only people authorized to conduct the ritual prayers. But, because of my saffron robes, they let me into the sanctum and I do the offering myself.

I tell my disciples that it is enough if they accompany me and join me in the prayers. Some of them won't listen. Their parents and well wishers back home would have told them that their trip would not be effective unless they get the rituals done by the temple priests. So, they are not satisfied with their master's prayers, they need the priest to endorse!

Then I see them sitting in a corner in front of the panda, the temple priest, who for every prayer he utters demands money. Suddenly, he will tell them that to propitiate the spirit of their ancestors, they must donate a cow. These priests are better psychologists than any of your qualified doctors. They can see through you in a minute and manipulate you; unfortunately this is the only way they can survive. This, however, is not the Vedic ideology or philosophy.

In Sanatana Dharma – the Vedic culture that is now called Hinduism – there was no emphasis on sins and redemption. The focus of the great masters who exemplified this culture and philosophy was to turn inward and understand who we are. It was a gentle and peaceful process that was internal.

Not only did Sanatana Dharma not classify us all as sinners, but it also promised us a great future to look forward to. Depending on the way you live your life you will be reborn was the scriptural pronouncement. Two important issues are to be understood here.

First, it is that you will be reborn. Second, you will be reborn based on how you have lived your life.

In fact, Krishna says with His stamp of authority in the Bhagavad Gita that your last desire in this life is what determines your next life. However, the Judaic religions, whatever may have been the convictions of the founding masters, do not believe in rebirth now.

Recently, I saw in Los Angeles some beautiful locations situated on hill tops overlooking the ocean with new constructions coming up. I was told that these were not for people to live in but for their dead bodies. They were cemeteries overlooking the ocean. Depending on the view was the price! These cemetery locations or crypts where the coffins will be placed were all sold out before construction. I was told that rich people booked them so that after death, their dead bodies could enjoy the serene view. I was also told that some of these locations had been bought for pet cats and dogs to be buried.

A religion that does not have the option of a rebirth forces the follower into believing that in this life you have to do all you have to. Your entire mindset is conditioned to achieve no matter what. All your actions will be materially driven, possession driven and pleasure driven. You will be forever making targets and setting goals. More you achieve more you will drive yourself to achieve more.

You cannot stop. You are too wound up to stop and enjoy life.

Such conditioning does produce results in a material sense. Fear and greed do drive you, no doubt about that, but they also drive you into suffering. The end result is depression and stress-related ailments that destroy your being. Even that one life you have either ends fast or gets spent in mental turmoil. You have all the possessions you craved for, not knowing why, but retained none that matter, especially in relationships.

Yes, great scientific advances have been possible as a result of this desperation of limited life time. When you are pressurized by the grim knowledge of one life time and simultaneous ignorance of where you are headed next, all you can do is focus externally. All that you are able to perceive and absorb are through your senses.

Your senses do not tell you the truth, however much you wish to believe them.

First of all, your conscious brain receives less than 5% of what your senses perceive. Second, your unconscious brain drives 90% of your actions. As a result, you are driven not from awareness or even logic much as you would like to believe, but by the dark spaces of your unconscious and instinctive brain.

Look around you and see how elderly people live in Western countries, especially the United States. See how they live in relatively poorer countries like Bharat. Here in the United States, children leave home at 18 at the very latest and there is limited or no contact between parents and children. As people get older and they cannot manage on their own, they need to find old people's homes for them to be taken care of. Children may visit them, with appointment, once in a while.

These people wait for death, while at the same time fearing it.

It was not like this in Bharat even a generation ago, although things are changing there too. The joint family system ensured that old and young of many generations lived together. It was holistic not fragmented like the present day nuclear family system. There is nothing nuclear about these families except disaster! People criticize the joint family system on mainly one account, that they lack privacy.

Just think deeply about where privacy and independence have taken you.

Is the old people's home an alternative to the joint family system? Is this the right way to wait for death, in loneliness, boredom and fear? Won't what we do to our elder generation await us in our old age?

The concern for our selfish comfort has overtaken our cultures so strongly that we now mask this selfishness in the name of privacy and individual rights. There is no birth right. You had no right to your birth. You were just born, that is all. No one owes anybody in this life, let alone the universe.

In the name of privacy, we have caged ourselves. We have built defensive barriers all around and still talk about freedom. What freedom can one have within walls that one has erected around one self? It is only when we realize that our true nature encompasses everyone around us and together we all form this universe that we can truly be free. It is the fear of losing our identity that makes us build these walls. Ultimately this is the fear of death.

The hope of rebirth, the understanding of the truth of rebirth, takes away a huge burden from our shoulders. It takes away this fear of losing one's identity. The burden of fear and insecurity arising out of the lack of understanding of what awaits us after death, or the fear that as a sinner our fate is only hell, gets lifted.

One of the most frequent questions asked of me is about death – what happens at death, what happens after death? Can we predict death? and so on.

Krishna explains so beautifully in the Bhagavad Gita that your spirit changes bodies just the same way as you change your clothes. That is all. The spirit moves from one body which no longer functions into another. From matter, energy moves out, leaving behind inert matter. It then enters another matter and enlivens it. That is all that happens at death. One body, one person, one identity dies and another is born, it is that simple.

Krishna says that the spirit is immortal; it does not get destroyed. He says that fire cannot burn it, wind cannot dry it, sword cannot cleave it, water cannot wet it, it is pure, untouched and unchangeable. Again and again He makes this point and affirms that the spirit within you lives on even though the body perishes. Spirit is undying energy.

Visualize a white sheet of paper on which you have drawn circles with a colored pen. The circles are your body. Outside the body is the universal energy, what we call Brahman. Inside the body is also a white space, the same as the white space you see outside. It is the same energy as outside. This is the atman, the holographic part inside you of that universal energy.

When you die, the perimeter of the circle gets wiped out; the body disappears. The energy inside, atman, merges with the universal energy outside, Brahman, once the circle dissolves.

This is all that happens. This is what should happen.

There is also something else that happens. The white space inside does not remain white. It gets tinted and it gets tainted with our conditioning, with our samskara; these are the cumulative experiences that we have in our lifetime, all the memories, all the conditioning that takes place in that lifetime. Some circles get tinted with anger, some with greed, some with lust, some with fear and so on.

So, when the perimeter dissolves as the body perishes at death, the tinted space inside does not and cannot fully merge with the white space outside, because it is no longer pure white. This tint is what Krishna says is our last desire, which is the cumulative mindset based on all our lifetime experiences. This is termed as vasana.

So, this body with tinted energy waits for another envelope, another circle with a capacity to hold that same conditioning. The spirit waits for another body which will allow its vasana, the mindset; another body in an environment of parents and culture that will foster this mindset, vasana.

The new body is born with this vasana and this mindset becomes its opening current account balance, which is called its prarabda karma. The new body is the soil that will allow the spirit's vasana, which is its prarabda karma now to take root and grow.

This is what Krishna means when He says that your next birth will be based on your last desire. The last desire is the accumulation of all your individual desires through life and the collective vasana.

This vasana, this tint, determines where and how you are born again.

You take birth in a country, in a culture, in a family and in an environment that reflects the collective desires, the collective unfulfilled desires of your past birth and allows them the chance to be fulfilled. You determine, you choose where you are going to be reborn and to whom.

This is what we call your prarabda karma. This is why you are born in a rich or poor family, in the United States or Bharat, as man or a woman and whatever else are the factors that would work toward the fulfillment. You are born with a promise that your desires will be fulfilled. This is why Mahavira, the founder of the Jain religion says that when you are born in this planet, all your needs have been anticipated and provided for.

You will then ask, 'I do not know what my prarabda karma is. No one told me! I have no memory of why I am here. This is not my fault. What can I do?'

This is the original sin. Your ignorance, your loss of memory of who you are, the ignorance of your divine origin and what unfulfilled desires you are bringing into this world so that they can be fulfilled and you can be dissolved of all your samskara, is the original sin.

Over time, with degeneration of our consciousness, we have lost the ability to remember the reason why we were born and we have lost the ability to remember our prarabda karma. But it is possible to recover this information.

In our second level program LBP 2, earlier called Nithyananda Spurana Program (NSP), this is what we teach you. We help you recover your prarabda karma, your account balance at birth. We help you finally focus on what you are here for, what is the meaning of your life.

Simultaneously, we help you unload and dissolve your additional samskara, the agamya karma, additional credits and debits to your account in this birth. These are the additional desires and experiences that you have further accumulated in this life. This program helps dissolve all these unfulfilled desires and acquired conditioning, so that you can focus on what your real meaning in life is.

When we arrive upon this planet Earth, we come with the imprint of our basic needs, the prarabda karma. That is all that we need to fulfill, to cleanse our vasanas and end the cycle of life and death. We carry the energy within us to fulfill these vasanas.

However, through conditioning, we start accumulating the needs of other people which are in no way related to us. We start building wants, in addition to our needs. Needs can be fulfilled and will be fulfilled. That is the promise of the universe as Mahavira says. But our wants can never be fulfilled.

Ramana Maharishi says, 'this universe can fulfill the needs of everyone who lives here; but it cannot fulfill the wants of even one individual'.

Dissolution of our samskara, our conditioned and embedded memories that lead to unfulfilled desires, liberates us. It releases us of our suffering.

People often tell me that they are not afraid of death, but they are afraid of dying painfully. Their main request to me is about how I can help them toward a painless departure. It will be so wonderful to die peacefully in sleep, they will say; they express to be guided into this mode of death.

There are two issues involved here. You do not know how you will die and when you will die. So, you are imagining an event that has no basis and wondering how to change that. Second, you have an inadequate understanding about death. Both these issues are addressed in our courses; in fact even in our first-level program called LBP 1 or Ananda Spurana Program (ASP), we teach you how to face death and overcome fear.

The fear of death, whether painless or painful, has been established as the single most common fear amongst all races. No one wants to die. They are always quartered and dragged against their will. But death is inevitable.

Death is not final; it is a passage.

It is a separation of your mind–body system from your spirit, and it can be painless once you understand that however much pain your body may undergo, you need not suffer.

I have said this many times. When you feel pain, focus on the pain. We are taught by many to distract ourselves from pain. That will never work. Once the distraction ends, the pain returns. Instead, focus on the pain, the region, the spot where the pain is, without using the word pain. Just watch and witness. The pain may seem to become more intense for a while but it will gradually start disappearing. Pain is a sign that your body needs attention, whatever the cause of it is. When you focus on that body part and shower attention, the concept of pain disappears. And you will find that you do not suffer as a result.

In the meditations that we take you through in LBP 1 and LBP 2 programs, we help you dissolve your saṃskāra and experience the mind–body separation from the spirit. We make you rehearse your death, in controlled conditions as it were, so that at your deepest level you are rid of that primal fear of death. Understanding that death is not final and that it is a temporary separation of your spirit from one mind–body system as it moves from matter form into energy takes away the dark mystery of death.

Dissolution of your saṃskāra liberates you from the pain that you will otherwise experience when your spirit leaves the mind body, when the mind–body system tries to hold back and experience all the desires, pains, joy and guilt that it had experienced in that life time. It has been said that death can be as painful as a thousand scorpions stinging at the same time. It is true. But with understanding, you need not suffer.

The idea of this LBP 2 course came to me when I had watched people suffer while dying. In my days of wandering, before Self-realization, I had sat beside a dying man. I could feel the terrible pain that the body mind spirit system was undergoing, as the spirit was departing from his mind–body system. It was unbearable for me to even witness this.

Later, after my Self-realization, I was in a similar situation of being beside a dying man. This time, I braced myself for what was to come. To my surprise, the spirit departed with no pain at all. I asked the relatives of the dead man whether he was very spiritual; they said no, not at all. It occurred to me suddenly that it was my presence – the presence of an enlightened being – that helped the spirit depart painlessly! Just the presence was sufficient to dissolve that person's saṃskāra and make his journey painless.

Based on this understanding, I developed the LBP 2 course and many thousands have benefited from the knowledge of how they can lead their lives better through the understanding of the death process.

Unless you learn how to die, you can never understand how to live.

In a sense, now, you are dying every second just thinking of the impending death.

Biologists will tell you that out of many trillions of cells within you, billions die every day and millions die every second. Cells die and new cells get created. Even at the moment before you die, even at old age, this process continues. Once every 6 months or so, you have a new kidney; once every two years, you are a new model. You can compete with car makers! Every single part of your mind–body system has new cells within 2 years.

You are being renewed constantly. You are being rejuvenated every moment.

Yet, your diseases continues. Why? While every living part in you is renewed, what is that which allows the memory, the intangible memory of your diseases to continue? This is the result of your saṃskāras, the engraved and embedded memories. The same way that the vāsanā, your mindset, continues with your spirit even after death, your saṃskāras pursue your regenerated cells. But you can dissolve them, you can eliminate them and rid yourself of the so-called incurable diseases.

You cannot do that by the Western medical method of looking at each body part separately and trying to cure the ailment by attacking the symptoms and effects of the ailment. The mind–body system is not put together as a mechanical toy by assembling parts together. Cells are not produced that way.

From your high school biology, you know that the first cell that is formed by the union of sperm and egg develops through mitosis; it develops holistically. To cure diseases, we need to look at the mind–body system holistically. That is what the Hindu medical system of Āyurveda, knowledge of life, does. The Āyurveda physician makes as much effort to understand your mental condition as he does your physical condition before he attempts a cure. If you have a headache, he does not attack your head; the cause may be elsewhere in the body or it may not even be located in the physical body. It may be in another energy layer. Western medicine and its practitioners need to understand this so that they can serve patients more effectively.

Once this understanding happens, people will become focused on wellness instead of just curing diseases.

When we understand that the process of death and regeneration is something that happens within us naturally, every living second, a new understanding can dawn on us in our approach to death. Then, death is no longer our enemy.

Death is a friend. Death is not destruction; it is merely regeneration.

In the Hindu theology, Shiva is considered the God of destruction. The word Shiva in Sanskrit denotes auspiciousness, causeless auspiciousness. How inappropriate, you may think. Not at all. Death is not destruction as you know it. Shiva's destruction is what gives rise to continuous creation! Without destruction, there can never be creation.

It is the cycle of Nature: death and birth; one is not possible without the other. This is the cycle of saṃsāra, creation and destruction. Shiva is not the God of destruction, He is the God responsible for rejuvenation; He is the rejuvenator, not the destroyer. The rejuvenation is random and auspicious, it is not planned.

That is why there is no answer possible when people ask why so many people have perished in this disaster and that accident and so on, or why a young innocent child should die when so many older not so innocent people are still flourishing.

There are answers, but none that your logic can understand. The answers to these questions are available in another frequency.

Let us say you drive over an anthill and kill thousands of ants. It is a humongous disaster to the ants, but you don't even notice it! Even if you did, what will you do? You will drive on. That is what Nature does when thousands of people die; it just moves on. It does not stop to weep. Even as destruction takes place in one place, there is creation happening elsewhere. For every black hole, there is a big bang.

Our logic and our science have no answers yet. But if we look inward, we can find answers.

I have talked about this before. In one of my earlier visits to the United States, I was requested to heal an autistic child, perhaps about 6 years old. His parents were from Bharat but not Tamilians. They did not speak the language. When I laid my hand on this child, he said to me in crude Tamil to take my hands off. Get away from me, he said.

I then started a dialogue with his being and asked why. His spirit told me that it purposely chose this autistic state for it did not want any responsibility in life. 'That is fine', I said, 'but you are making these good people unhappy. Don't you see?' The spirit said, 'That is why I chose such compassionate people as my parents; some one else may have rejected me.'

I left that spirit and child alone.

People ask why any one would want to be born a beggar or die young or suffer from painful incurable diseases. There are good reasons. A wealthy person who has suffered as a result of his wealth may have developed the mindset to renounce wealth and this vāsanā results in his birth as a poor man or a beggar. There may be others whose carried over saṃskāra may limit life time.

It is hypocritical to mourn death. All mourning of death is selfish. Why not accept that the spirit has escaped the bondage of the body and that it has journeyed to where it belongs?

When death happens, you move into a different frequency. Matter becomes energy. That energy becomes matter again when the spirit re-enters the body. One of the energy layers that the spirit passes through at death is the causal layer or kāraṇa śarīra. Till this point, that is till the fifth layer, the spirit has the possibility to return to the body. People who stay in coma, stay in the causal layer, which is a space of intense darkness.

This space corresponds to the darkness of the birth canal as the infant moves out of the mother's womb into life. This is the point at which the spirit enters the body. Till then it is just a body mind that is nourished by the mother's life.

Passage through this dark space can be one of great fear. This is the fear we seek to dissolve in the LBP 2 (NSP) meditation.

What is fear? Fear is the feeling of losing something that you have not yet achieved but feel that you can achieve. Fear cannot happen if you do not see a possibility. You do not fear that you will not become Bill Gates, because you totally cast aside that possibility if you are reasonably intelligent. But, you are afraid that you may not measure up to your brother, friend or neighbor because you see the possibility there.

You have no fear when you are fully confident of achieving any possibility without a problem. Fear happens only when you perceive a possibility and do not feel confident of achieving or facing up to that possibility. When you drop all possibilities, you have no fears. Up to the point of death, only the prospect of death can make you afraid; not death itself.

When you go beyond boundaries, you will have no fears. If you really understand this, then you will have no fear of either life or death.

When you understand that truly nothing is possible by you, then too all fears dissolve, because then everything is in the hands of the Supreme. All great masters and all scriptures have reiterated this truth.

The Hindu scriptures say that not even a blade of grass can move without divine sanction. This is a truth. This is not a logical fact. Anyone can disprove this as a fact. They can say, 'I can move, I can move others'. But when you delve deep into yourself, you understand that everything happens from beyond you. When you surrender that power beyond you, then you lose all fears; in fact you lose all boundaries and you achieve all that you wish.

You can lose all fears through surrender; this is the path of devotion. You say to the Supreme that all that happens is because of you, and if you cannot grant me what I wish, nothing else can help. This is bhakti mārga, devotional path.

Or, you can move beyond your boundaries in absolute confidence, with the deep understanding that you are no different from the Supreme. This is the path of knowledge, jñāna mārga. Either way, you can lose your fears and be liberated.

Otherwise, you will constantly be suppressing your fears, as you do not wish others to see your fears. You put on a brave front or become arrogant and aggressive. You will find that all authoritative persons, who make other people's life miserable by expecting every one else to obey them without question, are deeply troubled and insecure persons. They cannot face their fears and so they suppress them into insecurity.

When you let go the fear of death, you let go all your fears. No ghost will haunt you again. When you understand death and what happens at death, you really understand life and learn to accept life without struggling and suffering. You tune into bliss.

'Removal of Fear' Meditation

This meditation is a guided meditation for 30 minutes.

When done regularly, it facilitates the cosmic energy that is present everywhere to empower and energize your body and mind. It also opens and energizes the Svādhiṣṭhāna chakra or spleen energy center.

You may have the words of the guided meditation taped for the appropriate period and play it back.

Sit comfortably on the floor. Those who cannot sit on the floor, may sit on a chair. The head, neck and spine should all be in a straight line.

(Play soft music if you wish to.) Close your eyes. Breathe deeply.

Imagine that you are walking into a dense forest. You are walking into the densest part of the forest. You enter a deep, dark cave. You cannot see anything with your eyes. You sit down in the cave. You cannot see your own body. Except for your own feeling of being there, you have no other identification.

Exhale deeply. Focus only on your deep exhalation (1 minute).

How much ever you try, you are not able to see. There is nothing to hear, smell or taste. In this deep darkness your senses do not function (1 minute).

You are born from darkness that was in your mother's womb and you dissolve into the same loving, compassionate darkness (1 minute).

Breathe in deeply the utter darkness that surrounds you everywhere. Breathe in deeply the darkness that has made your identity disappear.

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body merging with the darkness. You have no sense perception, no thoughts, no mind. It is as if your mind and body have completely merged into the darkness (5 minutes).

Slowly, very slowly, experience your body becoming the darkness. Stay in the darkness. Become one with the darkness (5 minutes).

With your whole body, breathe IN the darkness. With every cell of your body, breathe IN the darkness deeply (15 minutes).

Begin to feel yourself. Start to feel your whole body with all your senses. Move your body very slowly in the sitting position. Get up and move out of the cave. You are coming out of the dense forest.

You have returned to your meditation space. Slowly open your eyes (2 minutes).

To summarize

• 1. Practice the meditation for removing fear.
• 2. Intend that you will be fearless in all that you do.
• 3. Visualize this state of intent as real. Visualize total courage in every single action. Visualize that you are wealthy, healthy and happy with joyful relationships.

1. Let go.

1. Offer your gratitude to the universe for what you are NOW and for what you are continuing to receive.

May you be fearless and be in nityānanda, eternal bliss!

You are not just matter, you are energy!

Master, You have said that in death we move from being matter to energy and we move again back to matter when reborn. Does the energy reside in that matter as well? How is it expressed?

Albert Einstein, the great scientist, climbs to the top of Mt. Sinai to get close enough to talk to God.

Looking up, he asks God, 'God, what does a million years mean to you?'

The Lord replies, 'Just a minute.'

Einstein asks, 'Ok, and what would a million dollars mean to you?'

The Lord replies, 'Just a penny.'

Einstein asks, 'May I have a penny, my Lord?'

The Lord replies, 'Sure, in a minute.'

Vedic scriptures say that the entire universe is made of five elemental energies.

These are the energies of earth, water, fire, air and ether. Earth is the grossest form and ether the subtlest of these energies. Everything in this universe, living nor non-living, is made of one or another of these five energies, or a combination. There are no exceptions. The energy form moves from solid to liquid to gaseous to intangible. That is the subtle progression of energy.

When the form is gross, we term that matter; when it becomes subtle and we cannot see the form, we call it energy. There is no distinction between matter and energy; matter is energy and energy is matter.

Scientists were fighting about this for centuries. In the days of Newton, not much was known about energy. It was Einstein who established clearly the link and the conversion. Even then many assumed that it was either matter or energy, not both. Now Quantum Physics has established beyond doubt that it can be matter and energy at the same time.

Sometimes objects appear to be matter or energy or both depending on the viewer! Quantum Physics experiments have established that the behavior of subatomic particles including their appearance, changes depending on who views them!

Matter is material, scientific, logical and self-centered. Energy is spiritual, beyond logic and multi-centric. Energy cannot stay in one place and cannot be bound by boundaries unlike matter, which stays where you left it. Matter needs to be moved by energy. One is form and the other is the formless behind the form.

An idol in a temple is seen by your eyes as matter, but can be seen as energy if your being is open. That is why people steeped in logic have a problem in understanding the nature of idol worship.

All living beings are energy, and humans at the higher end of the evolutionary scale are high-energy beings. The human being is a holographic image of the universal etheric energy. The human being is the microcosmic representation of the macrocosm. There is no distinction in energy; all energies are one and derived from one.

They seem to differ only in the form that they assume.

Within our mind–body system, we have energy pathways. Traditional Chinese and traditional Hindu medicine systems, as well as other ancient wellness systems, clearly talk about these energy pathways. Meridians and pressure points are the central concepts of Chinese acupressure and acupuncture treatments and millions of people benefit from these.

In many cases, people turn to these forms of treatment after Western medical treatments have failed to help them. These treatments are based on a clear understanding that our mind–body is an energy field. Many other Chinese practices such as Tai Chi, Qi Gong and so on are also based on energy and are widely practiced.

In the tradition Hindu medical system of Ayurveda (knowledge of life), the mind–body system is looked at as a holistic energy field. Energy blocks are diagnosed and related to mind–body states and cures are prescribed. It is not they will treat only the leg if you have a pain in the leg.

Each part of your body is not separate; it is part of an integrated system. You cannot cure an ailment by treating only the affected part or the symptom. One needs to identify the root cause and remove that cause.

Western medical science is on its way to understanding some of these concepts and accepting them. Many professional Western medical doctors have written extensively on holistic medicine based on the traditional concept of energy. It is now far better understood that mind and body are not two separate entities.

There is no such thing as a psychosomatic illness.

If what that term means is that the ailment is caused by the mind, all ailments including cancer and heart attack are psychosomatic. There is no ailment that we suffer from which is either purely body centric or mind centric. All ailments have a combined cause and effect of mind–body together. There are no exceptions.

The Vedic system says that there are 72,000 energy pathways in the body. Not all of them are active. In fact, probably about 14,000 of these paths we use in our lifetime. Then there are energy centers distributed around the mind–body system. The Chinese system talks about some 150 such points and Hindu systems such as kalaripayattu and so on mention 108 such points. Some of these points are critical and when affected can cause paralysis or even death. These points are known as marma or secret points in the Hindu system. Identification and use of these points are an art and a science, and there are still qualified and effective practitioners of these ancient cures.

In the past, when this knowledge was practiced extensively, it became in addition to a healing science a self-defense system as well as a spiritual path. It is in the same mould that karate and such other Eastern martial arts also developed.

There are seven major energy centers in our body. In Sanskrit we call them chakras or wheels. This is because when the sages meditated, there was extraordinary energy flow at these points resembling whirlpools or wheels of energy. The chakras are virtual energy centers. Doctors cannot find these when they cut up the body and so they might discount their existence, but kirlian photography has captured these centers clearly in the energy plane and now these centers are accepted by the world of medicine also. Each chakra is connected to an endocrine gland. Endocrine glands produce hormones that control our physical, mental and emotional wellness.

In the latter day Tantric tradition of Hinduism, which developed with the influence of Buddhist practices, various practices are used to energize the chakras. The objective of most of these techniques is to raise what is called the kundalini energy. This energy rests in the muladhara chakra at the base of the spine and through meditation can be moved upward, toward the sahasrara chakra at the crown of the head.

Though the underlying concepts are true, most of these practices can be quite dangerous to the average person. A person has to be ready to cope with the awakened energy. Even for someone who is prepared, it takes quite a while to become accustomed to the awakened energy. For someone who is not, there can be major damage to the physical and mental faculties and the nervous system.

Many people come to me asking me to help raise their kundalini energy. Others tell me of bad experiences in having tried this either by themselves or through other teachers. These dangers are real; you can become mentally unbalanced; you can go blind. I tell them to stop worrying about the kundalini and practice the completely safe and simple meditations we teach in our initial level programs called LBP.

These meditations help raise your energy; they energize all your chakras in a very safe way. We use the meditation techniques that will clear your emotional blocks in order to settle you into well-being.

Please understand this simple truth. When your energy is good and is flowing right within, you are in good health and at ease. When there is a problem and when your chakras are blocked, they disrupt the energy flow and you are in dis-ease and unwell. Proper flow of energy and energization of your chakras are essential to your well-being.

When your chakras are blocked, they can contract and become as small a button on your shirt. When they are energized, they expand and can be as large as a truck wheel.

You no longer have to believe that chakras exist based on what scriptures say or what a psychic could see by looking at you. Today, there are scientific techniques available that can capture the energy of chakras. Kirlian photography is one such tool and there are others. These techniques capture the energy field in you and around you. Many practitioners are using these techniques for diagnostic and treatment purposes.

There is no longer any doubt that an energy field surrounds us and that the same energy field acts within us as well. These pictures show energy blocks that help identify points of potential discomfort, even before such discomfort is manifested. Of course, one has to use these techniques with awareness and caution. When used appropriately, these can save lives and avoid suffering.

These energy centers are located at various points in the body. The corresponding endocrine glands are also shown separately. The accompanying chart explains more details about chakras.