Advaita and the Energy Body

Gautam’s mother Santosh Sachdeva is the author of “The Kundalini Trilogy” and other books on the subject of Kundalini. Santosh Ma counsels aspirants and provides guidance and clarification on any questions they may have regarding meditation, chakras, and Kundalini yoga. Given her thorough experiential understanding of the workings of the subtle body, Gautam thought it would be interesting to share Santosh Ma’s perspectives on the core of Ramesh Balsekar’s teaching.

Question:

The core teaching of the Advaita sage Ramesh Balsekar is “Consciousness is all there is.” There are two main aspects of this teaching: (1) everything that happens is God’s Will, and (2) no one is the doer of their actions, neither oneself nor others.

Rameshji elaborated these concepts of non-doership by saying that all of our actions and decisions are based on two factors—our genes and our conditioning—neither of which we have any control over. Therefore, any action or decision is truly not ‘my’ action or ‘my’ decision. In other words, although ‘free will’ is the mechanism of functioning in daily living, it is truly not ‘my’ free will, but rather God’s Will operating through me. With this understanding, one accepts that all one can do is to do one’s best in any given situation without attachment to the outcome. The outcome of any situation is God’s Will.

When this understanding becomes one’s experience in daily living, there is no room for hatred, malice, jealousy, envy, blame, or condemnation (because no one is the doer of ‘their’ actions), nor is there room for pride, arrogance, guilt, or shame (because I am not the doer of ‘my’ actions). When this teaching is accepted and experienced in daily living, the thinking mind that continuously reverts into the dead past or projects into an imaginary future is annihilated.

Santosh Ma, you have an experiential understanding of Kundalini energy and the intricate workings of the chakras. Could you explain how living Rameshji’s teaching changes an individual’s energy at the subtle level and the gross body-mind level?

Answer:

The Will of God prevails through the unfolding of all creation with its fixed laws. No one is the doer of their action because every creation within the manifest world moves in the pattern and rhythm that was set in motion for it. When a seed is planted, a plant emerges, draws its nourishment according to its need, and traverses its life cycle by following Nature or God’s Law. A mango tree will yield mangoes; an apple tree will produce apples. Birds, bees, and all creatures are living according to the Nature and Laws that have been laid down for them; they are all following their fixed plans. The sun, the moon, the planets, and the oceans do not cross their boundaries; they are all following God’s Will.

By contrast, the human species was given free will, which enables it to deviate from the patterns and rhythms that were set in motion for it. It is God’s Will that all of His creation ultimately reaches its potential. How then does this come to pass? The individual exercises their free will, which leads to repeating patterns of living, conflict, misconception, suffering, disappointment, and death, in a cycle of life after life. At some point, the awakening happens, and that awakening leads to a turning of the tide. Thus starts the inward journey, when the individual becomes introspective and contemplates the meaning and meaninglessness of human life lived within this world of dualities. The individual comes to realize the futility of all mental and emotional drama because it is their own play, and begins to see that others are similarly lost in their own play. This means that each individual comes into the world with their own script of give-and-take situations, along with the conditioning and beliefs of the collective consciousness.

The understanding of non-doership allows the individual to see that they have been living their life in strife because the others are simply playing out their own scripts. One comes to understand that they are interacting with others at cross purposes. Then, although the stage stays the same, the script stays the same, and the actors stay the same, another life emerges with another stage where the roles have changed. The old scripts, conditioning, and beliefs of the individual, which caused disruption and disharmony, all begin to fade, along with the collective consciousness. Awakening happens. The individual gains enhanced awareness and moves toward creating a new blueprint to meet the new challenges. As the individual evolves to higher levels of awareness and consciousness, they begin operating in alignment with God’s Will.

Nature participates in this process by bringing the individual’s mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies into balance, and hastening the goal of aligning with God’s Will. As the Bible says, The Prodigal returns home. It is God’s Will to give the individual free will and then watch the play.

When one goes through this shift intellectually, through the path of Advaita and Jnana Yoga, one comes to the understanding through one’s life experiences. When one follows the path of Shakti Sadhana, one comes to the understanding through seeing the changes happen within the subtle body. Life’s situations and emotions affect the chakras, which in turn affect the physical body. The former disruption and disharmony caused the pranic energy to become thick, which hampered the flow of prana in the subtle body and the flow of blood in the physical body. Every negative thought or resentment created disharmony in the flow of energy. Continuous negative thoughts or beliefs in the thinking mind affect the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind does not reason; its focus is to produce results. The thinking mind created disturbances in the individual’s energy body by all the thoughts of ‘I want’ and ‘I wish’. Invoking the phrase ‘I wish’ causes the energy body to move into a certain pattern. When another wish arises, the energy has to change direction at a moment’s notice, which disturbs the flow of prana and the mental and emotional body. This causes the subconscious to go into a flux.

Finally, everything is God’s Will. To have free will is also God’s Will, until we learn our lesson.