Healing, Energy & Dhyana: A Yogic Perspective
In recent years, there’s a lot of talk about Reiki Healing or Energy transmission through hands to cure people. Fundamentally, it is a byproduct of Dhyana(meditation) Practices, but now it is projected in a big way as something major by itself. One reason being, people are earning good money through Reiki business and another reason is that these people have never got any real thing from their spiritual practices that is why they are happy making money from a mere byproduct.
It is not anything exclusive that you need training for. Any number of Dhyana yogis know how to perform this healing, but rarely in their life do they do it for someone, leave alone making money out of it. It is not something that someone taught to them rather they experienced it within them by doing their Sadhana.
Now, someone may think what good is a skill if you are not using it for a greater cause? After all, it is good to cure people from their pain!
No, it is not good to cure people from what they are going through. See, when you go to a doctor he gives you medicine to eat not an assurance to cure. The medicines are given as assistance to help your body fight the disease. The doctor by himself is not doing anything to cure you, he just knows the medicines that can assist your body. So, the doctor is doing a good job. Now, suppose you are having back pain and you go to a Healer. What he will do is not assistance rather it is a sure shot way to remove the pain. This is not a good thing to do, it will create troubles for the Healer as well as the one getting healed. By doing this, the healer is interfering with the Karma of the subject. Anyway, the Karma has to fulfil, if not through the subject then through the healer. These people upon the end of their lives die a very terrible death because of too much interference with others Karma.
This is the reason why Yogic philosophy never endorses such healing things. But the problem is, today that which is ideally a byproduct has become a mainstream thing because people can earn through it. If only everyone is initiated into some Sadhana and they stick to it, will they know something beyond the physical capabilities, but largely people do not have such patience and perseverance and they get stuck with the byproducts. If you have reached a certain level in your sadhana, you can heal yourself, that way you are destroying your own Karma, it is not harmful. Well, knowingly or unknowingly every effort of any living being is to destroy their own Karma, but in the case of humans, unfortunately, we end up creating enormous new quota.
The first time I did…
Almost a month ago, I had excruciating pain in my stomach while I was preparing to sleep, at night of course. It was not a general pain that you get by eating some bad food. The pain was different, maybe something went wrong with my dhyana practice that day, that’s why the pain. It was then that I used energy to heal a point on my body only because the nature of pain was different, otherwise, I would have taken some medicine. Within five minutes I was back to normal. Also, it is very rare that I do these kinds of things and never when someone is around because then people go on imagining different types of things. Well, as far as Reiki or energy healing is concerned, it is very fundamental, nothing of an intense nature. It is just that you get the perception to work in a different dimension but the correct way to develop this is through Dhyana, not through some Reiki course. Never do it on someone, it is not about showing compassion or kindness to them, it is their Karma and they have to fulfil it. The best you can do is to respond to their situation in an assistive manner and not as some energy-doctor.
Where logic limits…
Now, I was telling you about imagination, wild imaginations of people. This happened earlier this year, a gemstone dealer who also happens to be a friend of one of our distant relative was with us in a small casual gathering. There he wished to demonstrate something about Rudraksha rosary. So, he made a statement, “Rudraksha is so powerful that it can discriminate between good and bad”. This thing is known in many Indian households that Rudraksha can be used to tell if some food is pranic(having positive life energies) or not, in other words, consumable or not. So, he demonstrated this on tap water and Purified water, and yes, it was found that tap water is not consumable with the help of Rudraksha. This made him feel like a Guruji.
It was then that I asked him to let me touch both the glasses of water one by one, to which he agreed. After touching them both, I asked him to re-demonstrate, and to his surprise, the results were reversed this time, means according to the Rudraksha rosary, the tap water is consumable and the purified water is not! He stared at me like anything, and said, “What the hell did you do to these waters? You know some occult or what?”
See, this is what wild imagination can do! Just because something does not fit in your logical purview doesn’t mean it has to be some occult or black magic. That person’s understanding of Rudraksha was not experiential, it was coming from a rudimentary logic of life as good and bad. Well, I told him that Rudraksha indeed is powerful but it differentiates based on pranic polarities, that is, positive or negative polarity or even neutral. Good and bad means nothing to it; it is just a making of the human mind. All I did to those waters is to influence their polarities, you can’t call it Tantra-it is more elaborate. The tap water is still not consumable but I gave it a certain pranic polarity, that’s why for Rudraksha it became positive and similarly the purified water negative.
Also, water is the easiest tangible thing to influence, anyone even without any experiential understanding can influence it, even the environment of your home can influence it. That’s why you should never consume water from just about anyone or any source. Also, some evil mind can intentionally make it very negative for you, that much is enough to cripple you on a mental level. It is good to chant some mantra or even some god’s name before drinking water, here the idea is not to pray to some god for providing you with water but to make it get positively influenced through you, for when you say something that makes you pleasant, positive reverberations will spread naturally.
The idea to tell all this is to make you understand that there is a world beyond your logical judgments. Never judge this grand scheme of the creator, the logic misses on a lot of things because we can only apply logic to the things that we already know or those which we can connect with.
Destroying the very essence of Yoga
A lot good has happened in the name of Yoga but people are doing a lot of bad too in its name. Just like Reiki Healers, every day a new yoga teacher pops up with his yoga business.
For me, it is a thing that just happened, no one taught me yoga. The way things unfolded throughout my life taught me to be in yoga, now when I look back at my journey since birth, I can recount how small happenings gave me all that I count as yoga. I am not taught nor initiated by any physical being; non-physical I won’t deny. Almost 5–6 years ago, I was in a certain powerful space when the first experience dawned upon me, from then on an intense journey began. It is not that only I got to know, people around me were able to see that in a matter of five or so months I am in a completely different state, they can feel something different about me all of a sudden. Out of nowhere, I was talking about things that were way beyond my level of perception some time ago and my energy system was just doing its things. The path unfolded without me doing much about it and now I am even better and ever-progressing with a powerful grace that keeps me going. Whatever needs to be known at the moment just flows into me from somewhere.
Still, I have not uttered a single word among anyone about how to practice nor I have given any practice to anyone. Yes, here and there if someone asks me, I just tell them a simple thing to do for some time and then come to me, which they never do and then there is no question about next step. All this is because the path is an elaborate one and contrary to the notion among people, the essence of meditation is to destroy whatever is not you! They think meditation is to bring calmness and peace, yes it will come but before that many layers need to be removed. In this sense, Dhyana destroys you or what you think as ‘you’ and to be honest very few are willing enough to let go their habitual complex and surrender. But once you surrender, believe me, miracles will unfold.
Now, here come the part-time yogis who aspire to open their Yoga classes and brand themselves as yoga instructors. They teach yoga asanas, a part of Hatha yoga but later on, start with meditation as well of which they know nothing about. Tell me, are those sitting up there in Himalayas fools and here you are who knows everything just with some Yoga crash-course and certificate? Yoga asanas are still fine but at least don’t try to mess with the life force, you will create myriad of problems for those being taught by you!
The mother that she is…
In the deepest roots of your body
lies the energy of extreme potential and power.
Dare not to wake her up until you are ready to welcome,
fierce and compassion both are her aspects
which one you want is absolutely your call.
For her compassion keep the insides clean,
a little muck and face the fierce.
She is in no hurry, take your time
But don’t invoke her without your spine.
Highest attainment or absolute damage
Both are possible, the call is yours.
Yoga calls it Kundalini or the life force. Before approaching her, many things need to be cleared up from your system, that is why Dhyana is so elaborate — slow and steady. Usually, after years of practice, the master opens it up for the seeker; just his touch is enough. And for someone to do it by himself effortlessly, there is no way. It is a thing which requires utmost discipline and is awakened solely on the will and compassion of a realised being towards the seeker; those who are yogis just for two hours a day won’t be able to do it for you.
A prominent master of Kriya yoga, Lahiri Mahasaya happened to meet his guru, Sri Mahavatar Babaji, for the first time and the conversation went as follows:
For more than three decades I have waited for you here-waited for you to return to me!’ Babaji’s voice rang with celestial love. ‘You slipped away and vanished into the tumultuous waves of the life beyond death. The magic wand of your karma touched you, and you were gone! Though you lost sight of me, never did I lose sight of you! I pursued you over the luminescent astral sea where the glorious angels sail. Through gloom, storm, upheaval, and light I followed you, like a mother bird guarding her young. As you lived out your human term of womb-life, and emerged a babe, my eye was ever on you. When you covered your tiny form in the lotus posture under the Nadia sands in your childhood, I was invisibly present! Patiently, month after month, year after year, I have watched over you, waiting for this perfect day. Now you are with me!
As written in the Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda
This is how the path of realization is, for some it may happen in a moment, for some it may take many lifetimes. It is a sacred science not to make a business of, only a rare few know what to do and rest are just shop owners. This is why no sensible one will tell you any real practice to do at first. Many things need to be done before the actual thing can happen. Only when one has stabilised several aspects of him does the mother — life force comes awake.
Seek! When the seed of grace and devotion sprouts within may you know what lies beyond!
Namaskaram.
-Ad.
