We always feel that we have a body, though we may go on saying that we do not have one. This is a handicap to our progress. Hatha yoga techniques take account of the bodily organism. Concentration, though it is necessary and is the pinnacle of yoga, can be done together with certain bodily adjustments. Asanas, bandhas and mudras are nothing but bodily adjustments to facilitate the higher purpose of concentration. I may mention a few of these techniques of hatha yoga. I said earlier that we should be seated in one asana for the purpose of meditation. Together with that, one or two of the bandhas or mudras may be practised. The well-known combination of asana, bandha and mudra is that blend of poses called dhyana asana, meaning any pose in which we may be seated for meditation; and a bandha called mula bandha, together with another called the jalandhara bandha, a third one called uddhiana bandha, along with a simultaneous concentration of the prana—all these are recommended.

However, these processes will not yield much result if two qualifications are not fulfilled: one, if we have not sublimated our sensual desires, at least to an appreciable extent, if not wholly; and two, if we have an ulterior motive behind these practices. This ulterior motive would be where we want something through this practice—something in the sense of a power to be harnessed for our personal selfish good or in order to harm someone. This sort of motive implies that the mind is not wholly pure. The second qualification is implied in the earlier one, namely, purification of mind.

It is just like education, as I mentioned earlier. Education is not the art of earning a livelihood. There are some villagers who think that if they have enough land and property that there is no reason for their children to be educated. “When there is plenty of land, property and money, why should there be education?” they ask. They may feel that education is only needed in order for someone to earn money, and in their case there is no need for their children to get an education in order to earn. But education is different from learning how to earn. Education is the art of broadening the outlook of life and not just learning how to get more money.

Unfortunately, most people think that the education one gets is only for the purpose of getting a job, and otherwise there is no use of education. Through education one is getting “fixed” in life, they would say. “Are you fixed?” people ask. By “fixing” they mean that one is able to earn. That is the reason why people think that education is not necessary if one has plenty of wealth. Big businessmen may train their children in only keeping accounts, making leases and running the business. Landholders may teach their children only to cultivate their fields and for reaping and harvesting, which is good no doubt—but it is not education. The mind will not be broadened, polished or regenerated. Education, as we know, is a process of the regeneration of the attitude in life rather than a way of getting on with things in the world.

Likewise is yoga an art and an educative process. Getting something in yoga practice is not the purpose. What is it that we want to get, after all? What is this that we are hankering after through yoga? What is it that we want, and what do we need? What do we lack in life? It is a thorough misunderstanding with which many people approach the art of yoga, and so they do not succeed. We approach yoga like children or fools, having no idea as to what it actually means. Many people take it as a hobby. Others are brought into the practice by an emergency they cannot cope with. “Oh God, if You are there, please come and help!” This kind of prayer may be good in some way, but it will bring nothing. How difficult is it to understand the implications of the approach to yoga. It is just like undergoing a process of impersonal education, which itself is an end and not a means.

A broadening of the outlook of life is an end in itself—it is not a means to some end. Our knowing what life is, is itself a great achievement. As a matter of fact, this itself is God-realisation. Whatever people say of God and the Absolute is nothing but the fundamental spiritual implications of life, and there is no God outside life. This is what yoga really means. Yoga is God-realisation. Yoga is the realisation of the values of life, and therefore yoga is an end in itself. We cannot get something for ourselves through yoga; we must let this idea go.

Without understanding this, people with certain submerged desires practise asanas, pranayama, bandhas and mudras, and as a result they get into complications and become tied into knots. There are various kinds of psychological knots in which we get entangled. Thus, there are people who get lost. I will mention some of the dangers of hatha yoga when it is practised at the higher kundalini and tantra yoga levels if the practitioners are not properly fit for undergoing it. If we meet people who have been studying and practising yoga for years, we may come to know their difficulties. If we have a private talk with them, and if they are ready to tell us the truth, we will be taken aback by the problems and difficulties that one has to meet in the practice of yoga. Yoga is not just a matter of coming and going somewhere. A person once visited here from San Francisco and said, “I’ll just get liberation and go back home!” He thought liberation was something one can purchase from somewhere, and that he could go back to San Francisco afterwards. I said, “Very good. You can have mukti (liberation) and then you can go to San Francisco and show it to others!”

Well, this is an example of how people remain simpletons in these very serious matters, and essentially learn nothing. Finally they begin to feel that there is no God, no religion and nothing of this kind, because they cannot get it so easily. We need not only good students of yoga these days, but we also need good teachers to tell us what it all actually means. There are many teachers who merely say, “Yes, come, come, I will tell you,” but they do not teach anything. A good teacher may not talk to us at first, and we must be prepared for that. To come into relationship with him may be a hard job, because goodness and appropriateness of understanding in matters of yoga is at the same time a great achievement in the stage of dispassion, and the dispassion of a yogin is something difficult to understand.

If we read the lives of great saints and yogins, we will know how difficult it was for them to get knowledge from their Gurus and what tests and periods of training, hardships and untold difficulties these students had to undergo. Many times they became discouraged, gave up and went away. This happened to many; it can happen to anyone, and it continues to happen. We are frightened by the very enormity of the difficulties and the complexities of the practice. We begin with an initial enthusiasm in yoga, thinking that it is just a matter of making a good attempt, and then it becomes difficult—like a child studying physics or chemistry, for example. It is a very difficult science, and one cannot just commit everything to memory. Then the study goes on with more and more complicated fields like relativity, quantum physics and so on. The student doesn’t know what these are, and would rather leave the study than try to go on to learn more. So it is with yoga. Goodness and appropriateness of understanding in matters of yoga are great virtues in the practice and are achieved through calm dispassion. The dispassion of a yogin is something difficult to understand, but must be learned in order to progress.

Given the nature of these difficulties and the fact that we are likely to be led astray, having a Guru is emphasised very much. If a Guru is nearby, like a physician is near to a patient, one sees that the patient is eventually mended somehow and then cured. The patient cannot understand himself. A Guru is like a physician for the student, and for some period at least the student has to be under the supervision of a Guru who is physically present. Some imaginary or mental Guru may be all right for some time later on, but not in the beginning. As long as we have a physical body, we are physically conscious, and we have physical difficulties, a physically visible Guru is necessary for some time. We may think it is a superfluous thing, but it is not so.

We will find later on how necessary a Guru is, because we will be led astray, we will suffer from illusions, we will see certain things and experience certain things which we will mistake for achievements, and we will get into difficult tangles. We may have physical complications, physiological disturbances and psychological entanglements, all of which may come upon us if we do not properly adjust ourselves morally and ethically under the guidance of a competent Guru. The pranas sometimes get locked up in certain centres of the body by a forced pressure exerted on the body by asanas, bandhas and mudras. When the prana is locked up in a particular way, we may feel pain and we may mistake this pain for the rising of the kundalini.

However, let it be remembered that the rising of the kundalini is never painful. Anything good cannot be equated with pain. The vision of God is not a pain, and the rousing of the powers within is not a pain. The pain comes only when the pranas are sidetracked and get centred in unwanted parts of the body. Kundalini yoga, which necessitates the practice of asanas, etc. also touches upon certain aspects of concentration on what are called the chakras. I would like for everyone to listen to me carefully, because all this is difficult to understand. The chakras are whirls of energy in the astral body. Remember that they are whirls of force and are not physical substances which we can touch. They are not merely anatomical parts in the physical body, though the physical anatomy has some connection with these whirls of energy within. These whirls of energy are nothing but the ways of the movement of thought. Finally, the energy which is called kundalini is nothing but mind lodged in a particular level.

Some people have the notion that the kundalini is something like a snake inside us. There is no snake inside us, and we cannot open a part of the body and see this kundalini. It is the mind itself locked up, coiled and whirling in a particular fashion in a specific centre of the body. As we are ourselves limited by the mind, we cannot see this centre with our eyes. The chakras are not physical objects—they are forms taken by the way of thinking itself. As we cannot see our own minds, we also cannot see the centres—but they can be experienced, and they can be realised. They can be contacted internally through feeling, empathy and realisation—but not through seeing as people generally see objects of perception.

While this is one aspect of the matter, another important aspect needs to be discussed. Through an incorrect understanding of the proper method of centring of the prana in concentration, a pranic centre may suddenly get stimulated through this misguided practice. The higher centres do not get stimulated in this sort of practice—the lower centres get touched. As a result, certain powers, one may call them lesser gods, are invoked. In the mantra shastra or the science of mantras, there are certain incantations with which one can invoke the lesser divinities. But these lesser divinities do not help us; they only cause us trouble. The lesser divinities, which are the presiding deities of the lower chakras, get invoked by the passions, desires and force of will through which the concentration is practised. Once these powers are evoked, our simple desires assume large proportions.

Only if we have seen sadhakas (spiritual aspirants) who have been practising for a long time will we know how they behave and what difficulties they have. One of the first things that one sees in the practice of sadhana is that small things can assume large proportions. What would ordinarily be of little consequence appears to be very important, and the sadhaka will go on thinking about it too much. This happens sometimes to sadhakas. One would be wondering, “What is happening to this person? Why is he worrying about these silly matters?” But it is not silly to that person; in fact, it has become very big. Hence, one of the important transformations in concentration, when it is done by an unprepared mind, is the magnified proportion assumed by small things or events. The person cannot be tolerant and becomes intolerant of everything in the world. He cannot tolerate a person near to him nor does he want a person to look at him. All these will happen in certain stages of practice.

They are not normal, healthy conditions. They are no doubt unnatural conditions which may supervene in the case of unprepared minds taking to yoga. The person will be restless, suspicious and will be looking down upon others and being critical of everything. “There is nothing good in this world. Everything is ‘at sixes and sevens’, everything is bad, and everything is nonsensical. This person is like this, that person is like that,” they will say. These things will loom so large in their eyes that they cannot bear to take one step. Once the centres of the lower level get stimulated, these sorts of unnatural conditions of attitude may occur. But another difficulty also gets created, namely, the intensification of desire. A small desire may become very intense—for example hunger. The person will become ravenous in eating food. While normal people will take only a little food, the sadhaka will eat much more, because the appetite has become intensified.

What is more, the affections may become abnormal, even morbid. If one starts loving a thing, one will love it inordinately. The love can be directed to simple things—like a walking stick, a cloth, a water pot, a small hut or a small, torn book. All these may become objects of affection, and the person will hug them without knowing why it is happening. Desires assume morbid proportions—morbid because they are no longer healthy reactions. Anything taken to excess has to be called morbid, for what else can we call it? Therefore, in love as well as in hatred one may become excessive. When one hates, it is to the extreme, and when one loves it is also to the extreme. These are due to the stimulation of the lower centres, especially the svadhishthana chakra. This is the centre of desires, especially sexual desire, and it is here that people often get stuck. They are always in the second chakra, and they do not go to the third. Though they think that kundalini has risen in them to the sahasrara, it has actually not happened. The kundalini has not gone beyond the second level, and yet they become inordinate persons—excessively critical and sentimental. Neither do they like others, nor do others like them. This is what one realises finally. This is very unfortunate, and everyone has to guard oneself against these excesses of central stimulation. We should therefore not try to stimulate the senses in this manner by force.

I have a reason for going so deeply into this. There are people who think that these techniques of stimulation of the chakras are one of the yogas, and they go on doing them intensely for hours together. There is nothing to be gained with that technique, but we must be ready and prepared so that we do not get led astray. Again, I suggest that we must have a Guru. We cannot rely on books and texts—they will not guide us, because they cannot speak to us. The difficulty with books is that books cannot speak to us. They will only tell one thing, just like a parrot that goes on repeating the same thing. That is what a book can do—it cannot tell anything other than what is written there. But a Guru can, because he is a living being, and the knowledge that comes from him is living knowledge. With the help of a Guru we can concentrate our minds on these practices, and they will help us. Asanas, pranayama, etc. are good, but they are good only when they are done with a purified mind, with no ulterior motive, and under the guidance of a preceptor.

There are many other restrictions also imposed, such as diet, atmosphere and environment, because all these influence the system. If we take stimulants and practise pranayama, there will be contrary results. The atmosphere and the climatic conditions should be suitable—neither too cold nor too hot. We must live in an atmosphere of calmness, tranquillity and non-disturbance. With these methods we may practise these techniques of bandhas and mudras, coupled with asana and pranayama. In practising this beautiful combination, the central nervous system gets stimulated. The central nervous system is controlled by a particular channel called the sushumna. The sushumna is supposed to be a vital energy moving through an astral tube in the spinal column. In Sanskrit this is called the meru danda. This has also a cosmic counterpart, called the Meru mountain in the Puranas.

If we read the Puranas of India, we will read wonderful descriptions of the seven worlds, the seven planes of existence, the seven oceans and many other things. These seven planes of existence are the cosmic counterparts of these seven chakras within. If we touch the inside chakras, we touch the outer world also. It is something like operating a switchboard. When we put on the switch, many other things also are connected. A particular chakra within is like a switch, a plug which we can use; and when we touch it, something corresponding to it is also stimulated.

We will find that when we undergo internal change, certain changes take place externally also. Very gradually we will find certain external transformations taking place in the atmosphere. People around us will start thinking about us differently, they may speak to us in a different way, and conditions will change. Something which we cannot understand will take place gradually when internal transformations take place, because of the connection of the microcosmic with the macrocosmic. Hence, there is no individual yoga, personal yoga or selfish yoga. All yoga is cosmic. When we touch our own higher selves, we have touched the whole world. We must give up this idea that yoga is yours or mine, or individual or unconnected with society—there is no such thing. There is no such thing as individual yoga—all yoga is universal. There is no such thing as the selfish yoga of some individual person. This being the case, the yoga of concentration on the individuality should proceed onwards to an understanding of the universal counterparts of individuality, and thereby also to a greater level of moral purification.