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Chapter V. 'As of all' with hills, woods and lands the support is the lord of Serpents, so of all the treatises of Yoga the support verily is kundali. (Kundalini) It has been shown in the foregoing pages that the Vedic Uchchishtha Brahman figures in the Pauranic mythology as Sesha Serpent and is the Residual Serpent power left over after the creation is complete and the corresponding static adhyatma; is pictured as Narayana resting on the Serpent. There sesha is described as supporting the Cosmos. In individual living beings the individualized Sesha left over after the physical body is built up is described as Kundalini Serpent, which supports the individual body, having Her Seat at Moolddhar (Mool--root, Adhdr---support) the root or basic support of the spinal cord known to the anatomist as coccygeal bone or coccyx. The corresponding static adhydtma is swayambhoolinga, self-born thallic-formed Shiva with the kundalini serpent coiling around three and half times, asleep with tail in her mouth placed at the top. What aroused the Power uncoils and takes its march back to the evolutionary side loosening the bondage. She ascends the spinal nerve and displays higher visions during the march of ascent. In cerebrum She comes into communion with Her Loral and merges into the Static Real. At other times when She is not in communion, She resides in the Vishuddha Chakra of the Cervical region resplendent in Her purity. When awakened She is experienced by Yogins as a spiritual guide who directs, controls, governs and leads the aspirants on the spiritual path to moksha like a living conscious divine help-mate, with Her vigilant hand helping Her favourite all the twenty-four hours in sleep, dreams and waking state, and at times takes him up for the Saniddhic communion with Her Lord. She then works character of a man and develop into instinct. The particular actions and environments are soon lost behind the vistas of past time and memory lets them slip off its hold, but their influence on the mind lasts tenaciously throughout the life and even transmigrates to future births. Certain children are by nature shy, polite, modest, truthful, peace-loving, merciful and possessed of fine character whereas others are mischievous, cruel and naughty. Certain part of their character might b due to their training but mostly it would appear on exanplation that they got those characteristics from birth, family consequences having had little effect on them. Different children of the same parents, brought up within the same surroundings under similar influences show quite opposite tendencies and inclinations. Character includes both good and bad habits a person has imbibed. When once a habit is formed it requires a hard struggle to quit it; one has to undo the whole lot of mischief that has been done on the mind by the long process of repetition. Therefore we ought to be ever watchful as to how a particular incident impresses us. If our minds are proof against outer influences we have no fear of contracting any habits. Particular incidents and individual actions do not much count but it is the animus and the motive that is to be taken care of, as they are responsible for the formation of a man's nature. A person's social, moral, intellectual and spiritual culture is thus built by a gradual discipline of mind through long thinking and by acting up to the ideal in his mode of living. Thus a mind free from attachment and hatred, always deeply engrossed in high pursuits, not minding the likes and dislikes of the objective world or ups and downs of life, steers through his mission with brave, fearless and undaunted heart, stands like a rock against the waves of the seething ocean of life. He forms a ,character, firm and bold, not affected by the society he moves in, but moulding the latter after his own fashion. He works hard and lives a busy life working miracles all his life, butt himself remaining unaffected like a lotus leaf in water. Such persons are called jiwanmuktas and are free from the worldly bondages even in life, and after death shall be absorbed into the universal, spirit no more to be reborn no passively as when sleeping but as divine mother on all the three planes of physical, astral and causal bodies. Her movements are then felt, Her voice heard, and presence experienced. She then becomes a Reality and not simply an object of imagination and conjecture. To a person of the modern education every idea connected with spirituality conveys an impression of something like nothing; if anything it is of a nature paling into the realm of unreality and superstition. To students of physic science, Metaphysics, every thought pertaining to God and Powers of the Spiritual World suggest an abnormality of brain, any attempt to understand or systematize phenomena of the higher planes of spiritual life a waste of time, and any expression of Divine Powers is simply absurd and meaningless. But fortunately in recent years attention of some of our educated persons on Western lines has taken a turn. The teachings of the Arya Samraj and Christian Missionary that had been working to cut at the very root of old beliefs have by reaction aroused a sense of curiosity to understand them, their mystic significance and philosophy. But such of them who possess a sense of reverence for old traditions are generally accused of blind superstition, though at times rightly, but not necessarily always. Faith is not always superstition. Faith combined with constructive reasoning prepares ground for sound knowledge. Faith governs the motive power and breeds desire for knowledge, which in turn gives necessary impetus for research work; sound and constructive reasoning 'shows the right path and guards against loopholes and pitfalls. Strong faith tempered with sound constructive reasoning is, therefore, what a research student of any field must need. But for some time past we have been witnessing in our educated people a tendency of fostering that line of reasoning which is justly named destructive, absolutely devoid of faith. This tendency has been making the mind of our youths a barren land of hot sands where no seed of spiritual knowledge can grow. Five senses combined with admittedly incomplete aid of inference are by such men regarded quite sufficient to unravel the vast hidden treasures of knowledge lying behind the superficial phenomena of Nature. The sixth son can claim that the whole store has been explored. We may still be picking up pebbles on the shore of the deeps of knowledge. When it can be so said about our knowledge .f the physical plane much more can be said about the higher spheres still unexplored. Metaphysics and occult sciences, have already given glimpses in that direction. We see that this Universe is a play of two kinds of forces secular and spiritual; physical and metaphysical. Physical science gives us information of the former and over the other it possesses no jurisdiction. It is it not fool hardiness on its to discount and set at nought the vast field of knowledge that transcends its very bounds, deny, denounce and ignore what is beyond its approach and try to judge and measure things spiritual with physical standards? Kundalini Shakti has met a similar fate. She is identified with some nerve unknown to the anatomists. Even Dr. Rele, the learned author of the work "Mysterious Kundalini ", has been led to identify the Mother Kundalini with the right vagus nerve. But in fact kundalini is as much the vagus or any other nerve as soul is an atom in the physical body, heart or brain. The author of the "Mysterious Kundalini" has been led to such a belief as he appears to have confused the kundalini shakti with the power of muscle and nerve control which is not the case. Even a person without his kundalini shakti awakened can acquire the power of controlling, at his will, muscles and the autonomous working of pulse and heart, and on the contrary a person with his Kundalini well awakened may fail to do the same at will. It is true that the nervous system governs and controls physical, mental and intellectul faculties and as such also the spiritual powers to an extent, but the relation between the two is like that of a radio receiver and the electric power which works it both from in and out, internally through wires and externally without wires. Kundalini shakti too works inside the body through the wires of the nervous system and from outside without their help. Sir John Woodrofle in his foreword to the "Mysterious Kundalini" has correctly and in the clearest of expression has refuted the nerve view of kundalini in these words. "She is the Grand Potential. As such she cannot, in my view, be identified with any of the products which she becomes. Kunddini is in my opinion a gross form of Shakti." Here Kundalini means a sleeping Kundalini. Again he says, "She is then not as such in my view, a nerve or any other physical substance or mental faculty but the ground substance of both, which, on being roused ascends and is merged in the higher tattwas ending in shiva shakti tattwas, when she is said to be merged in Param Shiva. Kundatini is the Dynamic Real as the residual power, the power left over after the production of Prithivi, when she coils herself around the Swayabhoo I,Linga or Static Real and rests ". We fully endorse the above view, as has already been pointed out that Pran-Shakti, the Dynamic life principle, left over after the involutionary process has worked out a human body or a body of the animal or vegetable kingdom is called kundalini shakti but she has the potentiality of being roused for spiritual evolution only in human beings. In the different treatises of Hatha Yoga such as Hatha Yoga Pradipika and others, seat of the kundalini shakti is described to be located in the centre of an egg like kanda (root) in the pelvic region. Some regard it as a muscle at the lower part of the body between the genital organs and the rectum, known to the yogin as yonisthan; others consider it as those muscles which cover the bony coccygeal and sacral triangular portions of the vertibral column with the seat of kttndalini at the base of the sacrum and at the top of coccyx, where the terminal part of the spinal cord rests. Again, others consider ganglion impar as her seat. Her description as sleeping there, as a coiled serpent, appears suggestive to the wrong idea that kundalini is a particular nerve and that idea is strengthened by the fact that for awakening the power all works, on hatha yoga invariably prescribe a course of physical exercises. It is also thought that through regular practice of those exercises the nervous system with its various ganglia is stimulated to give rise to a sort of physical reactionary force resembling muscular impulse. But roused kundalini is not a temporary result of the nervous stimuli, she is a permanent power working throughout, independent of the nervous system, divine by nature, and source of our life, intelligence and consciousness, though her activity comes to manifestation through nerves, heart and brain. The physical exercises of certain nerves help to rouse her dormant power just in the same way as by revolving a dynamo electricity is generated, electric power by no means being identical with the metallic wires wiapped round a magnet. Kundaini is also roused by Divine Love and devotion and utter self surrender to God, through "Japam" or repetition of His holy names, His meditation and spiritual knowledge. She is also awakened by the favour of spiritua1 masters who by a mere touch or a kindly look do in a second, arouse the kundalini shakti of those whom they are pleased to favour. The last process is known as initiation through shaktipat, that is, transmission of shakti. She can also be awakened by fixing the mind at Mooiddlutr * the seal of kundalini and through strong concentration at mind at that point.
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