Once there was a rich man. He died leaving behind him one son, but as luck would have it he could not pass on the knowledge of his wealth to him. In course of time the boy was reduced to utter poverty, so much so that he became a beggar. Years rolled by. One day when he was returning from his bhiksha trip he met a wise sadhu and prostrated before him. The sadhu asked him what he wished for. He replied that he was very poor and facing great difficulties in maintaining his life. So the sadhu told him to return home and dig at a particular place. He did so and found the wealth.
In Tantra as well as Yoga the sadhana is taught to us to bring us to the knowledge of the reality within us. We have always been depending on the mind and senses for knowledge, information, pleasure, and everything. Therefore we always find disappointment, because the senses and the mind are limited; from time to time their resources become depicted. But are we that only? Our history tells us something else - that we can reveal our real identity.
Consider the Story of King Janaka, the great videha, He was sleeping in his palace and dreamt that the army of the enemy was invading his kingdom, and finally he lost the battle. He had to take to his heels, wandering in the forest without food to eat and water to drink. He was homeless, without shelter, unprotected, unhappy as one who has lost his kingdom. Then came the morning when he woke up from his slumber and found that he had lost nothing. It had been an experience that was related to the limited capacity of mind and senses which operate during waking, sleeping and dreaming. When he awoke, the limitations of the mind in dream were mitigated and nullified. He could then sec for himself that he never fought a battle, he never lost his kingdom; he was the same Janaka, the videha who had slept in the palace the night before.
In the science of Yoga and Tantra the practices which are taught are definitely for the purpose of understanding this great truth. Take for instance, and let us reflect for a while on, Tantra. What is it? Is it black magic or a sort of ritual? "Tanoti trayati tasmat tantraha": 'tanoti' means 'stretching' and 'trayati' means 'librating'. So Tantra involves the practices by which we are able to expand the consciousness beyond the given boundaries and finally literate or release the shakti - that is Tantra.
The mind and senses function within given boundaries. There are forms of knowledge which mind cannot apprehend, and there are experiences which you can have without the involvement of the mind. Anahata nada is an experience which you can have without the involvement of mind. Darshan, 'inner vision' a living experience, is something which you can have without the involvement of mind. In order to have these experiences you will have to go beyond the mind, and stretch it beyond the realm of objectivity. Similarly, in yoga also you ultimately come to the point where you are trying to transcend matter.
Mind is matter and you have to transcend it. All experiences which are related to mind and the off springs of mind are also matter. Therefore, for example, by the practice of neti abhyas, you have to exterminate all forms of experience in dhyan yoga, one by one. Take the grossest example of pranayama. It is not just done to breathe more oxygen; it is not just a breathing exercise. When you practise pranayama the basic prana wakes up. That is kundalini shakti, the primal power. The air you breathe is not prana; you are born with prana and live by it. It is the energy which lives within your body from the moment you are conceived until the moment you die. But besides this there is the kundalini shakti which, in the course of evolution, must manifest in you whether you do sadhana or not.
Thousands of years ago the sages and seers realised this great Shakti residing at the base of the spine and found that without the awakening of kundalini it was not possible for an individual to experience his cosmic consciousness. As long as we live with the mind and senses, body and objects, we are jivatma, with ego, but once we leave behind these friends, we no longer identify with jivatma. We become paramatma. But it is so difficult. Every time we want to climb, every lime we go to the brink, every time we approach the barrier or border of maya, we find that we are subject to the laws of the gravity of mind.
Again and again we are brought back to the realm of objective consciousness. We have been trying to cross the boundary created by maya, by samskara, by janma, desire and vasana. We approach a little closer and fear creeps in, visions float into our minds and we are dashed back! For those sincere aspirants who want to realise their identity with absolute consciousness, who do not want to relate to their limitations and the relativity of maya, it is a problem, but the Tantra Shastras coupled with the Yoga Shastras more or less solved the problem.
In the science of kriya yoga the sages say that in this physical body, at the base of the spire is kundalini sleeping in eternal slumber. You may equate kundalini with pranashakti, moola prakriti or alinga prakriti, but it is the sleeping consciousness in every jiva. Through the practices of kriya yoga you awaken that kundalini and the mind is consumed. When the ego, related to the gross existence is dissolved and your mind begins to experience the inner awareness, wherever your mind stands, there its experiences get dissolved in the transcendental consciousness. Therefore I say : it is not necessary to fight with your mind.
There is no such thing as mind; it is energy. Mind operates through ida nadi, prana through pingala nadi - the negative and positive poles of awareness. The positive pole is time and the negative is spare. When time and space are separated, matter is in the unmanifest state. When time and space come closer to each other and meet at a point, that is called the explosion of the nucleus or the explosion of matter.
In Tantra the most important instruction is: do not fight with the mind! But what do you do? You sit for meditation on your ishta devata and thousands of things come to your mind. For one hour you are only wrestling with yourself. Do you know what you are doing? A very dangerous thing! One vritti of your mind wants to roam amidst the sensual experiences, but by suppressing this vritti you are antagonising yourself against yourself. You are creating a split and later you will not be able to face that split. That is one of the reasons why most religious people have these schizophrenic manifestations. They create an atmosphere of antagonism within themselves. You do not have to do that. You do not have to control the mind. You do not have to fight with a shadow. Once the awakening of kundalini begins, the mind automatically dissolves and the pranas are diverted. When you transcend, chakra after chakra, from mooladhara to swadhisthana, from swadhisthana to manipura, from manipura to anahata, from anahata to vishuddhi, and finally from vishuddhi to ajna, the ascension of energy is so powerful - the ascension of energy is so consuming! You tight the fire, the heat is burned. You light the fire, the vasana are burned. It is not necessary even to kill the desires. It is not necessary to suppress the vasana - you just transcend!