In tantra there is a very important practice called tattwa shuddhi. I would like to tell you just a little bit about it. Tattwa shuddhi is a practice in tantra which is not done every day, but once in a year for eleven or twelve days. In this practice the body is considered to be a yantra. You are just a geometrical map. Here you are the centre of the circumference, here you are the triangle, and here you are the square. You are just a geometrical pattern.
You are the yantras, which have different colours. From the top to the bottom you do not have just one colour, because you are not one colour. We are a combination of three primordial colours.
These three primordial colours represent the three states of prakriti or nature. These three states of nature are known as sattwa, equilibrium; rajas, activity, motion, progress and evolution; and tamas, hibernation or dormancy. These three states are represented by three colours, and we are a combination of all these three.
Sometimes sattwa becomes predominant, because that is how our teachers, our gurus, our priests, our books, teach us all the time – to be sattwic. So intellectually or philosophically or religion-wise we are sattwic – ‘Be good, do good; be kind, be compassionate’. We believe in this, don’t we? This is our sattwic belief, but what are we? On the top, we are sattwic. On the intellectual plane, we are sattwic. In the realm of philosophy, we are sattwic. In the realm of religious beliefs, we are sattwic. In the realms of our social conventions, and so on and so forth, we are sattwic, but are we really sattwic?
We are rajasic. How can you say we are rajasic? Because we have desires. Accept it! Every moment we have desires. There is not a moment that we pass without desires. There may be ordinary desires – I want a glass of water. I want to drink tea. I want to go. I want to come. I want to do this. I want to do that. But there may be very powerful desires – desires to be a world leader, desire to be a prophet, desire to be a Messiah, desire to be a great guru.
These are called desires and cravings and wants and passions. That is the sign of the presence of rajo guna in us. So we have so much of rajasic stuff in us that the sattwic frame cannot hold it properly, and sometimes it breaks. Sometimes very good people become criminal and are jailed because they are only trying to hold the fire in an ordinary plastic cover, it breaks and they go to jail. Many swamis, many gurus, many priests and many good people, so-called ‘good people’ do so many things because our nature is essentially rajasic.
How is it possible therefore, for us to purify that structure of our personality about which we do not even know very much? Nor do we want to accept it, and if we accept it we go insane. We have so many complexes about ourselves. We have so much guilt about ourselves. We have so many things about us that we cannot function properly in our day-to-day life.
In this respect, the sadhana of tattwa shuddhi is of paramount importance before taking to any tantric practice, whether it is kriya yoga or mantra yoga, or any other powerful yogic and tantric practices, because tattwa shuddhi is something like cleansing the whole vessel, the whole structure, the whole body and mind, thereby trying to create a congenial atmosphere. The importance of tattwa shuddhi lies in the realization of that being in us which is ruling our destiny, which is controlling our actions, and which is controlling our thoughts every minute, and they call it Papa Purusha. Christians will understand it better as ‘eternal sin’ or original sin. Papa Purusha is that being which makes us commit those acts which rebound on us again and again.
There are karmas which do not rebound. They are called nishkama karma yoga, that is karma done with total detachment, karma done with selflessness. Any action done with selflessness, with total detachment, does not rebound on us. It does not create papa. It does not feed that being. But any action which is done with the intention of fulfilment of motive rebounds on us again and again, thereby the Papa Purusha becomes more powerful. When that being becomes more powerful, then the chances of enlightenment, of inner awareness, are remote. You cannot go forward.
There is another important difference. In other forms of yoga, meditation is achieved by practice, by constant effort – Patanjali says in the Raja Yoga Sutras to go on practising again and again. By constant relentless practice, by personal effort, by purifying your mind, by perfecting the asanas, by holding onto the breath etc., you bring your mind to one-pointedness. Tantra says something else. You should now be prepared to listen to this.
Meditation is an effect of the awakening of kundalini. Awakening of kundalini is not an effect of meditation. You mark my words very carefully – meditation is an effect of the awakened kundalini. When, through the practice of mantra yoga, the realization of the yantra takes place, sounds are heard, forms are seen, smells are smelt, fears are experienced but not to the extent that you are sent to the mental hospital, then there comes a moment when awakening takes place.
The moment that awakening takes place the mind drops, just like the mercury, from fifteen degrees centigrade to ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero, then maybe minus. Because the concept of mind is based on avidya. As long as there is the divided field of energy, there is this worldly mind. Once the unified field of energy is realized, then the duality of this individual mind and the cosmic mind or universal mind is completely mitigated.
If fifteen or twenty pitchers containing water are placed in a well of water, they are divided. There is water inside the pitcher, there is water outside the pitcher in the well, but still they are not unified because there is a barrier. And what is that barrier? It is the pitcher. Break it, and once broken, the water of the pitcher and the water of the well mingle. That is called unified field of energy, when the individual consciousness and the universal consciousness become one.
This unified field theory can be best understood by understanding the relationship between the individual mind and the universal mind. Individual mind and universal mind are not two different entities. They are one and the same. The only thing is that individual mind is containing its own karma. It is carrying its own samskara. You destroy those karma and samskara. So in the tantric system of meditation you have first mantra, then yantra, and then awakening of kundalini takes place.
Within us there is an untapped, unknown reservoir of mysterious substance. You can call it energy. You can call it substance or whatever you like. The yogis have preferred to call it kundalini. They have used the word ‘kundalini’ because it is situated in the pit, although most books in kundalini yoga talk about ‘the coil’, without meaning anything to those authors including myself. I also wrote that way once. I did not know then because I was only consulting the books. I thought that there was a coiled serpent.
In Sanskrit, the word ‘kundal’ means coil, but in Sanskrit the word kundalini is derived from the word ‘kunda’. Kunda means a deep place of fire. The pit where a fire is lit is called kunda. You may know that in India the people lit the fire in a deep pit and then offered a mixture of barley, sesame, cow’s butter and one or two more things to the fire. This particular place is called kunda, and this kundalini is that particular reservoir which is situated in the pit.
Where is that pit? Is it in the subtle body, or is it in the causal body, or is it in the gross body? According to Samkhya philosophy, tantric philosophy and Vedanta philosophy, of course, there are many levels of bodies, but all of them are broadly classified into three. One is called the gross body which you see here. Everything has a gross body. A tree has a gross body, animals have gross bodies, creatures have gross bodies, oceans and continents have gross bodies. They are called sthula sharira, gross body, which can be perceived by the senses, through the eyes and nose.
The second classification of the body is called the sukshma sharira, subtle body. Subtle bodies are those which cannot be perceived with the gross medium of the senses, which can be understood by the deeper senses like mind, intellect, intuition, psyche etc.
Then there is a third classification of the body called causal body. The causal body is called karana sharira. This relates to the processes of causality in the whole universal scheme. In the universe, in the process of creation you may have studied that there are three things — time, space and causality. The third, causality, is concerned with the causal body, and this causal body is nothing but a constant interaction between cause and effect of different things which have happened inside you, and different things which have happened outside you. It is this karana sharira which is considered to be unconscious.
This is the karana sharira which is supposed to be the seat of kundalini. And where is this karana sharira to be represented, fixed or allotted in the physical body? Are these three bodies separate from each other, or do they live in each other? It is just like butter in the milk, and milk in the butter. Where is the butter in the milk, and where is the milk in the butter? The three bodies are interspersed, mixed up like khichari and you have to separate them by constant practice. Therefore, consider this physical body as the base.
Now, we have to decide and define which is the place in this physical body for that particular faculty of the subtle body. Thought, where is thought? Emotion, which is the seat of emotion? Where is the seat of passion? Where is the seat of fear? Of course, they are subtle things, but there is a seat for them in this physical body. In the same way, where is the seat of kundalini in this physical body? Where is the seat of the causal body? Is the seat of the causal body up on the head, or is it somewhere in the stomach?
The yogis have made it distinctly clear, and there are no two opinions about it. It is in mooladhara chakra that the seat of the karana sharira, the causal body, the seat of the individual unconscious is to be fixed. It is there. Where is that mooladhara chakra? Moola means ‘primordial’. That is the literal meaning, the root. Adhara means ‘basis’ or ‘substratum’ or ‘foundation’, on which something can stand or is supported. I am supported by this rostrum; if it is removed I will fall down. So it is the adhara.
Mooladhara is the primordial basis for human consciousness. And where is our basis? Where is our support? Where do we spring from? We spring from our mother’s uterus. At the root of the uterus in the female, behind the cervix, there is a tiny place, a tiny point, which is the fixed point of mooladhara chakra. It is there that the primordial, universal unconscious is to be accepted.
9 March 1985, Conway Hall, London, UK