“The universe is endless and beginningless.” Vimalananda was in a mood to talk, and plenty of time lay before us. “If you are sincere and work hard you will eventually reach the state of continual awareness that you are the Universal Soul, the One, the Atman or Brahman. Then you can truthfully say to yourself, ‘Aham Brahmasmi; I am Brahman.’ Our mortal consciousness has three normal states: waking, dream, and deep sleep. Turiya is the state beyond these three. In Turiya you are continually aware of being Brahman, the Absolute Reality, and of Brahman being all. But it is only the beginning.
“In spite of knowing yourself to be the Brahman you cannot do every thing the Brahman can. You cannot create, preserve, and destroy universes. It is all very well to know you are the Brahman, but there is an immense dif ference between imagining that you can create your own universe and actu ally being able to do so. While you and I are limited to the universe in which we live, a Rishi can create as many universes as there are stars in the sky. The difference between you and a Rishi lies in the power of will.
“To know that you are the Brahman is jnana, ordinary spiritual knowl edge. When there is full knowledge of the Brahman no iota of ego remains; discrimination, doubt, and determination disappear. This is Nirvikalpa Samadhi. You can be satisfied that you have reached the Absolute once you
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have achieved Nirvikalpa Samadhi, but there is no joy in it; it is dry, it has no juice, no rasa. How can joy exist when everything-observed, observer, and observation-has ceased to exist? Jnana is good, but vijnana, special knowledge, is far better. When you reach the state of vijnana you realize, ‘Oh, so there is someone behind the scene who is playing about and direct ing everyone else.’ When this happens you become a Siddha. Only when you go beyond Turiya can you understand and know Siddhas.
“A Siddha is one who returns from Nirvikalpa Samadhi to perfect his vijnana. Here is how it works: You go from the state of ignorance in which you possess attributes to the attributeless state of jnana and then back to the qualified state again, with a difference. Just compare it to being in the belly of the Mother, from which you will have to be born over and over again, with being on Her lap, where you can play about as much as you like and She will keep an eye on you. You exist in relation with Maya either way, since you are manifested, but there is a big difference between being in the samsara and being on top of it. A Siddha does experience joy and sorrow, and the other pairs of dualities, but not in the same way as before.
“Both an ordinary man and a Siddha cry when they visit the smashan, which is the true temple of God, the place of Eternal Reality. An ordinary man cries tears of misery, because he suffers from separation; he thinks he has lost something he thought he possessed. A Siddha cries tears of joy, because he understands the play of Mahakala, the Lord of Time. Mahakala can have no effect on a Siddha, who has gone beyond time, space and cau sation. A Siddha can safely admire the play of Nature as an inviolate observer
“Nowadays everyone who gets a little siddhi becomes a ‘siddha.’ Such people are only fooling the gullible and cheating themselves. Anything you strive to obtain is a siddhi, and you will find that in Kali Yuga many people are ready to strive for siddhis, for supernatural powers, but few are willing to strive for God. There are plenty of supernatural powers to be had, and many of them are very easy to obtain. One of the simplest is for the control of snakes. You can succeed at it in a single day. Our friend Chotu has done it. He doesn’t show off any more, but in the beginning just for fun he would go up to a cobra or a krait, pick it up and hang it around his neck as if he were Lord Shiva, and the snake would not do a thing; it dare not. Even if he sticks his finger into its mouth nothing would happen.
“You Westerners have siddhis too, of course. You have made great techno logical advances in a very short time. You have learned how to see and hear across vast distances, how to fly through the air, how to harness the power
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of the atom. All these are supernatural powers. You have done your own researches and have demonstrated the results, and it is only right that you insist on seeing the results of our researches before you believe in what we say. The only thing is, all these achievements are outside the body. They are gadgets, external things which can always be lost or broken. Here in India we have turned our attention inward, and the results we get can never be mislaid or destroyed. This is the big difference between India and the West.
“Most gurus will tell you to shun siddhis like the plague, and this is cor rect, in the sense that it is so easy to get attached to them. Obtaining a sid dhi is a great achievement, and when you obtain one it is natural to immediately think of showing off its power to others, but to do so is very foolish and dangerous. The real purpose of siddhis, which exist in the subtle body, is to remove one’s karmas from the causal body, which is basically just a warehouse of karmas, and then to repay these karmic debts. The subtle body is the intermediary between the causal and physical bodies. It is less subject to gravitation than the physical body, so when it is released from the grasp of the physical body it can go higher and higher; there is no limit to the heights it can reach, But its main job is to go into the causal body and remove the karmas stored there.
“Being able to do this still does not make you a siddha. It is easy enough—relatively speaking—to learn how to take out your astral body. It is a greater achievement to be able to sit in one place and maintain con sciousness of many different places and many different planes of existence all at once. But even that does not make you a Siddha.
“You must search long and hard before you find a real Siddha. You cannot become a Siddha over a weekend; nor can you follow a correspondence course and get a diploma by mail. No; you have to work your behind off, lit erally, sitting in meditation or sitting and performing rituals for lifetimes on end.
“And even after so much penance you must still be tested. Naturally the test for becoming a Siddha is very rough. I know the Mahapurusha in Gimnar who is responsible for the testing of sadhus. He might come to a sadhu in any form, and his test would take only a minute or two. If the sadhu passed, wonderful. If not, his matted locks would be cut and he would have to leave Gimnar. 99.5 percent failed. Five-hundred-year-old, one-thousand-year-old, even five-thousand-year-old sadhus couldn’t pass. So it is no joke to become a Siddha.”
Vimalananda used the term Mahapurusha, which literally means “Great Soul,” to refer to any being who has become immortal as a result of sadhana.
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Rishis, Munis, Naths and Siddhas are all Mahapurushas.
“But it is all worth it. To become a Siddha is a unique accomplishment, because you go beyond all the Elements and you can then play about with them as you please. A Siddha has no physical restrictions. You become immortal, which means that you are ethereal, but whenever you wish you can materialize a physical body for yourself and move about. Such a body is just like anyone else’s body, as solid as can be. Once you’ve finished what ever it was you wanted to do, you just dematerialize; it’s that simple. Each Element goes back to its source: Earth to Earth, Water to Water, etc.
“Once a Siddha was gracious enough to demonstrate this to me. He sat in front of me and within seconds, on the ground where he had been, there was a pile of some solid material, a little puddle of water and a warm breeze. Just to convince myself, I put out a finger and touched the water; it was real. After a few minutes of being discorporate he remanifested himself. But there was a flaw on his arm, as if some of the flesh had been dug out. When I asked him about it he replied, ‘Didn’t you remove a little of the water?’ Then I understood. But even that is only the beginning. I know a Mahapurusha who has such perfect knowledge of the Earth Element that if he even shakes one of his matted locks with his hand the earth will quake, and giant waves will roll in the ocean.
“Mortals cannot understand how Siddhas play about. Sometimes, if he feels like it, a Siddha may remove his head from his body and walk around with it in his hands. People will be so amazed to see it that they will run after him just to find out what it might be. When they start to make too big a noise about it he will replace it on his shoulders as if nothing had happened. After staying in one place for some time he may become famous. Then, to prevent being trapped and made to do others’ work he will discorporate and no one will be able to find him.
“Siddhas are too far away for most people. Unless a Siddha wants to meet you, you will never succeed at meeting him; it’s just impossible. Besides, even if you could meet a Siddha would you know how to react? There are only two ways to react to something which is unknown to you. Either you do as most people do and define the thing according to all the old notions that you have been given by your relatives, friends, teachers, priests, and so on, or you look at it in a new, non-verbal way. If something is really new to you how will you be able to describe it verbally, since no word exists for it? For example, would you please describe for me the taste of sugar?”
“Ah, well, it’s … sweet.” “Yes, but that doesn’t describe anything. ‘Sweet’ can only be tasted, it
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cannot be described in words. You may hear about ‘sweet’ all your life, but until you taste sugar you will never really know what sweetness is.
“Likewise, you may get the general idea of a thing by talking about it, but words are no substitute for experience. The verbal way is second-hand, which is of no use to a jnani, who wants to experience Reality. How then can it be of any use to a Siddha, who is three steps higher than a jnani?
“Siddhas can experience things which most humans would never be able to imagine even after millions of lives. Just one example: the ancient bathing festival called the Kumbha Mela, the ‘Pot Festival,’ which is held every three years by turns in Hardwar, Prayaga (Allahabad), Nasik, and Ujjain when par ticular conjunctions are in the sky. They say that a bath in the appropriate holy river at these particular times gives you a drop of Amrita from the celes tial pot of nectar.
“The most important of these festivals is held in Prayaga, at a place called the Triveni Sangama where three rivers come together: the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the unseen Sarasvati. The Sarasvati is hidden because here it repre sents Sushumna, the most important of the nadis, the nadi which carries Kundalini to the Unmanifest. Sushumna’s course is hidden in the body, just as the River Sarasvati’s course is hidden on Earth.
“Now, although a bath on the appropriate day in the Tri veni Sangama provides some benefit, the Kumbha Mela is basically an esoteric festival. On Kumbha Day a Siddha need not bother to go to Prayaga for his bath. He has his own Triveni Sangama and his own pot of nectar right inside him. His Triveni Sangama is his Ajna Chakra, where the Surya and Chandra Nadis meet Sushumna. You know the two roads to the Ajna Chakra: the right and the left nostrils, jnana and bhakti. Whichever path you take, your own Triveni Sangama exists in the Ajna Chakra. A Sid dha sits wherever he is and he-his ego, his Kundalini Shakti-takes a dip, by which he obtains a drop of Amrita from his own pot of nectar, his own head.”
“So here,” I interposed, “the ‘pot’ is like the pot of Ghata Sthapana and does not refer to the chest or to pranayama, even though the word kumbha
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is used.”
“Oh, but it does refer to pranayama as well. On the specified day at the specified time the Siddha sits in a certain posture and concentrates his prana in the Vishuddha Chakra. His breathing slows down to two finger breadths, then to only one. This is not forcible restraint, remember, this is the true ‘kevala kumbhaka,’ in which the breath slows and then stops auto matically when the two flows become perfectly balanced. Once the Siddha has balanced his breaths he draws the prana from both into the Ajna Chakra. Ajna stands for what?”
“For guru ajna, instructions from the guru.” “Yes. Here the guru is the sun, the world’s guru. Breathing slows almost to a stop when the Kundalini Shakti reaches the Ajna Chakra. It is not a question of holding the breath in; it is not inhalation, but rather continuous and complete exhalation. If you go for a swim and dive but inhale you will float. If you exhale you will sink right down to the bottom, which is neces sary here. The ego must dive in and sink to the very bottom of the stream to be cleansed of all her blemishes. When she is totally cleansed she becomes the Kula Kundalini. At that point, when the Kundalini Shakti is in her purest form, she becomes eligible for holy nuptials with her Shiva. The result is Sadashiva, the eternal form of Shiva.
“Just as Krishna insists that the gopis show themselves to Him naked, Shiva will lie with Kundalini only when She becomes completely naked, completely stripped of all the three coverings, especially the Three Gunas. When I was a naked sadhu I would always ask any other naked sadhu I might meet, “Just by taking off your clothes do you achieve anything? Do you become liberated? Only if you can remove Satrva, Rajas, and Tamas have you really taken something off; otherwise, no.’
“You probably were not very popular as a sadhu,” I opined.
“No, but why should I be popular? I was not trying to win any popularity contests. A sadhu should be searching for truth, not approval, and to get to the truth you have to become truly naked. You have a phrase in English: the naked truth.’ Translated into Sanskrit it becomes ‘nagna satya,’ which could also mean, ‘Truth is naked,’ or ‘Nakedness is Truth.’ I like that last version: Nakedness is Truth. The true nakedness comes when you peel off the three coatings of the ego: the Three Gunas, the Six Tastes, and the Five Elements. Only then does She become true. They say Sanskrit is a dead language, but I think we’ve just created a new word.
“A water bath will not remove any of your real stains; it takes a mental bath to do the job. The stream of Amrita in which the ego bathes is a glan
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dular substance, a secretion of the pineal gland. The conjunction of the con stellations causes the pineal and pituitary to hypersecrete, releasing a stream of Amrita in which to bathe the ego. So, by bathing in one of the four holy cities on Kumbha Day you get your physical bath, and by this internal pro cess you take a spiritual bath. Then you become eligible for your astral or adhidaivika bath, which unfortunately is indescribable. People come and go, enjoying the external Kumbha bath over and over again, but this spritual bath is something quite different. No one ever likes to return from this inter nal bath.”