Tag: Meditation

Shirshasana, Sushumna and Nondual Meditation: Balancing Stillness, Pranic Flow and Head Pressure in Worldly Life

Shirshasana has traditionally been regarded as a major or “top” asana because it reverses the body’s normal orientation and strongly changes bodily awareness. My experience has made me wonder whether familiarity with head-centered sensations may help during meditation, where awareness can sometimes become concentrated around the head. This should not be understood as a claim that increased intracranial pressure is desirable or necessary; the “pressure” I mean is an experiential sensation of fullness, heaviness or activity.

In shoulder stand and Halasana, I have noticed that small changes in position can markedly alter head discomfort. Slightly lifting the head or allowing the feet to touch a wall can change weight distribution and reduce the sensation. This shows me that posture, alignment, support and muscular effort strongly influence subjective experience. Discomfort, however, should not automatically be interpreted as spiritual progress; persistent, severe or unusual head pain deserves attention rather than spiritualization.

This becomes particularly relevant to my practice of nondual meditation, including what I call shavid or quantum darshan, especially during busy worldly days. Intense awareness can sometimes be accompanied by strong head sensations. Daily kundalini yoga postures and breathing exercises seem to complement this by conditioning the body and attention to controlled changes in posture, breathing, muscular effort and internal sensation. I find that this can make intense experiences less disturbing and increase my ability to remain present rather than react to every sensation.

I therefore see kundalini practice less as a search for dramatic energetic experiences and more as preparation, grounding and conditioning. Repeated exposure to controlled intensity may make unusual bodily and mental experiences feel less foreign, although this does not prove that every sensation is caused by kundalini energy.

Yoga and nondual meditation can consequently complement each other without requiring withdrawal from ordinary life. Yoga works through body and breath; meditation works directly with awareness. Work, responsibilities, conversation and stimulation become part of the practice when awareness is maintained amid them.

Most importantly, head pressure should never become the goal. Stronger pressure does not necessarily mean deeper meditation, stronger kundalini or spiritual advancement. The meaningful measure is greater clarity, steadiness and non-reactivity. If a posture causes discomfort, changing or stopping it is more sensible than forcing it. Persistent physical symptoms should not automatically be interpreted as awakening.

For me, Shirshasana and related practices are valuable not because they create a desired amount of pressure, but because they may help the body and attention become familiar with changing sensations. Daily yoga provides a grounding counterpart to nondual meditation: the busy world supplies stimulation, meditation reveals how awareness responds, and yoga disciplines the body, breath and attention. The deeper aim is therefore not greater intensity, but the ability to meet whatever arises—with steadiness, clarity and less reactivity. However, when there is enough stillness, nondual meditation in the midst of worldly activity becomes difficult. It feels almost like water cannot be both completely still and flowing at the same time: in one place there is stasis, while in another there is movement. How, then, can the two truly coexist?

Regarding head pressure, I also experience that a certain initial upward movement or “pumping” toward the head is needed to begin breathless meditation and initiate the flow through Sushumna. With the gaze turned upward and attention resting on the infinite, all-pervading sky as the Self, or Ekarnava, a rise in head pressure may arise together with bliss. This is not experienced as discomfort but as a positive sign of the meditation deepening.
However, if the pressure becomes uncomfortable, awareness can be lowered and expanded beyond the head. The sense of Self need not be extended only upward toward the infinite; it can also be expanded downward and sideways, in all directions. This reduces the head pressure while allowing the Sushumna flow to continue. Once established, the flow can sustain itself for roughly an hour, until, in my experience, the available prana becomes exhausted.

Spiritual Awakening and Self-Realisation: Mental Chaos, Nondual Meditation and Worldly Life

When Inner Calm Suddenly Meets Mental Rush

I have often wondered whether spiritual awakening and self-realisation can ever be accompanied by suicidal thoughts or deep depression. My own understanding became clearer when I looked back at something I experienced during my university days. I had become extremely calm and contained, and I was able to dissolve mental chaos quite easily. The inward movement was becoming natural to me. I was accustomed to silence, observation and the gradual disappearance of disturbing mental movements. Yet, near the end of that period, something unexpected happened. A sudden rush of recognition arose. Profession and family, which appeared to be ordinary parts of life, suddenly seemed to be creating chaos and opposing one another at the same time. It was not simply one particular problem; the whole structure of ordinary life seemed to reveal its contradictions together.
There were actually no clear-cut self-inflicting at that time. Rather, I had become somewhat reluctant about worldly growth. Perhaps this was partly an effect of my nondual philosophy and the way I was working with it. Desires were still there, but they were no longer experienced as cravings. Yet, as I could see in practical life, ordinary desires can be difficult to fulfil unless they become strong cravings in today’s materialistic world. People driven by intense cravings can easily move ahead of those whose desires remain moderate and intellectually restrained. From the outside, therefore, my condition could sometimes look like depression or a lack of ambition. From within, however, it did not necessarily feel like depression. I could feel that, in my own understanding, all was well.
There were also occasions when I realised how easily such a state could be misunderstood by others. Even a casual or playful remark about self-infliction, made perhaps as a kind of warning or expression of frustration, could backfire because people might understand it in a completely different sense from what was intended. That taught me an important practical lesson: never speak casually in such language, because others may attach a meaning to it that is entirely different from one’s own inner meaning. It is also possible that such a condition might have helped me in another way, by bringing more care or attention from people around me. Much depends on the society and the people one lives among. Some societies or individuals may treat a person who appears withdrawn, unsuccessful or vulnerable even more harshly, while others may recognise the difficulty and extend a helping hand. The same outward condition can therefore produce very different consequences depending on how people respond to it.
The experience nevertheless showed me something important. Even a person who has developed considerable inner calm, and perhaps has reached a profound state of awakening or self-realisation, can become temporarily destabilised when an unusually large movement of recognition and mental activity suddenly arises. Inner calm does not automatically mean that one has already learned how to integrate every possible contradiction of ordinary life. That integration may require another kind of training: learning to carry inner freedom into the full complexity of family, profession, desire, responsibility and the material world. Once a person has genuinely experienced and learned to navigate such complexity, it may leave a lasting resilience—perhaps even lifelong—so that the person can remain much less vulnerable to similar disturbances later, even if he eventually steps away from a demanding or struggle-filled life.

In a nutshell, self-inflictive, depressed, frustrated or hopeless moods may arise from unresolved emotions. Awakening and spirituality can help greatly in recognising, processing and resolving these emotions, but they also have their limits. When unresolved emotions accumulate faster than one’s capacity to clear them, the mind can become increasingly burdened and depression may arise. These unresolved emotions leave imprints, or what may be experienced as a kind of darkness over the self, creating a feeling of inner heaviness and even suffocation. In this sense, spiritual practice can help clear the darkness, but when the emotional load becomes greater than the person’s present capacity to process it, even a spiritually inclined person may become temporarily overwhelmed.

I have also observed another tendency in worldly life: a person who carries less mental or emotional baggage may sometimes appear more capable of carrying additional burdens. Others may therefore unconsciously shift some of their own burden onto him, seeking relief for themselves and creating an apparent balance of burdens. But in this process of taking and giving, the extra burden may sometimes become concentrated on the person who was already relatively free. What appears to distribute the burden equally can therefore have the opposite effect, leaving the awakened or inwardly developed person with a load that becomes unexpectedly difficult to lift.

Awakening Does Not Mean That Mental Turbulence Will Never Return

This also changed the way I look at what is sometimes called spiritual purification. Daily cleaning of the mind does not necessarily mean that the mind will become progressively quiet without interruption. Sometimes suppressed thoughts, emotions, memories and contradictions may come into awareness together, often triggered by external conditions. After several calm days, a person may suddenly experience a great rush of thoughts and wonder why everything has become chaotic again. The contrast itself can produce exhaustion, hopelessness, anxiety or even depression-like feelings. But such a phase does not automatically mean that spiritual practice has failed. It can mean that the person has encountered more psychological material than he is presently able to process comfortably.

There is also an important difference between seeing thoughts and being overwhelmed by them. In a stable contemplative process, thoughts may arise without having the same authority over the person. During an overwhelming phase, however, thoughts can become repetitive, emotionally charged and convincing. In such a situation, trying to meditate harder or forcing the mind to become empty may not always help. A Sometimes the better direction is to reduce the intensity of inward practice, return to ordinary activity, maintain sleep and food, walk, remain connected with other people and allow the nervous system to settle. Spiritual practice should not becoms another form of struggle against the mind. For me, a nondual practice such as Sharirvigyan Darshan or Quantum Darshan, applied in practical life, may be one of the easiest and least stressful forms of meditation during such periods. Instead of demanding prolonged inward concentration or withdrawal from ordinary activity, it allows awareness to continue while one is living, working, dealing with family, fulfilling responsibilities and facing the ordinary chaos of life. In this way, meditation becomes less a separate exercise and more a natural way of living.

The Difference Between Spiritual Crisis and Self-Realisation

I do not think suicidal thinking should be regarded as a necessary stage of awakening. A profound spiritual experience can coincide with suicidal thoughts, but that does not make those thoughts a higher spiritual attainment. A person may be undergoing what is sometimes described as a spiritual emergency, where identity, meaning and perception change so rapidly that the psychological system becomes overwhelmed. At the same time, similar experiences can occur with depression, dissociation, mania, psychosis, sleep deprivation or other psychological conditions. Therefore, an extraordinary inner experience should not automatically be interpreted as purely spiritual.

For me, an important point is that realising that the ego is not the ultimate reality does not mean that the body or life should be neglected. Self-realisation is not about destroying ordinary life; it is about changing the way we identify with it. In fact, spirituality can make life more meaningful and stable by giving a person hope, connection and a deeper reason to live. But if spiritual struggle makes a person feel that life has lost all meaning, or that he cannot reconcile his inner experience with ordinary life, it can have the opposite effect. It is also practically clear that spiritual life cannot easily advance without some worldly support. The body needs food, shelter, health, rest and social security, while the mind also needs a reasonably stable environment. Spiritual practice therefore does not exist completely apart from worldly life. Some basic worldly support gives a person the foundation from which deeper spiritual work can continue.

Why an Inward Life Can Become Vulnerable to Sudden Chaos

Looking back, I think there is another important reason why such destabilisation can happen. A person who has become habitual of a very inward and calm life may become highly trained in dealing with mental movements that arise within that controlled environment, but may not be equally trained in living amid external chaos. He may know how to sit quietly, observe thoughts and dissolve inner disturbances, yet have comparatively little experience of simultaneously handling family demands, professional responsibility, friendly chaos, interpersonal conflict, uncertainty and other pressures of ordinary life.

Then, when an extraordinary amount of chaos suddenly arises, the person may be disturbed not because his inner practice was false, but because he had not yet developed enough experience of carrying that inner stability into difficult circumstances. Calmness in the absence of disturbance and stability in the presence of disturbance are related, but they are not exactly the same accomplishment.

Sharirvigyan Darshan as a Bridge Between Inner Life and Ordinary Life

This is where my experience with Sharirvigyan Darshan became important. Instead of trying to escape profession, family, body and ordinary responsibilities, I began living and working according to the principles of Sharirvigyan Darshan. For me, this worked wonderfully. It stabilised me and, surprisingly, did not slow spiritual progress. I felt that the pace of spiritual development became even faster than before, but I also realised that this way of living has its limits. As long as the body has enough energy, one can deploy that energy in both the worldly and spiritual realms together. With advancing age, however, a person naturally has to move more in one direction or the other. Therefore, the spiritual way may gradually become more suitable, although some worldly engagement is still necessary for life. Even then, whatever worldly activity remains can be combined with nondual contemplation, so that the two do not become completely separate.

I think the reason was that ordinary life itself became part of the training. Family, profession, relationships, bodily experiences, desires, responsibilities and social situations were no longer separate from spiritual work. They became the actual environment in which awareness had to function. Instead of learning only how to dissolve mental chaos in a quiet inward state, I was repeatedly exposed to the chaos of life and could use the same understanding to process it.

This creates a kind of training through repeated experience. A person first learns calmness in a quiet environment. Then he learns to retain that calmness while ordinary disturbances occur. With continued experience, he develops confidence that even when something extraordinary happens, mental chaos can arise without necessarily controlling or destroying him. The disturbance becomes familiar rather than frightening.

From Escaping Chaos to Learning How to Dissolve It

This, to me, is perhaps the deeper lesson. The goal is not to create a life in which chaos never appears. Such a life may provide calmness, but it does not necessarily prepare one for the unpredictable intensity of existence. The stronger stability comes when one can remain inwardly centred while life continues to move around him.

Sharirvigyan Darshan, as I experienced it, provided precisely this integration. Instead of separating spiritual life from worldly life, it allowed the two to operate together. I have seen many people leave the material realm in order to become more spiritual, but my approach was almost the opposite: I continued to engage with the material realm while carrying the spiritual realm along with it. I did not see family, profession and worldly responsibilities as obstacles that had to be abandoned. Rather, I tried to bring spiritual understanding into them.

I have seen, for example, a doctor leave his job to become a writer, filmmaker and director around a spiritual figure. My own path was different. I continued with my job while becoming a writer and even got awakening like a spiritual figure. I did not have to leave my professional life for spirituality instead it further grew with this unique nondual philosophy. To me, these things did not appear contradictory. I am not presenting this as an exaggeration or as an achievement to be compared with others; it is simply how I experienced what happened in my own life through this practical philosophy. It may also be that my profession did not carry the same level of responsibility as that of a doctor, whose decisions can sometimes directly affect whether a person lives or dies. Human life is more precious than animal life, and the emotional and moral weight of such responsibility can therefore be much greater. However, I feel that spirituality properly integrated into a physician’s profession should not itself do any harm. If anything, it can strengthen the value placed on human life and make the work more meaningful than when it is approached through purely worldly considerations. If difficulties still arise, they may be due to other factors working together rather than spirituality itself.

Of course, no philosophy or spiritual discipline can make a person completely incapable of being disturbed. Even a highly experienced practitioner can become overwhelmed by sufficiently extreme circumstances. The real achievement is different: disturbance becomes less frightening, less sticky and less capable of reorganising the whole personality around itself.

Thus my earlier experience and my later understanding fit together. I once learned to dissolve mental chaos mainly through inward calmness. Later, by living fully in ordinary life through Sharirvigyan Darshan, I learned something broader: one does not become truly stable by escaping chaos; one becomes stable by becoming experienced in remaining oneself while chaos moves through oneself. Later on, I again shifted from the struggle of active worldly life toward calmer meditation, but now with much better understanding and control. I had already experienced worldly life and its chaos closely, so the inward movement was no longer the same as before. It became a more informed and balanced return to calmness. This may be an important part of the two-way movement between mental purification and worldly engagement, where each strengthens the other and gradually leads toward genuine integration and self-realisation.

Hanuman as Monkey God: The Deeper Meaning of “Tumharo Bhajan Ram Ko Paave”

Hanuman as the Symbolic Union of Monkey and Human

The line of the Hanuman Chalisa, “Tumharo bhajan Ram ko paave,” has always appeared to me as one of its most amazing and insightful statements. Its simple meaning is that through devotion to Hanuman, one attains Ram. But when I look at Hanuman not only as a religious figure but also as a symbol, the line opens into a much deeper meaning. Hanuman is a monkey god, and I see this expression literally as a blend of the characteristics of the monkey and the human. Neither the monkey alone becomes this god nor the human alone. The combination becomes Hanuman.

The monkey side of Hanuman represents a peculiar set of characteristics. A monkey is highly active and does not seem comfortable remaining idle for long. Even when it has no obvious work, it may begin moving, climbing, shaking a branch, looking around, or changing its position. It lives high on trees and naturally moves through open space. Its food can be seen, symbolically, as simple and sattvic: fruits, leaves, sprouts and other natural things. It is also constantly moving its attention. It does not usually fix its gaze or mind on one thing for a long time. It looks here, there and everywhere, changes position, wanders from one place to another and does not remain psychologically fixed in one object. This gives an impression of great activity combined with detachment.

I am using these qualities as spiritual symbolism rather than making a scientific claim that monkeys literally have no rajas or tamas. The point is what these visible characteristics can represent when a human being consciously embodies them. A monkey appears light-bodied, mobile, active and relatively free from the heavy kind of attachment through which human beings become fixed in possessions, places and objects. It may quarrel at times, of course, but symbolically it suggests an existence based much more on movement and immediate action than on prolonged fixation.

When Monkey Characteristics Enter a Developed Human Mind

This becomes especially interesting when the same characteristics are embodied by a human being. Human consciousness has the further capacity for sustained meditation, self-observation, discrimination and inner transformation. My understanding is that constant activity, detachment and sattvic living free a large amount of mental energy that otherwise remains occupied in attachment, possession, unnecessary thought and psychological fixation. That energy becomes available for meditation.

Then something remarkable can happen: the meditation image can become continuously present in the mind. It is no longer necessary to make a great effort every time to bring it back. It begins to express itself and shine almost constantly. After awakening, that established meditation becomes the basis for resting in samadhi. In this sense, the mind that was once continuously moving can finally arrive at a state of perfect rest.

This is where I connect Hanuman with Ram. I understand Ram not merely as a historical person or external deity, but also as a state of being, a state of rest. The word itself can be associated with resting or delight, and the historical Rama can then be understood as the godly person who perfectly embodied that state. Thus the symbolism becomes very beautiful: Hanuman represents dynamic activity without attachment, while Rama represents perfect rest.

Why “Tumharo Bhajan Ram Ko Paave” Is So Deep

Seen in this way, “Tumharo bhajan Ram ko paave” means devotion to you makes get Rama, becomes much more than a simple devotional promise. Hanuman is not the final destination who keeps the devotee attached to himself. He is the bridge to Ram. The devotee begins with Hanuman, with his strength, activity, devotion, purity and freedom from attachment, and through that devotion consciousness gradually moves toward Ram, the state of inner rest.

Bhajan here also need not mean only singing devotional songs. It can mean remembrance, contemplation, love, surrender and living in the consciousness represented by Hanuman. The highest quality of the true guru is similar: he does not keep the disciple dependent upon himself; he leads the disciple beyond himself to the ultimate.

This makes the progression almost experiential: Hanuman, devotion, transformation of consciousness, and finally Ram. The servant becomes the doorway to the Master.

The Monkey Can Express the Outer Characteristics, but the Human Can Realize Their Inner Effect

There is also an important difference between an actual monkey and a human being who embodies monkey-like qualities. A monkey can naturally express movement, activity, non-fixation, simplicity and detachment through its behavior, but its brain does not have the same developed human capacity for abstract meditation and deliberate spiritual self-transformation. The monkey therefore expresses the outer characteristics, but little, if any, of their deeper inner effect.

A human being can take these same qualities and turn them inward. Activity combined with detachment can reduce psychological entanglement. Sattvic living can simplify the mind. Non-fixation can reduce possessiveness. All this can release mental energy for dhyana. When meditation becomes stable, the meditation image can become spontaneous, and that spontaneous dhyana can mature into awakening and samadhi.

This is why, for me, Hanuman is not merely a theory or philosophy. It resembles something I have directly experienced in life.

My Own Experience of Becoming Like Hanuman Through Association

These characteristics were strongly present in my Dadaguru. He was, in my experience, almost like Hanuman himself: extraordinarily active, detached, simple, meditative and inwardly free. I did not consciously decide to imitate him. I simply lived in his company and absorbed the atmosphere and way of living for years.

I found these same characteristics gradually appearing in myself. The result was awakening and dhyana. In this sense, the symbolism became a living experience. What I am describing is therefore not simply an intellectual theory about monkeys, humans and gods. It is my attempt to understand something that actually happened in my life.

Later, karma-yoga and the non-dual philosophy of Sharirvigyan Darshan became a kind of medium for amplifying tendencies that were already present in small form. The philosophy strengthened activity, detachment, non-duality, sattvikata and meditation, and these in turn strengthened spiritual development.

The Monkey as a Natural Symbol of Non-Duality and Detachment

Some very simple monkey behaviors also become meaningful in this symbolic reading. A monkey does not necessarily make the elaborate distinctions that human beings make. It can take both raw and ripe fruit as food without building a philosophy around the difference. It can use an ornament and then throw it away. The famous image of a monkey being given a golden necklace captures this beautifully: it may know how to wear an ornament and use things with its human-like hands and arms, yet it can soon drop the object as though it has no lasting interest in it.

That is why I find the monkey an unexpectedly powerful symbol of detachment and even non-duality. It can use the world without becoming permanently fixed in it. It can move constantly without needing to possess every place it visits. It can handle objects without making them the center of its identity.

When such qualities become conscious in a developed human being, however, they can do something the monkey cannot do by itself: they can produce sustained meditation, awakening and samadhi. Then the monkey-like activity reaches its opposite end in Rama-like rest.

For me, this is the deeper meaning hidden in “Tumharo bhajan Ram ko paave.” Hanuman is the embodiment of activity, purity, devotion and detachment; Ram is the state in which consciousness finally rests. The monkey gives the outer symbolism, the human gives it conscious direction, and the awakened state gives it its final meaning. In that sense, Hanuman truly becomes the bridge from restless movement to perfect rest, from worldly activity to dhyana, and from dhyana to Ram.

Hanuman Ansh: The Hidden Spiritual Symbolism Behind Neem Karoli Baba’s Miracles

Watching Hanuman Ansh Through a Spiritual Lens

Friends, I went today to the theatre to see the blockbuster movie Hanuman Ansh. The emotions in the movie are powerful, but what interested me even more was how many of the apparently miraculous events can also be understood as symbolic expressions of inner spiritual experiences. I do not feel that every event has to be forced into either a literal miracle or a fictional story. Some may have been experienced as extraordinary events, while at the same time carrying a deeper psychological and yogic meaning.

One scene that particularly affected me was the freedom fighter eating halwa-puri. On the surface it is only a simple meal, but emotionally it becomes almost an ultimate expression of hunger and satiety. Hunger is one of the most basic limitations of the body, and the satisfaction that comes from food can communicate relief, dignity and joy without requiring elaborate words. The simplicity of the scene is precisely what gives it such emotional strength.

Baba Standing in Cold Water and the Symbolism of Kundalini

Another scene showed Baba standing in water and remaining in samadhi for an extended period. My own feeling while watching it was that the cold water could symbolically represent a powerful stimulus to the body, with the resulting inward movement being portrayed through yogic language as energy rising from Muladhara through Sushumna. In the traditional Kundalini understanding, the awakening and upward movement of Shakti is associated with the transformation of consciousness and deeper states of meditation.

Of course, this should be understood as a yogic interpretation rather than as an established physiological explanation. Cold water produces strong bodily and autonomic responses, whereas science has not demonstrated that such responses are literally Kundalini moving through Sushumna. Still, as a symbolic reading of the scene, the connection is meaningful: the body is exposed to an intense experience while awareness appears to become increasingly inward and absorbed.

The Prison Lock as Liberation From Limited Identification

The events that appear miraculous in Baba’s life can similarly be understood as symbolic. When the prison lock opens by itself and Baba wanders outside, I see something more than simply a miraculous opening of a physical lock. The prison can represent the limited identification of consciousness with the body, personality and circumstances. The opening of the lock can therefore symbolize the breaking of that limitation.

Baba walking out of the prison becomes an image of consciousness moving beyond confinement into something much vaster. If this is connected with samadhi, the symbolism becomes even deeper: the body may remain in the world, but awareness is no longer experienced as confined to the ordinary boundaries of individual identity. The movement is from prison, to locked identity, to the opening of the lock, to freedom and finally to the vastness of existence.

The Serpents Around Baba and Awakened Kundalini Shakti

I also remembered the account in which a devotee saw Neem Karoli Baba covered with hooded snakes while he was in samadhi. To me, this too can be understood as a powerful representation of awakened Kundalini Shakti. The serpent is one of the oldest symbols associated with Kundalini in Indian yoga. Therefore, seeing serpents surrounding a yogi absorbed in samadhi can naturally be interpreted as the devotee perceiving the immense Shakti associated with his spiritual state.

We cannot know from such an account whether actual snakes were physically present, whether the devotee experienced a visionary perception, or whether the experience was influenced by familiar spiritual symbolism. But the symbolic meaning remains striking: serpent, Kundalini Shakti, awakening, ascent of consciousness and samadhi all come together in a single image.

The Train That Would Not Move and the Power of Guilt

Another event has an equally interesting psychological interpretation. Baba was pushed out of a train, but afterward the train would not start. This can be seen symbolically as the train of life itself stopping after an innocent person has been wronged. The person may have thought that he had simply removed an unwanted passenger, but suddenly the entire movement of the train comes to a halt.

It resembles the way guilt can stop the inner movement of a person. An innocent person is hurt, conscience becomes disturbed, guilt arises, and the normal momentum of life is interrupted until there is recognition and remorse. In this sense, what we reject or hurt outwardly can become an obstruction within ourselves. The story is therefore not merely about punishment; it can also represent the power of innocence, compassion and spiritual presence to interrupt the unconscious momentum of the ego.

Miracles, Telepathy and the Traditional Yogic View of Siddhis

There may also be other events in Baba’s life that appear telepathic or clairvoyant. I do not think we should automatically dismiss such accounts. In the traditional yogic framework, extraordinary perceptions and abilities, called siddhis, are described as possibilities arising from profound concentration and samadhi. Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, particularly the Vibhuti Pada, discusses such capacities.

At the same time, not being disproved is not the same as being scientifically established. Modern science has not established telepathy, teleportation or clairvoyance as reliable supernatural abilities, and individual stories can have different explanations. So I would leave the question open rather than making an absolute claim. A spiritual account may be interpreted literally by a devotee, symbolically by a contemplative, psychologically by a modern reader, or perhaps, in some cases, as an extraordinary phenomenon that we do not yet understand.

The important point in yoga is also that siddhis are not themselves liberation. Even when such abilities arise, attachment to them can become another distraction from samadhi and realization. The purpose of spiritual practice remains freedom, not the acquisition of extraordinary powers.

The Child Who Wanted to Reach God

Perhaps the most touching part for me is the story of how Baba’s spiritual search was inspired in childhood. When people told him that his deceased mother had gone to God, he apparently took the statement with the directness of a child. If his mother had gone to God, then he too wanted to go there. This desire became strong enough that he eventually left home in search of yoga and the means of reaching that state.

There is something profound in this simplicity. He did not begin with complicated theories about chakras, Kundalini or enlightenment. He began with longing: if there is a place called God, I want to reach it. From that simple question came the search for yoga, renunciation, spiritual practice and eventually samadhi. It reminds me that the deepest spiritual journey may begin not with philosophy but with an intense longing to know what lies beyond ordinary existence. I still remember my childhood, when my family tried to console me after my elder sister was gone, telling me that she had gone to God. As a child, I accepted those words with a simple heart, imagining that she had only gone somewhere beyond my reach.

The Essence of Tantra in a Few Words

Another thing that struck me was the simplicity of the instruction given to the child Baba by his guru: to leave dhyana at the Ajna chakra and place it at the Muladhara chakra. The deeper implication is that this can establish strong dhyana at the Ajna chakra by itself, without continuously forcing attention there. To me, this is perhaps one of the most basic and complete essences of Tantra expressed in an extraordinarily few words. The teaching does not need a long philosophical explanation; a simple direction contains an entire method, which the practitioner can discover through practice. Teaching Tantra in such simple and little words is itself amazing.

The Psychology of the Bahelia Scene

One scene is particularly profound from a psychological and spiritual point of view. A Bahelia, meaning a bird-catcher or fowler, is shown catching birds and imprisoning them. When Baba asks him why he does this, the Bahelia gives a surprisingly philosophical answer. He says, in effect, that just as nature has imprisoned human beings and entangled them in troubles, he is simply doing the same to the birds. It also helps him earn bread and butter for his children.

This is remarkable because the Bahelia does not even believe in God. Yet, at some deeper level, he feels that something is trapping human beings and making them suffer. Since he sees himself as a victim of this mysterious force, he feels justified in reproducing the same pattern with the birds—imprisoning them because he himself feels imprisoned.

Baba then completely changes his perspective. Instead of allowing him to blame God or nature for his suffering, Baba points him toward his own actions. Baba asks him why he had beaten his wife when she was pregnant. The implication is profound: it is not God or nature that is arbitrarily entangling a person; one’s own actions can become the very cause of one’s bondage and suffering.

The Bahelia had been looking outward for the cause of his troubles. Baba makes him look inward. What he experienced as an external force imprisoning him could actually be the consequence of his own actions. Thus, the scene transforms the idea of “I am being imprisoned by nature” into “I may be bound by what I myself have done.”

The psychological transformation that follows is equally beautiful. When Baba reveals details of the Bahelia’s past that he could not ordinarily have known, his disbelief begins to break down. He develops faith in Baba and eventually becomes one of his principal devotees.

The scene therefore works on a very subtle psychological level. Baba does not simply tell the Bahelia to believe in God. He first breaks his habit of projecting the cause of his suffering onto the outside world and brings his attention back to his own life and actions. That inward turning becomes the beginning of his transformation.

The symbolism is especially powerful: the bird-catcher himself feels caught. He imprisons birds because he feels imprisoned by life. Baba shows him that the real trap may not be nature at all—it may be the bondage created by one’s own actions.Seeing the

The Symbolism of the Germinating Seeds

Another beautiful incident occurs when Baba’s wife becomes annoyed by his long periods away from home, absorbed in deep dhyana and samadhi, and by his apparent lack of attention to family life. She asks him what he actually gains from spending so much time in meditation and samadhi.

Baba does not answer her verbally. Instead, he extends his tongue, places a few grains of seeds on it, and, within moments, they germinate and grow into tiny seedlings or plants. His answer is symbolic rather than literal: this is what he gains through such intense spiritual practice—extraordinarily rapid spiritual development.

The symbolism is simple yet profound. Under ordinary conditions, a seed takes time to germinate, grow, and eventually become a plant. In the same way, an ordinary human life may involve a gradual process of inner development through experience, relationships, worldly responsibilities, and spiritual practice. But Baba’s life of exceptionally intense meditation and samadhi is portrayed as accelerating that process dramatically—as though a seed that normally takes a long time to become a plant could mature in moments.

Thus, without explaining anything in words, Baba gives his wife a visual answer: the time spent in deep meditation is not simply time taken away from life; for him, it is a means of accelerating the growth of consciousness.

Miracles as a Language of Inner Experience

After watching Hanuman Ansh, I therefore feel that the miraculous stories surrounding Baba can be approached on several levels at once. The chana-puri scene expresses the bodily movement from hunger to satiety; the cold water and samadhi can suggest the inward movement of energy; the opening prison can symbolize liberation from limited identification; the serpents can represent awakened Kundalini Shakti; the stopped train can represent conscience and guilt interrupting the momentum of life; and the accounts of telepathic or clairvoyant perception can be considered in the context of the traditional yogic descriptions of siddhis, while leaving their literal interpretation open.

For me, this makes the story more meaningful rather than less miraculous. What appears outwardly as a miracle may also be a language through which an inner spiritual event is being communicated. The physical story, the devotional interpretation, the symbolic meaning, the psychology of consciousness and the possibility of extraordinary yogic experience do not necessarily have to cancel one another. They can exist together, allowing us to watch the life of a yogi not merely as a collection of miraculous incidents, but as a possible symbolic map of the movement from bodily limitation toward freedom, expanded awareness and the divine.

Black Hole and the Human Self: Imprints, Detachment, Yoga and Liberation

The idea began with a simple question about black holes: is there any evidence that a black hole disappears more quickly than expected? The answer is that there is still no direct observational proof that an ordinary astrophysical black hole is actually evaporating and dying through Hawking radiation. Hawking evaporation is a theoretical prediction, not yet a practically demonstrated fact for real astronomical black holes. Small black holes are theoretically expected to evaporate much faster as they become smaller and hotter, while large black holes should lose mass so slowly that their lifetimes are enormously longer than the present age of the universe. This distinction between theoretical prediction and practical proof became important for my own intuition. I feel that a black hole should also ultimately die rather than remain forever. Yet I do not mean only the physical black hole. I began to see the black hole as a possible metaphor for something much closer to human existence: the self.

The Human Self as a Structure of Imprints

My intuition is that the human self is not necessarily an independent physical substance. It can be understood as a structure formed from worldly experience, memory, identification, conditioning and repeated psychological impressions. In this sense, the self is built from what it has experienced and retained. It imitates the experienced world through accumulated imprints. The more deeply these experiences are identified with and stored, the more stable and substantial the self appears to become. When the self is strongly imprinted by the gross physical world, the black hole becomes an interesting symbolic comparison: both can be imagined as structures that accumulate and concentrate what enters them. I do not mean that a physical black hole is literally a human self or that modern physics has established a connection between black holes and consciousness. The comparison is philosophical rather than scientific. What interests me is the similarity between accumulation and dissolution.

Imprint Formation and Imprint Dissolution

The self can then be viewed through two opposing processes: the formation of new imprints and the dissolution of previous ones. If imprint formation is greater than imprint dissolution, the accumulated structure of self remains stable or becomes stronger. If both processes are roughly equal, the self remains comparatively stable without major transformation. But when imprint dissolution exceeds imprint formation, the accumulated structure gradually becomes lighter and weaker. This gives a simple way of understanding the movement toward liberation. Liberation, in this framework, is not merely having fewer experiences. It is the reduction of the total accumulation of psychological impressions.

This distinction is important because preventing new impressions and dissolving old impressions are not the same thing. A person may isolate themselves from the world and thereby reduce new imprint formation. Fewer worldly contacts mean fewer opportunities for fresh conditioning. But if previously accumulated impressions are not being dissolved, those old impressions simply remain. Isolation may produce quietness, but quietness by itself is not necessarily liberation. When the person returns to ordinary life, old conditioning may still reactivate. The storehouse has not disappeared merely because nothing new has been added to it.

Detachment as Prevention of New Imprints

There is another way to prevent new imprint formation: remaining in the world while becoming detached from identification. Instead of withdrawing from experience, one continues to live, work, relate and encounter pleasure and pain, but does not allow every experience to become another layer of psychological identity. Pleasure need not become an insistence that it must be repeated. Insult need not become a permanent story of “I was insulted.” Success need not become a definition of “who I am.” Experience can arise and pass without being appropriated. In this sense, isolation reduces the input, whereas detachment reduces the imprinting mechanism itself. The world continues to provide experience, but experience increasingly fails to become new conditioning.

This seems more radical because the world itself becomes the field of practice. One does not need to escape life in order to prevent new imprints; one learns to experience without accumulating identity. Eventually, even deliberate detachment may become unnecessary if witnessing becomes sufficiently established. Experience can simply arise, be known and pass without leaving a strong psychological residue.

Yoga, Samadhi and the Dissolution of Old Imprints

Yet even perfect detachment would not by itself complete the process. If no new impressions are formed while old ones remain untouched, the old structure persists. Therefore something more is required: the dissolution of previously accumulated imprints. This is where practices such as yoga, deep meditation, witnessing and samadhi become important within this model. Existing conditioning is brought into awareness without identification, and through repeated non-attachment its psychological force can gradually diminish. Thus there are really two complementary movements: detachment prevents the creation of new conditioning, while deep yogic practice dissolves conditioning that has already accumulated.

The relationship can be expressed very simply. If imprint formation is greater than dissolution, the self becomes more conditioned. If formation and dissolution balance each other, the self remains relatively stable. If dissolution becomes greater than formation, the total conditioning steadily decreases. The ideal direction is therefore not merely to stop adding new impressions but to allow the old ones to disappear as well. Liberation requires both processes working together: less new imprinting and greater dissolution of existing imprints.

The Self as a Black-Hole Analogy

This is where the black-hole analogy becomes meaningful for me. A black hole can gain mass when matter and energy enter it. It can theoretically lose mass through Hawking radiation. If the inflow is greater than the outflow, the black hole grows. If the outflow eventually becomes greater than the inflow, its mass decreases and it moves toward evaporation. The same pattern can be used metaphorically for the self. New experience identified with becomes new psychological imprint, just as incoming matter adds to a black hole. Witnessing, detachment and deep yogic dissolution act like the opposite movement. If new imprint formation is greater than dissolution, the self grows in psychological density. If dissolution exceeds new imprint formation, the accumulated self becomes progressively lighter.

This also clarifies why simply avoiding the world is insufficient. If matter stops entering a black hole but nothing causes its existing mass to leave, the black hole does not disappear merely because inflow has stopped. Likewise, if new impressions are prevented but old impressions are never dissolved, the self remains. Existing conditioning has to be released. Therefore preventing imprint formation and dissolving previous imprints are not competing methods but complementary necessities within this model.

From Conditioned Self to Unimprinted Awareness

The final possibility is what I would call the unimprinted self. As new imprint formation approaches zero and the existing accumulation continues to dissolve, the self becomes progressively less conditioned. The world may still be experienced, but experiences no longer become deeply embedded as identity. The process can therefore be understood as a gradual movement from a heavily conditioned self toward an increasingly pure and unimprinted state.

There is, however, a deeper question at the end of this process. If all accumulated identification finally dissolves, is what remains really a purified self, or is it awareness without the separate structure that previously called itself “me”? Perhaps the stages are better understood as conditioned self, purified self, and finally the disappearance of the separate self-structure. In that sense, the death of the self is not necessarily the destruction of consciousness. It may mean the dissolution of the structure that had identified consciousness with a personal accumulation of experience.

This gives a simple definition of liberation: not freedom from the world itself, but freedom from the world continually becoming psychological imprint and from those imprints continually becoming self. Experience can continue, but it no longer has to become identity. New accumulation declines while old accumulation dissolves. The self becomes less dense, less reactive and less dependent on what it has stored. Like the black hole in the metaphor, what matters is not merely that something stops entering, but that what has already accumulated is progressively released. In this sense, liberation is the point at which dissolution consistently exceeds accumulation, until the constructed, imprinted self approaches its own disappearance.

Smaller Imprints, Faster Liberation: Why Meditation in Childhood May Matter

There is an interesting parallel between black-hole evaporation and the gradual dissolution of psychological imprints through meditation. A smaller black hole is theoretically expected to evaporate faster as its mass decreases, because its temperature rises and its rate of mass loss increases. In a similar way, it may be possible to think of a meditator as progressing faster toward liberation once the accumulated structure of worldly imprint has already become smaller. This is a philosophical analogy, not an established scientific equivalence, but the parallel is striking.
It may also help explain why meditation is traditionally encouraged from childhood. A child has had less time to accumulate deep worldly conditioning and identification. If meditation, spiritual companionship and a supportive environment begin early, the formation of new impressions may be reduced while existing impressions are comparatively few. In that sense, the inner “mass” that has to be dissolved is smaller from the beginning.
My own experience gives me a personal example of this possibility. Meditation began in my childhood through close association with a spiritual guru and through the environment at home. This early foundation continued to influence me and was followed by an awakening experience during adolescence. Yet complete dissolution did not occur at that stage. The needs and attractions of worldly life continued to create new impressions and prevented the process from reaching its full conclusion.
Traditional accounts sometimes describe exceptionally early liberation. Shukadeva, for example, is portrayed in Indian spiritual tradition as being liberated while still very young. Whether such accounts are taken historically, spiritually or symbolically, they fit naturally into the idea that a person who begins with fewer accumulated worldly impressions may reach deep realization more quickly.
There may also be another important similarity. In black-hole physics, the evaporation rate becomes greater as the black hole becomes smaller. In meditation, once a practitioner has become sufficiently familiar with meditation and a significant portion of accumulated conditioning has already dissolved, progress may also become easier and faster. Earlier experiences of inner clarity can strengthen confidence, reduce fear of the unknown and make deeper meditation more natural. The meditator no longer approaches the process as something completely unfamiliar; familiarity itself becomes a support for further dissolution.
Thus the process may have an accelerating character: less accumulated imprint → easier meditation → greater dissolution → greater confidence → deeper meditation → still less imprint. In this sense, childhood meditation may provide an especially favorable beginning because the psychological structure that has to be dissolved is still comparatively small. The analogy with an evaporating black hole therefore suggests an interesting possibility: as the accumulated imprint becomes smaller, the movement toward complete freedom may itself become progressively faster.

Deep Dhyana, Self-Realization and Nondual Awakening: How Witnessing Dissolves Inner Imprints

Deep Dhyana as a Window into the Actual Self

It seems to me that during deep dhyana we are able to live, even if only temporarily, in the experience of our full structure of self, together with its actual state of development. This is not merely an idea about ourselves or a mental image of who we think we are. It is experienced in a subtler and more essential form. At other times, worldly distractions occupy our attention so completely that this deeper structure is forgotten. We continue to live, act and think, but we remain largely outside our actual form. In this sense, I have described the dhyana state as a kind of window into our real being, and ordinary life outside that window can feel almost like a state of existential death. This does not mean physical death or that the self ceases to exist. It means that the deeper dimension of oneself, which becomes directly accessible in deep dhyana, becomes functionally absent from ordinary awareness.

Why the Ancient Teaching About the World and the Soul Becomes Clear in Experience

This makes me think that what the ancient sages said about the world being different from the soul, and about worldly life making us blind to the soul, may be pointing to an experience rather than merely presenting a strange metaphysical theory. In theory, such statements can easily be misunderstood. They may sound as though the physical world is unreal or that the soul is some mysterious supernatural object hidden somewhere inside us. In practical experience, however, the distinction can become much clearer. The world does not necessarily destroy or remove the soul. Rather, our attention becomes absorbed in sensory experiences, thoughts, desires, reactions, identities, memories and external objects, and therefore we forget the deeper structure of our own being. Dhyana reverses the direction of attention. When the outward movement becomes sufficiently quiet, what was previously obscured can become directly apparent. Thus the contrast is not simply between a false world and a true soul, but between world-directed consciousness in which the self is forgotten and inwardly gathered consciousness in which the self becomes perceptible.

The Soul as the Complete Intrinsic State of Being

I do not see the soul as something special or as an additional supernatural substance added to a person. By soul I mean one’s own complete state of being as it exists in itself, without something foreign being newly added to it from outside. Yet this does not mean that the self is completely devoid of external influences. The self bears the imprints of everything it has experienced. These experiences, however, are not necessarily present within the self in the same gross and differentiated form in which they were originally encountered. Experientially, they may exist in a subtle, consolidated and relatively undifferentiated form. Therefore, the self is not an untouched thing standing apart from all experience. It is a being in which experience has been assimilated into a deeper structure. We can say self gets colored according to what it has experienced till date. In deep breathless dhyana, it is same eternal self but it is not pure rather it is individualised by experiential imprints.

From Gross Experience to Subtle Imprint

This gives a different meaning to the distinction between self and non-self. A gross experience that has not yet become assimilated into the subtle structure of the self can appear foreign or non-self. It is something occurring to us from outside in its gross, differentiated form. When experience becomes imprinted and assimilated, however, it becomes part of our own subtle experiential structure. It is not like something physical adheres to self as nothing can stick to void, the true nature of self. Yes, its experience gets somewhat distorted and this distorsion is according to the extent and nature of the external experiences. It is like a illusion. Just as, after revolving round and round for some time, the world around may seem to revolve for a while when we stop, though the world itself has remained stationary as before, similarly, after prolonged experience of the external world, our own self may appear different and foreign, though in reality it remains the same pure own form as before. The movement can therefore be understood as gross experience becoming an imprint, the imprint becoming subtly consolidated, and the consolidated impression becoming part of the self. In this sense, what is non-self is not necessarily everything that originates outside the body or mind. Rather, it is what has not yet been assimilated into one’s own deeper structure of being or pure self form. Everything we experience is, in some sense, our own self, because we can never experience anything other than what becomes present within the self. No physical thing can literally be attached to the self as something separate and then experienced as part of it. For the self to experience something fully, it has to take the form of that experience itself. Yet this self has become partitioned through experience. When an experience exists only as a mental pattern or as a gross external impression, it is experienced as non-self or as something foreign. But when that experience becomes deeply imprinted and assimilated as a change in the feeling and structure of the self, it is no longer experienced as something separate; it has become the self itself.

This may also explain why, after moderate drinking, a person can sometimes experience a temporary sense of joy or relief, as though the outer distractions have been reduced and one comes closer to a feeling of oneself. But what becomes accessible is not necessarily the pure self; it is still the self carrying all its accumulated imprints. Alcohol may temporarily weaken the ordinary mental activity through which worldly distinctions and distractions are maintained, making the underlying feeling of self seem clearer. Yet it does not remove the imprints. In fact, after heavy worldly involvement, experiences that might otherwise have gradually dissolved through witnessing can become more deeply impressed or carried forward as further conditioning. Thus the temporary relief may give the impression that the road has become clearer, while the underlying burden has not actually been removed. It may simply have been carried forward to be released later. Witnessing, in contrast, allows impressions to arise and dissolve without adding the same kind of further burden, so that the self can gradually become lighter, clearer and less partitioned. Actually, the mental noise that arises after worldliness is there to dissolve the imprint of that worldliness through witnessing. The imprint of worldliness has already been registered on the Self. This mental noise arises as a process through which that imprint can be dissolved, particularly when it is witnessed without interference. It is as though the fresh imprint is still loosely fixed and can therefore be released through awareness and witnessing.

If this mental noise is forcefully suppressed by will, continuously drowned out by further indulgence in the world as a means of forgetting it, or suppressed through the consumption of some substance, the opportunity for its dissolution is prevented. Instead of allowing the freshly formed, loosely fixed imprint to be erased through witnessing, such actions may reinforce or preserve it. With time, the imprint can become more deeply fixed and therefore much more difficult to remove. Daily yoga helps to shed fresh imprints from self as soon as they are formed easily. By this self gradually become lighter, clearer and less partitioned because, as the burden of accumulated imprints is shed, the darkness created by those imprints gradually diminishes. The self becomes clearer and begins to correspond more closely with the shimmering, undivided character of the external world as it is directly experienced. What had seemed divided between self and world becomes less sharply separated, not because the self becomes something new, but because the accumulated obscurations that made it appear separate are gradually released. Once this process reaches its full extent, the separation between self and the experienced world becomes completely nil. There is no longer a sense of the self standing apart from what is experienced. In that moment, there may be a glimpse of nondual awakening—a direct self-realisation in which the self is experienced without the partition that ordinarily separates it from the world. This is not the creation of a new self, but the recognition of the same self after the accumulated imprints and obscurations that made it appear separate have fallen away. However, the glimpse of awakening may fade after a few moments. The self then seems to regain its previous imprinted structure, although often in a somewhat lighter form. In my understanding, the sudden glimpse occurs through a strong upward movement of kundalini, which temporarily breaks through the accumulated structure and reveals the nondual state. But a glimpse is not the same as complete purification. If the self has been accumulating impressions through countless experiences over an enormously long period, their complete dissolution may require decades of meditation and witnessing. Awakening therefore need not be regarded as the end of the journey. It can instead be understood as a road marker: a brief direct glimpse of the destination that confirms what lies beyond the accumulated structure, while the remaining work is the gradual clearing of the imprints that still obscure it.

Witnessing Dhyana and the Release of Worldly Imprints

This also explains what seems to happen during witnessing dhyana. The self contains accumulated impressions, and these impressions can arise into consciousness as thoughts, memories, images, emotions, sensations or impulses. When they arise and are simply witnessed, without identification, fresh attachment or resistance, they can pass away. The self is then no longer continually burdened by them in the same way. Dhyana becomes not merely a method of observing thoughts but a process through which accumulated worldly imprints can gradually be released. With their release comes a sense of becoming clearer, lighter and purer. Purification, in this understanding, does not mean adding something new to the self. It means removing or releasing what has accumulated and obscured the self’s own intrinsic nature.

From Purification to the Pure Self of Liberation

The process can therefore be understood as a gradual movement from worldly experience to subtle imprint, from subtle imprint to witnessed thought or feeling, from witnessing without identification to release, and from release to increasing clarity and lightness. The deeper self does not have to be created through this process. Rather, what obscures it is gradually reduced. This gives liberation a particularly simple meaning: liberation may not be the creation of a new or extraordinary self, but the gradual removal of whatever prevents the already-existing self from being experienced in its own completeness. The final state could therefore be described as the true or pure self of liberation, in which accumulated worldly formations no longer obscure one’s intrinsic being.

The Dhyana Window and the Possibility of Continuous Awareness

Seen this way, the dhyana window may be only the beginning. At first, there may be a strong difference between deep dhyana and ordinary waking life. In dhyana, the deeper structure of being becomes clear, and for some time afterward, as an aftereffect of the practice, accumulated impressions may arise into awareness and be released to dissolve. Outside dhyana, however, worldly impressions and distractions again tend to dominate awareness, covering the deeper structure once more. Repeated witnessing may gradually disburden the self and reduce identification with these formations. The possibility then arises that the clarity experienced inside dhyana can increasingly remain present outside it. This is because shimmering world supports clearer self outside too. Spiritual development would therefore not simply mean repeatedly entering a special meditative state, but gradually carrying the recognition of one’s intrinsic being into ordinary life. The dhyana window could eventually become less of a temporary window and more of a continuous way of being.

This also gives a more precise meaning to the old idea that the world blinds a person to the Self. The problem is not necessarily the existence of the world but our absorption in its gross, differentiated experiences. The self carries the subtle impressions of experience, while ordinary consciousness is continually occupied with the experiences themselves. Deep dhyana allows attention to move beyond this gross level and encounter the subtler structure in which one’s accumulated experience has already been consolidated. Witnessing then allows those formations to arise and pass without renewed identification. Gradually, what remains becomes clearer, lighter and less burdened. Whether this final pure self should be understood metaphysically as an independent spiritual reality is a further philosophical question. The immediate experience, however, is simpler: through deep dhyana, one can experience a dimension of oneself that is normally forgotten, and through sustained witnessing, one may gradually become less obscured by what has accumulated upon it. In this sense, liberation can be understood as not becoming something else, but finally becoming fully present as what one intrinsically is.

What Happens to the Soul After Death? A Dream of Death, Kundalini Yoga, and the Continuity of Spiritual Development

A Dream After the Death of Someone I Knew

A few days ago, a known friend who was also a distant brother took some herbicide and had to be hospitalized for a few days.

I had not met him for years, as I had been living far away from home due to my job and business commitments. When I heard the sad news, I was shocked for a moment. He was such a happy, smiling, and active person. It makes one wonder whether some people manage to hide deep inner depression beneath an outward appearance of happiness and liveliness.

I have now also heard that he had been consuming both cannabis and alcohol, which were reportedly believed to have played a major role in the incident. However being living in spiritual environment and so called high order caste, he also used to go to perform spiritual worships and rituals in people’s homes with other more or less similar team members as part time hobby with little earnings. For one tour of this kind even he was ready but missed due to reluctance of her wife in returning her true home from her maternal home with him where both had gone to celebrate rakshabandhan festival. Was this spiritualism and addiction a lethal combination or was he caught inside dominance of woman related ego. Both appear as the valid psychological possibilities together. He had already warned of consuming something lethal but the family almost ignored it.

The event followed a quarrel between the couple throughout days of journey. After returning home the quarrel continued, and he reportedly beaten his wife and she also attacked back although male is male in strength. Even he hit his mother too in anger while she came to protect her and control him too. So she made them sleep in different rooms separate from each other. At night, God knows from where he got that 500 ml poison bottle and drank entire. In the morning naked due to heating up by poison and blood vomit everywhere. He opposed to be carried to hospital as he was already determined to die but was carried forcefully. Then his partner went back to report to police out of fear. He eventually passed away. When I saw the news on Facebook, I later had a strange dream. I saw a shavayatra moving toward the place of funeral, with people carrying a dead body, but I could not find out who had actually died. The person I had heard about appeared to me as if he were still alive, smiling and happy as he had been earlier. I asked people who had died, but nobody answered me. Instead, everyone seemed to be telling me to remain silent. I could not identify the dead person. At one point I thought that perhaps his younger brother had died because he was not clearly visible and, in the dream, he seemed to be the one showing the greatest grief. Yet this itself became strange, because the person whom I expected to be dead did not appear dead at all.

When the Dream Changed the Meaning of Death

The dream made me think that perhaps death is not as simple as the death of the body. The funeral procession clearly represented physical death, yet I could not locate the person who had supposedly died. The one whom I associated with death appeared alive, smiling, peaceful and recognizable. This contradiction became the central point of the dream for me. I began to feel that perhaps no one dies in the deepest sense merely because the physical body dies. What dies may instead be the bodily form and the world of physical relations connected with that form.

The younger brother’s grief seemed to deepen this interpretation. I had initially guessed that he was the one who had died because he was experiencing the greatest grief. This suggested another possibility: perhaps the person who undergoes a kind of death is not necessarily the one whose body has stopped functioning, but the person who thinks that everything he loved has become zero. When someone believes that the person he loved has completely disappeared, his own inner world can collapse. In that sense, the deepest psychological death may occur in the one who remains behind but becomes overwhelmed by the belief that everything meaningful has been lost.

This does not mean that physical death is unreal. The body certainly dies. The point is different: physical death need not necessarily mean annihilation of the person. The funeral belongs to the body, while the question of what happens to the person or soul belongs to a deeper level of existence.

The Soul May Remain Fully Alive After Bodily Death

I am not thinking only about the way the dead survive in the memories of other people. My meaning is more direct. I am referring to the possibility that the person himself, as a disembodied soul, remains fully alive after bodily death. I have also once experienced what I understood as a dream visitation of a soul, so my understanding of this possibility does not come only from abstract thinking. I experienced something personally that led me to consider the possibility that a person may remain present after the body has died.

My dream after this recent death therefore appeared meaningful to me because the physical body was being carried toward cremation, while the person I associated with that body was nevertheless appearing alive. This created a distinction between the body and the person inhabiting or experiencing through that body. The body may become lifeless, but the soul may not therefore become lifeless.

This gives another meaning to the statement that perhaps no one really dies even after death. It does not have to mean that biological death does not happen. Rather, it can mean that the death of the physical body is not necessarily the death of the person at the level of the soul.

Why the Disembodied Soul Might Feel More Alive

I then began to see another possibility. During embodied life, consciousness is continually surrounded by the distractions of the physical world. The body produces sensations, hunger, thirst, pleasure, pain, fatigue and other needs. The mind is occupied by relationships, social circumstances, memories, desires, fears, reactions and the ordinary stream of thoughts. Much of what we experience as ourselves may therefore be mixed with the activity and limitations of the physical body.

After disembodiment, this entire field of gross physical distraction may no longer dominate consciousness in the same way. If the soul continues after death, it may therefore become more directly aware of its own state of development. Without the same degree of sensory distraction and physical involvement, it could perhaps see and feel its own condition much more clearly.

In that sense, the disembodied soul might be more alive in one respect than the embodied person. This does not mean that it would continue thinking exactly as a living human thinks. Ordinary discursive thoughts, bodily sensations and many emotional reactions may themselves belong to embodied existence. They may be dharmas, or characteristics and activities, of the body-mind condition. The subtler experience of the soul would therefore not necessarily resemble ordinary human thinking.

Instead, the soul may experience reality as a subtle spiritual essence. What is experienced may be less gross, less sensory and less conceptual. It may be closer to direct seeing, feeling or knowing at a spiritual level. What is experienced during embodiment through the body and mind could, after disembodiment, be experienced in a much subtler form.

This is why the smiling and living appearance of the person in my dream seemed significant to me. The dream did not portray him as diminished or extinguished. It portrayed him as alive, even though the funeral procession was taking place. The body seemed to be going toward death, while the person himself did not appear to have become dead.

Physical Death, Psychological Death, and Spiritual Continuity

This way of looking at the dream also suggests three different meanings of death. Physical death is the end of the functioning body. Psychological death can occur in a living person when grief, attachment and the belief in complete loss make the person’s inner world collapse. Spiritual death, however, would be something different altogether. If a soul exists independently of the body and continues after bodily death, then physical death would not automatically mean spiritual death.

This distinction is important because the statement that “no one dies” can otherwise be misunderstood as denying the physical reality of death. I do not mean that. The body dies. What remains open is whether the deepest identity of the person also ends.

My dream cannot prove what happens to a soul after death. It is a personal experience and a source of philosophical reflection rather than scientific evidence. The same applies to my earlier dream visitation. I experienced it as a visitation, but that experience by itself cannot establish the metaphysical fact that souls survive bodily death. Still, an experience can be meaningful without being presented as scientific proof.

Kundalini Yoga and the Continuity of Spiritual Development

This understanding naturally connects with Kundalini Yoga. If consciousness is more than the physical body, then spiritual development may also be more than the temporary development of the body and personality. Ordinary life develops many things that belong to one particular embodiment: physical abilities, possessions, social identities, habits, memories and patterns of thought. These may end or change with the body.

Kundalini Yoga can be understood as working at a deeper level. Its purpose, in this interpretation, is not merely to produce unusual sensations, powers or altered states. It is a process of transforming consciousness and developing subtler levels of awareness. The deeper the transformation, the less it can be understood simply as something belonging to the physical body.

This leads to an important possibility. If the soul continues beyond bodily death, then spiritual development cultivated through Yoga may not necessarily disappear when the body dies. The physical instruments used for the practice belong to one lifetime, but the deeper transformation of consciousness may belong to the soul itself. In a spiritual understanding of rebirth, that development could therefore be carried subtly into the next birth.

The idea is not that every memory or ordinary thought survives in exactly the same form. Rather, what may continue is the deeper spiritual development. A person might lose the particular body, circumstances and personality through which development occurred, while still carrying forward the effect of that development at a subtler level.

In that sense, Yoga can always be seen as helping growth. Even if outward achievements end with the body, genuine inner development may not be lost. What is cultivated at the deepest level may become part of the continuing being.

Why Yoga May Not Require Escape from Society

This also gives another perspective on spiritual practice. One may imagine that leaving society is necessary in order to seek Kundalini or spiritual growth, but that need not follow. Society itself provides the circumstances through which consciousness can be tested and transformed. Relationships, attachment, desire, conflict, responsibility, distraction, loss and ordinary human interaction all reveal the condition of one’s consciousness.

The important question is therefore not simply whether one has escaped society, but what one is developing while living in it. A person may remain in ordinary life while gradually cultivating deeper awareness. The physical and social world can become the field through which spiritual development takes place rather than merely an obstacle to it.

This is also consistent with the central insight of the dream. The ordinary world may contain many distractions, but those same circumstances can become opportunities for growth. Kundalini Yoga does not necessarily require rejecting the world; it may instead involve learning to move through the world without allowing its gross distractions to completely determine consciousness.

What the Dream Means to Me

For me, the deepest meaning of the dream is not simply that a dead person can appear alive in a dream. It is that the dream reversed the ordinary assumption about death. We normally see the body as the person and therefore assume that when the body dies, the person is gone. In the dream, the body was moving toward the funeral, but I could not find the person who had supposedly died. The person was smiling and appeared alive. Nobody would tell me who had died. The one who seemed most visibly affected was the grieving person who believed that someone had been lost.

This makes me wonder whether the tragedy of death belongs primarily to the body and to the attachments surrounding the body, while the deeper person may continue in another condition. Perhaps what appears to us as the end is actually a transition from one mode of experience to another.

The disembodied soul, in this view, does not remain occupied in exactly the same way as the embodied person. Freed from much of the physical world’s distraction, it may experience its own spiritual condition more directly. It may see what it has become more clearly. It may feel reality not through the gross senses and ordinary thought but through a subtler spiritual essence.

And if spiritual development has been cultivated through Kundalini Yoga or another genuine path of inner transformation, perhaps that development does not simply become zero when the body dies. It may continue with the soul and, in a doctrine of rebirth, influence the next embodiment.

This is why I see Yoga as a form of growth that can never be completely wasted. The body is temporary, circumstances are temporary, thoughts are temporary, and personalities are temporary. But if there is something deeper that continues beyond them, then what is developed at that deeper level may have a continuity that ordinary physical achievements do not have.

The funeral procession in my dream therefore came to represent something different from simple annihilation. The body may be carried toward the funeral, but the person may continue. What we call death may be the ending of one form of embodiment rather than the ending of the being itself. And perhaps the greater spiritual task in life is to discover and develop that deeper dimension before the body is finally left behind.

I do not take this dream as proof of a metaphysical fact, nor do I think the death of my friend should be interpreted as something other than the tragedy that it was. His physical death was real, and his suffering before it was real. But the dream led me to ask whether the person who died physically may nevertheless continue in another form of existence, and whether spiritual development can therefore extend beyond a single lifetime.

For me, that possibility gives a deeper meaning to Yoga. It suggests that spiritual practice is not merely an attempt to become more peaceful or powerful within one temporary life. It may be a way of developing what can continue when the temporary body, its distractions and its ordinary mental processes finally fall away. In that sense, perhaps the deepest aim of Kundalini Yoga is not to escape life but to use life to cultivate the part of oneself that may not end with it.

This should not be taken as glorification of death in any way. The point is simply that when worldly activity and its associated mental noise temporarily subside, one may experience a sense of relief and a more direct feeling of the underlying Self. Such relief, however, can be temporary or illusory and should not be confused with genuine spiritual development or realization. The real emphasis is on understanding the nature of worldly impressions and mental noise, and how they can be dissolved through awareness and witnessing.

Kundalini Awakening and Chakras: The River and the Whirlpools

I have found the image of a river and its whirlpools useful for understanding my experience of kundalini and the chakras.

I experience kundalini as an ascending current moving through the central channel, or sushumna, along the spine. A river normally flows onward, but at certain places its water can circulate and form a whirlpool. The water remains part of the same river, yet its movement becomes concentrated and especially noticeable at that point before continuing onward.

In a similar experiential sense, I understand a chakra as a place where the ascending kundalini current seems to gather, circulate, intensify, and become particularly noticeable before continuing upward. The movement through sushumna may remain subtle, while activity at a chakra may appear as pressure, vibration, pulsation, rotation, warmth, expansion, or a distinct feeling of concentrated energy.

Thus, the chakra need not be imagined as a separate energy or independent storehouse. Within this metaphor, it is a more concentrated and noticeable pattern within the same ascending current.

Chakra Meditation and the Flow of Kundalini

The same image helps me understand chakra meditation. A weak whirlpool and a strong whirlpool are both part of the same river; the stronger one simply gathers more water into its circular movement and becomes easier to notice.

Likewise, when meditation strengthens a chakra, the kundalini experience may seem to gather and intensify there, circulate around the centre, and then continue upward through sushumna. The movement from the base may consequently feel stronger, smoother, more organized, and more continuous.

Meditation, therefore, need not be imagined as creating a completely new energy. Within the metaphor, the river is already flowing. Meditation makes a particular whirlpool stronger and the existing current more perceptible.

Different Places and Different Qualities

I have also come to feel that different places can stimulate different chakras—or, more carefully, bring forward qualities traditionally associated with different chakras.

If chakras represent different dimensions of human and spiritual experience, environments can also have different characters. Some places may feel emotional and relational, others devotional, intellectual, practical, social, or deeply contemplative. In the chakra framework, such differences can be described as an environment having an affinity with a particular centre.

The heart chakra is a useful example. A place filled with affection, human interaction, community, devotion, or emotional exchange may bring heart-like qualities more strongly into experience, while a quiet spiritual environment may make contemplative or higher-centre qualities more prominent.

This does not require the belief that a physical location objectively contains a measurable chakra field. People, atmosphere, symbolism, memories, habits, sensory surroundings, relationships, and activities can all influence which qualities become prominent. A place may therefore have a particular quality without containing a literal energetic vortex.

A socially diverse environment can be compared to khichadi: different people bring emotional, intellectual, practical, devotional, social, or worldly qualities, all mixed together. Such a place may stimulate many dimensions simultaneously and can therefore be valuable for someone seeking balance and integration.

Sequential Practice and Integrated Development

Another practitioner may prefer the opposite approach. Someone working sequentially through the chakras may deliberately develop one centre at a time and choose an environment suited to that centre. After that stage is sufficiently developed, another place or practice may be chosen for the next one.

For such a practitioner, a mixed environment may feel like spiritual mix-veg when concentrated work on one particular chakra is desired.

There is therefore no single ideal environment. A person seeking balance may benefit from varied influences, while someone deliberately cultivating one centre may need a focused environment. The same place can help one practitioner and distract another. Its suitability depends partly on what the practitioner is trying to develop at that stage.

My Change of Priority After Awakening

My own experience changed after what I understood as an awakening of the top chakra through kundalini awakening together with self-realisation.

Afterward, I began to feel that the lower chakras no longer needed deliberate strengthening in the same way. Within the yogic framework, my reasoning was that if the same kundalini current had already passed through the lower centres on its way upward and culminated in a powerful awakening at the highest centre, then those centres had already been traversed by the current.

The river-and-whirlpool metaphor made this intuitive. If the river has already passed through several lower whirlpools and finally formed a powerful whirlpool at the top, why must every smaller turbulence below it be made equally strong?

I began to regard the highest chakra as something like the strongest or master whirlpool of the ascending current. My question consequently changed from how to strengthen every smaller whirlpool to how to allow the whole river to flow well and deepen the realization associated with the strongest one.

This did not mean that I considered the lower chakras bad, unnecessary, or unworthy. My feeling was simply that the ascending current had already passed through them, while my attention had moved toward the highest realization.

Why I Preferred Isolation

This change naturally affected my choice of places. After awakening, I preferred relatively isolated environments with strong spiritual and contemplative qualities. I was drawn toward places that seemed to support the higher centre rather than places deliberately selected to stimulate lower centres.

I wanted to deepen and stabilize what had awakened rather than deliberately intensify every lower turbulence again.

Other people sometimes found this preference strange. Looking back, I think part of the misunderstanding came from comparing different stages of development. Someone deliberately cultivating a particular chakra may naturally prefer an environment that stimulates it. I was choosing from the perspective of an experience in which I felt that the current had already reached the top.

Two people can stand beside the same river while being interested in different parts of it. One may study a nearby whirlpool; another may be interested in the direction of the whole river and where it is going. Neither perspective is necessarily wrong. What appears strange from one stage may make sense from another.

Awakening Does Not Mean Complete Development

I now see an important qualification to my earlier understanding.

Experiencing awakening at the highest centre does not necessarily prove that every quality traditionally associated with the lower chakras has become perfectly developed or permanently integrated. Spiritual awakening and complete human maturity are not necessarily identical.

Emotional maturity, relationships, compassion, practical functioning, bodily stability, social adjustment, and other aspects of ordinary life can continue developing after profound spiritual realization.

Therefore, I do not conclude that everyone who experiences awakening at the highest centre should abandon lower-chakra development. Awakening changed my priority; it did not establish a universal rule.

Another practitioner may continue working with lower centres for integration, balance, emotional development, practical life, or other reasons.

Nor must everyone experience the chakras in exactly the same sequence. Some may experience a strong upward movement, some may work with centres individually, some may experience several centres together, and some may not experience chakra sensations in any clearly defined way.

The river-whirlpool model is therefore an explanatory metaphor, not a compulsory map of spiritual development.

Experience, Interpretation and Metaphor

This distinction is especially important when I speak about kundalini.

I am primarily describing something I experienced: an ascending movement, strong sensations, concentration at particular centres, and an awakening associated with the highest centre and self-realisation. I understand these experiences through the traditional yogic language of kundalini, chakras, and sushumna, while the river-and-whirlpool image helps me communicate their structure.

These are three different levels:

  • Experience — what I directly experienced.
  • Yogic interpretation — the framework through which I understand it.
  • Metaphor — the language I use to communicate its pattern.

I can therefore speak firmly about my experience without claiming that the metaphor proves a physical mechanism.

When I say that a stronger chakra attracts more energy, the safest meaning is experiential: attention and sensation may become concentrated there, and the ascending movement may seem to gather around it. Within the yogic framework, this can be described as the chakra drawing more kundalini into itself.

It should not automatically be interpreted as a scientifically established force pulling a measurable substance upward through the spinal cord. It is like stronger whirlpool attracts more water towards it.

Similarly, saying that kundalini passed through the lower chakras before reaching the highest centre describes how I experienced and interpreted the process. It does not prove that every quality traditionally assigned to those centres became perfectly awakened or permanently integrated.

The Limits of the Metaphor

The river analogy is useful precisely when its limits are respected.

Kundalini is not being described as a literal liquid flowing through the spinal cord, and a chakra is not a literal hydraulic whirlpool. A physical whirlpool is a measurable fluid-dynamic phenomenon, whereas a chakra belongs to the traditional subtle-body framework and is being used here to describe spiritual and experiential phenomena.

The metaphor also does not establish that geographical places objectively contain different chakra energies. A place may evoke emotional, devotional, contemplative, intellectual, or other qualities because of its people, atmosphere, symbolism, sensory environment, relationships, habits, memories, and personal associations.

Most importantly, the metaphor describes the pattern of experience, not necessarily its ultimate nature. One person may understand an ascending current as kundalini, another as consciousness or attention, and another through a different spiritual framework.

The value of the metaphor is that it communicates how the experience seems to behave without requiring every part of the image to be taken literally.

What the River Means to Me

The simplest form of my understanding is this:

Kundalini is like a river, and chakras are like whirlpools formed within that river.

The current moves upward, while particular centres become places where the flow seems to gather, circulate, intensify, and become especially noticeable. Meditation may strengthen such a whirlpool. Different environments may bring different qualities into prominence. A mixed environment may suit someone seeking balance, while a focused environment may suit someone developing one centre at a time.

My own path led me toward a different priority after kundalini awakening and self-realisation. Once I experienced the strongest awakening at the highest centre, I felt that the lower centres had already been crossed by the ascending current and became less interested in deliberately strengthening their milder turbulences. I consequently preferred isolation and spiritually intense environments that seemed to support the higher centre.

I would now express this carefully:

Awakening at the highest centre changed my priority; it did not prove that every lower centre becomes permanently unnecessary.

The lower qualities may still need to be expressed, balanced, matured, and integrated in ordinary life. Daily yoga exercises do it well enough by keeping all chakras well energized and balanced. The river may reach its highest whirlpool while still flowing through the whole landscape.

Perhaps this is the deepest value of the metaphor. Before awakening, one may ask which whirlpool needs strengthening. During chakra practice, one may deliberately work with particular centres. After profound awakening, the question may change: instead of continually intensifying individual whirlpools, one may become more concerned with allowing the whole river to flow freely, steadily, naturally, and in harmony with the highest realization.

The metaphor does not require every practitioner to follow the same path. It simply gives me a way to understand how the same kundalini current can appear as a continuous upward movement, an intense concentration at a particular chakra, or, after awakening, as a movement whose deepest significance seems to lie not in any individual centre but in the realization toward which the whole current appears to lead.

Shiva, Shakti and the Cyclic Universe: A Personal Intuition About Branes, Conception and Cosmic Rebirth

From Two Hands to Two Cosmic Branes

I began to understand the idea of a cyclic universe through a very simple image: two hands slowly moving toward each other in position of cosmic prayer, touching, separating, and then coming together again. In some versions of string-inspired cosmology, our universe can be pictured as a three-dimensional brane, or membrane, existing within a higher-dimensional space. Another brane may exist alongside it, and the two can move relative to one another. Instead of imagining the Big Bang simply as an explosion of matter from one point into already existing space, this picture allows us to imagine the changing relationship between the branes themselves as part of the cosmic story. When the two branes separate, the universe can pass through an immense phase of expansion. When they eventually come back together, their collision can produce a new hot, dense beginning, creating a Big Bang-like state. The whole process can then repeat again and again.

The Cosmic Clap: Collision and a New Big Bang

The most striking image is the final clap. After the branes have drifted apart to their maximum distance and the universe has expanded enormously, they begin moving toward each other. Their meeting represents a catastrophic collision, or bounce. In the simplified picture, the old universe is not preserved in its familiar form. Galaxies, stars, planets and other large-scale structures do not simply pass intact into the next cycle. Instead, the previous organized universe is replaced by an extremely hot and energetic state, a kind of plasma inferno in which the familiar structures of the old cosmos have disappeared. From that hot state, the universe can expand and begin forming structure again. Thus the Big Bang is no longer necessarily imagined as the unique beginning of everything. It can be one phase of an endless sequence: separation, expansion, convergence, collision, hot rebirth, and expansion once more. That is the basic appeal of the cyclic or ekpyrotic picture, although it remains a speculative cosmological model rather than an established description of our universe. The “cosmic applause” is simply the repeated meeting of the branes: clap, rebirth, separation, and another clap.

My Shiva-Shakti Intuition

What made this picture especially meaningful to me was that I could see it through an entirely different symbolic language: the ancient idea of Shiva and Shakti. In scriptural traditions, creation is associated with the union of Shiva and Shakti. Shiva can be understood as the still, enduring principle, while Shakti is the dynamic power through which manifestation takes place. I began to see the two branes not merely as two identical physical sheets, but as two complementary symbolic principles. The right and left hands became a simple image of this union. When the hands meet, conception occurs. When they separate, development begins.

This made me think of Shiva as the father principle and Shakti, the mother or goddess, as the creative womb. The union of the two is conception, and the newly conceived universe is then like something growing within a cosmic womb. The important point for me is that the universe does not have to appear fully formed at the moment of conception. After conception comes development. When the two branes separate, Shakti can symbolically be understood as carrying the developing universe, while Shiva remains associated with the essential principle, identity or recognition from which that manifestation arose. In this interpretation, separation is not the opposite of creation. Separation is what allows creation to unfold.

Shakti as the Developing Universe

This makes the female brane, in my symbolic reading, especially interesting. It is not simply another universe identical to the male brane. After the union, Shakti carries the manifested creation and allows it to develop. The universe grows within this cosmic womb, moving from an intensely energetic beginning toward increasing differentiation and complexity. What begins as a hot and chaotic state can eventually become particles, atoms, stars, galaxies, planets and perhaps life. Shiva, by contrast, represents the enduring essence or recognition behind the manifestation. In this picture, Shakti is the movement and development of creation, while Shiva is the principle that remains comparatively still.

This is only a symbolic interpretation; physics does not describe one brane as male and another as female, nor does it assign them the attributes of Shiva and Shakti. The physical model and the spiritual symbolism belong to different levels. What I find meaningful is the structural resemblance between the two pictures: union, creation, separation, development and return.

The Return of Shakti and the Death of the Universe

The idea becomes even more interesting when the universe reaches old age. After a vast period of development and expansion, the universe can be imagined as moving toward exhaustion. In my intuition, Shakti then begins to return toward Shiva. She does not return carrying the old universe as a fully functioning world. The recognizable universe is almost dead. Its galaxies, stars and other structures have lost their former organization, and what remains is increasingly reduced to underlying energetic potential. Yet this does not mean that everything has become meaningless residue. The remains of the old universe can be imagined as carrying the potential for another beginning.

This gives the reunion a different meaning. The approaching Shakti is like a cosmic mother returning to Shiva with the exhausted remains of their previous creation. The purpose is not to preserve the old universe in its previous form, but to allow its remaining essence, now concentrated in energetic form, to participate in another conception. The old universe therefore ends as a recognizable world but survives, in this symbolic picture, as potential. The new universe does not emerge as a completely unrelated event. Its birth is connected to the death and dissolution of the previous cycle.

Conception, Growth, Death and Rebirth

Seen this way, the entire cosmic process becomes almost like one continuous act of reproduction at the scale of the universe. Shiva and Shakti unite, conception occurs, and then they separate. Shakti carries and develops the universe. The universe expands, differentiates, lives through its vast history and eventually approaches death. Shakti then returns toward Shiva carrying the dying creation in a reduced energetic form. Their reunion becomes both dissolution and the preparation for another conception. The old manifestation disappears, but the creative process begins again.

The cycle can therefore be understood in a very simple sequence: union is conception, separation is gestation, expansion is life, aging is exhaustion, return is dissolution, and reunion is rebirth. Then the hands separate again, and the whole process begins once more.

Between Physics and Metaphor

I would not claim that this proves Shiva and Shakti are the physical explanation of brane cosmology, or that ancient scriptures scientifically predicted modern string theory. That would go beyond what either tradition can establish. The brane collision model is a speculative idea in theoretical physics, while the Shiva-Shakti framework is a spiritual and metaphysical language. My point is different. When I placed the two pictures beside each other, I found a striking pattern: two complementary principles come together, something is conceived, creation develops through separation, the manifested world eventually dissolves, and the remaining potential returns to the source for another beginning. My interpretation is closely aligned with the creation symbolism described in the scriptures, particularly the Shiva Purana, where Shiva and Shakti are understood as father and mother in relation to the origin and manifestation of the universe as a fetus growing in cosmic womb.

What began for me as a simple image of two hands coming together therefore became a much larger intuition about the universe. The cosmic clap is no longer merely a collision. Symbolically, it is conception through the death of the previous creation. The separation of the hands is not merely distance; it is the opening of the cosmic womb. And the return is not simply destruction. It is the movement of Shakti back toward Shiva with the almost dead universe, carrying whatever remains of its energetic potential toward a new union. In that sense, the universe becomes a repeating rhythm of union and separation, manifestation and dissolution, death and rebirth: an eternal cosmic cycle in which every ending is also the preparation for another beginning.

Entropy, Kundalini and Higher Order: My Journey Beyond Social Order

From Social Order to Inner Order

There was a time when I began to feel that the order in which I was living was not the deepest order available to me. Ordinary life seemed largely organized around identity, status, ambition, possessions, reputation, social expectations and accepted ways of thinking. I gradually moved beyond some of this superficial order and entered a different field of inquiry through nonduality, karmayoga, Sharir Vigyan Darshan and what I call quantum darshan. Along this journey I experienced awakenings, nirvikalpa dhyana, peace and wisdom. From outside, this might have appeared as leaving one order behind, but inwardly it felt more like the loosening of one structure and the emergence of another.

Only later did entropy become useful to me as a metaphor for this transition. I do not mean that consciousness acquired measurable thermodynamic entropy. Entropy in physics has a precise scientific meaning. I use it only to describe the loosening of an existing organization: when its constraints weaken, attachment to its established arrangement decreases and a wider field of possibilities opens.

Entropy, therefore, should not simply be equated with disorder. A high-entropy state is not necessarily bad, chaotic or inferior, just as low entropy is not automatically better. The meaningful sequence is not entropy produces higher order, but an existing order loosens, possibilities widen, and another organization may or may not emerge.

Social Order and Kundalini

Social order is useful. It provides stability, responsibility, cooperation and continuity. But it can also become bound to ego. Status, ambition, possessions, reputation, comparison and social approval may create an outwardly organized life while leaving a person inwardly governed by fear, attachment or the need for recognition.

Likewise, someone who departs from conventional society may appear disordered while undergoing genuine inner transformation. Neither conformity nor rebellion proves spiritual realization.

This is especially important with Kundalini. Leaving society does not itself guarantee Kundalini awakening, meditation, realization or wisdom. One person may withdraw and discover deeper spiritual order; another may become isolated, unstable or attached to a new spiritual ego. The old structure may disappear without a better one replacing it.

My own experience therefore should not be treated as a universal formula. What mattered in my journey was not merely moving away from superficial social order, but what followed: spiritual inquiry, meditation, awakenings, nirvikalpa dhyana, peace, wisdom and my continuing exploration of nonduality, karmayoga, Sharir Vigyan Darshan and quantum darshan.

Detached Participation

Because of this, I increasingly see value in remaining connected with society while becoming inwardly detached from its superficial pressures. One can continue working, maintaining relationships and fulfilling responsibilities without being psychologically dependent on status, possessions, reputation or approval.

At the same time, one can associate with sincere Kundalini yogis, meditators and spiritually oriented people. I think of this as a secondary order within the primary social order: ordinary society continues to provide practical stability, while a second field develops around meditation, spiritual inquiry, discipline and practice.

This allows spiritual exploration without requiring complete social withdrawal. It also shows that greater freedom does not have to mean greater isolation.

The Water Cycle as a Metaphor

The water cycle gives me a natural image for this process. Water in the ocean has a recognizable large-scale organization. Through evaporation, it leaves that arrangement and becomes dispersed in the atmosphere. Later, cooling and condensation may bring it into droplets and clouds, contributing to rain, rivers, groundwater and the wider hydrological cycle.

The point is not that entropy creates clouds. It does not. The point is that water can leave one form of organization and later participate in another.

But there is an important limitation: vapour does not necessarily become a rain-bearing cloud. It may condense as dew or follow another pathway. Likewise, when a person loosens the structure imposed by conventional social conditioning, the resulting freedom may lead toward meditation, Kundalini practice and deeper realization—or toward confusion and fragmentation.

Dissolution is therefore an opening of possibilities, not a guarantee of evolution.

The water analogy is only structural, not literal. Water forms collective structures through physical processes, while human beings form spiritual communities through consciousness, relationships and shared purposes. Yet both illustrate that leaving an earlier arrangement does not mean remaining permanently dispersed.

The Scientific Boundary

The thermodynamic analogy must remain limited. Local organization can emerge within larger processes in which total entropy increases. Clouds and living organisms can display considerable structure while participating in processes involving entropy production. Thus entropy and ordinary “disorder” are not simple opposites.

This does not scientifically prove Kundalini, nonduality or spiritual evolution, nor do my experiences establish a physical law of consciousness. The scientific and spiritual levels must remain distinct.

The legitimate connection is only the structural one: an existing organization can loosen, a wider range of possibilities can open, and another organization can subsequently emerge.

The Pattern I See

The process can therefore be expressed as:

existing social order → loosening of identification → wider freedom → spiritual association and practice → possible deeper order → integration

But another outcome is possible:

existing social order → escape without deeper organization → fragmentation → loss of outer and inner order

The water cycle expresses the same structural possibility:

ocean → evaporation → atmospheric dispersion → condensation or another pathway → cloud, dew, rain or another state

Neither sequence guarantees its final stage.

My own journey taught me, therefore, not to romanticize either conformity or escape. One can leave society and find nothing higher; one can remain within society and become inwardly free. What matters is not the external form but the organization of life that emerges within it.

For the seeker of Kundalini, the wiser approach may be detached participation: remain connected enough to society to preserve useful outer order, detached enough to gain inner freedom, and connected enough with genuine practitioners to nurture deeper practice.

The central insight is not that entropy is good or that disorder produces Kundalini. It is that the dissolution of one order can open the possibility of another. The loosening is only the opening. If a higher order emerges, it is revealed by what becomes reorganized afterward.

The highest possibility is therefore not society versus Kundalini, or order versus entropy, but a deeper order capable of containing both.