A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

They were sitting opposite to each other in the sanyasi’s room at the
math.

Anand : Then what about the sensations I have on the chakras?

Sanyasi : That shows the weakness of your mind. What happens

when a strong current passes through a thin wire. The wire
melts, right. That is what happened to you. A high spiritual
current has made your mind weak.

Anand : So my mind is weak because of this?

Sanyasi : Yes. Anyway there is no other use out of these sensations

that you have.

(Anand and the sanyasi continued their conversation. After that Anand was
about to leave. Then the sanyasi said looking at him)

Sanyasi : What kind of a yogi are you with a tummy?

* * *

(years back when Anand was undergoing his primary education)

It was the day of an examination. The students were eagerly waiting to leave
the exam room after the exam. They talked about movies they could watch in
the television after getting back home.

Anand was sitting straight in his chair in the exam room. He kept looking at the
plain wall before him. He focussed his attention to the wall. He concentrated
on to there.

* * *
Anand was studying in 9th standard. He then joined for an entrance coaching
course. He understood that the competition there was really high.

Those days, he was an atheist at times. He often talked about science. But at
the early days of his entrance coaching he started believing in god. He thought
this will make him perfect, which will eventually help him in the competition in
studies. He even carried a Bhagavath Gita in his bag while going for coaching!
He also thought concentrating on something, say god, will increase his
concentration skills.

One morning before going for coaching he was praying to God from home. He
was standing before the photos of deities, eyes closed. He concentrated on the
picture of god in his mind. Suddenly, he started to feel a pulling sensation
between his eyebrows in the middle of his forehead. He wondered what it was.
And that was a beginning.

* * *

Anand started doing small meditations. Anand meditated by imagining the

names of god written on sky, on the black board. He even started doing it at
his free times with his eyes open.

He browsed in internet to know more about this feeling he had on his

forehead. None gave a proper scientific explanation for this sensation. But in
spirituality this sensation had an explanation. It said that this is a feeling that
occurs before the third eye chakra opening. It also said concentrating on this
chakra(point) will open your third eye. He tried this but did not see much
happening. He also read about the other chakras present in the human body.
All this made him more into a spiritual person.

One day he noticed that he started to have this same sensation on the top of
his head. He knew that this is where the crown chakra is located. He thought
he might start to have this sensation on all his chakras.
When Anand reached 11th standard he forgot about all these things and
started concentrating on his studies. He wanted to crack the entrance
examination. But it is to be noticed that he had good concentrating skills at
that time which is a characteristic of active third eye chakra! By this time he
had also developed better notions about God, the universe etc. This can be
said as a feature of active crown chakra! The once atheist in him also helped to
make these notions. By this time he had moved on from the silly notions he
made about God, like imagining his names written on sky. His ideas about God
were polished in time. He believed in god being an entity that cannot be
explained by the frameworks of time and space.

* * *

When he started studying in an engineering college he began practising

meditation that he had stopped once. At that time, he believed that existence
of God cannot be proved but in process of searching for God you can refine
yourself as a person. Thus,his meditation became a search for God. He thought
of God as a presence without a presence. This confused his mind. But he
thought this confusion was his spirituality.He also thought about the endless
time and space and God beyond these. And whenever he meditated, he had
sensations on points of third eye and crown chakras.

Now you can see another transition in Anand. When he meditated these
sensations came down to the middle of his chest where the heart chakra is
located. He also started to have sensations in the lower chakras (there are
three lower chakras, the heart chakra and three higher chakras as main
chakras in total) but not as consistent as in the higher chakras.

* * *

The sensation at the point of heart chakra was the beginning of a new phase in
his life. That is when he started to feel high affection towards a girl from his
college. Remember the heart chakra is related to love. He also started to have
problems in his behaviour during this time. When a person’s chakras open
without spiritual preparations from that person, then that will lead to
problems. That might be what happened in his case.

He started to have mental problems after deeply loving this girl from college.
(an overactive third eye chakra will lead to mental problems) He was made fun
of in front of others due to problems in his behaviour. He broke completely
after all this. But he had read somewhere in the internet that the chakras will
create problems in a person’s life but that is all a cleansing action and
eventually the problems will fade away. This gave him some solace.

At a time, when in college, he found that a foul smell had started to come out
of his body. This is also the time when he had sensations in the point of root
chakra(the lowest chakra located beneth the spine). He understood that this is
the reason for the smell. But, at times, he concentrated on the root chakra, as
he thought this also was a part of spiritual development and also, the smell
was a bit lustful!

Finally he graduated from college. He got a job. For some reasons, he believed
that it was a good time for him. He was full of energy. Then, in the mornings,
he meditated concentrating on his lower chakras, especially the root chakra.
This is because he had read from the net that the spiritual development starts
from the lower to higher chakras. The lower chakras need to open before the
higher chakras. But that was another mistake. His negative emotions like lust
and anger increased with it. He was also seen surprisingly emotional at times.
He finally quit his job.

At this time, when he was tested, the testosterone levels were high in his body.
This can be related with a highly active root chakra as root chakra is related to
the production of this hormone. After sometime, he came out of the problems
with his root chakra. But many other problems still remained with him. He
decided to visit his nearby math to know more about these chakras, as he
believed that these chakras created problems in his life.

* * *
Anand was an introvert from his school days but it seems his spiritual life had
made him more of an introvert. From the math, he asked about the chakras to
the main sanyasi. He advised him not to meditate concentrating on the
chakras.

Sanyasi : Even we don’t meditate concentrating on the higher

chakras. That will confuse your thoughts. You are not
ready for it.(he stopped and continued) Nobody can
become a yogi in a day. That requires years of practice. I
will give you some books to read.

He gave Anand some books to read. But Anand was never interested in reading
books. Also he couldn’t digest everything written on those books. The atheist
was still there somewhere inside him.

The sanyasi also advised Anand to pray to God. He said that praying is one of
first stages of spiritual development. He then got many new ideas regarding
spirituality. He understood that most of the things he thought about
spirituality were wrong. He once asked the sanyasi whether he could choose
sanyasa, the sanyasi soon understood that he asked that not only with the
desire to become a sanyasi, but also because of thinking about that girl from
college. He then said that Anand should be prepared for it before choosing
sanyasa. And there is lot of preparations still to do.

The sanyasi understood that Anand was poor at reading. He asked him to
complete reading those books that he had given him, before Anand visits him
the next time. After that Anand had not gone to the math to meet him.

He still thinks of going to the math after reading those books. He feels, going
there will give him some solace. He still has those problems he had from
college. He is not able to get out of it. He started to believe in the effect of
karmas. This happened after going through some books that sanyasi had given
him. He thought he suffers for the bad karmas he had done before.

So, now he hopes for a spiritual development to solve his problems. But it can’t
be sure whether the spiritual development will bring new problems along with
it. He lives hoping that he will be cleansed of all his bad karmas or all his
chakras will be cleansed, and good times will come back to him. Or will this be
an end to all the spiritual development that he underwent.

The journey continues.

* * *