Q&A – Chakras, Sannyasi and Grihasthi

Q&A – Chakras, Sannyasi and Grihasthi

[00:45] Q – How do chakras influence our lives?

How do chakras influence our lives?

[00:48] A – Gateways for Creative Intelligence

Chakras. So nice to hear somebody pronouncing it correctly for once. Somebody a long time ago, and I rather suspect it was in the state to my west, California, started convincing everybody that it was terribly chic, just like it’s not chick, but it’s chic, to pronounce chakra, the way you pronounce chic, which is shhhakra, you know, “My shakras.” And this isn’t French, this is Sanskrit.

We don’t pronounce it shakra, it’s pronounced chakra. Chakra.

Chakra means a circle. And when people talk about chakras, they tend to go around in circles. Chakra is a very simple thing to understand. There are certain places in the body aligned along the spine starting from the base of the spine working its way all the way up to the top of our head. There are certain critical places where, if there’s stress accumulated in those places, then upward moving creative intelligence gets blocked. And when upward moving creative intelligence gets blocked, it’s going to hammer away at the block until the block is broken through.

And a chakra simply could be thought of as a gateway through which creative intelligence has to pass in aid of the advancement of one’s overall evolution and optimal brain functioning. Chakras.

Now, people get too involved in all of the, “Oh, what are the colors of the chakras? And what is the special deity? And what’s the ghost in the machine? And what’s the special kinds of aromatherapies that you have to take to get the chakra to…?” You know, all that, “And what does it mean? And why am I feeling this way about you?

“And I usually get a bit of shoulder work in this thing. I’m feeling this way about you because of your chakra. I’m vibing on your first chakra, second chakra, and you’re vibing on my fifth chakra. The reason why we’re not really resonating is because of our chakras being out of alignment with each other.”

But usually they don’t say chakras, they say shakras. “My purple shakra is not vibing with your orange shakra.” Really we need to kind of just blow all this mood making apart and just get simple about it.

[03:14] Not That Important

Chakras do play a role, but they play the role of like a gate. And there are seven of them, and there are seven consciousness states. And each one of the chakras, as creative intelligence is able successfully to move through the gateway, and elevate human behavior, elevate the repertoire of human capacity, then we can say, well, it’s like somebody comes into your house, maybe they come in through the front door, they pass through the living room, they come into the hallway, and then they come into the kitchen.

We’re not going to go with that person and say, “Oh, you entered the front door. Did you notice the purple doorframe? Oh, you walked through the doorway from the living room into the hall? Ooh, you did a chakra walk or a shakra walk.” It’s just a doorway, it’s a gateway. Far too much importance is put on them.

In my entire career with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a master of every conceivable Vedic thing, I think I only ever heard him talk about chakras maybe three times for maybe a total of 15 minutes if you added up all the three.

What he did talk about was that natural rising through the human body of fully developed creative intelligence. And there is an upward movement, an upward movement from less sophisticated to greater sophistication, greater sophistication, the greatest sophistication, and this movement of creative intelligence.

He didn’t use the word energy. It’s a little bit too vague and a bit kind of California sounding for him.

It was creative intelligence. Creative intelligence on the move. And of course our body becomes more and more sophisticated moving upward toward the brain. And, so then the chakras are simply the doorways through which creative intelligence moves. If there’s a block in the doorway, then the creative intelligence will push the door open.

It’ll force the chakra into unblocked function until eventually the entire brain’s functioning is optimized and when one is able to lead a life of frictionless activity, activity without friction.

So chakras don’t really play a role per se. They are simply thought of as doorways, doorways through which creative intelligence passes.

It’s the creative intelligence we need to pay attention to, not the doorway. Chakras, not that important.

[06:14] Q – Where did the fascination from Chakras come from?

Where did the fascination from chakras come from?

[06:20] A – Too Much Object Referral

Fascination with chakras came from ignorance. Just as most undue fascinations come from ignorance. Too much object referral, too much object referral. Not what is the nature of the Self, capital S, the transcendental Unified Field of Consciousness, which in Sanskrit we use the word samadhi.

Transcending all relativity, the individual mind discovers the layer at which it’s unified with Totality Consciousness. Now we’re talking. That’s what we need to be attending to. But this kind of piecemeal approach that we take in the West,

“Oh, did you take your vitamin C? Was it calcium ascorbate or was it ascorbic acid? Because you know it makes a difference. One of them is assimilable and the other really is not. And did you have your special adaptogen? Oh, you mean you only had a quarter of a teaspoon? No, you need to have half of a teaspoon of your adaptogen.”

You know, this whole thing of your whole life is in orbit around and pivoting around all of these piecemeal little details. You get all the little details right and there’s a plethora of details. “Get this right, get the chakras right.”

“Oh, I’m still suffering, even though I’ve been having all of my adaptogenic food and I’ve been looking after my body, and I haven’t been putting paint on my fingernails and deadening the nail beds, and I haven’t been brushing my teeth with fluoride, and I’ve made sure that whenever I drink water out of a bottle that the plastic of the bottle is a special kind of plastic that doesn’t leach toxins into it, and I just can’t figure it out because I’m still suffering.”

“Ah, it’s your chakras.”

“Okay, I’ve tweaked all my chakras, and I’ve got all the beads on that aid in the purple chakra, and the orange chakra, and the blue chakra, and the red chakra, and all that. And, ah, but it’s not that. What it is, is…” and there’ll be some other little piecemeal detail.

How can I juggle all of the plates and spin all the plates and juggle all the balls and everything and keep everything in perfect balance using my individuality to do it?

[08:53] Water the Roots

Maharishi had a great analogy of a tree. It has a hundred thousand leaves and branches going out everywhere and it’s supposed to be producing flowers followed by fruits. But for some reason the leaves are going brown, and the flowers are withering, and whatever fruits do come are all shriveled. And so somebody thinks, “You need to fix that.”

They get a ladder and park it up against one of the branches, climb up there with some green paint and start painting the leaves green.

Somebody else says, “A good healthy tree always has fruits on it. Let’s get the stapler out. Go to the store, buy some fruits, and we’ll staple them on here. Staple some fruits on this tree. Let’s get up there and spray some moisturizer on all the flowers and treat the flower. Treat the flower, treat the fruits and staple fruits on.” And then “Tree’s looking really good now.”

Well, don’t look away for long because it’s just about to die. What’s wrong with this tree is not lack of attention to the hundred thousand leaves. It’s not lack of attention to the flowers and the fruits. It’s lack of watering the root. The tree goes way down underground and it has all these roots from which it draws from the nutrients in the water of the soil to make colorless sap.

And when the colorless sap rises in the tree, all the leaves are fantastic, all the fruits are fantastic, all the flowers are beautiful, but we haven’t been watering the root, the transcendental level of life. Meditation. Take the mind to the source. Take the mind to the infinite field of inner creative intelligence, to Brahman, the Totality Field.

Take the mind there and identify with that. It awakens all of that creative intelligence that will naturally rise through the physiology, rise through the mind, and all the elements of individuality, the ego structure, the sensory development structures, and all of that. Everything gets nourished if we stop attending to all the little details.

Stop painting the leaves. Get your ladder down, stop trying to spray the flowers and things, stop stapling fruits onto your tree.

Somebody said to me once, “Oh, my relationship with my partner’s bad.” “How do you know it’s bad?”

“Oh, we’re not having sex. Oh, somebody said to us, just have a lot more sex. So we’ve been having sex day and night because we want to keep our relationship together. Like wake up in the morning, have sex before breakfast. Wipe our mouths, go away and have sex, you know, maybe right there in the breakfast room. And then, go off and get a coffee together and have sex in the car on the way home. And it was having sex day and night.”

And I said, “How’s it working for you?”

And they go, “It’s not working.”

I said, “You’re stapling fruits onto the tree. A good tree is supposed to have fruit but there aren’t any fruits so let’s staple them on. That’s this thing of, let’s just have sex and that’ll make it look like a healthy relationship.”

And these people were just exhausted. They’re absolutely exhausted and kind of annoyed with each other too. Having to take all kinds of drugs to feel sexy and things as well.

So then, what we need to do is water the root. Water the root of the tree, and then whatever needs to be there in the tree, it naturally appears.

Water the root means transcend. Practice Vedic Meditation. Go to the source, awaken the source, everything else will blossom.

[12:38] Q – What’s the difference between a sannyasi and a grihasthi?

What’s the difference between a Sannyasi and a Grihasthi?

[12:43] Four Varnas – Life Stages

See, the thing is these are life stages that can be chosen to be lived at earlier stages than others. Let me give you some clarity on it.

There are four Varnas, V-A-R-N-A, varna means a life stage, and you move from one to the next.

Brahmachari, Bramhacharya is… Brahma means Totality. Acharya means my teacher.

So, being taught by the Totality Consciousness is the phase of life of Brahmacharya.

Brahmacharya is that phase of life where you are learning. You are under the tutelage of others. Brahmacharya. And someone who is in Brahmacharya phase is a Brahmachari. Brahmachari. If it’s a female, it’s a Brahmacharini.

So in many cases the neuter form is Brahmachari, and the specific female is Brahmacharini, and the specific male is Brahmachari.

Then we at some stage graduate from that phase of life into Grihastha, Grihastha, G-R-I-H-A-S-T-H-A, Grihastha. Grihastha. So Grihastha means civilization building. We’re in a phase of life where we are, adding to and bringing about greater and greater sophistication of all of those social arrangements which we refer to as civilization.

Where everyone has an opportunity to specialize in their field, to make their personal contribution to the group effort of being civilized. And people can draw upon each other’s energies. And the Grihastha phase of life, when practiced, is you are a Grihasthi. And so, when you are a Grihasthi, you’re in a phase of life where you are building civilization.

Perhaps one of your contributions is family, whether through procreation or through adoption, or through simply the creation of community. And leadership within community is the grades of Grihastha moving from being less of a leader to more of a leader.

The next phase of life is called Vanaprastha. Vana, V-A-N-A, Prastha, P-R-A-S-T-H-A. Vanaprastha. It’s all one word.

Vanaprastha means a forest dweller, but it doesn’t mean literally that you go off and live in the forest, though it could. But it means that perhaps you’ve resiled somewhat from the busy, busy life of being expected to lead in community. You’re in the process of building protégés.

You can see whether you feel older or not, still, you can count, and, we know that human body life is some kind of percentage of a hundred years, so we can all count. And it’s evident that there’s going to come a phase where whatever knowledge you have accrued, to make you socially relevant, your existence having been relevant socially, it’s good to have some kind of an idea of succession.

So, the mapping out of succession, the building of protégés, and the more retired, not necessarily completely retired, but a more retired phase of life.

The final stage is referred to as Sannyas. Sannyas means that phase of life where you have nothing to do with civilization building anymore. Where you are practicing fully a Sadhana. You are a Sadhaki, you are someone who is full time, day and night, in spiritual practice.

You have no interest in the usual things that people are engaged in, in life, like, “Oh, what movie will we watch? What are we going to do? Go to the play, or go to the theater, or listen to the opera, or lie around, listening to beautiful music.” 

Sannyasi is someone who is in a rather sped-up mode to advance all consciousness states into the one highest pinnacle of consciousness, Unity Consciousness.

[17:32] Blessed Solitude

Now someone may, at a very early stage of life, straight out of being a Brahmachari, being out of the student phase, one may think to oneself, even a very young person, “I need to graduate through all those other phases right now and become a Sannyasi.” Sannyasi means someone who is practicing sannyas, a life of complete detachment, a monastic or nun life, and that you live separate from other people and you spend a lot of time in blessed solitude.

And blessed solitude sounds terribly blessed unless, of course, you’re not actually ready for it. In which case, it starts to sound like that other word that starts with an L, lonely. But sannyasi, there’s just absolutely nothing like being A-L-O-N-E, alone. 

All alone is the sound of perfect blessedness to someone who properly is in the sannyasi phase of life. If it is that you are a member of that percentage of one percent, a fraction of one percent of the population, who, it’s your dharma to enter sannyas very young or younger than usual, then you seek the permission of a guru, who is someone who really knows what she or he is doing, and they will initiate you into sannyas.

And therein you’ll be taught how to be completely self sufficient. Completely self sufficient means even family name or name not used anymore. Family people, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, all of that, no recognition of any of that anymore. No specificity of relationship. And one becomes then a dedicated sannyasi, and a sannyasi then is someone who is living that life of pure monasticism.

[19:44] It’s Better to Have a Guru

And, there’s a calling for that, doing that very young. There’s also… sannyas is something that everyone will experience at some phase, even if it’s the last one year or one hour or one minute of your physical existence on this Earth, you’ll pass through sannyas.

And so maybe, in your very late phase of your body life, it becomes appropriate to detach from all relative matters, then you know, indeed you’ve become a sannyasi, even if only by the necessity of you being someone of that particular body age.

If not, one could be a Grihasthi or a Vanaprasthi, a civilization builder or a forest dweller, right up to the last five minutes of your life, or you could be a Grihasthi right up to the last five minutes and then have three minutes of vanaprastha and two minutes of sannyas before you let go of this mortal coil.

And so all of this is a way, just different ways of describing what you’re up to. What are you up to? For someone to say, “I’m a Sannyasi,” but not to have been initiated into it, is cultural appropriation. You’re not actually a Sannyasi, unless someone who is a master, and they themselves a Sannyasi, initiates you into the order of Sannyas.

Otherwise, simply self declaring, “I’m a Sannyasi,” it doesn’t have any cache with those who are actually in the know. It’s a little bit eye rolling, as if, kind of territory. One can’t just simply say, “I think I’ll be a sannyasi now.” It has to be something bestowed on you, as properly you should be initiated into it.

And we don’t recommend experimentation. This is why it’s always better to have a very highly qualified, knowledgeable, and recognized guru who can give you guidance in this area, because days and nights are passing irresistibly and one moment gone and nothing can bring it back to you. We don’t want to do flip-flop experiments with our days and nights.