Satsang as Attunement to Subtle Vibrations
In scientific terms, satsang is attunement to the Guru's brain waves. What are brain waves? They are vibrations of the subtle body. Telepathy. Whether or not you can attune yourself, whether or not you can pick up the signal, depends on how sensitive you are. This does not mean that you have to guess. I think of something, and you guess it. This is not that kind of telepathy; it is attunement to the vibrations of the subtle body. The subtle body has a certain vibrational frequency. If you catch it and attune yourself to it, your subtle body will also be reconfigured. To do this, visualize the Guru's illusory body in the form of Dattatreya, as you were taught in the practice of the illusory body. But even the vibration of the subtle body is not everything. There is the vibration of emptiness, the vibration of the nature of Mind. The subtle body is merely a derivative. This is the highest way to receive satsang.
If you have attuned yourself correctly, you will feel wholeness, a powerful observing consciousness detached from everything, which seems to act and yet does not act, which seems to live and yet might as well not be living, which is in both the pranas and the body, yet beyond both prana and the body. This observing wholeness is inherent in you as well. But it is either unrevealed, undiscovered, or very weak. It must be strengthened and strengthened, and through it you must free yourself from karma. Even when we have discovered it, that does not yet mean anything. Karma still remains. A great action, a mahakriya, must still be performed. What action? The dissolution of karma.
The Power of Observing Presence and Vital Energy
Therefore, this observing presence must grow stronger and gain power. It has much to accomplish. In itself, it is beyond action, but it can do a great deal. It has much to accomplish. It must harmonize your pranas, your vital force, your winds. It must protect you, give you more strength in life, and extend your lifespan. Every person has their own lifespan allotted by the devatas. If they have been allotted enough vital force for ninety years, they live for ninety years, and that is all. If they encounter obstacles in life, then even if ninety years have been allotted to them, they will live for eighty. They will not live the remaining ten years because of those obstacles. Some unforeseen obstacles may cause them to leave the body prematurely. But this reserve of vital force may remain, and then it will be added to their next life. Either they will live longer, or they will incarnate for those ten unfulfilled years as a child, live for a while, and die young. This happens when young children die. It means that they still had a reserve left over from that life, but that life was cut short, and the new incarnation is brief.
However, due to random factors, a person may not use the reserve of vital force allotted to them. If you possess the observing power of awareness, jnana-shakti, svatantrya-shakti, you can increase your vital force, attain the siddhi of longevity, and add ten, twenty, or thirty years to your life. And if the power is very great, you can postpone this limit indefinitely, like the immortal siddhas. We must learn to draw strength from our awareness.
Doubles and Guardian Spirits
It is believed that every person has a double, a person just like them who lives somewhere else. These doubles are connected. As a rule, their vital forces are also connected. And every person also has a guardian spirit. Suppose a person leaves the body; another spirit wants to protect them, so it transfers that person's negative karma onto someone else, onto the double: “I am protecting this one, while the other one does not matter anyway.” Or it may steal the other person's vital force and give it to the one it protects. This is known among shamans. If a shaman watches over a family, lineage, or clan, they fight these spirits so that they release the soul and leave it alone, if it is under the shaman's protection. These matters are not simple.
Vital force can be taken from one person and given to another, like money. It can be accumulated like funds in a bank account, making one extremely rich in terms of vital force—a multimillionaire. If the power of presence is great, the pranas are strong and the elements are whole. You do not need dollars or bank accounts; you need strength of spirit, prana, vital force. An immense, simply incredible amount of it.
Question: In what way are doubles alike?
Their bodies are identical, as are the structure of their subtle bodies, their genetics, and their chakras. They are different souls, but they are like mirror images. They are connected in some incomprehensible way.
Question: Do they look alike?
Yes, and their fates are often similar. But they may live in different parts of the world, in different countries. People have sometimes approached me and said that they had met someone who looked like me. If a person has a powerful guardian spirit, then, in caring for its ward, it seeks out this double in order to take their power and transfer it to the person under its protection. But if the other person has a powerful Guru or a shaman as their protector, then the protector travels in a subtle body and battles this guardian spirit, telling it to leave the person alone, not to touch them, and to let everything take its natural course. Such things happen. Your illusory body and your presence are your true patron and protector. This is your wholeness.
Emptiness and Self-Liberation
But for this to become true power, you must learn to be empty within, empty. To separate yourself from the movements of the soul, from attachments, from everything. Emptiness. Non-grasping. Be aware, let go, detach. The movements of the soul weaken you; attachments weaken you. Often, when demons or spirits create obstacles for a person, they do so because there are certain dark aspects within that person, and these attract them. Sometimes a person can free themselves from them by sacrificing, by offering up these kleshas. Sometimes demons can be pacified with offerings, whether physical or visualized. But most of all, they love offerings of vices and kleshas. If a person offers them their kleshas, they will leave them alone: that is what they wanted, and they have received what was theirs. What does it mean to offer up one’s kleshas? It means to detach oneself from them, to give them away, not to cling to them. To make an offering, one must be empty, not hold on, not cling.
A snake used to slither into a yogi’s cave. It frightened him. His Guru advised him to recite mantras and protect himself, but it kept coming back and frightening him. Then the Guru told him to take a stick and draw a cross on the snake’s belly. He said that this would greatly impress the snake. So he took a stick, and when the snake crawled up to him, he drew a cross on its belly. After drawing the cross, he saw that the cross had appeared on his own abdomen. Then he realized that the snake had come from his own mind. His mind itself was that snake.
Tantric methods involve visualization, mantras, and transformation into an ishta-devata; all of them must be known. But the method of Anuttara Tantra is emptiness and self-liberation. You combine the Tantric methods of visualization, mantras, and transformation into Dattatreya with self-liberation.
When spirits came to Milarepa’s cave, he tried to expel them through wrathful actions and by reciting mantras, but it did not work. Then he began making offerings to them, but they continued to trouble him. Then he simply began meditating on emptiness as inseparable from his own mind and realized that his mind had led him into duality. And they disappeared.
It is useful to master the subtle body, visualization, and the illusory body; all of this is useful. Various powers arise through these practices. But above all is abiding in the unconditioned, inner emptiness, and self-liberation. Your inner emptiness emerges through humility. Even if you are not an outstanding contemplative, but are capable of humility and patience, your karmas sometimes leave you in a way that cannot be achieved through meditation. Someone comes up and spits in your face. You humbly bow. One who can do that is a great person. If you spit back, then you are an ordinary person. Sometimes siddhas or demons test people in this way. If someone reacts like an ordinary person, they are weak, and anything can be done to them. But if they respond with humility and control of the mind, it is better not to approach them: that is a strong person, a strong yogi, and nothing can be done to them.
That is how Soma took Brihaspati’s wife away from him. Brihaspati became enraged, and Soma said, “Your anger shows that you are weak, that you can do nothing to me, and that you are unworthy, so I will not even listen to you.”
Humility as a Source of Strength
Our conditioned reactions, our resentment, our anger, our envy, our jealousy, and our attachments are all our weaknesses. These are all the things that deprive us of strength and inner emptiness. Because they are functions of the ego, and the human ego is capable of nothing. Our humility is the ability to detach ourselves; it is our strength, an immense strength, a nuclear power. Our whims and self-indulgence are all our weaknesses. But subduing our mind is an immense power. This is where the difference lies between an ordinary person and a sadhu, between a sadhu and a jnani.
The emptier you are, the more shakti you can allow to pass through you: jnana, svatantrya, kriya, aishvarya. You are empty, and these powers pass through you as if through a channel. They obey you. But if you act from the ego, that is, if you are not empty, these powers do not pass through you and do not obey you. Because you are small, you are like a point, not space.
We have a strong tendency to superimpose, project, generate thoughts, and make judgments, even unconsciously, at a subconscious level. This happens even faster than we can notice. But you must become subtler, go deeper than this, observe, catch yourself immediately, and dissolve it. As soon as a judgment arises, dissolve it; as soon as an opinion about someone arises, dissolve it. You must tell the mind: “Mind, you understand nothing about the powers of the Universe; you know nothing. Listen to reason, to buddhi; listen to the Atman. Do not superimpose your projections.” This too is humility—the humility of the mind before buddhi.
A saint has no personal opinion about anything. There is awareness, but no opinion. A person, however, has opinions arising from past experience, from the memory of the soul and the subtle body, and from karma. This is what leads them astray. Be empty, freeing yourself more and more from opinions. This opinion, that opinion—if anything, only as a game.
The Memory of the Subtle Body and Liberation from the Past
The memory of the subtle body prevents you from being empty. It still contains a great deal and impels you toward various things. You must remember that by becoming monks, you have destroyed within yourselves the oligarch, the ruler, the family man, the lover, the husband, the wife, the businessman, the soldier, perhaps even the bandit in some of you, the worldly scholar, the rock star, the pop singer, the artist, the poet, all talents in the worldly sense, and the pleasure-seeking person, the bhogi. Because all these are new lives, new bodies, new incarnations. You must constantly decide whether to sustain these things within yourself or dissolve them. But I advise you: it is better to dissolve them. It is better to learn how to dissolve them. Because there will be no end to this. The Universe is infinite, and the universe of ignorance is also infinite. You can go on being singers, rulers, businesspeople, husbands, and wives for five thousand kalpas, for five hundred thousand kalpas. To the Universe, this is imperceptible. Ignorance has no end; vices, illusions, and delusions have no end. Infinite worlds exist everywhere. But this is our point of choice, our point of transition.
There are spirits who experienced some kind of shock after death and then appear before people in certain places. For example, they stop cars on the road. The driver lets them in and gives them a ride. They may have pale faces and speak strangely, and then they either warn the driver of danger or disappear. The driver turns around, but there is no one in the back seat. Then, in shock, the driver takes pills. They go to the police and say, “A young man or woman flagged me down and got into the back seat.” “That often happens at this bend,” the police say—they already know about it; it is not the first time. They pull up the archives, and it turns out that several years ago someone had an accident there and left their body. But because of attachment, that spirit remained there. It did not proceed to new incarnations, to other worlds, or to the worlds of the ancestors, but lives at that bend and warns all the drivers. This happens. Spirits are also attached to their impressions and to the memory of the subtle body, which holds them there.
Because of the memory of the subtle body, we become humans and spirits again. Those whose memory is beautiful and pure become gods, devatas, worldly gods—those who are very pure, creative, and exalted, yet worldly. You must purify all this memory, detach yourself from it, distance yourself from it, as if none of it were yours.
