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The basic qualities of our chakras

Hidden powers reside within the human being, mapped through the chakras.

The Mūlādhāra Cakra holds karmic destiny and the dormant Kuṇḍalinī Śakti. Life's direction is determined in the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra, shaped by choosing sādhanā over consumption. Through practice, three powers awaken: prāṇa-śakti, dhāraṇā-śakti, and chaitanya-śakti. These are accessed via four gateways: nourishment, breath, conscious movement, and external intake, including the Guru's word. Mastering these grants the divine Śaktis of will and creativity. Success here allows movement to the Maṇipūra Cakra, the transformer of divine power and seat of deep light and sacred sound. The Ājñā Chakra is the managing principle. The Anāhata Chakra holds the power of love and balances the soul against the ego. The Viśuddhi Cakra purifies the final poisons of individualism. The foundational three powers are cultivated in Svādhiṣṭhāna; higher siddhis come later. The Guru principle manages this entire play of energies.

"The play of various Śaktis can only be managed by Gurudev."

"Gu is darkness, and ru is light... It is the play or game of darkness and light, wisdom and ignorance."

Filming location: Strilky, Czech Republic

Praṇām parāpar, praṇām Gurudev, praṇām paramparā, praṇām Spoločne. Let us ask our Gurudev together to bless us, to bless this moment, this precious moment, and to bless the words we will speak so that they are constructive and lead to our spiritual development. We will chant the mantra together: Om Prabhupāda Svāmī, and then we will begin the satsaṅg. Yesterday and the day before, our Gurudev announced the broad topic of chakras and the hidden powers in humans. Before he begins speaking in specific detail about these powers and chakras, let us review the basics from the book The Hidden Powers in Humans. It is one of the most comprehensive books you can acquire. Swamījī has included within it the wisdom of thousands of years, presenting it in words we can understand today. There are hidden powers in humans. The Mūlādhāra Cakra is where the powers of our karmas are hidden. You know well how difficult it is to resist the power of destiny; it is not easy to successfully overcome the karmic message we brought with us. We can only do this through our sādhanā and our Gurudeva. Within the Mūlādhāra Cakra is also hidden one of the strongest powers: Kuṇḍalinī Śakti. It is a dormant, inactive power. If we move further to the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra, we come to our life—the life we are currently living. Here, it is decided whether we are on the path of the destruction of human consciousness or the path of constructive development of our consciousness. All depends on good karma. If we touch words like yoga in life, words like sādhanā, our guru, then our life is directed positively under the leadership of culture. If we opt for a consumer way of life filled with entertainment, alcohol, and sex, then that is what our life will be. Through our sādhanā, three basic force fields begin to arise, and we start to cultivate them. These are: prāṇa-śakti, dhāraṇā-śakti (the power of concentration), and chaitanya-śakti (the power of alertness). These are the three main powers we have a chance to awaken during our life, and they will give us the force to continue on the path. When we imagine ourselves, there are four different entries or gateways. The first is nourishment—what we eat and drink. That is why Swamījī stresses a sāttvic way of eating; otherwise, our development becomes much more difficult. The second entry is our breath. We learn how to breathe and to touch prāṇa through prāṇāyāma. The third is movement—conscious movements, which are our āsanas. The fourth entry is what we take in from the outside: in the form of stress, electromagnetic smog, various information, but also in the form of Guruvākya (the Guru's word) and Guru Tattva. If we grasp this positively—if we start to eat healthy and clean, practice āsanas and prāṇāyāma, and if we start to listen to Guru Vākya and act accordingly—then we are truly grasping the essence of the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. We then gain access to the three powers I mentioned. If we do not realize the potential and play of these three Śaktis, we will act in a confused and unconcentrated way, becoming what Swamījī describes as "world champions in wasting energy." We need energy, prāṇa, and we need to be alert. If we gain hold of these three powers, we then have access to the two divine Śaktis contained in the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. These are Icchā Śakti, the willpower we can develop up to the point of His will, and Brahmā Śakti, the power of creativity which allows us to burn into the essence of any issue. It is thanks to this divine Śakti that we have been born here as this entity. This is the chance we have been given: the chance to actually move the karma contained in the Mūlādhāra Cakra. Swamījī said that if we are able to manage the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra—its power of concentration and the other powers—we are halfway through on our path. It is not easy to live these principles through our karmas. If we manage this successfully, we move forward to the Maṇipūra Cakra. Maṇipūra is the seed of the power of wisdom. It is said that Mahāprabhujī, the divine light, comes from the Maṇipūra Cakra. This deep light is awakened in the Maṇipūra Cakra based on our successful management of the powers in the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. The Maṇipūra Cakra is a kind of transformer of divine power into specific prāṇas. This is why we always begin our practice by relaxing Maṇipūra. Those of us at Anuṣṭāna always start with the left nostril, which symbolizes the Divine Mother, the female principle, the energy. This relaxes the parasympathetic system and the right hemisphere. The Maṇipūra Cakra has ten petals that symbolize the ten prāṇas being transformed. Swamījī tells us that breath also starts in the Maṇipūra Cakra, as does the divine sound of the Nāda. In a similar way that a mother nourishes her baby through the navel cord, the Divine Mother nourishes us through the navel cord of our breath. So, two things are here: nāda and deep light. Nāda is the essence of Guruvākya. In the evening prayer we sing, "Guru Brahma, Guru Viṣṇu, Guru Devo Maheśvara, Guru Sākṣāt Parabrahma." The essence of that Parabrahman is nāda—nāda rūpa Parabrahma. Thus, Swamījī Gurudev is the essence of Parabrahman, but he is also the divine light, the deep. All this is awakened in the Maṇipūra Cakra. All these power fields are connected to the Ājñā Chakra, the Guru Chakra. It is the managing chakra. If we have not successfully implemented the managing principle inside ourselves, then our guru becomes that managing principle. This is why it is vital to understand and implement the managing principle of Gurudev into our life. The play of various Śaktis can only be managed by Gurudev. It holds huge powers. When we move forward, we come to the Anāhata Chakra—the endless chakra. One huge power is hidden there, and that is love. We imagine various things under this word, but we say, "love moves mountains." Bhakti is a kind of power whose dimension we cannot imagine. We know the stories about Hanumānjī and what he was able to do through bhakti. The Anāhata Chakra is the Chakra of Balance. The play of individuality and spirituality is developed there. While our soul wants to sing, chant, fly, and have contact with the universe, our ego tries to manipulate those forces back to oneself, not allowing the soul to get free. We then become enclosed in the cyst of our own ego, a very hard shell. Again, Gurudev is here, knocking on the shell of our ego, trying to open it so that the individual soul becomes united with the universal. When we move to the Viśuddhi Cakra, consider how many times in recent months Swāmījī has said, "Look in the mirror in the morning and realize that you are a human being." In the Viśuddhi Chakra, the last poisonous elements preventing us from being real human beings are destroyed. This is where the development of a human being is completed. "Viṣa" means poison; "śuddha" means to purify. If we clean the last traces of individualism through udāna prāṇa, we purify. After the process of de-egoization runs through uḍḍīyāna prāṇa, the Viśuddhi Cakra, symbolized by sixteen petals, represents the sixteen siddhis, or divine powers, one can master in a human body. But what is the reality? The powers of Prāṇa Śakti, Dhāraṇā Śakti, and Caitanya Śakti were realized in the Svādhiṣṭhāna Cakra. These are the powers we actually have access to; we do not have access to the other powers. So, the development is not easy. As for the Ājñā Chakra, only Gurudev can truly speak about it. We have a vague idea about what the Ājñā Cakra is, by which we can at least understand the principle of Guru. "Gu" is darkness, and "ru" is light. What is dark about the guru? It is us, the disciples. "Guru" and "yoga"—yoga is connection. So, it is the connection and the play of darkness and light. It is the play or game of darkness and light, wisdom and ignorance. Then we start to understand the principle of the guru. That is about it from me. Thank you.

This text is transcribed and grammar corrected by AI. If in doubt what was actually said in the recording, use the transcript to double click the desired cue. This will position the recording in most cases just before the sentence is uttered.

The text contains hyperlinks in bold to three authoritative books on yoga, written by humans, to clarify the context of the lecture:

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