A vibhuti like Napoleon, even during his short period of exile on the island of Elba, developed its iron mines, overhauled its legal and education system, created a small army and navy. You were mentioning in a reply recently on the amount of work Sri Aurobindo accomplished in those few years he wrote for Arya. I feel it’s got nothing to do with just the food one eats, but how to make oneself a vessel of such energy?
Can Invoking Mother Kali throughout the day help in tapping into higher energy sources? I remember Mother telling a student to heighten his attention if he thinks time isn’t enough to study all that he has to, but sharp attention itself feels straining after a point and I feel like I need energy to persist in such long streaks of attention.
The seat of energy is always the vital being or the prana in us. Some have a large vital being constitutionally so to say. They can receive and release a lot of energy. But this need not always be the highest or best kind of energy. There are people who draw a lot of energy from the lower vital worlds or even from people and objects around them. These people eat, drink, dance, enjoy life, indulge in all kinds of pleasures, but the quality of their energy is very poor. It is like the fossil fuel we use today that drives our cars, but also creates a lot of pollution.Β
There are others who are simply open to everything in their environment. They give and therefore they receive from everything around. This is like the wind and water energy, which helps us move and carry on our regular activities. This type of energy available all around can be increased by the practice of pranayama, preferably learnt under a proper guide. However, even the simple practice of conscious deep breathing from time to time gives this kind of energy boost. Or even simply opening oneself through an inner state of wideness to nature, such as trees, does give energy for certain activities of the mind and heart.Β
There are, however, higher sources of energy like the solar energy, which can be received by linking ourselves to the spiritual consciousness by an inner aspiration or mantras that invoke certain cosmic powers.Β
One should, however, not invoke these powers indiscriminately, as the body or the mind may break down under the impact. Invoking Kali should not be done. There is hardly anyone who can bear her impact, especially as her higher forms do not tolerate any impurities in nature. Most often, what one receives is the inrush of vital forces that are easily mistaken for the goddess and can do harm. Instead, one should simply turn to the Divine with prayer and aspiration and give oneself to Him with faith and devotion. This opens the doors to the highest and best quality of energy, but it requires a certain degree of sincerity. If one misuses the higher forms of energy, then the door closes.
Most important is to learn to give. This makes one wide and hence we receive more energy from everything and everywhere.
Here is a comprehensive hint provided by The Mother.
‘One of the most powerful aids that yogic discipline can provide to the sportsman is to teach him how to renew his energies by drawing them from the inexhaustible source of universal energy.
Modern science has made great progress in the art of nourishment, which is the best known means of replenishing one’s energies. But this process is at best precarious and subject to all kinds of limitations. We shall not speak about it here, for the subject has already been discussed at great length. But it is quite obvious that so long as the world and men are what they are, food is an indispensable factor. Yogic science knows of other ways of acquiring energy, and we shall mention two of the most important.
The first is to put oneself in relation with the energies accumulated in the terrestrial material world and to draw freely from this inexhaustible source. These material energies are obscure and half unconscious; they encourage animality in man, but, at the same time, they establish a kind of harmonious relationship between the human being and material Nature. Those who know how to receive and use these energies are usually successful in life and succeed in everything they undertake. But they are still largely dependent on their living conditions and their state of bodily health. The harmony created in them is not immune from all attack; it usually vanishes when circumstances become adverse. The child spontaneously receives this energy from material Nature as he expends all his energies without calculating, joyfully and freely. But in most human beings, as they grow up, this faculty is blunted by the worries of life, as a result of the predominant place which mental activities come to occupy in the consciousness.
However, there is a source of energy which, once discovered, is never exhausted, whatever the outer circumstances and physical conditions of life may be. It is the energy that can be described as spiritual, and is received no longer from below, from the inconscient depths, but from above, from the supreme origin of the universe and man, from the all-powerful and eternal splendours of the superconscient. It is there, all around us, permeating everything; and to enter into contact with it and to receive it, it is enough to aspire sincerely for it, to open oneself to it in faith and trust, to widen one’s consciousness and identify it with the universal Consciousness.
At the outset, this may seem very difficult, if not impossible. Yet by examining this phenomenon more closely, one can see that it is not so alien, not so remote from the normally developed human consciousness. Indeed, there are very few people who have not felt, at least once in their lives, as if lifted up beyond themselves, filled with an unexpected and uncommon force which, for a time, has made them capable of doing anything whatever; at such moments nothing seems too difficult and the word “impossible” loses its meaning.
This experience, however fleeting it may be, gives a glimpse of the kind of contact with the higher energy that yogic discipline can secure and maintain.
The method of achieving this contact can hardly be given here. Besides, it is something individual and unique for each one, which starts from where he stands, adapting itself to his personal needs and helping him to take one more step forward. The path is sometimes long and slow, but the result is worth the trouble one takes. We can easily imagine the consequences of this power to draw at will and in all circumstances on the boundless source of an energy that is all-powerful in its luminous purity. Weariness, exhaustion, illness, old age and even death become mere obstacles on the way, which a persistent will is sure to overcome.’
Bulletin, August 1949
(Ref. https://incarnateword.in/cwm/12/energy-inexhaustible)
Affectionately,
Alok Da
