Questioner: My question is that I heard that there are two cosmic energies, these two Cosmic energies will take out all the sufferings of the people, which are from treta yuga of Lord Sri Ram and Lakshman get received the cosmic energies from Sage Vishwamitra, those are called some bala and atibala, these are the two cosmic energies he can if he gets that cosmic energies he can even will be out of hungry. The person can cannot fight for the food and the person can live blissfully. This blissful cannot be seen in our education system I feel, because we are studying about the objects and materialistic lives, but we cannot we are not possible to enjoy every time, but if that things were there we will be enjoyed.
Acharya Prashant: How do you know any of that?
Questioner: How these things can be achieved? Is it possible in today's world?
Acharya Prashant: I tell you to go and achieve A*B*C squared D, how do you achieve that? How do you achieve that? Do you know what A, B, C, or D are? Or are we just dealing with imagination? Is A greater than 1? Please raise your hands. Is A smaller than 1? Please raise your hands. How do you answer? How do I answer? I do not know what A is, how do I say anything about it? And without knowing it, if I still insist on saying something isn't that superstition? Is that not the very definition of superstition? To not know, yet believe? What do I know? How do I know?
Enlightenment is a fancy word, but actually, the thing is quite simple. Enlightenment simply means to know. There are areas of darkness in the mind, you throw light on them, and that is enlightenment, that's all. Enlightenment is no magical or fancy thing. So right now, I can enlighten you a bit, you too can enlighten me a bit. To really know something is to be enlightened about it.
Kindly do not associate metaphysical notions with it. Enlightenment is not some divine event, in which flowers rain from the sky and strange impossible meta-natural things start happening on the earth. No, nothing, enlightenment is a very simple thing and the other kind of enlightenment that you hear, in which magical things happen, incredible stuff, people start flying and flowers start talking, animals transform into human beings, all that is nice entertainment, nothing beyond that.
Soul, you said, that the soul has to be enlightened, we talked of three words and we said that they are approximate synonyms, which three words? Consciousness, mind, and ego. Take the soul as just the mind, nothing more than that. When you say, “My soul is suffering”, it's actually nothing but the mind because nothing apart from the mind ever suffers. So that which has been, in a very ornamental way called as the soul, is nothing but the mind, just the mind. Okay?
Energies, are really there two types of energies? I know of only one energy that is denoted in Joules, how many do you know of? Is there another kind of energy denoted by something else? At least in SI, it is just Joules. What other kind of energy can be there? There can be forms of energy I understand, there can be forty forms of energy, but energy is just one. Energy is just one. That which can cause change in matter is called energy, is that not the basic definition? That which can cause any kind of change in matter is defined as energy, full stop. The energy causes change in matter and change in matter produces energy, the two are interlinked.
So, what is this paranormal kind of energy? The word energy used in a spiritual sense is mere superstition. Do you understand the word ethereal? What is ethereal? You know cosmic, blurred, hazy, beyond real, surreal, mystical? If ever in any of these contexts you hear the word energy being uttered, run away. Somebody says, “You know, some energy is rising from my naval point and it's coming upwards, it has reached my lungs now it will hit my throat and then the brain, and then there will be a great fountain of energy bursting out from my skull.” Please, watch out, sheer nonsense.
Energy is physical, consciousness is not. When you talk of energy, you are talking of the material world, full stop. Anything material has energy associated with it, full stop. Energy has no meaning in the spiritual sense, no meaning at all, if you hear someone saying “You know, I can move this mug using my mental energy”, nonsense.
There is solar energy, there is tidal energy, and there's nothing called mental energy. Nothing called mental energy, and if you insist that there is something called mental energy, it is just the food that you take in, and that food becomes the stuff of the brain and obviously in the brain there are electronic processes going on, there are neurons that fire, so some energy is involved, there are very subtle electrical circuits all over in the brain, so obviously there is movement of energy.
Even with respect to the brain, you can just fully use the word energy but with respect to the mind, the word energy is meaningless.
Are you getting it?
But there is a lot of spiritual haziness, so we start using words that belong to the objective universe, in the subjective sense as well. Keep these two apart, that's the fundamental thing, the objective world is one thing and the inner world, where you have dissatisfaction or love or curiosity or identification, that is another thing, these two are related to the each other, yet very separate.
Are you getting it?