It is like this: I am one person with two hands – a right and a left. If somebody observes my hands from a distance and says that they are one and the same, he is wrong, because they are two hands clearly separate from each other. Coming closer to me, he will see that my left hand is quite separate from the right. Maybe my left hand is in pain, and the right one is not in pain. Maybe the right hand is cut, and the left one is okay, so the two are obviously not one and the same. But if someone enters inside me, they will find that I am one person, and both hands are mine. When the left hand is broken it is I who am hurt, and when the right one is broken, it is again I who suffers. And in the same way when the left hand is raised, it is I who am lifting it, and when the right one is raised, it is again I who am doing it.

So in the ultimate experience, the body and soul are not separate; they are two sides, like my two hands, of the same truth. I use this example so that you understand this well. Then the journey can begin from either of the two points – from the body or from the soul. If someone begins with the body and goes deeper and deeper into it, they will ultimately reach the soul. It is as if someone takes my right hand and moves up; he will reach my left hand sooner or later. Similarly someone can begin directly with the soul, and reach the body in the end.

It is, however, very difficult to begin with the soul. It is difficult because the soul is completely unknown to us. Since we mostly exist on the physical plane, our journey can only begin with the body. There are techniques which start directly with the soul, but generally they can be used by only a very few people. One in a million can use the techniques that begin with the soul. Most people will have to start with the body. The journey can begin only where one is. And for the journey starting with the body, the kundalini is the preparation. Kundalini is the basic seat of the deepest experiences of the body.

In fact, the body is not just what we, or the physiologists, know it to be; it is much more. For instance, a fan is on. If we take the fan down and dismantle it part by part to investigate it, we will not come across electricity anywhere. And maybe, on the basis of this investigation, a very intelligent person may say that there is no such thing as electricity in the mechanism of a fan. He will never find it in any part of the fan itself. Yet the fact is that when it was moving, it was being moved by electricity, and the fan stops moving the moment the electricity stops. Physiologists study the body by dissecting it, and they don’t find the kundalini anywhere. They will never find it. Yet the whole body is run on the electrical energy that is kundalini, just as a fan is run with electricity. This electrical energy of the kundalini cannot be known through outside analysis, because in the very process of analysis the energy disintegrates and disappears. It can be known only through inner experience.

There are two ways to know the body. You can know it from outside, as the physiologist knows by dissecting it – this is one way, and the other way is to know it from inside. One who goes deep inside the body and lives there, knows it from within.