The material energy is such that it relentlessly attacks everyone.
I just got a letter and someone was in Kanpur on the railway station and it was the day after Ramanavami and suddenly he had a little dizzy spell, in a moment he was in hospital , a cut on the head , fainted, bleeding, concussion and all that….it happens!
This is the way the material nature strikes. We go for a drive and wind up two months in a cast, with a big leg in plaster, so no one expects it but it happens and then there is nothing that we can say. So we are pushed by the material nature like a boat on the waves, like a little straw in the wind. ……The straw in the street is just blown by the wind. So we are being blown by the wind in this world! The material nature pushes us….
The material nature pushes us, sometimes give us good things, sometimes gives us bad things. So the shakta or the shaumon are trying to gain power by which they can control this material energy. Shaumanism is especially preoccupied with attaining siddhis. We see that within the Tibetan Buddhism such shaumanism is there, amongst Indian tribes we such shaumanism is there and in India we see it in the tantra. But all that is simply bound to fail!
It is an underestimation of the power of the material energy because no amount of mystic power is adequate to conquer the material energy. It is impossioble to conquer the material energy through out those means.
One will be betrayed, although one’s success of the mystic power maybe extraordinary for some time……..There are acrobats in the circus, they can stand on one finger for a little while, but how long can they maintain that….just another trick. So many tricks! What’s the point of these tricks?!
I can go under water and hold my breath but I’ve got to come back up! So all my mystic power is just giving me temporary gain.
Bhagavad Gita explains (Sanskrit) that only through the mercy of Krishna can we overcome the material energy, no other way, no other way! And any other way we think we can overcome the material energy …..means maya!!!
Maya has captured us. The main problem with maya, or the illusionary energy is that it is not just outside of us, but maya has already entered within and is already within our mind and therefore maya makes us think that there is more than the Absolute Truth, that there are other means that are required to find relief from the illusory energy. This is maya! This is illusion! This maya has to be given up! We have to take full trust in the words of Krishna.
(Kadamba Kanana 02/05/2002)