The Power In You (3 Forms of Shakti) by H.H.Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

You have the power in you.

We all have three shaktis (energies) in us. They are ‘ichcha shakti’ (the energy of will), ‘kriya shakti’ (the energy of action) and ‘jnaana shakti’ (the energy of knowledge). We have disturbances or ups and downs in our lives because of imbalances in these three energies.

The jnaana shakti in you brings ichcha shakti, the will or desire in you. For example, you have a desire to eat rasagolla. You already know what rasagolla is. You have already savoured it. The knowledge of rasagolla brought the energy of desire in you. So you develop a desire to eat rasagolla. Once you have known what rasagolla is, after you get to know where it can be obtained, after the desire to eat rasagolla arose in you, will you sit idly? No! The kriya shakti or the energy of action follows you. You will go and buy it and eat it. In case you do not know where to get it, then you will make an effort to find out where you can get it. Then you will have lot of kriya shakti in you.

When there is kriya shakti and ichcha shakti, they lead you towards jnaana shakti, the energy of knowledge. You have curiosity. You do not know what exists inside the moon. You want to know what exists in the planet Jupiter. What is there in this creation? Most of our such desires are those about which we know almost nothing about. So you take a telescope and go to a planetarium and begin your research. All research depends upon ichcha shakti and kriya shakti. In order to acquire jnaana shakti or the energy of knowledge, research takes place.

In the same way, whereever there is jnaana shakti, ichcha shakti and kriya shakti follow. Jnaana shakti or the energy of knowledge is symbolised as Saraswathi, ichcha shakti and the energy of desire as Paravathi or Uma and kriya shakti as Goddess Lakshmi.

Brahma is the creator. What does the creator need? He needs knowledge. So jnaana shakti or Saraswathi is the consort of Brahma. Vishnu is the protector of all. What does the protector need? He needs Lakshmi, isn’t it? If you need to run an establishment, if you need to run your house, you need money. Money is Lakshmi. You need Lakshmi for sustenance. Ichcha shakti is Umakumari who symbolises change. You need to have a desire in life to change, to obtain liberation. For that Shiva principle to be auspicious, desire should be created in you. That ichcha shakti is Parvathi, also known as Eashwari.

Therefore, the whole world runs because of the presence of these three shaktis. Whichever energy is more in a place or in a person, that energy gets exhibited. When there is right knowledge, then the right desire arises in us. When there is right knowledge and right desire in us, then right action follows naturally. In that case, all activities that happen through us will lead to completion. Completion in activity will lead to completion in knowledge.

There should be a completion in desire too. If you desire something which does not exist, for instance, if you desire to see the horns of a rabbit, which does not exist in the first place, then what is the use? You had a desire, but there was a lacuna in the energy of knowledge. Now, if anybody decides to see or search for the horns of a rabbit, they are bound to get distressed.

People have ichcha shakti, the desire in them. Due to the wrong desire, usually one undergoes lot of misery. People would have become engineers and will be working as engineers. But if they keep regretting, thinking that they should have been a doctor instead, can they start studying for medicine now?

Many people desire wrong. They obtain a postgraduate degree from the University and then begin to study some other course. The moment they get a new desire they begin again. They never have contentment. They begin one job, quit it and move to another job and then again they move on to another job. They keep searching for contentment. What is this? There is ichcha shakti and jnaana shakti here.

Some have do not have kriya shakti and sit where ever they are and dream and think ‘‘Oh! That should happen to me. It would have been wonderful if I had become a minister’’ or some other dreams to live happily. What happens to all such dreamers? They just sit and dream and dream. Kriya shakti is absent here. They sit in one place and calculate all the profits too. They sit idle and keep planning and talking too much. If you look at those people who talk too much, you can see that they would not have done much work. They do not plan even a single thing properly. They just keep advising everybody to do things that way or this way or keep claiming that they could have got many things done. They keep criticising people. If you tell them, ‘‘Okay, you do at least something of it’’ then they say ‘‘no’’ and just slip away and vanish! What happens in such people? They have lot of jnaana shakti, but zero kriya shakti. If kriya shakti disappears from a person, then that person is good as finished for life. Such people keep repeating their mistakes.

It is a very rare opportunity to see the combination of all the three shaktis. When all the three shaktis combine, then they say that the person has attained ‘siddhi’. We should bring about a balance of ichcha shakti, jnaana shakti and kriya shakti in us.