be admitted with caution. That static background can never be absolutely dispensed with. As you have yourself rightly observed, 'Shakti can never be depleted, but this is how to look at it'. Precisely; the Kundali, when powerfully worked upon by Yoga, sends forth an emanation or ejection in the likeness of Her own self (like the 'ethereal double' of the Theosophists and Spiritualists) which pierces through the various centres until it becomes blended, as you point out, with the Mahakundali of Shiva at the highest or seventh centre. Thus, while this 'ethereal double' or, self-ejection of the coiled power at the Muladhara ascends the Sushumna, the coiled power itself does not and need not stir from its place. It is like a spark given from an over saturated electro-magnetic machine; or, rather, it is like the emanations of radium which do not sensibly detract from the energy contained in it. This last, perhaps, is the closest physical parallel of the case that we are trying to understand. As a well-known passage in the Upanishad has it, 'The whole (Purna) is subtracted from the whole, and yet the whole remains.' I think our present case

comes very near to this. The Kundali at the Muladhara is the whole primordial Shakti in monad or germ or latency: that is why it is coiled. The Kundali that mounts up the Nadi is also the whole Shakti in a specially dynamic form--an eject likeness of the Eternal Serpent. The result of the last fusion (there are successive fusions in the various centres also) in the Sahasrara is also the whole, or Purna. This is how I look at it. In this conception the permanent static background is not really depleted, much less is it dispensed with.

"4. When again I say that the volume or intensity of the coiled power can be affected (though not its configuration and relative equilibrium), I do not mean to throw up the principle of conservation of energy in relation to the Kundali, which is the embodiment of all energy. It is merely the conversion of static (potential) energy into dynamic (kinetic) energy in part, the sum remaining constant. As we have to deal with infinities here, an exact physical rendering of this principle is not to be expected. The Yogi therefore simply 'awakens', and never creates Shakti. By the way, the germ-cell which evolves the body does