Over a decade ago, my wife Alexandra and I met a spiritual teacher in Southern California. What puzzled us at the time was the fact that while his teaching was very crisp and clear, the energy in the room was very low.

We’ve since come across teachers around whom one feels that the energy has been sucked out of the room or, in any case, in whose presence one feels sleepy. This is most puzzling.

And we’ve also sat in the presence of, for instance, a Himalayan monk whose power was “out of this world.” It was epic, symphonic, sublime.

How to make sense of these experiences?

In The Philosophy of Panchadasi, Swami Krishnananda offers us a clear distinction between power and clarity. The yogis, having engaged in practices centered on sense withdrawal and on one-pointed concentration over a long period of time, have cultivated power or prana. Meanwhile, the jnana yogis who have fixed their attention on the Source and thus have been absorbed in It have realized the truth. Hence, we can say that they are clear.

It’s important for a teacher to exude both power and clarity. (This should be a criterion one applies in order to discern whether a certain teacher is one to learn from.) And it’s important for a student to cultivate power and to arrive at clarity.

Let’s stick only with the latter. We cultivate power, indeed, through sense withdrawal and through one-pointed concentration. We should practice both. One example: in trataka, one gazes (for instance) at a black dot. In so doing, one is withdrawing from chasing sense objects, and one is focusing one’s attention on a single object. If one carries out this practice with earnestness, one will experience a profound uptick in power (prana).

Naturally, this uptick in power makes it possible not just to turn inward but also to fix one’s attention on the Source.