What is this energy which we all have?  This energy is thinking, feeling; it is interest, enthusiasm, greed, passion, lust, ambition, hate.  Painting pictures, inventing machines, building bridges, making roads, cultivating the fields, playing games, writing poems, singing, dancing, going to the temple, worshipping—these are all expressions of energy; and energy also creates illusion, mischief, misery.  The very finest and the most destructive qualities are equally the expressions of human energy.  But, you see, the process of controlling or disciplining this energy, letting it out in one direction and restricting it in another, becomes merely a social convenience; the mind is shaped according to the pattern of a particular culture, and thereby its energy is gradually dissipated.

So, our problem is, can this energy, which in one degree or another we all possess, be increased, given greater vitality—and if so, to do what?  What is energy for?  Is it the…