The body is the instrument

If you don’t know your instrument, then how will you play any music?

Knowing the body is knowing the instrument of spiritual perfection, the god-given gift, the human body.

The gross body is the outermost layer. That is the one we identify with in the lowest stage of consciousness. That does not mean it is rejected. Indeed, our first encounter with the miraculous is to see this body with the mind.

ṣaṭ-cakraṁ ṣoḍaśādhāraṁ tri-lakṣyaṁ vyoma-pañcakam |
sva-dehe ye na jānanti kathaṁ siddhyanti yoginaḥ ||
eka-stambhaṁ nava-dvāraṁ gṛhaṁ pañcādhidaivatam |
sva-dehe ye na jānanti kathaṁ siddhyanti yoginaḥ ||14||
1.13 How can those yogis succeed who do not know the six wheels (cakras), the sixteen containers (ādhāra), the three targets (lakṣya) and the five skies (vyoma) in their own body?
1.14. How can those yogis who do not know the home, which has a single pillar, nine doors and five divinities (adhidaivata), which is present in their own body, ever attain success?
The first internal vision of the body is an insight into the prāṇa body. The prāṇa body is that same body, perceived subjectively through the movements of prāṇa energy, especially sexual energy, which is its central dynamo, the complex of channels by which this energy pervades the body and in particular the central pathways of Ila, Pingala and Sushumna.

It is the beginning of the inward journey. Sooner or later it has to be made. The body is your instrument, and moreover, it is the temple of the Divine Spirit. The proper maintenance of the body is a religious act. śarīram ādyaṁ khalu dharma-sādhanam. If you think you are engaging in devotion without taking care of the instrument by which you serve, by which you experience life, you will not truly experience the life of love.

The point is you really have no choice. You have to convert that energy or die. There is only one energy of God, everything else is perceived in part, as shadow or reflection. The external potency IS the internal potency when seen through the eyes of God, or when one sees God everywhere and only him.

And if that God is the Yugal Sorkar, then your vision of the world is going to be different. But you have no choice, you have to see the sexual energy as a gift from God. It is actually the meaning of the Lila. The second meaning. The meaning that comes after you get vaidhī bhakti and rāgānugā and you start to enter rāgātmikā. You enter the līlā by living the līlā.

And of course what they saw in Goloka is what they saw here first. They just extracted the essence.


Comments

chota baba said…
without knowing how to coordinate prana, chanting mantra is useless, no?
Friday, 29 May, 2015
Jagadananda Das said…
Only if there is no vastu-śakti in the mantra. Vaishnavas accept as a fundamental principle that Krishna is present in his name. abhinnatvān nāma-nāminoḥ. So how can chanting a mantra with Krishna's names be useless?
Friday, 29 May, 2015
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