Sun-Related Elevation

Chanting Savitur Gayatri mantra is an old tradition among brahmins and devotees of India. It is an enduring procedure. The first line of the prayer-song is Om Bhur Bhuvah Swaha, which indicates the predominance of the sun deity over the lower middle and upper dimensional realms in the sun’s jurisdiction. This jurisdiction is the spatial regions which are influenced by the rays of the sun.

Beginning with physical existence, where is plain to see for anyone using a physical body there is also a psychic counterpart to the sun, just as much as everything else we experience carries with it a subtle energy expression. Modern science recognizes subtle energy as light and particle energy which human eyes may or may not see. In yoga it is termed as psychic or supernatural energy.

Physics gives us physical evidence but much of it is indirect because that it dependent on technological registry. Yoga gives us subjective evidence and much of that is unverifiable because it is not objective as the physical reality.

For yogis, the use of the Savitur Gayatri mantra begins as a physical adoration of the sun deity. Later it shifts into being the subtle existence of both the yogi and the deity. Yet again the question arises as to what would happen to the yogi when he is no longer able to access the physical body.

Will the yogi hanker to adore the physical deity of the sun, a being of physical light? Or will the yogi adore the subtle body of the sun which cannot be seen with physical eyes, the way we view sunlight?

We are confronted with this in a simple way when we do meditation practice, where a yogi shifts his focus to the subtle body, abandoning sharp focus and reliance on his physical body. It begins as inSelf focus through upgrade of the identity crisis, moving gradually from the physical me as the physical body to the subtle me as the subtle body.

Of course ideally a yogi should abandon even identity with the subtle body, but to be realistic he can achieve that only when he gets to a higher level of consciousness where that plane is his base energy. Prior to that it is mere fantasy. He should work with the level which he can access to transit from that place to the next higher plane.

How is this done practically?

Let us take the example of the yogi’s use and adoration of the sun deity. First the recognition is of the physical sun and its physical benefits which the physical body of the yogi uses for sustenance. Enough of that leads to an understanding that perhaps the subtle body is also nourished by another type of sun energy which subtler than the light energy which the physical system uses. The yogi may shift in meditation to reach that subtle energy and may leave aside the lower practice of focusing and stressing the physically-sensed sunlight energy.

Pranayama breath infusion is the sure way to develop transcendence of the physical use of the sun into being the use of its subtle energy with defocus of the physical, such that a yogi would be using an entirely different procedure (kriya) when chanting Gayatri mantra as contrasted to a brahmin or devotee who uses the sun with the focus of its benefit to his physical body.

And then..... A yogi should go beyond using a subtle body which requires subtle sun energy. The statement of the first line of the Savitur Gayatri mantra denotes that the sun’s jurisdiction ends at the Swargaloka celestial regions. This means that if the subtle body does not shed the need for subtle sun energy, it cannot go higher.

A yogi has that stage to transcend but first he should attain Swargaloka instead of pretending that he already bypassed that zone.