Yogi and the Bird / Vishnudevananda
Meditationtime Forum Post
Date: Posted 5 years before Jun 04, 2017
MiBeloved 5 years ago
During breath infusion and also during the meditation that followed, Swami Vishnudevananda (Vish-noo-day-waa-nan-da) was there. I sensed his presence about ten minutes after I began the breath infusion practice. It is an interesting name because broken down into the individual words this is what one gets:
Vishnu - God Vishnu or Krishna
Deva - God
Ananda – spiritual happiness
Translated it means one who has got spiritual happiness because of being in connection with the God Vishnu.
Swami Vishnudevananda doing a pose before his guru Swami Shivananda
I have not seen this Swami for months now. He did help me with some asana postures some years ago. He did a very valuable translation and commentary of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, which shows that he was not a fake yogi but he actually practiced many of the delicate kriya which are used in the Natha sampradaya lineage which comes from Guru Gorakshnatha.
This Swami was very cool headed. He even used to try to advocate peace in the Middle East but like so many other socially-concerned liberators, the Middle East has ignored their pacifist sentiments for the more basic animal tendency which is strife and war.
Swamiji began to speak about the value of doing asana postures and pranayama practice to discover and then to clean out the nadi tubes in the subtle body. He feels that this is a necessary step in the quest for practicing samadhis. He said that since kundalini created those nadis, kundalini knows where they are. Thus if one infuses kundalini and causes it to move, it will show the yogi within his psyche where those passages are, even the very tiny ones which cannot be seen with ordinary perception and which require super-sensory perception.
This idea of the swami is indirectly confirmed by verses from the Anu Gita:
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Anu Gita Chapter 3
Verse 7
The individual spirit’s energy is diffused into every part of every limb of the fetus. It accepts the body’s composite consciousness. It simultaneously resides in all locations where there is distribution of breath energy in the body. Then the fetus being conditioned by consciousness, moves its limbs.
Verse 8
As molten iron which is poured into a mould, takes the form of it, so you should know that as being similar to how the individual spirit enters the womb.
Verse 9
As fire penetrates a ball of iron, heating it, so you should comprehend the presence of a soul in a fetus.
Verse 10
As a blazing lamp illuminates a house, so consciousness gives feelings to bodies.
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I took the opportunity to ask the Swami about the process used by a yogi to exit the body at the time of death. He did not think much of the question but he said this:
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One should begin by doing day long samadhis. This is after one has mastered kundalini by the restraining power of pranayama practice. Samadhi before mastering kundalini is nonsense. It is just a mental state of some sort and has nothing to do with the accomplishments of yoga.
Like you are now doing the practice seriously as compared to years ago when we used to meet astrally. So if you continue like this, then it will come down to doing longer meditations. Then when you shift off into samadhi, the body will be left here. You will tour around into higher dimensions and higher states of consciousness.
Samadhi without clear sensory perception is blind man samadhi.
After doing daylong samadhi for a time, you will get a sense of geography of the various realms and will reach siddhas and deities. So then what is the question about exiting the body? Once you have the connections on the outside, what does it matter how you get there? If you jump out of the aircraft it will be alright so long as you land where your friends are. If on the other hand you want to land the aircraft and then get out, then that is okay, provided your friends and not your enemies are there on the tarmac.
Listen; there was a bird in cage. It had been there for several years. First the bird used to think of getting out and it used to go up and down, walking this way that way, poking its head through the wires. Eventually it felt frustrated and stopped that. It began to appreciate the cage even though the confinement was so tight that it could not even flap its wings.
It got used to the confinement. So then one day, somehow the latch on the cage fell off. You know, the metal corroded at a certain place. So then the cage door opened. The bird noticed it but it made no impression on the bird. The silly thing did not even look out through the door. It saw no significance in that.
A yogi should not be like that. That is for non-yogis. A yogi should fly out as soon as the body is near its end. There will be a time, you will see it, but then do not stall for a second just fly out. I will be there to greet you and some other of our friends. But be sure to fly out.
So the question is how can you be sure to do that. The answer is that you have to practice through the samadhis but be sure to practice sincerely. Do not be a con. Do not settle for less. Make no effort to change yoga into something that suits you. Change yourself to suit yoga. Do it as it was done by the ancient teachers. And good luck!
Dean 5 years ago
Michael wrote: This idea of the swami is indirectly confirmed by verses from the Anu Gita: Verse 10: As a blazing lamp illuminates a house, so consciousness gives feelings to bodies.
Dean's comment/question: Michael this is funny because I read this very verse last night before retiring to bed. And planned on posting a question to you about this exact verse today.
Could you give me a further explanation about the application of this verse?
Which states:
During astral projection the yogi gets definite evidence that the consciousness is composite. This is because in projection, the physical body remains alive somewhere with a minimum quantity of consciousness, while the astral body roams here and there in subtle dimensions. When the two bodies fused together again, the physical body becomes increasingly animated by the increase influx of energy from the astral form. In psychology there is the spirit individual who is the source of primal energy. Thus when the astral form synchronizes back in the physical body that physique displays active personality. Each yogi must study these matters in meditation practice to come to the proper conclusion about how the spirit is related to its body.
MiBeloved 5 years ago
To give further explanation, you have to be a little more specific because this principle of the consciousness giving feelings to the body, can be explained from innumerable angles. If you are trying to grasp it or to get direct objective experience of this, then explain from which perspective you are approaching this, and then I may assist.
Dean 5 years ago
Michael wrote: To give further explanation, you have to be a little more specific because this principle of the consciousness giving feelings to the body, can be explained from innumerable angles. If you are trying to grasp it or to get direct objective experience of this, then explain from which perspective you are approaching this, and then I may assist.
Dean's question: My question has more to do with these specific lines. In psychology there is the spirit individual who is the source of primal energy. Thus when the astral form synchronizes back in the physical body that physique displays active personality.
Is the source of the primal energy from whatever dimension the astral body projects to which causes the astral body to be more energized because you were consciously aware during the projection?
MiBeloved 5 years ago
Dean's question: My question has more to do with these specific lines. In psychology there is the spirit individual who is the source of primal energy. Thus when the astral form synchronizes back in the physical body that physique displays active personality.
MiBeloved’s Response:
The spirit individual is a perpetual power source of spiritual energy but that energy in its pure form is useless for operating anything in the material world. It has to be converted before it can be used.
Suppose you have a piece of uranium. It is a very powerful energy source, perhaps the most natural source of energy on the planet, and still it is useless unless you convert it to some other form of energy. Uranium ore was on this planet from the onset and yet, only recently was the modern human being able to put it to use. And now despite our intelligence and our technology we are still not certain how we could harness it. This means that just being a power source does not mean that there can be practical application.
Take another example of the sun planet which has so much energy that if we were to use it for millions and millions of years, we could not exhaust it and still we are baffled in how we can put it to use efficiently.
But let us get closer to home. What about the energy in the earth. There is enough energy inside the earth itself. Some of this energy is near the surface or at the surface like in volcanoes or like in some places in Hawaii where you can walk up to molten metal, and still we cannot put it to use.
So why am I saying this because any sort of utopian arrogance about us doing what we want to do and all that, must be trashed before we can begin this conversation.
So let us follow the premise that the individual spirit is a source of energy, a primal source. Then so what? Can it use itself effectively? Can it distribute its power in its own interest? Does it have the intelligence to do that? So you see that at first we are baffled because having power or being power, has little to do with using that power and especially with the efficient use of that power.
Nature has this way about it where it does not package everything with everything or stated more clearly, where it parcels out itself so that one part of itself is deprived of the other part of itself, so that some single parts do not have all composites. So until we can find a self which has primal energy and which also have the super-intelligence and super-power to manage that energy, we have to back off.
Even though personality is displayed when the astral body synchronizes back into the physically form, that does not mean that the reason for this is the self. You might be implying that but it is a very misleading assumption.
I used to astral project regularly when I used a child’s body in South America. Especially on Saturdays, sometimes we kids had to take a nap. So then I would astral project but when I would come back into the physical body the astral one would sometimes not synchronize properly and I would be struggling inside the physical form to get it to stand up or move any which way. So if as you say the person is the major factor in this, why was I struggling?
Obviously the major factor is the life force, which the yogis call kundalini. That is the principle which has to operate this properly. Here is another example, as a child I used to have to go to a Methodist Christian Church with a grandparent. So there was this old African lady who used to have this young woman who was Portuguese with her. I don’t know how she got that young woman in her care. But we used to travel home from church with this old lady and the Portuguese young lady. At the time my physical body was about 9 or 10 years old. This Portuguese girl was about 20 years of age.
Sometimes suddenly she would fall to the ground and begin mumbling and frothing at the mouth. We would run to her and then the old African lady would come and do some mumbo jumbo stuff and the girl would come out it.
Later on I used to hear people say that she was an epileptic, whatever that is. The point is that she, the individual spirit, was there but she could not help herself in that situation. So the idea that the individual spirit is primal energy is great but the control of its power and the distribution and mixing of its power is a totally different consideration.
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Dean's question:
Is the source of the primal energy from whatever dimension the astral body projects to which causes the astral body to be more energized because you were consciously aware during the projection?
MiBeloved’s Response:
I could probably provide some clarification with this inquiry:
The astral body runs mostly on the basis of the life force. The individual spirit with its primal energy is a side feature in the whole affair. It is a necessary feature but still it is a side feature, just like the battery in a car. The battery is there for starting the motor and some other auxiliary concerns but it is not the main power thing. In the subtle body the main power thing is the kundalini.
People who study yoga and who neglect kundalini are like people who have become attached to the grating sound which one hears when the ignition is turned on. They get the idea that this is the engine in operation even though it is not. Hence when they try to engage the car and it does not move they are baffled because if there is just the starter, the fly wheel and the battery, you can still get that ignition sound to some degree but the car will go nowhere. Then such persons sit in the car and just imagine that they are driving. Then they come out of the car and explain themselves as having gone on a long trip. Yes, but in the imagination only.
You can do what you like with the individual spirit and its primal energy and if you do not take care of the kundalini you will get nowhere in fact. This is because the subtle body is operated by the kundalini. When you leave this body and you have to develop another one, it is the kundalini which will do that not you. You will have to tag along like a little kid who is pulled through a street by holding on to his mother dress but the main pulling is done by the kundalini. The planning for the next body is done by the kundalini. And that is why we pay attention to it.
I am not saying that the spirit does not have to be present or that it has no importance. In fact it has all importance, perhaps 99.99%, but only as a primal energy source which has to be converted. This conversion principle makes the kundalini very important because it takes the power of the spirit and converts it into various kinds of energy. It also mixes that spirit power with various grades of energy depending on what level the psyche is on.
When the astral body separates from the physical one, the individual spirit leaves the physical one but still the physical one continues to exist in a living form though it is in sleep or comatose.
How is that? That is because the kundalini stays being in the physical body. Death means that the kundalini has left the physical system in full. Death does not mean that the individual spirit has left the physical body. It is the departure of the kundalini that causes death.
How does this help you in your inquiry?
The energization of the subtle body when it is separated out of the physical one is directly related to how much energy the kundalini can transmit through space to the subtle form. If it transmits very little energy, you will astral project but you will not remember anything because the memory mechanisms in the subtle body will be shut down due to a lack of juice (energy).
You are thinking that this depends on the energy the subtle body is taking in after astral projection but this calculation is wrong. Let us look at it in this way. Suppose I contract tuberculosis. Then you put me in a chamber in which you pump the right percentage of oxygen and fresh air. Will that help me? In other words the state of the environment does not override the condition of my lungs. You can pump as much pure air as you like and if my lungs are malfunctioning, it will do no good.
So what I am saying is that the astral body cannot use any higher energy from any higher dimension if that body is not in the proper condition which relies on the condition of the life force.
It does happen sometimes that there is an exception to this but that happens when a yoga guru or deity pulls you into a higher dimension on the basis of that person’s spiritual or supernatural power, not otherwise.
Usually when you go to a higher dimension it is because of an energization of kundalini on this side of the border first of all. If the astral body is made fit, then you will go to higher place and be able to take advantage of those environments. Making the astral body fit has more to do with elevating the kundalini than any other spiritual discipline.
When the astral body is separated out of a living physical body, the kundalini which stays behind in the physical form sends energy in a pulse signal (so called silver cord) to the subtle body and that is how the subtle body keeps going. It is like broadband transmission of power in electronics.
Once death occurs, this system of transmission is over and the kundalini will be housed only in the astral form, at least until it fuses into a parent and uses the genetic materials in the parent body for creating another physical form.
