Yogi and the non-persons

Meditationtime Forum Post

Date:  Posted 5 years before May 25, 2017

MiBeloved 5 years ago

Breath infusion practice this morning was without much sensation but with clarified energy in the lower trunk, thighs and the top part of the legs. Tibeti Yogi did not come. This is his program for the clarification of the thighs, legs and feet, something he insisted on as being a meaningful part of the yoga siddha body attainment.

Once a yogi picks up a material body, an embryo, from some parent somewhere on planet earth, then the problem begins to getting the subtle body to become detached from that body. The subtle body is dragged down to the level of the physical form, hence the need to elevate it up again.

You can imagine my difficulty with this, if at 60+ years of age I am still trying to elevate the subtle body away from the lowering effects of the material form which I am now using. Many students want to talk about meditation and about becoming God. Some say they want their Buddha nature. They do not want a belief system or a deity to worship. This is all well and good.

However my interest is the subtle body. When all is said and done, right now all these persons and myself as well, have this present material body as our astral address. Why speculate some fantastic state of consciousness at death, when you are dying every night when you sleep in wonderland without any objective consciousness. Begin where you are in your ignorance of sleep and try to work that out. Try to figure that out first before running off into some fantastic super-consciousness.

Master astral projection first. Study the psychic situation, how nature is controlling it; how you have little or no access to it. Don’t dream up fantasies about getting control at the time of death, when on a daily basis nature keeps everything under lock and key and keeps you out in the dark of deep sleep and ignorance every night during a span of unconsciousness of the physical system.

During practice session this morning, Swami Muktananada showed up. He was praising the Tibetans for their yoga practice development. He said this,

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Gone are the days when Indians were the masters of yoga. Now yoga means fixing diseases and making an attractive material body. It means getting rid of obesity. But that is not yoga. That is not what it was originally intended for according to the Upanishads and the Puranas.

Even the asuras, the hostile sorceress in India, wanted to master yoga to gain control of the supernatural realms. They wanted supernatural conquest. Yoga concerns the supernatural, not the natural, the subtle body not the physical body. What has it got to do with beauty of a physical body?

But higher yoga is even different. That means you are concerned with the energy in your psyche. And if you have no psyche, then why bother with it. If you are nothing and if you are going to merge into nothing then why waste time to do meditation. For meditation, you have to be something that will be something more sublime by the process of yoga. Only that makes sense.

I have my Guruji and I love him. This is why I completed the austerities. He is not a nothing, He is not a void or an energy. He is a person. I have seen deities. So yes, it is personal. The only thing impersonal about it is the escape from identifying the self as a material body. And you must take help from higher yogis. That is necessary. Don’t approach them as if they are none persons.

What do you think namaste means?  We don’t say namaste to a cloud, to energy. We say it to a person. And we mean it sincerely.

You found someone greater than you and you are embarrassed. You do not like the idea. You think that perhaps you will become him or become like him. You are saying that you have no humility part to you. You are saying that you are the highest. What sort of reality are you, which is the highest after so many wonderful things have appeared in this creation. Krishna was here. Buddha was here. And now you are saying that you are like Krishna and you are like Buddha.  What froth? Now at the tail end of the lifetime of the universe, you are the highest, you have that potential. Be real! Push off the arrogance!

You cannot do the asanas but you are a Krishna. You are a Buddha. Please unwind yourself! Be real! Say Namaste* to someone who is great. Find some shelter. I found that in my Guruji, Baba Nityananda. Krishna is Bhagavan, not you. What do you think Bhagavan means. Great yogis call him Bhagavan but it is not because they feel they are his equivalent. Figure that out.

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Sanskrit note:

*Namaste is a combination of two Sanskrit words. Namah and te. Namah is a noun meaning I offer my obeisance. Te is a pronoun meaning to you.

In the Western countries no one offers respect to anyone in the way of namaste. Perhaps people did that way back in the feudal era when they were forced to do so to nobles and kings. In India if you ever visit, you might see that people enter a temple and lay prostrate before an icon of a deity or before a guru who sits on a special seat. That is how it is to do namaste.

In the Puranas it was offered to kings and to recognized gurus or brahmins.

Since it is not a custom to do this in the Western countries, they have taken the word to mean hello and some take it to mean that they are greeting an equally enlightened person.  These meanings of the terms are at variance with the original meaning and intent of the word in India.

Even in Buddhism the word was never used to mean greeting an equally enlightened person. It was used in reference to the lineage guru, such that if a disciple of that guru said it to another disciple, it meant that there was recognition of one another in reference to acceptance to that common guru.

When Buddha’s disciples offered respect they were to offer their respect to three principles, one such principle, the foremost, was the Buddha himself. The next was the sangha or the association of monks under Buddha. And the next was the path designed by the Buddha. In all respect it was in reference not to each other but to the Buddha as the central figure.

In India the word namaste is tied to another word which is danda. Danda mans a bamboo rod. So it is said that one should do dandavats when doing namaste, which means lay down like a rod before the authority. I am explaining this to give some insight into the original meanings as compared to how we use these terms in our Western culture where everyone is the same or is potentially the same and no one is worthy of special honor.