Yogananda, Paramahansa, 1893-1952; Yogis -- India -- Biography
The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to man’s temporary
unawareness of body and breathing. The sleeping man becomes a yogi;
each night he unconsciously performs the yogic rite of releasing
himself from bodily identification, and of merging the life force
with healing currents in the main brain region and the six sub-dynamos
of his spinal centers. The sleeper thus dips unknowingly into the
reservoir of cosmic energy which sustains all life.
The voluntary yogi performs a simple, natural process consciously,
not unconsciously like the slow-paced sleeper. The KRIYA YOGI uses
his technique to saturate and feed all his physical cells with
undecaying light and keep them in a magnetized state. He scientifically
makes breath unnecessary, without producing the states of subconscious
sleep or unconsciousness.
By KRIYA, the outgoing life force is not wasted and abused in the
senses, but constrained to reunite with subtler spinal energies.
By such reinforcement of life, the yogi’s body and brain cells
are electrified with the spiritual elixir. Thus he removes himself
from studied observance of natural laws, which can only take him-by
circuitous means as given by proper food, sunlight, and harmonious
thoughts-to a million-year Goal. It needs twelve years of normal
healthful living to effect even slight perceptible change in brain
structure, and a million solar returns are exacted to sufficiently
refine the cerebral tenement for manifestation of cosmic consciousness.
Untying the cord of breath which binds the soul to the body, KRIYA
serves to prolong life and enlarge the consciousness to infinity.
The yoga method overcomes the tug of war between the mind and the
matter-bound senses, and frees the devotee to reinherit his eternal
kingdom. He knows his real nature is bound neither by physical
encasement nor by breath, symbol of the mortal enslavement to air,
to nature’s elemental compulsions.
Introspection, or “sitting in the silence,” is an unscientific
way of trying to force apart the mind and senses, tied together by
the life force. The contemplative mind, attempting its return to
divinity, is constantly dragged back toward the senses by the life
currents. KRIYA, controlling the mind DIRECTLY through the life
force, is the easiest, most effective, and most scientific avenue
of approach to the Infinite. In contrast to the slow, uncertain
“bullock cart” theological path to God, KRIYA may justly be called
the “airplane” route.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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