Sunday Service Reading #22

From Rays of the One Light
The Inner Kingdom
(to long readings) (link to longest reading)

Most people imagine that the “inner Kingdom,” as Jesus described it, lacks the fascination they attribute to sense life: the bright lights, the diverse attractions, the joys and the laughter. Little do they realize what a vast universe exists in their own selves!

There are many passages in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible that describe aspects of this inner kingdom. In the Book of Genesis we read: “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden... And the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:8, 9). This garden was in no earthly place. It exists even now, in the very Self of every human being! The legend of Adam and Eve is allegorical. It describes how the first human beings dissipated their spiritual energy, centered in the spine. The spine is the channel through which flows the river of baptism and of spiritual life.

The Bhagavad Gita tells us, “The wise speak of an eternal ashvatta tree, with its roots above and its branches below” (15:1). The “tree of life,” spoken of also in genesis, is the spine. Its roots are above, in the brain’s energy. Its branches are the outward spreading nervous system. When the “sap,” which is to say, the energy, flows downward the consciousness is drawn into delusion. On the other hand, when the energy is drawn upward in deep meditation, the consciousness is drawn toward its eternal source, God, and is at last united with Him.

Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita therefore urges his chief disciple Arjuna to embrace the yoga science, the path of meditation. “The yogi,” he says, “is greater than the ascetic, greater even than the followers of the paths of wisdom [Gyana Yoga] or of action [Karma Yoga]. Be thou, O Arjuna, a yogi!”

For those who would find the divine truth, Krishna gives this description of the yogi:

Steadfast a lamp burns, sheltered from the winds;
Such is the likeness of the Yogi’s mind
Shut from sense-storms and burning bright
to heaven.

Wherever you are, whatever your outward beliefs and observances, seek God in the silence of your soul.

Thus, through holy Scripture, God has spoken to mankind.

VIDEO of Pranaba's Service on this Subject from 5-30-10

VIDEO of Anandi's Service on this Subject from 5-23-09

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Anandi's Service on this Subject from 5-23-09

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Asha's Service on this Subject from 6-1-08

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Sharon and Robert Clark's Service on this Subject from 6-3-07

MP3 for Download (or online listening) of Nitai's Service on this Subject from 6-1-08

Long Readings from the 3 Volume Set:
Rays of the Same Light

There Is No Corresponding Reading for These Verses in
Rays of the Same Light

Longest Reading from the Book
The Promise of Immortality

#22 The Inner Kingdom
(One of the Gita verses in the short reading isn't covered in this reading.)

There is the inner spiritual pilgrimage, of which outward pilgrimage is a symbol. And there is also the inner universe, which in many ways is like the outer one. Paramhansa Yogananda once said, surprisingly, that the sun is a symbol of the spiritual eye in the forehead. His statement suggests persuasively that the outer universe, too, is but a symbol of the inner one, rather than the reverse; that astrology is a symbol of the inner movements of energy around the spine, rather than the other way around; and that the planets and constellations are symbols of more real (or at least more immediate) mental and spiritual characteristics in oneself.

Usually, symbols represent phenomena that are larger and more enduring than themselves. A candle may symbolize the sun, but no one would think of the sun as symbolic of a candle. Size, however, is an illusion. And permanence is better gauged not in terms of earth years, but of eternity. Thus, Mount Carmel has long been for Christians a symbol of everyone’s spiritual climb toward perfection; Mount Meru, for Hindus, is a symbol of the challenge to divine attainment; and the river Jordan, for Jews and Christians alike, is a symbol for baptism not only into their respective faiths, but (for those with deeper understanding) into the stream of energy in the spine. What can be perceived inwardly by everyone under the right conditions—the spiritual eye, for example—is no less objective or permanent than anything perceived outwardly through the senses. Universal truths are manifested as perfectly in the atom as in a galaxy. The greatest, regardless of its apparent size, is that which manifests reality to the greatest degree. The closer a sage or yogi comes to realizing the source of his own being, the greater his mastery over all manifested existence. He realizes space and time themselves to be only figments of the cosmic dream, their apparent reality a mere imposition on the mind by the Cosmic Dreamer. To know one’s Self to its ultimate depth is to realize God.

When Jesus Christ said that the kingdom of God is within, his meaning was more literal than even mystics as a rule imagine. For every human being is a veritable kingdom in himself. His soul, acting through the ego—which is, by Paramhansa Yogananda’s definition, “the soul identified with the body”—reigns supreme, and the multifarious qualities of his personality are the citizenry, each one with its distinct personality. Thus, every human being is made up of a multitude of traits, both positive and negative: hope, aspiration, faith, nobility, generosity, discrimination, and self-control on the one hand; and on the other hand, disturbers of the inner peace such as selfishness, rebelliousness, restlessness, greed, lust, avarice, envy, jealousy, and the whole gamut of what the ancient Greeks called hoi polloi, the people, or—more aptly in this case—the rabble. The aristocrats of this populace are the noble qualities—an aristocracy of merit, not of power. These better-class society members nourish the well-being of the entire “body politic.” The lower social element, composed of ignoble qualities, detract from that well-being and disrupt the kingdom’s harmony and happiness.

As the citizens of a kingdom play their own roles—butcher, baker, candlestick maker (or, in more up-to-date terms, physicist, computer programmer, engineer)—so our mental citizens keep themselves busy with a variety of self-supporting tasks. Some of them try conscientiously, with approval from the ego, to contribute to the kingdom’s over-all welfare. They engage in a wholesome give-and-take of energy with other kingdoms. Others, though accepted by the ego, work only in their own interest. An example is the psychological trait of self-pity, when the ego mutters to itself, “I deserve better treatment than this! Do people think I’m a nobody?” Citizens like these deplete the royal coffers of energy by constantly pleading for support and sympathy. Still others—though perhaps only with reluctant consent from the ego—are predators by nature. Lacking peace themselves, they do all they can to spread discord and disharmony among others—as when the ego seeks, out of sheer meanness, to hurt others, though it knows that, later on, it will suffer negative consequences in terms of anger-created tension and remorse.

It is not unusual to see someone, kind and loving under certain circumstances, be fiercely competitive, even vindictive under others. Certain Nazi rulers in Germany of World War II were sensitive lovers of art. Yet they rapaciously stole art treasures from other nations.

There is no man so evil that he lacks utterly the touch of divine yearning in his soul. For everyone’s only reality, though he bury it deeply in the sand of delusion, is God.

The ego, reigning as king in our inner kingdom, is our sense of personal reality. If this “I” is weak-willed and vacillating, the kingdom will be kept constantly disrupted, reflecting the citizens’ growing self-involvement and self-will. Disunity and conflict can deprive a kingdom of the energy it needs for accomplishing anything worthwhile. Poverty-consciousness develops, and failure-consciousness, and health-destroying attitudes such as fear, doubt, anxiety, and despair.

It may be difficult to imagine one’s personality traits as separate individuals. After all, they are projections of the same, one ego. In fact, it is the ego that assumes all their roles, like an actor upon a stage. Each role, however, represents a commitment on the ego’s part to that particular trait. In the same way, the one divine Self plays the roles of every ego in the universe, yet each becomes so immersed in his role that he forgets his own infinite identity. We dream the attitudes that our egos assume. Each one of them, like the ego itself, is only imaginary: a role played for a time, then abandoned.

Consider the single trait: envy. Envy, like all the others, has no visible features; it is expressionless, and abstract. Soon enough, however, it can be visibly etched on a countenance, the very lines of which reveal emotional upheavals, past and present, that envy has caused. The eyes gaze with a slight squint under drooping lids; the mouth turns habitually downward, while its corners twitch upward nervously from time to time out of a wish to seem forgiving. The glance tends to be oblique rather than direct. And the sufferer often develops a nervous habit of keeping his chin lowered toward the chest, as if determined to protect his self-worth from others in their want of appreciation for him.

So completely may an emotion enforce its personality, even briefly, that one who is normally cheerful may, during a bout of depression, be hardly recognizable to his close friends.

A friend of the author’s once went to a train station to meet his wife, who was a strikingly beautiful woman. He’d last seen her only two weeks earlier; it would seem almost impossible for him not to recognize her after so short a time, yet so it proved. The woman had been passing through an emotional crisis. The man watched the passengers descend from the train, but didn’t see her among them. Thinking the crowd must have hidden her, he went to the waiting room to see if she was there. A woman stood alone in the center of the room; she seemed a stranger. He paused, then hesitantly uttered her name as though asking a question. She looked up: It was his own wife!

We are not our personalities. The soul never changes, but our personalities undergo constant mutation according to the way we’ve reacted to inner and outer circumstances. A personality trait that we may once have laughed off lightly as “not really me” may become indelibly stamped on our features, in time, as the trait hardens into a fixed habit. The sweet innocence shining in a child’s face may be transformed in old age into vicious intolerance and cynicism, if that life was lived unwisely.

There is a story of an artist who, to paint a portrait of Jesus Christ, used for his model a pure-eyed, beautiful young man. Years later, he needed a live model for a painting of Judas, and found someone who displayed all the characteristics he imagined in that greatest of history’s villains: pride, deceitfulness, meanness of spirit, personal ambition. To his astonishment, the model turned out to be the same one he had chosen, years earlier, for his painting of Jesus Christ!

The citizens of a kingdom can be inspired to live together in productive harmony if the king sets them an example of justice both firm and kind, inspired by magnetic aspiration toward high ideals. The same may be said of our inner kingdoms. When our egos, acting on behalf of the soul, are uplifted by noble aspiration, they inspire all our mental citizens with a desire for upliftment also. The need seldom arises, then, to police them: Their virtue increases of its own accord as the energy and consciousness in the body flow toward the brain. Even energy that has been wasted in “slumming”—reveling, that is to say, among the “flesh pots” of sense pleasure—reforms itself happily. Forsaking low pursuits, it recognizes that all the fulfillment it ever craved is to be found in self-giving, not in self-absorption.

Such, indeed, is the message in the great scriptural epic, The Mahabharata, of which the Bhagavad Gita forms a part. This epic is an allegory of the soul’s fall from grace and its eventual return to God. Such also is the theme of two great poems in the English language: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, by John Milton.

The first chapter of the Bhagavad Gita outlines the opposing forces within man. It describes them as armies: the good, or spiritual, and the bad, or self-seeking. These armies are ranged against one another on the eve of their conflict. The ensuing war of Kurukshetra takes place in both time and eternity, for every divine aspirant must face this inner struggle not once only, but forever, until his soul achieves final victory. Only when all the energy that we have devoted to ungodly pursuits is re-channeled in aspiration toward God can we achieve what all of us have been seeking for eons of time.

Man’s energy for accomplishment even in a worldly sense is frustrated by “the thwarting cross-currents of ego,” as Paramhansa Yogananda called them. Only to the degree that these currents become untangled and directed upward to the brain do they become strong, because focused at last. The personality then shines with spiritual power.

As a person meditates deeply, he finds his inner energy increasing. Gradually he becomes aware of that energy as a light radiating particularly from the chakras, or spinal plexuses, and outward around the entire body as an aura of light, and as a halo about the head. This light shines with a variety of colors depending on a person’s state of consciousness. The brighter the light, the more spiritually refined the consciousness.

In the first chapter of Revelation—this Book of the Bible, Paramhansa Yogananda said, is filled with deep yoga teachings—St. John describes his vision of the spiritualized astral body: “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; and his feet like unto fine brass.” (1:14,15) John’s description of a dimmer light in the feet increasing in brilliance as the energy rises toward the head indicated, Yogananda said, the upward direction of the divine energy in the body. Many Bible passages corroborate this teaching of an inward wakening of energy, as a person’s inner psychological conflicts yield to self-integration, and as the struggle between worldly desire and soul-longing becomes resolved in divine devotion.

“Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God,” wrote the prophet Ezekiel, “thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.” (Ezekiel 28:13,14) The “stones of fire” refer to the spinal chakras. To “walk up and down” the mountain signifies the yoga technique of bringing energy up and down the spine, magnetizing it and thereby opening the subtle spinal passageway to the brain. This technique is known today as Kriya Yoga—specifically, the Kriya Yoga of Lahiri Mahasaya, who for the first time in this age brought it back to the world. At the beginning of one’s Kriya Yoga practice, the energy is circulated through outer channels in the spine, known as the ida and pingala, which correspond to the sympathetic nervous system in the physical body.

In the Old Testament, the prophet Zechariah was given a vision: “And [the angel] said unto me, What seest thou? And I said, I have looked, and behold a candlestick all of gold [the channel within the spine, known in yoga teachings as the sushumna], with a bowl upon the top of it [the sahasrara, or “thousand-rayed lotus,” a subtle light emanating from the brain], and his seven lamps [the seven chakras] thereon. . . . And two olive trees by it [the ida and pingala channels], one upon the right side of the bowl, and the other upon the left side thereof.” (Zechariah 4: 2,3)

The Hindu scriptures, to which the teachings of yoga are integral, liken the body to an upturned tree. The spine is the trunk; the hair, the roots; and the nerves spreading outward from the spine, the branches. This is the true “tree of life,” through the trunk of which flows the “sap,” or energy, of divine awakening.

The Bhagavad Gita states, “The wise speak of an eternal ashvatta tree, with its roots above and its branches below.” (15:1) Although the physical spine, like the body, is ephemeral, the principle behind its manifestation is, as the Gita says here, eternal.

The Book of Genesis, referring to this “tree of life,” states, “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden. . . . And the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.” (Genesis 2:8,9) The story of Adam and Eve is an allegory; it describes how the first human beings dissipated the power of the tree, whose treasure had been bestowed upon them. They were persuaded by the “serpent” of delusion to view it as a tree of the “knowledge of good and evil”: that is to say, of duality and delusion. Adam and Eve ate the fruit of this tree, and found it pleasing to their senses.

Paramhansa Yogananda explained that the sin of those first human beings was to choose enjoyment of the outward creative energy over the bliss to which God had invited them: the flow with the “sap” of divine energy in the spine. The “tree of life” was described as growing “in the midst of the garden,” for the spine runs through the center of the body. Adam and Eve were souls that, evolving upward from lower animal forms, had attained a level of spiritual development that fitted them for a more refined physical vehicle for the expression of their consciousness. The human body has a sensitive nervous system which facilitates higher spiritual evolution. The memory of past sex indulgence lingered, however, in the subconscious of Adam and Eve. Their creative urge might have produced “children” of a subtler kind: intense inner joy, wisdom, and spiritual love, had it been directed toward the brain. Soul-union between Adam and Eve could have manifested limitless divine powers of accomplishment; outward “children,” born of their united consciousness, would have been possible: great works of art, inspired musical compositions, innovative ideas, scientific inventions, and other works that would have benefited all humankind. The “children” of the creative impulse, when it is directed inward and upward in a perfect unity of feeling and reason, is capable of producing great wonders. Above all, it helps very much toward divine realization.

Adam and Eve might, Paramhansa Yogananda said, have produced even human children, without recourse to sexual reproduction, had their energy been united lovingly in the spiritual eye. Thus, they might have created families also by inviting spiritual souls to dwell with them for their continued soul-evolution. This method of procreation is the norm among highly evolved beings in the astral world, where souls descending from the subtler, causal region for rebirth in the astral world are invited by couples to dwell with them. Adam and Eve, however, influenced by delusive memories, chose the familiar, physical course of procreation. Thus, divinely produced progeny became for them, and for their descendants ever thereafter, an impossibility.

Other sensory enjoyments (the fruits of those lesser “trees in the garden” that stood not at the center) would not have blinded them with delusion. The author recalls one day asking his guru for help in overcoming the liking for good food. Paramhansa Yogananda, with a gentle but dismissive smile, replied, “Don’t worry about those little things. When ecstasy comes, everything goes!” The sex nerves are unlike other senses, however, in that they are more directly connected with the spine, the “tree of life” at the center of the garden. The two main nerve channels, ida and pingala, join together at the base of the spine, generating a powerful energy. An outward flow at this point drains away energy that might otherwise rise to the brain.

That the tree of life is not itself evil, however, is emphasized in Revelation: “He that hath an ear, let him hear. . . . To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.” (Revelation 2:7) And again: “Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.” (Revelation 22:14) “Gates,” here, incidentally, refers to the spinal chakras.

Another reference to the chakras as “gates” is in Proverbs 8:34: “Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. For whoso findeth me findeth life.”

The energy at the base of the spine flows naturally outward with the body’s creation. Hence the human inclination from birth is toward outwardness. The gaze, which at first is turned naturally inward, shifts gradually outward in focus on the surrounding world.

A friend of the author’s relates a fascinating story. Two friends of his, a married couple, had a son. Some time later, the wife gave birth to a second one. The older boy kept insisting, “I want to speak to my baby brother, alone.” Concerned that his request might be motivated by sibling jealousy, they agreed reluctantly but stood quietly outside the door, and listened.

When the older child thought he was alone, he leaned close to his baby brother and whispered, “Please help me. What was it like there? I’m beginning to forget!”

Even in outwardness, a child’s increasing involvement with the world needn’t enmesh him in duality, provided he keep his energy moving upward by expressing joyful enthusiasm for life, generosity toward others, and non-attachment. With these attitudes he can retain an awareness of the inner kingdom and increase his inborn spirituality. Most children, however, exposed as they are from birth to sensory stimuli and to grown-ups who are steeped in outwardness, forget their inner kingdom and become, in effect, “absentee landlords.”

Thus when, in the natural course of events, the reproductive organs develop and stimulate the sex instinct, the child is swept away in a roiling white water of impulses from which, for lack of any prior training, he is helpless to extricate himself. The desire for sexual pleasure, the fruits of the “tree of life,” seizes him. The tree becomes then, for him, not a tree of wisdom, but the tree of “the knowledge of good and evil”—of duality. Even his outer fascination with sex emphasizes his absorption in duality: boy seeks girl; girl attracts boy. Each sees in his or her complement a promise of fulfillment that can, in fact, be achieved only when the mind is turned inward, toward union with God.

The force of energy generated by the union of ida and pingala at the base of the spine produces a spiral magnetic field, in the same way electricity does when flowing through a wire. Thus, the downward-moving force is fittingly described in the Bible as a coiled serpent. In Genesis we read, “Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made.” (Genesis 3:1) Other ancient scriptures also, especially the Indian, describe this energy as serpent-like. In the yoga teachings the name for this energy is kundalini. When kundalini’s course is upward, there occurs in meditation a spiral movement which often causes the whole upper body to rotate.

II Kings, 2:11 describes Elijah as being taken “up by a whirlwind into heaven.” The “whirlwind” here described is a reference to the awakened kundalini.

In Numbers 21:8,9, we read, “And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived.” Here described are two kinds of serpent-energy: the downward-moving kundalini, which draws the mind toward sensual pleasures; and the brilliant light of upward movement in the spine, described here as “setting the fiery . . . serpent of brass upon a pole.” The awakened kundalini alone can bring healing to the “poison-bite” of delusion.

Jesus was referring to this kundalini awakening when he said: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up.” (John 3:14) The son of man, as Jesus uses the expression here, signifies not himself as a man, but man’s physical body as distinct from the soul. Physical consciousness, in other words, must be “lifted up” in meditation, with kundalini.

Revelation 22:1 states: “And he showed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.” Here, “the lamb” refers to the indwelling Christ consciousness. The “pure river of water of life” is the “sap” flowing through “the tree of life.”

Revelation continues in the next verse: “In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” These words refer to the six chakras in the spine (the seventh is located at the top of the head). The six become twelve by polarity as energy rotates upward and downward in the spine through the ida and pingala nerve channels.

As energy rises through the spine to the head, it is focused in the spiritual eye midway between the eyebrows. Physiologically speaking, stimulation of this section of the frontal lobe of the brain induces intuitive, superconscious awareness. Therefore Revelation 22:4,5 states: “And they shall see his face; and his name shall be in their foreheads. And there shall be no night there, and they need no candle, neither light of the sun; for the Lord God given them light: and they shall reign for ever and ever.”

Jesus said, in Matthew 6:22, “If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”[1]

The place of divine vision in the forehead is described in scripture as “east” in the body: Kedem in the Hebrew, meaning, “That which lies before.” Thus, when Genesis says, “And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed,” (2:8) the inner meaning is that at the time of the first man’s creation he had spiritual awareness. He fell from that high state owing to his misuse of the body’s energy. “Eastward in Eden” signifies that the natural focus of his attention—his native “habitat,” so to speak—was in the spiritual eye.

Thus, in Ezekiel’s vision (Ezekiel 43:1,2) we read: “Afterward he brought me to the gate, even the gate that looketh toward the east: And, behold, the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east: and his voice was like a noise of many waters: and the earth shined with his glory.”

This “voice of many waters” signifies, as we have already seen, the mighty Vibration of God, AUM, or Amen. As Revelation 3:14 states: “These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God.” Paramhansa Yogananda explained that it is AUM which John called “the faithful and true witness,” for the cosmic sound heard in meditation makes one aware that he is in touch with Infinite Bliss, whence cosmic creation was manifested.

Revelation 14:2 states also, “And I heard a voice from heaven, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of a great thunder: and I heard the voice of harpers harping with their harps.” The “voice of harpers,” incidentally, is the sound produced by the third chakra, manipur in Sanskrit, the lumbar plexus. This sound is generated when energy is concentrated there. The sound is like that of a plucked string instrument. From this fact the Christian tradition arose of angels playing on their harps. AUM is the bridge to cosmic consciousness. Thus, Revelation 3:20 states: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man shall hear my voice [the Amen], and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

Psalm 81 states, “Thou calledst in trouble, and I delivered thee; I answered in the place of thunder.”

And Job 37:5 states, “God thundereth marvelously with his voice; great things doeth he, which cannot be comprehended.”

Jesus underscored the eternal nature of these truths in the words, quoted already in this book: “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? Behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” (John 4:35) People look to the future for earthly fulfillment, but God lives in the Eternal Now. The counsel to “look up” is found in many spiritual teachings, for the eyes, when turned upward, focus also the mind at the point between the eyebrows, the spiritual eye. Hence the words of the psalmist: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121)

It would be timely, here, to reiterate the immortal words of Jesus: “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:20,21) Through the practice of yoga-meditation, and by spiritual living, we can discover for ourselves the little-known inner kingdom of God.

Students interested in this subject will find it helpful to study also the first three chapters of the Book of Revelation, which contain a detailed, though veiled, presentation of these teachings.

Deeper truths are not for people whose minds are engrossed in worldly desires. As Jesus said repeatedly, “He who hath ears to hear, let him hear.” Nevertheless, they are stated—or, rather, very subtly under-stated—in both the Old and the New Testaments of the Bible and in many other scriptures as well, particularly in those of India.

Yoga is a science, discovered in ancient times, carefully preserved since then, and developed by sages through millennia of tradition. Its goal is to help one work with the subtle nature of the body. Many spiritual aspirants, unaware of the inner aspect of their own bodies, imagine that the only thing needed is heartfelt aspiration, through love for God and through prayer and contemplation. Even if a person’s love for God is intense, however, the illustration of a bent hose explains the problem every aspirant faces.

For the stronger the flow of water through a hose, the more important it is that the hose be kept straight. One that is only slightly bent may straighten itself out if the flow of water is gentle, but if the hose is bent sharply and the flow of water is strong, serious damage to the hose may result. For this reason many saints, unfamiliar with the subtle spinal channels, have, when subjected to powerful rising currents of inner energy, been known to suffer severe illness, and considerable physical pain.

These teachings have persisted in the West since Biblical times, as saints made their own discoveries and spoke of them to others. The ancient Hesychasts, a school of Eastern Orthodox mystics, counseled breathing in and out with the prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ [on inhalation] have mercy upon us [on exhalation].” Certain of the traditions taught that with inhalation there would be a sensation of rising energy in the spine, and with exhalation, of descending energy. One tradition described bringing a cool current upward through the spine with the breath, and a warm current downward, as happens, in fact, with the practice of Kriya Yoga.

St. Teresa of Avila described her ecstatic experiences as resembling “the upward shot of a bullet through a gun”—an acceptable account of kundalini awakening. She also stated, from experience, that the seat of the soul is at the top of the head (the sahasrara).

These teachings, however, would require a deeper and detailed study, and lie outside the scope of the present work.

Sri Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, referring to Raja Yoga (which blends the main paths of yoga with the practice of meditation), tells his disciple Arjuna, “The yogi is greater than the ascetic, greater even than the followers of the paths of wisdom [Gyana Yoga] or of action [Karma Yoga]. Be thou, O Arjuna, a yogi!”

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