Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 7

[Guest guest]

Jesus' Temptation in the Wilderness - Part 7

 

The yoga science of

mastering the energies

that sustain the body

 

(p.167) Certain yogis of India, in the suspended state, have shown the

sustaining power of Cosmic Energy, even in the absence of energy from oxygen and

sunshine. (p.168) Sadhu Haridas, under rigid observation of medical men, was

buried several feet beneath the surface of the earth in the courtyard of a

well-guarded palace. His body survived without food, oxygen, or sunshine for

forty days. When he was disinterred, he was pronounced dead; but to the

amazement of his attendant English and French physicians, the suspended life in

his body returned. [1]

 

When the yogi puts himself in a trance of suspended animation, he halts decay in

the bodily cells. While he is buried, the cold earth acts like a refrigerator,

preserving the body from the destructive work of heat. The inner life force

additionally creates a sort of coolness in all the cells, which helps to

preserve them. In this state, the cells temporarily forget their bad habit of

addiction to food, and live by the vibration of Cosmic Energy.

 

Science postulates that each gram of flesh in the human body has enough energy

in its electroprotonic constituents to run the electrical supply of the city of

Chicago for two days. The life force in the ordinary human body is accustomed to

deriving power from the chemical energy in food; nature's cumbersome procedures

have blocked the process of living solely on the lifetronic energy [2] stored in

the electrons and protons of the body cells. In the state of suspended

animation, yogis know how to utilize this electroprotonic energy to keep the

body cells electrified like trillions of dry batteries.

 

All consciousness, energy and forms evolve from and exist in God's immanent and

transcendent Cosmic Consciousness. We exist only because our Creator allots

infinitesimal segments of His Being to masquerade as a multitude of beings. The

ordinary man thinks of himself as a body whose faculties produce consciousness.

Self-realized yogis, to the contrary, know that it is the consciousness and

subconsciousness in the brain and spine that sustain and animate the body. They

understand how to withdraw life and consciousness into the astral cerebrospinal

centers and connect them with the source of all consciousness, God's Cosmic

Consciousness.

 

Just as ships can be controlled by a distant radio, so God sustains all thought

processes and cells in the body by continually sending Cosmic Consciousness and

Cosmic Energy to them. (p.169) Even if one is not conscious of this Sustaining

Power, no one can live without the inner intelligence of subconsciousness,

charged with God's consciousness, utilizing the Cosmic Energy " radioed " into the

body through the medulla and stored in the protonic center of all bodily cells.

[3] During the suspended state of the body, unless the cell and thought radios

are tuned in with the dynamo of Cosmic Consciousness, or with the subdynamo of

the superconsciously charged subconscious, the cells and bodily functions will

be destroyed because of the lack of a controlling intelligence. When

consciousness departs from the spine and brain in the suspended body, death is

instantaneous, and decay ensues.

 

The suspended animation accomplished by yogis such as Sadhu Haridas is useful

primarily for the purpose of demonstrating advanced psychophysiological laws. A

suspended state of unknowingness is not necessarily spiritually beneficial. Any

kind of suspended animation when one is unconscious outside and unconscious

inside is only a mental chloroform and should be discarded. Certain teachers

produce a state of suspended animation in animals or themselves by pressing

glands. This produces a state of inner and outer unconsciousness which should be

strictly avoided as metaphysically useless. In the spiritual yoga of 'samadhi'

meditation, though the body may assume a trancelike suspension, the

consciousness remains fully awake in oneness with God in the bliss of conscious

divine communion.

 

Meditation: connecting

one's limited energy

and consciousness with

the Infinite Life and

Cosmic Consciousness

 

In the state of divine ecstasy, the life force becomes concentrated in the

spiritual cerebrospinal centers and electrifies all of the trillions of cells of

the body, not only preventing their decay but rejuvenating them with a powerful

elixir of Cosmic Energy. When the cells are electrified with this super-current,

they cease their accustomed mutations of growth and decay. This is what is meant

by ecstatic " suspended animation. " (p.170) The body, being a cluster of atomic,

cellular, circulatory, muscular, and astral lifetronic motions, depends usually

upon such motion for its existence. But the yogi in 'samadhi' meditation

consciously suspends the activity of change in the muscles, blood, nerve force,

and all tissues, and supports the body by the changeless power of Cosmic Energy

from Cosmic Consciousness. If one gently touches the spring of a fine watch, it

will stop; and when the watch is shaken, it will run again. In the same way,

when the body functions are stilled by quieting the restless activity of the

mental processes, the life force and human consciousness cease their outward

activity with the material world and temporarily suspend their slavery to

oxygen, food, and sunshine; they learn to depend wholly upon the true body

supporters, God's Cosmic Energy and Cosmic Consciousness.

 

To return to activity, the yogi stirs his will and consciousness in the spine

and brain. When he turns on the switch of the will, the thoughts begin to stir.

With the connecting of the mind to the sensory powers of perception and action,

the life force restores complete animation to the body.

 

A Sadhu Haridas who can put the body into a subconscious trance state of

suspended animation; a Therese Neumann or Giri Bala who can subsist on pure

energy from air, sunshine, and vibratory light of God; an avatar such as

Mahavatar Babaji for whom breath, bodily atoms, life itself, are no more than

manipulatable light and God-thoughts--all provide dramatic proof of man's

potential to master the life forces of his erstwhile materially stubborn body.

 

Jesus showed his mastery over the body by the manifestation of Cosmic

Consciousness during his forty days of fasting and meditation. After attaining

such a state, it makes no difference whether a master eats normally to remain in

touch with his human nature, or whether he eats sparingly or not at all.

 

Extreme examples are cited not as an objective toward which the average man or

even the God-seeker should aspire, but to show that if such remarkable control

of the physical being is possible, it is also possible for a person living a

normal life to so spiritualize his body that he can experience the Divine Power

as the real source of his life, and can consciously use that Power to help free

himself from physical suffering and other grief-inflicting mortal limitations.

 

Meditation is the method of realizing the connection between one's

body-circumscribed life energy and the infinite Cosmic Energy of God, the

connection between the conscious and subconscious states and the Cosmic

Consciousness of God. (p.171) Through 'Kriya Yoga' meditation, the consciousness

is gradually transformed from identification with the inept and often

treacherous physical body, with its love of breath and " bread, " to awareness of

the inner astral body of self-renewing vibrant life energy, and thence to one's

ultimate nature as a soul image of God: ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new

Bliss. Jesus, Elijah, Kabir, and other prophets were past masters in the use of

'Kriya' or a similar technique, by which they could cause their bodies to

materialize or dematerialize at will--even as Jesus resurrected his crucified

body; and as he witnessed, in his former incarnation as Elisha, his guru Elijah

dissolve his body into fiery energy and ascend into heaven. [4]

 

The Second Coming of Christ (The Resurrection of the Christ Within

You) Volume 1, Discourse 8, pg. 167-171

Paramahansa Yogananda

Printed in the United States of America 1434-J881

ISBN-13:978-0-87612-557-1

ISBN-10:0-87612-557-7

 

Notes:

 

[1] In 'Thirty-five Years in the East' (London: H. Bailliere, 1852), Dr. John

Martin Honigberger, physician to the Court of Lahore, India, writes of the feats

of Sadhu Haridas, which he gathered from eyewitness accounts.

 

[2] As in the macrocosm of the universe, so in the microcosm of man there are

three interdependent bodies. Man's soul dons these three coverings that serve as

instrumentalities through which the incarnate spirit can perceive, comprehend,

and interact with God's creation. The very tenuous first covering of the soul,

which individualizes it from Spirit, is one of pure consciousness; it is

composed of God's thoughts or ideas that cause the other two sheaths. Thus it is

referred to as the causal body. These causal ideas emit a magnetic force of

light and intelligent energy, which I have called lifetrons, that form the

astral body of man. The astral body of lifetrons is itself the life energy that

empowers all the senses and functions of the physical body. The physical body is

merely a gross materialization of the causal ideas activated by the life and

energy of the astral body, and endowed with consciousness, self-awareness, and

intelligence from the causal body. All of these vibratory manifestations of the

macrocosm and microcosm derive from the Holy Ghost Vibration and the

transcendent consciousness of God.

Thus John summarizes: " In him (the Word) was life; and the life was the light of

men " (John 1:4) - Volume 1, Discourse 1, p.14.

 

[3] Consciousness as a factor in human sustenance is demonstrable in the

phenomenon of sleep. The human mechanism must periodically be recharged by

retiring into the subconsciousness in the state of sleep, wherein the

consciousness and body cells are revivified by contact with the

superconsciousness of the soul. The rejuvenating effects of sleep are due to

man's temporary unawareness of the body and breath. 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 in the six subdynamos of his spinal centers.

Unknowingly, the sleeper is thus recharged by the Cosmic Energy that sustains

all life.

 

[4] See Discourse 2: " ...there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of

fire...and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven " (II Kings 2:11).

Kabir was a great sixteenth century saint in India. See Discourse 75.