From the moment of conception to the last breath man has to fight
numerous battles. There are many verities of inner and outer conflicts
competing for victory.
In every encounter there are the forces for good and evil. The
battle is for man to align himself with the side of righteousness.
The ultimate aim is Self realization. The realization of man’s
true Self, the soul as made in the image and likeness of God.
One with the ever existing, ever conscious, ever new bliss of
spirit.
At birth man brings with him self-created influences from actions
of past lives.
In each incarnation, karma works itself out partly through
hereditary forces; the soul of a child is attracted into a family in which
heredity is in conformance with the child’s past Karma.
The child begins its first conscious struggle when it has to chose
between his desire to play aimlessly and his desire to learn, study and pursue
some course of training.
Gradually, more serious battles arise, forced on him by karmic
instincts from within or by bad company or battles from the outside.
The youth suddenly finds himself confronted with a host of
problems for which he often is ill prepared because he does not possess the
necessary worldly experience.
As he turns to be an adult he finds that without cultivating and
being able to draw on his innate powers of wisdom and spiritual discrimination,
he succumbs to the temptation of wrong desires, destructive habits, failure,
disease and unhappiness.
Few people realize that there is a constant battle happening
within. It is the battle for sense gratification that lead them to view the
outer world as the main playground for happiness and the forces drawing man
back to the soul or Self
awareness, the often forgotten true nature of man.
The yogi, the awakened man, is well aware of this battle. Not only
with the external battles fought by all man, but also the internal clash
between the forces of restlessness arising from sense consciousness and his
effort to meditate.
This points out the value for nightly introspection to discern who
won out, the good or the evil.
Good is that which expresses truth and virtue and attracts the
consciousness to God;
Evil, being ignorance and delusion, that which repels the
consciousness from God.
Man’s body and mind reveal in its detailed perfection the presence
of a divine plan.
“Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of
God dwelleth in you?” Corinthians 3:16.
The Spirit of God, His reflection is the Soul
The goal in meditation is to overcome the lower states of
consciousness and dissolve the ego causing sense of separation from God in
samadhi (oneness), the victorious union of soul and Spirit in cosmic
consciousness.
Yogis may enjoy the blissful achievement of samadhi many times,
yet find that they cannot maintain this union permanently, as they are drawn
again into ego and body consciousness by their karma and remnants of desire and
attachment.
But, through each triumphant contact with Spirit the soul
consciousness becomes strengthened and more firmly established.
Maintaining a healthy body:
It is much easier to attain material success, mental efficiency, through
the practice of meditation for the purpose of attaining Self realization if the
body is healthy.
For the body to be healthy, we must use the proper food, exercise
regularly, be in the fresh air, expose the body to the sun, try to live worry
free, manage stress, practice self control, relax the body and mind etc.
Raising the level of consciousness:
We are not a master over our being if we still engage in the
ordinary life battles of sensory temptation, uncontrollable desires, bad
habits, identifying with our body and restlessness of our mind and remain
ignorant of our soul.
The consciousness of ordinary man is subject to fear of death,
poverty, disease and many other ills. He is bound by attachment to name, social
standing, family and possessions.
Spiritually he cannot feel his presence beyond the body except in
his imagination.
He is conscious only of his body and mind and of their outer
connection. He remains hypnotized by the world of delusion.
Man must re-aquatint himself with the changeless sea of the all
protecting Spirit by moving upward from body consciousness to cosmic
consciousness.
How?
Through study, through discrimination we free ourselves from ego
attachment, through expansion of consciousness toward all inclusiveness,
through life force control, through concentration, contemplation &
meditation.
In the state of super consciousness, our perceptions are
internalized rather than externalized.
When in superconsciousness, the heart is calm, (we see visions of
lights; hear astral sounds; we can become one with lighted space).
We can stimulate at will the medulla or point between the eyebrows;
we can control the inner and outer perceptions.
Here we know that all matter, energy, and intelligent prana, is
composed of thought force.
The person whose knowledge comes through books and not through
intuition at times speaks of matter as thought, (thoughts are things, things
are thoughts) yet he remains attached to the body and its material limitations.
The yogi who can withdraw his consciousness as well as his life
force from the senses, taking them through the spinal centers to the point
between the eyebrows has progressed enough to say: ”all matter is thought.”
Therefore unless consciousness and energy reach the medulla plane,
all matter will be experienced as solid, or from a phenomenal perspective,
real.
In superconsciousness the body which once seemed so solid and
vulnerable, takes on a new dimension composed of energy, light and thought, a
marvelous combination of currents emanating from the creative vibrations of
earth, water, fire, air and ether in the subtle cerebro spinal centers.
The battle of consciousness everyone must fight, is the war
between human consciousness and the ever blissful state of soul, Self
consciousness.
The material man will know inner peace and happiness only if he
sides with goodness and wins the battle between good and evil.
The spiritual aspirant of any true religious path must in addition
win the victory on the inner plane, the subtle spinal centers.
The yogi, who seeks the ultimate goal of Self realization and
kaivalia (liberation), leads a life of:
Self-control,
High moral standard,
Spiritual consciousness,
Avoids the pull of the lower ego nature and strives for
Interiorized God communication.
Each person, moralist, spiritual aspirant, and devotee should
every night before retiring ask his intuition whether his spiritual or his
worldly inclinations of temptations won the day’s battle between good and bad
habits,
Between temperance and greed,
Between self control and lust,
Between honest desire for necessities or for excess,
Between forgiveness and anger,
Between joy and grief, between kindness and cruelty,
Between selfishness and unselfishness,
Between understanding and jealousy,
Between bravery and cowardice,
Between confidence and fear,
Between faith and doubt,
Between humbleness and pride,
Between desire to commune with God in meditation and the restless
urge for worldly activities,
Between spiritual and material desires,
Between divine ecstasy and sensory perceptions,
Between soul consciousness and ego states.
The Gita commands man to avoid mere existence. It stresses, that
the practice of contacting God in meditation will enable man to keep the state
of blissful consciousness ever present with him, even during the performance of
his daily duties.
Discontent, boredom, and unhappiness are the harvest of a
mechanically led life, whereas the infinite spiritual perceptions which are
gained in meditation bring man countless inspirations of wisdom and enliven
every aspect of his life.
It teaches, to use the senses with discrimination and self-control,
to lead an upright, honest family life. Yet it also teaches, not to let our
obligations in the material world crowd out our supreme duty to seek God and
Self realization.
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