Chapter
1
Introduction to Natural Yoga
In the Western world it is not
considered very important to be guided by the heart. We would
all like to be more able to love and be loved, but we have learned
to trust our heads. We have been educated, not only in our educational
system, but also in our society as a whole to use our heads.
It has brought us a certain degree of material success, but it
has not succeeded in giving us the happiness, the peace, the
consciousness, and the love that we all want.
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Open the heart and surrender
The teaching of Natural Yoga is the way of natural union with God. From
my spiritual teacher Master Kripalvananda, I learned a method of opening my
heart, a method of surrender. This is not to say that knowledge is a bad thing,
because it is not. But it is not enough; nor is just opening your heart. We
are so much more advanced in our heads than in our hearts. What we need is
to learn to open the heart and surrender.
But surrender to what? In Natural Yoga one surrenders only to the Truth.
Another name for the Truth is God. God is the Absolute; the Absolute is Perfection;
and Perfection is Truth. Natural Yoga is about knowing God not just intellectually,
but consciously and directly; it is about surrender to God.
Captured energy
It is necessary to re-release the energy captured by the closed heart. The
heart, in turn, has been captured by the mind; and the mind controls it. It
is not possible to figure out how to re-release or to liberate the life energy
that has been entrapped. The more you use your will to make it happen, the
more life energy gets captured. But when the heart is re-opened, the mind loses
its grip on the previously captured energy, and life begins to flow again.
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Surrendering to anything
If you surrender to anything and everything, your life becomes a complete waste.
Your desires run wild and you run into incredible difficulties. In Natural
Yoga, by surrendering to God, by surrendering to the Truth, the suppressed
energy is released and transformed. Then liberation is achieved.
Once you surrender the body, feelings and mind to God, the purification process
begins. But the ego resists it. It says, “Oh, no, you don’t. This
surrender business is not for me!”
If you have a lot of toxins in your body, there will be a strong reaction.
If you are sickly, overweight, use drugs, smoke cigarettes, or drink coffee
or alcohol, the body will react very strongly and make it very difficult for
you to continue surrendering. If you sincerely want to do Natural Meditation,
you need to work through these difficulties and prepare for the process of
full surrender, of completely giving over your body, feelings and mind to God.
Then as you continue to surrender, your mind begins to purify spontaneously.
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Four ways to awaken the life energy
There are four ways to awaken or liberate the life energy. One of them is by
physical exercise; another is by understanding the Truth; the third is through
devotion; and the fourth is through the transmission of divine energy form
teacher to student.
If you do a lot of exercise, stop using drugs and eat a pure diet, your body
will become purer. And when it purifies, the life energy will be liberated.
My life energy was liberated by understanding the Truth. I had a realization
of the Truth of life. As a result, the life energy in my body went “whoooosh.” I
rolled all over the floor and acted crazy. I didn’t know what to do with
it! I tried to figure out what it was all about. For years I tried to find
out what to do with it and how to handle it.
I did not succeed until I met Master Kripalvananda, affectionately called Kripalu.
He is the only one I ever met who really knew what to do with the vital energy.
He was a great yogi from the great tradition of Natural Yoga. Something
led me to his feet. He had the knowledge, method, and power to transform the
life energy; and he could teach and transmit it to others.
And finally, if you devote yourself to whatever is divine to you and open your
heart and serve it, through great love, your life energy will be liberated.
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Transmission of divine energy
In Natural Yoga, the life energy is awakened through the transmission
of divine energy from teacher to student. The transference is a gift of life
energy from the teacher to the student. The great advantage of transmission
of divine energy from teacher to student is that you know what is happening;
you how it has come about; and you know you have someone to guide you. Once
the divine energy is transferred, the rest happens spontaneously and automatically
as you continue to surrender.
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Stages in Natural Yoga
1. You begin
to treat people better, not because you are forcing yourself,
but just because you want to.
2. The body performs purifying actions, moving spontaneously into yoga
postures whether you have ever heard of them or not. The postures occur
in the exact way necessary for your body to purify.
3. The life energy becomes restrained and elevated.
4. The attention withdraws from the senses.
5. You go into deep concentration.
6. You go into spontaneous meditation.
7. You go into equanimity or union with God.
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This does not happen in two or
three seconds; it takes a while. It may take days, weeks, months
or years; but it happens according to the grace of God and Truth,
according to the wisdom of the divine energy that guides you.
The process of Natural Yoga proceeds according to your degree of surrender, the
previous work that you have done in this life and others, and the wisdom of
your spiritual teacher. Divine union is the ultimate outcome of Natural Yoga.
Your own true, divine nature comes into union with God or Truth.
Natural Yoga brings not only bliss, but also consciousness, Truth, health
and happiness. It brings natural humility and saintly behavior. Impurities
are transformed into Divine Love for others. Eventually a complete and permanent
transformation of one’s human nature takes place. This is a long-term
project; yet it is the promise of Natural Yoga.
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Chapter 2
Surrender
Surrender is the key
The key to Natural Yoga is surrender. By surrendering in meditation you
achieve union with God or Truth. There are many names and ways of thinking
about the Ultimate. Choose the way that has meaning for you, then surrender
and go into union with it.
Natural Yoga is natural union, a union that happens naturally without
the use of willful direction or guidance. Natural Meditation means following
the natural path, the path that is automatic and spontaneous. But this can
only come through surrender. This is why surrender is the key. Without surrender,
the will is involved. When the will is involved, nothing happens naturally.
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Advantages to meditating naturally
There are a lot of advantages to meditating naturally. You might say that surrender
is “letting it be.” Letting things be the way they are, is a form
of surrender.
The dictionary defines surrender as the opposite of victory; surrender is yielding
or giving in. It implies being forced to give in, to give in against your will.
In Natural Yoga surrender means giving in by your own choice and letting
the will of something other than you have its way.
In Natural Yoga, you not only surrender, but you also surrender to the
Truth; you surrender to Perfection; you surrender to the Absolute; you surrender
to the Ultimate. You surrender to the cosmic finality. Call it whatever you
like.
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The key principle of Natural Yoga
You don’t just surrender. You surrender to an Ultimate. You have the
choice to surrender or not. In Natural Yoga you choose to give in to
the Divine. This is the key principle of Natural Yoga. You don’t
need to know anything else. Everything else supports this key principle. So
you need to understand it well.
It is not easy to surrender, but it is the key to spiritual growth. If you
surrender to the Divine, then automatically and spontaneously, you are on the
path to the Truth, to the feet of the Lord, to Divine Love, without having
to plan, to know, to force or to concern yourself in any way
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Reaction to surrender
The difficulty is that when you choose to surrender, there is a
reaction. Therefore, you can only surrender to a certain degree. If you could
surrender to the Truth totally, all at once, you would experience the Truth
and you would have complete union with the Truth.
Some people refuse to surrender at all. They say, “I’m using my
will and that’s it. I’m not surrendering at all!” A few have
surrendered totally. We call them God. Most of us are in between with some
degree of surrender.
When you have a reaction to surrender, don’t stop surrendering. Simply
surrender more. Even if you don’t want to, go ahead and do it anyway.
Perhaps you pull back your surrender to some degree. But if you do surrender,
a little bit of purification takes place. Not only do concerns go away, but
also the body and the mind purify to some degree. So when you surrender that
much again, the reaction is not so strong. And as you continue, your capacity
to surrender grows deeper and deeper because the reactions are less.
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Ultimate method
It would take a lifetime to sort out the best way to have a supremely happy
life, achieve complete liberation, attain absolute freedom, and reach total
union with God. By the time I found Natural Yoga, my life had been spent
trying to work this out.
I had assembled about fifty different, quite excellent methods of dealing with
the body and mind, like massage, Polarity Therapy, Rolfing, Feldenkreis, Hatha
Yoga, breath restraint, good diet, Gestalt Therapy, Mind Clearing, Emotional
Trauma Release, praying to God, and many others.
I was trying to design an assessment method to test every person who came to
our spiritual growth center and then direct them to the techniques they needed.
I had an elaborate plan worked out with a marvelous testing system so that
each person’s plan could be adjusted to just the combination they needed
and varied as their needs changed. I was excited by all of this and was beginning
to make some sense out of it even though it was a fairly complex subject.
Then one day I met my beloved spiritual teacher, Kripalu. He taught me Natural
Meditation. With Natural Yoga all you have to do is surrender to God.
And the perfect thing happens to you at just the right time with the correct
intensity to do exactly what is necessary for you whether it be in your mind,
your body or your feelings. It brings about the exact degree of purification
you need. And then the process continues naturally without any need to ask
questions or make plans! What a relief! What a Godsend!
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Surrender is not for everyone
Unfortunately not everyone can surrender to God. First of all, many have not
found God. Others have no absolute anywhere in their life. It’s difficult
for them to find anything to surrender to.
Secondly, many are so impure and toxified that if they do surrender even a
little bit, their ego can’t stand it. They clamp their will down with
all their might. These people must find Truth, through some other method, through Enlightenment
Intensives, for example. They need techniques to remove their mental and
communicative obstacles. Once their minds become purer as a result of techniques
such as the Enlightenment Intensive, then surrender is possible for them.
For those who are ready, for those who have prepared themselves, the path of
Natural Yoga is open. Natural Yoga is an option if they so choose!
Many have had deep experiences of God, Truth or Divine Love. But these experiences
fade with time.
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Limitation of willful techniques
All willful techniques are limited because you can only know God in a surrendered
state. As soon as the will is re-activated by arising desire, the deep experience
lost. Many people are sincerely driven time and time again into the realm of
peak experiences only to fall back again when desire arises.
Some have sought experiences using drugs, only to crash again. Taking drugs
is certainly willful; and you cannot willfully maintain union. Only in the
state of surrender to the Truth can the Ultimate goal be continually experienced.
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The value of willful techniques
It’s a gradual process. Where willful techniques leave off, surrender
begins. This is not to say that willful techniques have no value. They do!
It is necessary for almost everyone to participate in them to get themselves
to the place where they can surrender meaningfully to the Truth. To do Natural
Yoga, one must be able to surrender and let the will another be done.
It is God who is the doer in Natural Yoga.
No willful acts in Natural Yoga
In Natural Yoga you release the body from willful acts. You allow the
life energy in the body to do what it wants instead of willfully trying to
do something.
If your body gets tired, let it fall over or just collapse on the floor. Once
the body rests for awhile, it wants to move again. Whereas ordinary meditation
uses the will, in Natural Yoga you let the life energy, guided by the
divine, move the body in whatever way it sees fit.
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Mind or attention in Natural Yoga
Do not try to concentrate your mind or attention on any particular thing. In
willful meditation you concentrate on one subject or willfully try to maintain
a state of openness.
In the case of Natural Yoga, you let the attention go wherever it wants.
It might go onto anything. You surrender the control of your attention to the
divine and letting it do what it wants. The divine directs the energy that
guides the attention. It will go where it needs to go in order for you to make
the most rapid progress in your meditation.
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Is boring OK?
Meditation may not always be what you want; and often, it is not. Sometimes
it is boring. Sometimes it does seemingly pointless things like the grocery
list. But that is what needs to be done. The energy is trying to release your
attention from the “grocery list” so it can go on to other things.
You say, “Oh, I shouldn’t be thinking about the grocery list; so
I’m not going to think about it. I should be thinking about God.”
You are using your will. It is all very well to think about God; but if you
are using your will to direct your attention, then you are defeating the method
of natural union with God. If you surrender your attention to God, the life
energy in the body and mind will be guided appropriately.
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God/Goddess is the therapist
In meditation you go through what you need to go through. No one has to tell
you anything. God is the only therapist. If you have God or the Truth as your
therapist, you can not do better. The only fee God wants is surrender to Him.
You can say Her if you prefer. The Goddess is Truth. Truth is the way things
actually are no matter what perspective you take. You just let meditation happen
whatever way it wants. Let His will be done, not yours.
Surrender, then, is to choose to
let God, the Truth, or whatever you want to call it, guide your
body, feelings, and mind, your thoughts and attention. You will
be lead you through the most fascinating, exciting, sometimes boring
and even terrifying journey to to union with the Truth.
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One can do many hours
By surrendering to the life energy, the body can naturally go through what
it needs to go through in Natural Yoga. It does not become tired. The
mind goes through what it needs to go through so it does not become stuck or
frustrated trying to control the attention. And the feelings can flow when
they are ready; when they are not ready, nothing happens. So just let it be.
One can do many hours of Natural Yoga over long periods of months and
years. The serious aspirant can devote his or her whole life to this activity.
Four to eight hours a day spent in meditation is not unusual for a serious
practitioner of Natural Yoga.
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Yogic sleep
Generally, the energy in meditation moves a lot at first, then slows down to
nothing and the aspirant goes into yogic sleep. You may think that you should
be alert and busy. Your will tells you, “I think I should be awake, active
and busy.” And there is God’s will.
Sleep is coming on naturally. If you have truly surrendered, you let sleep
come. If a hand wants to move, let it move. Whatever happens let it happen!
There is only one condition, surrender your body, mind and feelings to the
Truth,. If you have done that, there is no error. Whatever occurs, including
sleep or anything else, happens properly and automatically.
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Attachment to the ego
Why doesn’t everybody do Natural Yoga? It’s so easy! I mentioned
the obstacle of reaction. Many people are attached to the ego; that is, their
ego wants to be in charge. It wants to be the doer and wants to cause things
to happen. “If I do this, then I want that result. And I want the fruits
of my actions.”
Following the ego is the ordinary Western way of proceeding. It is also the
Oriental way of proceeding to some extent. When you willfully act, God responds
to a degree, if you have acted ethically.
You can get bound to the ego and get stuck in the role of the doer. You are
the one who is doing it, rather than surrendering. Following the ego can only
take you so far. But most people are not ready to give up the role of “doership.” They
are not ready to go on to Natural Yoga.
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The slave master
God is the doer of all things. Imagine a slave master who has many slaves and
who wants to build himself a nice house. He sits up on his dais and says, “Slave,
you come over here and you carry these stones. And you slaves there, you pile
them up. And you mix the mortar. And you design it. Come on, jump!”
And they start jumping and carrying stones and they build the palace. When
the palace is finished, the slave master invites his neighbor over. And he
says, “Look! See the palace I built! See what I did!”
The slave master is the ego and the slaves are God.
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God in the form of nature
God is the doer of all things that appear in the form of nature. God in the
form of nature does all things. The ego sits back and says, “Look what
I’m doing! See what I did!” The ego thinks it is the doer. But
the ego does not create anything; it does nothing!
The body is part of nature; the mind, feelings and thoughts are part of nature.
The entire physical universe is part of nature. All that happens is done by
God working in and through nature. Surrender releases the divine energy that
makes everything work. The divine energy is what guides your body, mind and
feelings in Natural Yoga.
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Identification with doership
If you are strongly identified with doership, surrender will not occur. But
you can give up the ego and say, “God, I surrender to you.” It
would be like the slave master saying, “Slave, I surrender to you. I
realize that you have been doing the work anyway and I’ve just been taking
credit for it.”
It is not just a matter of stopping what you were doing; it is a matter of
realizing that you never were and are not the doer. God in the form of nature
does all things. The act of surrender is simply the gradual realization of
the Truth.
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Fruits of action
As long as you are attached to the fruits of action, you are held in a trap.
You hold on to the idea that you are the doer. “I did it. I worked all
day. I want my pay.”
So if you are attached to the fruits, you are automatically the doer. But it
is not true. The fruits do not belong to you. They are all God’s. You
are not the doer. God does it all.
So what are you? You are the one who either surrenders to that fact, or resists
it. You are the one who can make the choice. You can either surrender to the
natural way which brings about union with Truth or you can fight it, saying, “No!
No! No! I’m going to do it the way I want!”
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Not doing anything
Sometimes people feel that if they decide to stop doing something, nothing
will happen. They think that not doing anything is surrender. This is not true.
They think, “I won’t think any thought; I won’t move a finger;
I won’t breathe.” There is a very simple way to test this.
“ Well since I’m the breather, I’ll stop breathing.” But
it is not you who starts breathing again because it was not you who was breathing
in the first place. God in the form of nature is causing the body to breathe,
not you. And in the same way, nature causes the brain to think, the hunger to
come, the sexual urge to arise. All these things happen by the will of nature.
Thus it is the ego that stops people from doing Natural Meditation. Everyone
has an ego. However, if you can just yield some of your doership, some of your
attachment to the fruits of action, then you can open the door to Natural Yoga.
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The cycle of pleasure and pain
Natural Yoga liberates you from both pleasure and pain. You protest, “Wait
a minute, don’t you take my pleasure away! I’ll put up with some
pain as long as I get some pleasure.”
By surrendering to the Truth, you gradually get over the suffering of pain
and the enjoyment of pleasure. In life, pain is the payment, pleasure is the
reward. It is the fruit. Getting caught in this endless cycle of pain and pleasure
is ordinary human life.
An individual who wants liberation seeks to transcend this cycle. A practitioner
of Natural Yoga, instead of pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain, seeks
only union with Truth, perfect awareness of the way things really are. He or
she becomes more and more detached. Both pleasure and pain become the same.
A sincere meditator seeks pure consciousness of the way it is. The ‘way
it is’ is often called ‘That’ in yogic scripture. Pure consciousness
of ‘That’ is bliss.
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Direct knowledge
Pure consciousness of the “way it is” (‘that’) may
be called direct knowledge. When you have direct knowledge of ‘That’ which
is true, you are in bliss. This is union with God. A liberated individual having
transcended pleasure and pain comes to know God directly. If someone just talks
to you about Truth, it tends to be dry. If someone just talks about God, you
may feel belittled. But when you are the one that ends up knowing the Truth
directly, you are in the state of bliss.
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Bliss
Bliss is not the same as pleasure. Bliss is pure consciousness of Truth. The
state you are in when you go into union is bliss. Bliss is not the titillation
of a nerve ending; that is pleasure.
If that nerve is not titillated, then it is painful. “Oh I feel so lonesome
and left out. I feel depressed and hurt.”
This happens because the nerve fiber
did not get its electrical stimulus. But if you have pure consciousness
of God or Truth, it is bliss. It is union with God.
How do you to reach bliss? By the realizing that you are not the doer. By surrendering
to the Truth. This leads to pure consciousness of the Truth and you have bliss.
I speak not from theory, but from experience that this is the case. Surrender
even in the early stages of the process of union with God, leads to bliss and
to God. By the grace of my spiritual teacher it has happened to me. I can say
that direct knowledge of Truth is God, beyond doubt, beyond certainty.
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Different names
for divine energy
There are many schools of thought, many religions and teachers who teach surrender
to God in the form of the divine energy. The Christians on the day of the Pentecost
were invested with the Holy Spirit which is the same thing as divine energy.
They spoke in tongues and rolled on the floor, called out to God, cried, and
laughed with joy. The purification had begun. The Holy Spirit had descended
upon them.
Chi is another name for the divine energy. Tai Chi tries directs this energy.
The name is ‘Orgone’ to the Reichians. They permit the energy to
flow and to surrender to it. These are all steps in the right direction. They
are all excellent techniques. In Natural Mediation, we deal with the same energy.
In yogic tradition, the guru gives Shaktipat initiation awakening the divine
energy in his or her students.
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Swami Kripalvananda
My spiritual teacher has provided us with a broad perspective of the spiritual
growth process based on his experience in Natural Yoga. He practiced
ten hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year for over thirty years.
His life was Natural Yoga. He understood and practiced Natural Yoga
in the context of ancient scripture. He was taught by his teacher, Lord Lakulisha,
who achieved divine body through Natural Yoga.
Natural Yoga has a history of thousands of years of sincere meditators
experimenting, going up blind alleys, finding the way and then staying on course.
They continued until they achieved the highest state of union with God, the
development of the divine body, and the fulfillment of life.
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The yoga of love
There are many names for this meditation. When I was in India, Swami Kripalvananda
called me back into his room and wrote something his chalkboard in Hindi. I
had to ask the translator to come back. Kripalu wrote, “The name of this
yoga is love.”
I did not know what he meant at the time. Now I have a good idea. Love and
surrender are the same. One’s most outstanding quality is love. And God
is love. So when you surrender to God, to Perfection, to Truth, you love Him
so He can love you. This is what leads to union. Without love none of it is
possible.
Love does not mean surrendering to people’s personalities, weaknesses,
inabilities, failures, or impurities. You surrender to the Divine, the Divine
that is everywhere and in everything. You should not surrender to imperfections,
disease, insanity and false knowledge. Surrender only to the Divine Truth which
is in the heart of everyone. This is the act of love.
Kripalu told me that for thousands of years, it has been the custom in India
when greeting or parting to say, “Victory to God!” Jai Bhagawan
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Chapter 3
Divine Energy
The male and
female principles
All of existence can be understood in terms of the male principle and the female
principle. The male factor is the Being, an individual being conscious. The
female factor is Nature. Nature is all the world. When I say, “all the
world,” I mean not only all the things and all matter in the world, but
also all space, time energy, events, thoughts, and bodies. Everything that
is and everything that takes place is what I mean by Nature.
The aspect of Nature which moves and empowers is divine energy. Divine energy
is power or directed energy. If a motion or an event has some direction or
intelligence guiding it, then it is power. is divine energy.
Divine energy is not something mysterious. It is something ordinary. It is
that aspect of nature that empowers movement and gives energy and direction.
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Divine energy
The concept of divine energy applies to the entirety of nature, realms, life
forms, space, and time, forever and ever. It is universal divine energy.
From the very beginning of the universe to the very end, including the
present, everything is empowered by universal divine energy.
In Christianity, this is also discussed. The Bible speaks of God, and the Word
of God. The Word of God is Nature and is the same as divine energy. The empowering
factor in Christian theology is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes everything
function. Without it nothing takes place. The Holy Spirit, on the most universal
level, is identical to the divine energy.
The Holy Spirit is the empowering force, the energy from God, directed by His
intelligence. The entire forming of the physical world of matter and the evolution
of the suns and galaxies, the stars and their interaction in galactic forms,
the formation of planets, all have been empowered by divine energy. Without
this energy creation would not take place. Without the energy and intelligence
of the Holy Spirit, the physical world would not form. There would not be coalescence
of matter or substance. Nor would matter form into intelligent patterns like
the spiral form of the galaxy or the roundness of stars.
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Divine intelligence
The intelligence contained in the laws of nature, acting by the energy of God,
makes the world the way it is. Just as planets are formed by the direction
of intelligent energy, life forms on the planets and biological forms, simple
viruses, bacteria, simple plants, and one-celled animals evolve. Divine energy
is at work to make life, whether it is plant or animal. When divine energy
is operational in a life form, we call it the life energy. But it is still
the same divine energy that forms the universe.
Consider the intelligence factor also, a guiding hand of divine energy within
the form of the DNA. It guides the form, pattern, structure and activities
in of the biological form in the final analysis. The divine energy is in the
very structure of the cell itself. Without it, a cell cannot live. Divine energy
is also the energy that motivates and binds the molecules.
The material world and the divine are not two separate things. The divine pervades
every aspect of the living form. The intelligence that makes the organism the
way it is, is divine. As cells combine and relate through the intelligence
that is contained in the structure of the DNA molecules, life forms become
more and more complex.
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The evolutionary force and life energy
The same principle guides the evolutionary formation of the human body. When
the intelligent divine energy, this power, drives evolution on towards a more
complex and perfect organism, it is called the evolutionary force. The overall
empowering force of a body form is called life energy. The force contained
in the DNA molecule that is the driving power of evolution, is called the evolutionary
force. It has a goal in mind, a place to arrive at. It drives the body toward
more and more complexity and perfection in its biological form,.
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Kundalini
In Sanskrit the evolutionary force is known as kundalini. Kundalini literally
means ‘the female coiled one’. Yogis think of the evolutionary
force as a she-snake The giant male snake that fills the universe and makes
it go, is the life energy, a giant cobra. And the little female snake is kundalini – the
female coiled one, which is contained in each and every body, in each and every
plant, in each and every animal, in each and every cell.
The physical form of the evolutionary force is in the DNA molecule. The energy
form of it in the lower part of the body is the sexual urge. The sexual urge
gets you to reproduce, driving you into contact with another body. This brings
about further evolution of the species. The sexual urge is not some sort of
a casual thing; it is inherent in every cell of the body. It is the evolutionary
force that drives bodies towards the perfect state.
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Conception
When the human body is conceived, two parts of the evolutionary force’s
pattern, the DNA pattern, combine in union. One half is from the ovum of the
mother and one half is from the sperm of the father. These two patterns come
together and form a new pattern, optimally more perfect than the one before.
The evolutionary force is released at this point of conception when the sperm
and the ovum come together.
The force starts driving hard. It has been encapsulated temporarily in each
one of the sperm and the ovum half-cells. The half cells are incapable of sustaining
life on their own; but when they come together, the dormant evolutionary force
is released. It starts out with tremendous power, guiding, empowering, and
directing the multiplication of the cell into a human zygote within the womb
of the female.
As it grows, it passes through the evolutionary stages rapidly. The zygote
of a human first looks like that of any other animal. Then it begins to resemble
the zygote of a fish and then of a reptile. It goes through the various monkey-like
stages, and finally evolves into the human form, the human fetus, the human
baby.
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Birth
The tremendous trauma of birth puts a damper on the rate of evolution. The
evolutionary force has to start coping with the world; it has to start digesting
milk and breathing air. It has to deal with being neglected and getting cold
and hot. The evolutionary pattern, normally associated with the breath, is
battered. Because of the interaction of the evolutionary force with the environmental
forces, evolution is somewhat frustrated.
Growing
You, as an individual associated with a body, use your ‘will’,
as you grow year by year for your own purposes and ends. By using your will,
as you respond socially to your parents, the evolutionary force is further
constrained, perverted and distorted. By the time you are four, five or six,
the will in the form of the mind, has started to capture the energy to behave,
to stay out of no-no’s, and to get a piece of candy.
And so you make the body sit still and do what it is supposed to do according
to you and according to society instead of just letting it do what the evolutionary
force keeps wanting it to do. It wants to fidget, run around, jump up and down,
and yell, because it is trying to make the body evolve the way it wants it
to evolve. But you direct it through your will, to not urinate or defecate,
to eat when the time is right, to sit still, and to learn to read.
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Constrained evolutionary force
And so the evolutionary force is constrained and constricted to social necessities.
We are not to blame for this. This is the kind of world in which we live. We
are battered by the environment, physically and socially. We continue for the
next few years with the energy somewhat captured. It tries to break out again,
tries to express itself. But because it is captured, it tries to express itself
through sexual reproduction, beginning at or around eleven, twelve, thirteen
or fourteen. The sexual urge breaks out at puberty.
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Sexual urge
You try to have intercourse with a member of the opposite sex. The energy is
essentially saying, “If I can’t make this evolution perfection
in this body, I’ll make a new body. I’ll try it that way, and see
if it can make it.” But because of social circumstances, even that is
constrained. Sexual expression is held in by social pattern, by social necessity,
by lack of money, by lack of education. You cannot get married; you cannot
have sex; you cannot let this energy express itself in just any way or any
time it sees a member of the opposite sex. It cannot have sex immediately and
instantly as in the case of animals.
So you use your will again under social pressure to constrain the evolutionary
force which has broken out in the form of sexual drive. It is held down and
suppressed again out of necessity. No one is to be blamed. But this is what
happens. When this energy is constrained in this manner, it leads to tension,
headaches, unhappiness, and disease. Neurotic behavior begins. After puberty,
comes neurotic behavior. And teenagers start to get more and more neurotic.
They fight against it, they struggle against it; but because of social pressure
and necessity, gradually the evolutionary force is forced to yield to social
patterns.
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Teenager
By your late teens, you have learned enough about life to encourage independence.
You say, “I’m going to let this energy do what it wants,” thinking
that is what you want to do, which is all right, I suppose. And you may think, “I’m
going to live independently. I don’t need my parents, and I don’t
need society. To heck with it! I’m going to go my own way.”
You pull out of the household, and find that you have to make a living. You
have to work at a job or study at school or else you will be left out in the
cold, hungry, without support. And so the necessity of maintaining the survival
of the body causes you to use your will again. This time it is to grind by
the hour over books in college, or grind by the hour, day in and day out, at
some wage job, trying to make a living.
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The force enslaved
This completes the job of enslaving the evolutionary force. With a final gasp
the power of the evolutionary force is lost. The evolution of your body stops.
It quits growing in size and the nervous system stops refining. At this point,
around seventeen, eighteen, nineteen or twenty, further growth of your capacity
and creative powers is suppressed. Your intelligence ceases to grow any more,
and the process of death begins. You slowly start to die right at about that
age. You may not notice it at first. It may take you ten years before you notice
it. But it starts right at that age. Life loses some of its glow. And you begin
to give up.
But the evolutionary force has not given up. It is still there and it still
tries. It never quits. The evolutionary force is so captured by the will, through
the agency of the mind and is so enslaved by the ego that evolution stops,
A few of us develop some outstanding talents up to the age of about twenty-seven
or twenty-eight. By that time the suppression of growth is complete – and
we feel like saying, “What’s the use?” The process of decay
begins more rapidly.
As you can see, the evolutionary force is no mystery at all. It is an every-day
thing. It is suppressed and held at the base of the spine, captured and enslaved
by the mind for social and survival purposes.
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Four ways to release the energy
Liberation of the evolutionary force takes place in the context of purity.
It can be released in one of four ways:
1. by exercise and pure diet
2. by deep sincere love
3. by profound concentration
4. by the Divine grace of God
either directly or by a spiritual teacher.
Exercise and pure diet
1. Exercise and pure diet: Physical impurities hold the energy down. They are
created by bad diet, cola, doughnuts, coffee, bad air, and diseases that
have battered the body and accumulated in it. Through exercise like swimming,
through deep breathing and pure diet, you can purify the accumulations
of toxins and traumas of childhood diseases. Then the evolutionary force
will break out again. This often happens in outstanding athletes and dancers.
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Deep sincere love
2. Deep sincere love: The toxic accumulation of emotional hurts, disappointments,
suppressions and frustrations of the evolutionary force have captured the emotional
energy and held it down. The impurities are accumulated in your emotional aura.
Also, a person who has the capacity for deep, sincere love, who does not care
about hurt feelings, can have a heart opening. They cry. Tears run down their
cheeks, but they don’t care because their love is so strong either for
another being or for God. And the evolutionary force will break forth, and
poetry and song will spontaneously flow from them. They are in love. This is
true devotion. This can awaken the evolutionary force that releases the emotional
hurt and purifies all the past traumas.
Profound concentration
3. Profound concentration: Mental attitudes about how you must be and act trap
the energy. The construct of the ego itself, of personality, of image, of what
attitudes you must have about life--all these have accumulated in the mind
and act as impurities.
Through tremendous concentration, the artist, the pianist or the writer practicing
their art-- eight, ten, twelve hours a day-- focusing acutely his or her attention – brings
about a degree of purification of the mind and freedom of attitude; and the
creative energy of evolution is released.
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It is the same way with the scientist seeking Truth. He concentrates, sees
through misconceptions, and begins to see how the world is put together. This
process releases fixed ideas that he or she has accumulated, and the mind is
freed. The evolutionary force breaks out in the form of exceptional mental
activity. Creative genius may blossom like Einstein’s.
The Zen aspirant sitting in meditation hour after hour focusing on the Truth,
can break through the mind and directly know the Truth. “Ah!” and
the evolutionary force rushes in the purified the mind.
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Physical, emotional and mental
impurities
Physical, emotional and mental impurities all act to hold
the evolutionary force down. They are supported by the power of the
will. By exercise and pure diet, deep sincere love, and profound
concentration, the body, feelings and mind are able to purify enough
so that the evolutionary force can be released in ordinary life.
The removal of toxins and traumas whether physical, emotional or
mental, set the stage for the release of the force of evolution.
Unfortunately, most people do not know what to do with this powerful
force when it arises. They are lost because the power is so great.
They think they are crazy, eccentric, or weird.
Their creative power is unleashed along with the sexual form of the energy.
They are driven by a great sexual power and urge. Not knowing how to deal with
it or transform it, their lives are often destroyed. If anything goes wrong,
which it usually does in a social situation, they are made fun of, rejected,
called crazy or weird.
Perhaps they try to re-suppress the energy by drinking or taking drugs or tranquilizers,
exhibiting more neurotic behavior, busy-busy-busy running around doing all
kinds of things. They may try to sublimate the energy; but they often fail.
So the evolutionary force goes back to sleep again after a few months or years,
back to its dormant state at the bottom of the spine.
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Creative plexus
There is a knot, a complex of energy, at the base of the
spine that includes the sexual and naval centers or chakras. It is
the first of three energy plexus in the body and is called the Creative
plexus or brahmagranthi in yogic terminology. The knot binds the
energy plexus so tightly and is so complex that it is practically
impossible to undo, to evolve out of existence, especially due to
our social situation and our ignorance.
Divine grace of God
4. Divine grace of God either directly or through the agency of a spiritual
teacher who takes one from the darkness to the light: So that leaves us
with the fourth form of awakening the evolutionary force--through the divine
grace of God either directly or through the agency of a spiritual teacher.
By the grace of God or guru, the trapped and dormant evolutionary force at
the base of the spine is released and activated. When this takes place, you
receive the knowledge to handle and transform this energy in the purification
process.
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Ethical standards
Purification takes place spontaneously through surrendered
action and automatic suspension of the life energy in meditation.
For this to occur, you must have adopted ethical standards to guide
your actions in life. Eventually through the purification process
of Natural Yoga you will act in an ethical manner.
As the process of Natural Yoga continues, you will de-identify from the sense faculties,
concentrate more deeply in the practice, increase your ability to practice, and
finally achieve union with God. This all happens spontaneously because the
evolutionary force has been awakened and the divine grace and knowledge of
the spiritual teacher is activated through your connection to the lineage.
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Evolutionary activity
The evolutionary activity goes on not only to purify the body, mind and feelings,
but also to bring about their further evolution. First, you reach genius-level
capacity seeing everything the way it actually is. Then a saintly level follows
where you become a glowing manifestation of love, kindness and Truth. In the
final stages of evolution, you evolve the perfect bodily form called the divine
body. Jesus achieved divine body, as did my teacher’s teacher, Lord Lakulisha.
It is a perfect body, an immortal body that has not only purified but also
has evolved to the final state.
This is the goal that drives the evolutionary force. It is possible to achieve
it – the final evolutionary perfected body form. The divine body is mentioned
in The Autobiography of a Yogi. Babaji, the teacher of Yogananda’s
teacher, achieved it. This final form is Divinity itself; it is God in form.
It is true that not everyone who practices Natural Yoga is going to complete
this project in this lifetime. Indeed, it is said that on earth a great one
attains a divine body every five hundred to a thousand years. But every degree
of progress that you make through surrender in Natural Yoga takes you
to liberation. While everyone will not complete the evolutionary process in
one lifetime, the progress you make in this lifetime moves you forward in the
next life.
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The path of renunciation
The path of renunciation of all desire involves full reawakening of the evolutionary
force. Technically speaking the teacher’s initiation into Natural
Yoga awakens the life energy and releases it so that the purification
can take place. Then, for a person taking the renunciate’s path,
God awakens the evolutionary force. Due to the linkage with the spiritual
teacher, the proper understanding of the process can occur allowing the
evolutionary force to take over and eventually finish the final phases
of the divine form.
Kripalu, my teacher, was in the final phases of this path when he died. One
sign that the evolutionary force was well advanced in his body was the appearance
of a vertical white streak in the middle of his the forehead, like the one
seen on drawings and paintings of Krishna and other gods.
Actually, at one time, Krishna and the other gods were just ordinary people
like you and me. Through the technique of Natural Meditation in ancient India,
they brought about the full evolution and perfection of the divine body and
became what are now known as gods and goddesses. They were just ordinary people
in the beginning. Krishna has a streak down the middle of his forehead. The
female has a red dot in the middle of her forehead, the signature of the female
divine body. This is caused by the upward flow of the evolutionary force or
the sexual energy – the sexual fluids, actually. The fluids, flowing
upward, appear on the forehead in the final stage of the evolutionary path.
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Divine energy is not abstract
So you see, divine energy is not abstract. The Holy Spirit is not abstract.
When Jesus’ disciples received the Holy Spirit from Heaven on the day
of Pentecost, their evolution and purification began immediately, right there
in the public square. They began talking in tongues, twisting, singing, and
rolling. This is the purification. The disciples eventually became outstanding
geniuses and saints because of the evolutionary force. We are dealing with
knowledge that was known in the West and was integral in Christianity. The
divine energy is present every day of our lives and makes every breath take
place. Guided by the knowledge passed down to us, the divine energy can take
us to the highest levels of union with God.
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Chapter 4
On Natural Yoga Science
Scientific precision
Although the surrender technique is not scientific in that one can predict
when particular events will occur, it is exact in that one knows what is
going to happen. The same things happen to everybody more or less. The
remedies for typical problems that come up apply in every case. This is
not to say that there are not miracles. There are some. There is the scientific
precision in Natural Yoga. The course of events in meditation is
a progression.
In the beginning, when one first receives initiation, the aspirant will experience
at least some period of nothing happening at all. This may be two or three
seconds, two or three minutes, two or three hours, two or three days or it
might be two or three months. Very few people will continue to meditate an
hour or two a day for three months without anything happening, but some have.
By continuing, eventually something starts to happen. But generally something
happens within a few minutes. It may be that the body collapses on the floor
and stays there. That is something. When you remove the will from the body,
it slips down. When the energy starts to move, then the body starts to move.
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Purifying actions and postures
The body will go through purifying actions or assume postures. Willful hatha
yoga postures came from observing yogis do postures in the state of surrender.
Then a formal willful technique was organized.
In Natural Yoga these things happen automatically. At first they often
happen in a sloppy fashion depending upon the nature of the impurities in the
person. Perhaps their feet go out and they reach for their toes and cannot
get there. They cannot do the posture properly, nor could they if they were
doing it willfully.
Perhaps the back is stiff, the belly fat, and the legs tense so it cannot be
done properly. It is the particular situation of the impurities that causes
the variation in how they do the posture. If they are going to do one where
the spine is twisted, how are they going to do it if they have to push? Is
the leg supposed to be out or is it supposed to be in and how far are they
supposed to twist and what is the hand doing the whole time? This is the whole
science of hatha yoga.
But in Natural Yoga the proper thing happens, the proper variant, depending
upon the need of their bodily situation and their impurities. So it does not
matter what one does. It is adjusted for you. After movement has happened for
a while and you have done a lot of postures, the variation goes away and the
motion becomes a more precise.
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Energy seals
Around the same time, energy seals begin to occur. There are many energy seals
that take place. Sometimes they are called purifying motions. A purifying motion
is a motion that brings about greater purity whether it is done willfully or
automatically. In Natural Yoga it happens automatically.
There may be a motion with the hands for example. It may be very floppy to
begin with. That may be the entirety of the energy seal. People will go through
various positions. They are all purifying motions and poses.
Various breathing patterns may occur. The moving of the life energy causes
this. At first the patterns are ragged, but as time goes on they become more
precise. The variation between one person and another becomes less with time.
In the final stages, every posture and every energy seal are all essentially
the same.
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Final stage of postures
For example, the lotus pose is a very common pose; but it is not complete until
the hands are in the proper position. Kripalu has been photographed demonstrating
the final stages of the postures. They have been published in a book called Asana
and Mudra (Postures and Energy Seals). It is significant that eventually
you come to do the postures in the same way that everyone else does.
Even though an aspirant may have never known anything about yoga, he or she
will sing the original syllables in the end. At first it comes out garbled
with nonsense English. The brain is being purified. Perhaps one goes from one
sound pattern to the next, yet it always ends up with the basic pattern: da,
ba, ma, da, sa, etc.
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OM and ancient sounds
When it has gone through the ancient set of sounds, the process ends up with
one sound: OM. That is always the final sound. Then even that vanishes. This
pattern happens for everybody. In the meantime, perhaps you will dance around
the room. For some the head will go up and down, or perhaps someone else will
do a Native American dance. Perhaps later on they will sound like a cantor
in a Jewish synagogue. They may call out and sound like a Muslim standing at
the top of a minaret calling the people to prayer. These are spontaneous sounds
on the way to the basic ones. These are purifying actions that lead to the
basic ancient sounds and finally to OM – and then only God.
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Rate of progress
Some people go through phases faster than others. It depends on the degree
of surrender, the degree of impurity, how much time per day is spent meditating,
how well one follows ethical behavior, how deeply one surrenders to the spiritual
teacher, how wise the teacher is, how impure the environment is in where one
lives. There are many factors that determine the rate of progress. But no matter
how variable, it all eventually converges at the end. Everyone does the same
postures and the same energy seals.
It is an inherent pattern with a built-in structure. It is a pattern that knows
where it is going. When you surrender to God, you are led to it automatically
and spontaneously. When I saw some of those pictures of Kripalu, I said, “My
body is never going to do some of those poses.”
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But one day I was meditating and the body just wanted to move into this position
or that position and there I was there for a long time. It must have been fifteen
or twenty minutes. I was feeling very blissful. I noticed willfully that nothing
was happening. “Why isn’t something happening? The body is calm.
I’m just sitting here!” The body was in an incredible posture and
I was paying no attention to it at all. It just seemed perfectly natural. This
is Natural Yoga.
Progression
First you go through the more active movements. They are variable and quite
different from one person to another. You may roll around, do variations of
breath control, jump up and down, bang your head on the floor, or swear in
Russian. As time goes on, the energy purifies and the evolutionary force is
awakened.
Then the evolutionary force starts to pierce the energy centers in serial order.
At this juncture the second phase, the intermediate form of postures and the
suspension of the life energy begin.
At a certain place in an aspirant’s practice, a teacher can predict
almost exactly what will be reported, what questions will be asked. He/She
will give the answer that is appropriate to that stage of practice. Specific
helpful information is given at the correct time.
Based on the teacher’s experience he or she knows a particular person’s
progress in Natural Yoga and responds accordingly. It is amazing that the pattern
is so predictable. It is much more detailed than you might imagine. The same
progression happens with everybody.
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The mind
We have been talking mainly about the body, but what about the mind? The mind
at first is loaded with doubt. It does not know whether the will is doing it
or the energy as a result of surrender. Is God doing it, is it me or is it
my ego? Everyone experiences a degree of confusion and doubt. This happens
until the energy is released. The release can be like a dam breaking and the
energy exploding. After that there is no doubt about what is moving the body
around. Then you know. The doubt then tends to disappear and the movement calms
down. But the life energy is flowing all around the body.
The stages proceed and the energy eventually becomes steady in the throat,
then in the mind. Perhaps you will wonder what will happen next. You should
let whatever is going to happen, happen. Surrender your attention and do not
try to make it go any place. “Uh, but I think I’ll listen to the
ringing in my ears. Maybe that’s what I’ll do. No, no, he said
to surrender and let it come out any way.
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Thoughts
Here I am having all these thoughts. Maybe I ought to stop having these thoughts?
Is this me? Is this my thought or is my thinking God thinking? Who’s
thinking? How can it be thinking?” And as if that is not enough, maybe
you will be thinking about the movie you saw last week.
The movie starts playing in your head, and you think, “You know I forgot
to balance up my check book. You know, I don’t think Suzy loves me anymore.” You
may get five or six of these thoughts going simultaneously. Babble, noise,
chatter. It may seem intolerable. But this is only purification. It happens
to everybody after a fashion. You may complain that all that is happening in
your meditation is that you are lying there thinking. This is the passionate
state of the mind. It is a predictable occurrence. What follows the passionate
state is tranquil power.
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Tranquil power
This mind pattern reminds me of a movie I once saw about colonists in Africa.
They were going inland in their covered wagons to settle the land. They had
been trekking for a number of days. They unhitched the wagons on the slope
of a hill to feed and rest the horses. Some of the children were sitting and
playing in one of the wagons. One of the children bumped the brake and released
it. They started rolling down the hill. The people started running after them.
The men got on horses and were chasing them. The wagon was making a lot of
noise and the action was getting louder and wilder. Everyone was shouting;
the mothers were screaming panic-stricken, running after them. And they went
off the edge of a cliff!
This is like the mind. It gets busier and busier and goes to a frantic peak;
and finally it goes: fffsssssst...peak...death. Yes...and peace also. Something
dies at this point. It is not you, but the frantic mind trying to keep itself
busy and entertained. Eventually the mind gets so pure it just goes to nothing.
You may strain; you may find you can still think, but it is just a thought.
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Life energy awakens
Then a new phase of an entirely different nature arrives: the life energy awakens.
When this happens, both physical and mental purifying actions occur. The mind
goes through an entirely different exercise digging out the deepest, darkest,
most perverted desires that could ever exist. It brings them up and purifies
them until every desire is purified, until there is just nothing left. If you
look for desires, there are none. You may be tempted to use your will to test
it. Your mind is no longer busy; there are no desires.
Now, there is only one thing left to do – that is to keep surrendering
to God. You may experience that the dawn of pink love is finally coming to
you beautifully and slowly. Everything turns to love and to God automatically.
You do not have to make it that way. You do not have to evaluate the experience.
This love does not happen by chance; nor is it temporary; it stays.
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Singing
Then the next step is a whole new cycle. Singing starts, spontaneous singing
from the heart. There is no mind or thought involved at all because there is
no way to structure the words or the language. It is pure incredible sound.
There is a tape of Kripalu in that state. When I first heard it I was so startled
that I could not believe what I was hearing. It was so powerful. This was happening
automatically and spontaneously; it was not a willful act.
Unstruck divine sound
After this state had been occurring for some time, someone made recording.
This spontaneous singing is called unstruck divine sound, heart sound. When
it is formalized it sounds like a Brahmin priest chanting formal chants. Why?
Because this is how the chanting originated.
Ancient yogis, practitioners of Natural Yoga who had achieved union with
God, sang spontaneously from their hearts. These songs were memorized and passed
down to the modern Brahmin priesthood. Analogous things have happened in Western
culture, Gregorian chants, for example.
Unstruck divine sound illustrates the precision and the exactness of the science
of Natural Yoga. Divine patterns are uncovered by the purification in
Natural Yoga and produce universal experiences that have been occurring
in the same way for thirty thousand years. It would be a mistake to confuse
Natural Yoga with the latest fad in the personal growth market.
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With seed equanimity
At a certain point, equanimity, union with God, begins. There are two stages
and sub stages of equanimity. The first general stage is ‘with-seed’ equanimity;
the second is ‘seed-free’ equanimity. In with-seed equanimity,
there is union with God but one still has a mind. The seeds of desire still
remain. It has four sub stages.
Equanimity is impossible to describe. It is the result of the activity of joining
with God. In with-seed equanimity the process is not finished. In the first
general stage of union with God, a joining together between you as a divine
individual and divine otherness occurs, but the mind remains.
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Substages of with seed equanimity
Equanimity is beyond the senses and the mind; however, it may be helpful to
understand that in equanimity one comes to know directly that what one is,
is the same as what God is. Yet at this stage in meditation the mind is active.
Reasoning accompanies union, which leads to the substages of doubt and uncertainty.
Then automatically the next substage, self-inspection, begins. Later one surrenders
not only one’s brain but also one’s judgment. When surrendering
my judgment came up in meditation, I put the brakes right on. It came to surrendering,
to giving into God’s hands, my ability to discriminate between right
and wrong, good and bad, up and down, and who and what.
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Surrendering judgment
Putting on the brakes happens to everyone to some degree. However, for me it
was especially hard because I had an ego attachment to being able to tell what
was happening in life. Would I lose this power? Perhaps I would become an idiot
if I turned my judgment faculty over to God. And when I did, it was true that
some days I could hardly speak.
But when I turned over my power of discrimination to God, it proved to be my
greatest gain in meditation up until that point. Since then I have been willing
to be a happy idiot who does not know anything. I do not know anything; I cannot
decide anything. People say, “What are you going to do?” I do not
know. It is up to God.
The final substage of with-seed equanimity has the quality of non-judgementalness
because the judgment faculty has been transcended. This is true equanimity:
all is the same, and all is divine.
Seed-free equanimity
The second general stage of union with God is called seed-free equanimity.
The mind itself (the desires and the willful activities to satisfy them) is
dissolved away through surrender to God. You may think, “What will I
do then?” However, you need not worry; for by this time you will be truly
in God’s hands.
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Chapter 5
What is Surrender?
Awarding victory
Surrender is so central to Natural Yoga that it deserves further clarification.
Natural Yoga, that is, the natural way of union with Truth, comes
about by surrender to God. The question is what is that? Who is doing it;
who is surrendering what, to whom?
In the dictionary, surrender is awarding victory to one side. The choice has
been made. There is some truth to that. Some people think that surrender means
defeat; and in a way they are correct. Surrender is the defeat of the ego.
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Willful Western way
I you have been trying very hard to have life your own way. You try to make
it come out the way that you want. People do not like life the way it is, so
it seems logical that they would try to change it to something else. If you
do not like it, well, do something about it! That is the willful Western way.
Therefore, to surrender has not been socially approved, even though Christ
taught surrender to God; and the West is primarily a Christian culture. Somehow,
we have wandered away.This is understandable, because it is not easy to surrender.
To give up control of your life, to work hard and have no attachment to the
fruits of your labor is not easy. It is not natural for the body to surrender
anything, to anyone, ever, under any circumstances. Yes, it will do what it
is told when it is threatened. When it gets hungry enough, it will do what
it has to do to eat. When somebody threatens it with a gun, the body will back
off. It is a total coward. But if it does not have to give anything, it gives
nothing. Such is the body.
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The way of the body
If one is going to live the life of the body, “never surrender” is
the correct philosophy. But in humankind’s four or five-million-year
tenure on earth, this approach has not produced anything more than temporary
pleasure. By using your will, you can only go so far in elevating your consciousness
and seeking union with Truth.
The people, who are serious about growth and want to continue past a certain
point, must entertain the concept of surrender. Willful methods and techniques
are beneficial and should be done; they will take you partway. But when you
have yourself together physically, mentally and emotionally, what then?
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Appeal to sincere students
I would like to make an appeal to the dedicated people who have spent long
hard hours willfully improving their lives, to all the sincere students and
participants in personal growth. I want to say, “You have done well.
Now what? How do you get past the limitations of the temporary peak experience?
How do you continue to improve your life?” The answer is surrender to
Truth.
Entertain this answer seriously. I used to be one of you. If anyone worked
hard at personal growth, night and day, for over twenty-five years, it was
I. I used willful technique after willful technique, this way and that, crossways
and into the center. I grew a lot from it, learned at lot, realized a lot,
and even touched the Truth many times. I even stopped calling it Truth, after
a while, and started calling it God, when I had deeper experiences. But finally,
I found myself stymied. Try as I would, I was only slowly crawling forward,
inch by inch.
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Meeting Kripalu
Then one day I met a swami, a master, in India. I had met practitioners of
yoga before, Rinpoches, mullahs. But this master knew the answers to my questions.
He knew why I was stymied and could not grow rapidly anymore. He instantly
opened me up. I sat down, and I was gone. I started crying. I did not know
why, and I did not care. He had been there, and I wanted to know what he knew.
That is it, very simply. Master Kripalu, the ‘master of compassionate
grace’. He taught me surrender.
I had read about surrender, and I had done Reichian work, Primal Therapy; I
had studied the Holy Rollers; I knew the teachings of Christ; and I knew the
principle of surrender. But I did not understand it. It seemed to me to be
an avoidance of responsibility, a giving up, and a weak place for the defeated.
But Kripalu was the living Truth, and contradicted my assumptions. He was not
defeated; he was victorious. He had won over life. He had won over anger. And
most of all, he had won over passion and lust. He had danced on the head of
lust and made a fool of it.
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Kripalu’s share
I said, “Master, how does this work?” I will share with you what
he taught me. There is that which is other than you. If there is nothing other
than you, there is nothing to surrender to. Then the whole principle of surrender
is nonsense. Jesus was wrong; Krishna was wrong. All the messiahs, teachers
and saints have said the same thing. There must be something other than you;
or there is nothing to surrender to.
You could say, “I could surrender to myself,” but that is illogical
gibberish. There may be something that you think is you that is actually other
than you, but then it would not be you. If it is other than you, it cannot
be you. “There’s my hand, and I will surrender to it. I am surrendering
to myself.” But that would not be true; it is other than you. Your hand
is not you. That is merely your hand. Whose hand? That is the question. As
I said earlier, who is surrendering what, to whom?
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Dionysianism
If you surrender your body, feelings and mind to nature, you will get into
trouble. This is the way of Dionysianism. The Dionysians in Greece and the
Near East surrendered to natural forces. This leads to wild, uncontrolled,
anti-social behavior. It ends up with things like Jim Morrison and even Charles
Manson. This is not correct.
On the other hand, if you take the body, the mind and the feelings and crush
them with your will, what will you have left? A crushed body, mind and feelings.
Who wants that? Therefore, in Natural Meditation, the teaching is that one
surrenders the body, the heart or the feelings, and the mind to Truth, to God,
to Divine Love, to the Absolute, to Perfection, whatever you prefer to call
it. These are different names for the same thing.
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Giving over control
By your surrender, the body is taken out of your hands. So it is no longer
your body. It is as if you say, “Here Truth, here God, it is yours. You
do with it what you want” This is the act of surrender. In Natural Yoga
you quit using your will. You quit controlling the body’s actions. And
you give control over to the divine. This is proper surrender.
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Chapter 6
Freedom of Choice and Mutual Surrender
Freedom and surrender
In spiritual life, we are set in an apparent contradiction between surrender
to something other than ourselves and total freedom. All spiritual paths
of any importance require that the individual have freedom. The ancient
yogis went into the forest. There they could have freedom. They yelled
and screamed, did not have to work, came and went as they pleased, and
owed nothing to anyone. They could do anything they felt like doing. They
usually spent the whole day in contemplation because they felt like it.
Much of the meaning of renunciation is summed up by freedom. You are not tied
down. You are free of requirements, yet you are held fast through your own
choice by the arms of the Lord. The key is that it is by your own choice.
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Conscious and free choice
In order to prevent people from thinking that union is just a psychological
trick, yogis, who are individuals who have achieved union, do not make much
of this point although they themselves know it is all-important. They know
that at all times, whether we know it or not, we are in the hands of the Lord.
Yogis know that it is by one’s own choice that one gives over his or
her life to the Lord. It is a conscious and free choice.
Your life is run by God whether you have given it over to Him or not. But the
fact that you have surrendered your life to God consciously and of your own
free choice makes the difference. Instead of accumulating more and more mental
impressions in the activities of life, the undigested experiences and the psychological
impressions dissipate. These impressions are, in essence, what impurity is.
They are experiences from the past that were resisted and thereby suspended
in your mind, body and feelings.
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Resisted experiences
Note that I said experiences that were resisted. When you freely give your
life to the Lord, the resistance disappears. When you give it to Him or Her,
there is no action done by you and no action being done to you. That is the
truth of the matter anyway; so you are not deluded. You are not under a veil
of illusion. Things are as they are. There is no more accumulation of mental
impressions.
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The choice of relating
In modern times, this approach could easily be misunderstood and casually thought
of as being just another psychological attitude. Perhaps it would be dismissed
as a form of self-hypnosis or autosuggestion. In our culture, it is not known
that the essence of life is the relationship between one divine entity and
another divine entity. It is not known that the choice of relating is absolute.
You can relate, or not. Therefore the fact of choice is all-important, and
not just a psychological trick. At the very root of what is happening in life
is whether you choose to relate, or not.
Free choice
That freedom must be given and acknowledged by teachers and others or it is
a denial of the truth. The truth is that we have choice. It is a free choice;
and it is not in anyone else’s hands other than the individual who
chooses. So any teacher who does not acknowledge student’s freedom
of choice is denying the truth; and the teaching is bound to fail. Students
will spend their time trying to prove to the teacher that they have a choice.
I remember when I discovered this principle in the early days of my teaching.
Then by being totally permissive, I made an error in the other direction. Once
the student has given himself or herself by his or her free choice, he or she
needs guidance and a firm loving hand. Surrender must come first; then the
teacher can guide properly and firmly.
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Mutual surrender
Any good teacher knows that the student is completely free to do as he or she
wishes. When a student chooses and surrenders, he has accepted the teacher’s
power of choice, and then accepts the teacher’s guidance. The teacher
has surrendered to the student in advance, by choosing to be a teacher. He
or she says, “I will teach you.” Then he or she will give his or
her life on behalf of the student; and the student will give his or her life
on behalf of the teacher. Then it is mutual surrender.
Duties of a teacher
Exercises discipline every day to do a good job of teaching
Speaks only the truth to his or her students and does not delude them
Acknowledges the freedom of the student
Exercises discipline to keep the teaching free from his/her own impurities
Commits to removing his/her own impurities
Does his/her own spiritual practice
Accepts proceeding without the presence of his/her own guru if necessary
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Swami Shivananda
Some students do not like to acknowledge the authority of the teacher.
They say, “I own you. I’ve have come all the way to be with you,
so you’ve got to do what I say.”
Swami Shivananda laid down rules for his ashram. Sometimes the young bucks,
who at the time were Venkateshananda, Vishnudevananda, Satchitananda, Chitananda
and others, would not recognize that the ashram code of ethical conduct was
important. So they would wake up, and the Master would be gone. They would
look all over Rishikesha, and they could not find him.
A neighbor would say, “We saw Master go down the road.” They would
pursue him and find him fifteen or twenty miles down the road.
“Master, what has happened? Where are you going?” they asked.
.
He replied, “I am going some place where the students will follow the
ashram code.”
“But you have started this ashram,; you are required to stay,.” they
insisted. And he continued off down the road.
Finally they threw themselves at his feet and said, “We will do what
you say, no questions asked.”
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Acknowledging freedom
The master also has freedom. Every individual, by his true nature, has complete
freedom. But you do not have freedom to enslave others because each of us has
freedom. Most people spend their lives not to allowing others to have freedom.
Then others have to prove that they do. A great part of the conflict between
parents and children is about acknowledging each other’s freedom. It
is the same in marriage.
Spiritual progress
Spiritual progress in a teacher-student relationship begins when freedom is
mutually acknowledged and then voluntarily given up. It is at this point that
the teacher and student relationship is established and teaching can begin.
Spiritual progress is made in an atmosphere of the acknowledgement of the freedom
of the student and the teacher and the acknowledgement of the bond to each
other by free choice. When mutual surrender exists, real spiritual progress
is possible.
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The ability to choose
What we are is the ability to choose. We do in fact have absolute choice. We
are divine; God is not enslaved. As an individual entity with divine qualities,
nothing can happen to you. Since you are involved in life anyway by your own
ancient choice, you might as well make it conscious and say, “All right,
I am participating in life by my own free choice."
Participating in life
You can stop participating in life, totally, at any moment. Remember Harry?
Harry quit participating; he is gone now. He is in a sea of pure knowledge,
no consciousness, no relationship, no activity, no manifestation in life in
any way, shape or form. Who is to say how many non-participators there are?
We are the ones not doing that, the ones who have chosen to participate. The
error is not to participate fully.
The process of surrender in Natural Yoga is just a matter of increasing
the degree of participation, surrendering more and more and more, until you
are totally consumed by otherness – God. Since that was your original
intention, you are just following what you started out to do in the beginning
of your participation in life.
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Contacting others
You are contacting others. Since that is the original purpose of life, the
union of Natural Yoga fulfills that purpose. How can you have union with
others without surrender? It cannot be done. How can you have it without freely
choosing to recognize the other’s freedom of choice by surrender to them?
Of course, you can stop anytime; but then you are out of contact. Life is a
play of percentages of how much you are giving over your freedom of choice
to others in order for contact to take place and how much you refuse to do
so. The God or gods are the ones who have gone ahead and surrendered to us
totally. We are playing around, trying to get ready to surrender a little bit
more.
Meditation periods are formal times to say, “All right, I’ll surrender
a little more.”
Changes
The changes that take place on the spiritual path are side effects of your
increased choice to surrender. When you surrender, all the rest happens spontaneously.
You go through postures, energy seals, breathing patterns, withdrawal of the
senses, concentration, true meditation and finally union. These are really
side effects of your choice to surrender. You cannot cause any of these things
to happen.
People doing willful spiritual practice are deluded in thinking they are doing
anything but surrendering. You surrender and then these things happen by themselves.
They are done by God; they do not belong to you. All power belongs to the Lord.
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Apparent contradiction
Although we live in an apparent contradiction of freedom and enslavement, the
contradiction is an illusion. We are both free and enslaved.
What you are to another individual
We are so self-centered always thinking about what others are to us. Basically,
others are that which we are surrendered to or trying to surrender to. But
to others we are another. we are that which they are trying to surrender to.
We are their God. We are the divine nature that others are seeking to have
union with.
And what we are, our nature, automatically determines what unfolds to them
when they surrender to us. What we are, our divine nature, when surrendered
to another, automatically appears to them as the natural happenings in meditation,
the purifying actions, energy seals, breath restraints and the rest.
When others surrender to us, their gradual experience of us in meditation is
what happens in their meditation. We are the power that brings all things to
others when they surrender. It is a good thing we do not have to do this willfully.
It is already established. What we are is what makes it come out the way it
is. It is fait accompli.
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Illusion of time
The illusion of time is your unfolding to another step by step. You exist independently
of time. The Truth already is; what you are already is. Others are choosing
to accept that you have choice; yet you do have choice independently of their
choice. What God is, is already determined for them. What their experiences
will be are already set forth because you are what you are.
It is valuable to see the situation from both sides. It gives you a different
perspective and makes it clearer. You can look at it as the Supreme Being because
to them you are the Supreme Being. There isn’t anything other than you.
Identical natures
You can say, “Well, there are others; there are ones like me.” Yes,
but their nature is identical, so it doesn’t matter who they surrender
to: one, all or any combination. It is the all the same. Therefore, when surrendering,
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