The Flowering of Spiritual Consciousness through the Body
By Gurudev

“Just as the capacity of the tree to bear the healthy fruit depends directly upon the root system, so also to unfold the ultimate unity depends upon being grounded in the roots of our being through uninterrupted flow of our contact with primal unity.”

Yoga training is not focused totally on the body. Even the practice of Hatha Yoga that appears to be body-oriented uses the body as an opening to access the boundaries and limitations that exist on the level of the mind.

Our bodies are directly tuned in to the natural laws. The involuntary functions and instinctive activities of the body provide us the direct way to connect with our primal unity. The willful functions that we are capable of carrying out make part of our body belong to the mind, carrying out our sustenance and survival in the external world, while the involuntary functions carry out life-giving functions internally. Together they complete the one holistic system.

The polarity through which the body has come into existence manifests through bodily functions, and is maintained by inborn instinct, which functions within the confines of preprogrammed behavior patterns among various species of the animal kingdom. With the human body is born not just the instincts, but the mind and a sense of separate ego — the individual self. This presents a whole new dimension in the unfolding of an evolving consciousness.

Our human body is carrying out actions on its own or under the direction and command of the mind. All tensions, weaknesses, or illnesses that appear in the body are first gathered by the ego-mind. This is why Hatha Yoga practices that are exclusively confined to physical disciplines applied in various modes such as reducing tensions or losing weight fail to reach the cause of problems, which lie in our mental and emotional makeup.

Your body can only be locally conscious — limited and confined to the universal, natural laws. The body has no facility to control or direct the mind in the same way as the mind has control over the body. But what happens in the body, or what is made to happen in the body by the mind, does have a definite impact on the mind.

This is why I have chosen to use Hatha Yoga postures which deal with the body, but use body postures only as an opening to self-discovery that transcends the acquired limitations and boundaries in the ego-mind as well as those deposited in the body.

The spiritual unity that exists as the core of our being is the source from where the body-mind receives the spark of life, but the mind is the prime mover of external activities through its control of the body. Willful actions can be in alignment with the natural laws or go against them. With the conscious use of our physical and mental facilities and capacities, we can transcend natural laws. That is our inherent potential for Self-Discovery.

We want to learn how to use the body and instincts to consciously return to primal unity consciousness. To live in tune with natural laws, regain our health, and also grow conscious to transcend the limitations of the body, instincts, and the ego-mind's separative consciousness that causes fear and all human suffering.

In order to ascend to the pinnacle of the spiritual unfolding, we must first learn to descend down to the roots of primal unity. We must learn to trust our bodies totally and acquaint ourselves with the wisdom of the body, and live in our body fully. This allows the hidden wisdom and the mystery of the primal wisdom to play the most fundamental role in the development of our spiritual potential.