Mysteries of Mind

SR No.: 006756
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency
Publication Year: 1982
Total Pages: 278
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 11 MB

Page 59

: 5:
DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY-TAPA (AUSTERITIES)
Kayotsarga (abandonment of the body and self-awareness) is an exercise in discernment. After we have analysed an object thoroughly and distinguished one part of it from another, what remains is the existence of the object which is transcendental and supreme. In order to arrive at ultimate truth we have to make analyses and distinctions, distinctions between the body and consciousness, between desire and consciousness, between infatuation and consciousness, between excitement and consciousness and so on. Consciousness is distinct from the body, sleep, desire, self-negligence (pramāda) and excitement. The sense of this distinction is the starting-point of the journey towards self-realization. We enter into the realm of the spirit or our real existence by means of disciplining the body, hands, feet, speech and the sense-organs. Self-discipline is the means of attaining the self. Kayotsarga (abandonment of the body and self-awareness) is the first step in this direction.
The grossest means of self-realization is the human body. Breath is a part and parcel of the body. There are three sources of our actions: mind, body and speech. Breath is not an independent source. It is included in the body.
The self-exerting spiritual practitioner has to achieve kayotsarga and to bring the fickleness of the body and mind to an end. How is this to be achieved? How is the fickleness of the body to be controlled? So far as vital energy continues to circulate in the body and so far as the mind keeps the body active, the natural tendencies of the body cannot be controlled and it cannot be stabilized. In other words, kayotsarga cannot be achieved so far as the vital energy and mind are active. In order to achieve kayotsarga the mind will have to