Mysteries of Mind

Author(s): Mahapragna Acharya
Publisher: Today and Tomorrows Book Agency

Page 60

DEVELOPMENT OF ENERGY-TAPA
be engaged elsewhere. It will have to be eliminated from the body. Therefore, we will have to divert the mind inwards and drop it into the ocean of consciousness. In our worldly experience, consciousness remains hidden like a flame in a closed vessel. Once the mind has been soaked in consciousness or absorbed in the flame of consciousness, the body will become calm and stabilized by itself. The vibrations of vital energy and the restlessness of the mind are the causes of all the activities of the body. If vital energy and the mind are canalized towards consciousness, the body will become calm and stabilized, for it will be cut off from the sources of its activities. It will become abandoned. The body cannot be abandoned and its activities cannot be stopped until the mind has not been yoked to that state of consciousness in which the self becomes a spectator and a knower par excellence.
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Kayotsarga can be achieved in two stages. The first is complete relaxation of the body and the other is its stabilization and abandonment. Realization is not abandonment. Abandonment of the body means a clear experience of the separation of the body from consciousness. In such an experience one comes to feel that the body and consciousness stand apart and are quite distinct from each other. In figurative language it means that the bird which had been encaged has flown away into the open sky leaving behind the cage. This happens when the mind has become completely immersed in the self. Then the hands and feet, the sense-organs and speech become fully restrained.
The process of the abandonment of the body is a twoway process. It is an internal as well as an external process. Firstly, we have to restrain the hands and feet, the senseorgans and speech. Secondly, we have to sit in such a physical posture which will divert the flow of the mind and vital energy towards the self. If the mind could be inverted and made to catch a glimpse of our real existence, every particle of the body will become calm. There will be no need for further effort. The fickleness of the body will automatically disappear and the soul will manifest itself in a manner in which it had never done before. The practitioner's personality will become completely integrated. There has been a lot of talk about such