Tune Yourself to the Cosmos🔗

January 12, 2011

Asana is roughly translated as 'posture', but I do not want to use the word posture to translate asana. I want to translate the word asana as 'tuning yourself to the cosmos'. The words

sthira and sukha mean that the way in which you tune yourself to the cosmos should be stable, steady and comfortable for you.

There are thousands of ways to tune yourself to the cosmos. For every act, you have a particular asana or posture. For example, just lie down in a relaxed way and try to be angry and shout at somebody. You can't! Your posture, your consciousness and your action, all these three are closely connected. By lying down, you can't shout at somebody. By standing up you can't sleep. Each posture creates a particular state of consciousness in you, and helps you perform a particular action.

Please understand what is meant by 'stable, steady and comfortable'. The posture for the ultimate state of consciousness is what we call mahasana or mahamudra. For that posture, that happening, you need to evolve your body step by step. That evolving should be steady and comfortable. Each posture creates a particular state of consciousness in you. You can see a simple example experientially. Sit in padmasana or sit holding the legs. You will see th chin mudra. When you sit in this way, you will have a different feeling. When you sit and just turn the palms downwards, you will have a different feeling. Inhale and exhale. You will see the difference - how a change in body posture brings a change in the state of your consciousness. There is a particular body posture for each person to have the ultimate state of consciousness. You need to find out the right body posture for you, and move towards that body posture.

For the right posture, you need to do two things. One, respect your body. You need the understanding that only by aligning your body properly will you be able to experience the highest transcendental consciousness, raise your body to the highest possible spiritual conscious coherence. Second, a very important thing; through trial and error or through the Guru's prescription, find out the right set of postures for you: vinyasa krama. I can add one more thing, increase the ability to practice those asanas by doing them again and again and again; experience the sweet nectar, similar to pain, in your body the whole day.

The sweet pain which happens in your system by practicing is what Patanjali calls sukha. Align your body, and you will immediately see that levitation will start happening. It is nothing but just aligning your body properly. Levitation is not some magic. It is just aligning your body. When your body can float in the water once you align it with water, why can't it float in the air if you align it with air? It is possible. When you align your body, it levitates. When you malign your body, it gravitates. That's all. Aligning brings levitation; maligning brings gravitation.