VBT – Meditation 12.3
Original State
The greatest exertion on the body is happening even without putting it to any work. No matter what you do about it, in seventy or eighty years, your body will become old. Even if you just go on sitting idly or lying down the whole time, your body will still grow old because the earth is keeping it under stress the whole time. Even when you are sleeping your body is growing old because the earth is pulling it down – and there are many reasons for this.
Scientists say that everything wants to go back to its original state. Everything wants to return there because, in the original state, there is rest. For instance, a wave rising in the ocean will soon fall and go back to the source. For the wave to rise above the ocean is a tremendous exertion, a tension, an anxiety for the wave. When it falls back it is again at rest. This means that your body – which is created out of earth and water and other compounds – wants to return to them, and gravitation is the system for this to happen. The earth is calling back its earth every moment, pulling it back to itself every moment.
This fact started dawning on scientists only recently, but Yoga has been aware of it for thousands of years. Hence, if a yogin spends much time sitting with an upright spine, his life span will be longer. This is the comfortable posture. Any posture in which the spine is absolutely upright, at ninety degrees to the earth, will cause the least exertion on the body.
And there is also a second reason why it is called sukhasana, a comfortable body posture. Physiologists now accept that the energy moving in the body is bioelectric, a physio-electricity. The movement of electricity, the flow of electricity inside the body, is happening constantly – and Yoga has always been aware that there is electricity functioning within the body. Yoga calls this electricity prana; the difference is only in the name. This prana inside the body moves on the same principles as electricity. For example, if electricity is moving in a circuit it does not dissipate, but if the circuit is broken, then it will dissipate. If the electricity keeps moving in its circuit, then it connects with itself.
In sukhasana, body electricity creates a circuit: the soles of the two feet connect to the two thighs, both palms are kept one over the other, and the spine is straight. The body electricity flows outward through the fingers and the toes. When both hands and both feet are connected to each other at the thighs, the outgoing electricity of the body starts to move in a circle within the body instead of leaking out. The body electricity does not flow out at all.
Yogis and meditators have done this in other ways, too: they sit on a wooden platform because it is a non-conductor and there is no dissipation of energy through it; or they sit on a lion skin or a deer skin because they are non-conductors, or they sit on a woolen blanket because that too is a non-conductor. All the things that Yoga suggests as mats to sit on for meditation are non-conductors; they don’t allow the body electricity to flow out. The entire body energy will remain within the body; all the doors for it to flow outward will be closed, and a circuit within the body will be created. In this circuit, there is the least possible dissipation of energy or exertion of the body.
Tags: Original State
