Wednesday 22 January 2020

ACHIEVING SELF-REALIZATION --- PART TWO


THE ULTIMATE GOAL

As the whole Universe is a manifestation of God, the ultimate goal of life is the realization of the Self in body, mind and spirit. It is due to illusion, delusion and attachment to external objects that we are unable to realize that it is God who exists in us as the Self and that every person is a living God. God existing in the body is the Self, whereas the Self in its all pervading, omnipotent nature is God.

God rules the gross human body by means of the six cerebro-spinal centers and the blood vessels, all of which act as defensive forces preserving and sustaining it. Though the Self is invisible and impersonal, it provides a taste of divine bliss by its innumerable manifestations. But people are so bound up in passion, anger, illusion and sensory stimulants that they ignore that bliss.

HE = SPIRIT BEHIND LIFE

The Rg-Veda (ancient collection of Vedic Sanskrit texts and hymns) declares that the Truth is the Supreme Being, the Purusa (cosmic consciousness and the universal principle) of Whom we perceive through past, present and future as the all-pervading existence. He (Spirit/Consciousness) is the Soul of the Universe and it is through this knowledge alone that mankind attains immortality. He is Brahman, the Supreme One, independent, imperishable, indivisible, self-luminous, self-sustained and the Indescribable. He is the basis of all names and forms, the support of all creation. He pervades all creation and yet transcends it. All creation is in Him, but He is detached from it.

He is also the silent witness of the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep. The ATMA is the immortal part of a person and is beyond body and mind -- beyond time, space and causation. It is without beginning, without end and without cause. It is Knowledge Absolute, Existence Absolute and Bliss Absolute. The realization of this knowledge frees one from the cycle of births and deaths.

ETERNAL TRUTH

Behind this world, behind all physical phenomena, behind all names and forms, behind feeling, thought, emotions and sentiments, lies the Truth. How can that which has no permanent existence be true?? The Truth is eternal and it is only illusion that makes the unreal appear real. That Truth is the Self, the silent Witness and ruler, which is the only thing that will provide bliss and make a person absolutely free. Self-realization is not for the weak or cowardly, it is for the strong and courageous who can face all storms and sacrifice their ego on the altar of Truth.

>> Article from book "Kriya Yoga" <<

Tuesday 21 January 2020

ACHIEVING SELF-REALIZATION. -- PART ONE



ABOUT CREATION

God is one, absolute and non-dual. Before creation He (Spirit) existed as Absolute "Brahman" (highest Universal Principle and Ultimate Reality) or Impersonal Soul. Spirit wished to be manifested in various forms of existence, Thus, from Absolute Brahman Spirit transformed Itself into relative existence and became the manifest universe - Mater, Mother, Divine Feminine. Therefore, whatever we perceive and recognize and whatever exists as matter or life is the ( manifestation of Spirit. The indwelling Self in all creatures is this one Brahman manifesting Itself in different forms.

This transformation into the ever-changing manifest universe is the conception of "jagannatha", the Lord of the world. The word jagannatha is composed of two words -- jagat = the everchanging world, and Natha = the Lord.

HUMANITY 

Of all creatures only human beings are rational and have the facility of discrimination. Therefore, only human beings can realize God, Who exists as the all-pervading Spirit in the human body, as well as in all existence. Mankind can realize that he/she is a living God and that the whole cosmos is but a manifestation of God. In practice, however, we do not have such a realization as part of our direct experience. But still, nothing exists anywhere except the presence of God.

Why do we not experience this truth?? According to the Will of God, mankind is acted upon by two powerful forces -- one "centripetal", the other "centrifugal". The centrifugal force is extrovert by nature and therefore, attracts mankind towards the external world, thus dissipating all his/her energy and engrossing one in illusion, delusion and error. But this centrifugal is merely a different manifestation of the centripetal force, the Atma (Self). It is a misconception to think that the centrifugal force is a seperate entity. The indwelling Self in the body is the ruler of the person. The Self is ever pure, full of bliss, eternal and immutable, as it is nothing other than BRAHMAN (The Ultimate Reality).

GOD AND SELF

The Self is like a mirror that reflects the entire universe. Although a mirror reflects the images of a thousand objects, it does not retain any of them; in fact, it remains detached and indifferent to the objects it reflects. Similarly, even though mankind is absorbed in love, lust, anger, pride, arrogance, avarice and illusion, the Self remains detached, pure, luminous, untarnished and incorruptible. Among all beings, mankind alone can avert the power of the centrifugal force by meditation. Through sincere efforts, one can realize that the whole of existence -- including oneself -- is God.


(Part Two is to be found  under the label SELF REALIZATION).




>> Article from book "Kriya Yoga". <<

Monday 13 January 2020

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART NINE


(Should you want to read these articles from Part One, you may have to click in on
the label marked "Soul journey".)

Sri Yukteswar continues....

COMMINGLING WITH THE ETERNAL

Just as most people on Earth have not learned through meditation-acquired vision to appreciate the superior joys and advantages of astral life and thus, after death, desire to return to the limited, imperfect pleasures of Earth, so many astral beings, during the normal disintegration of their astral bodies, fail to picture the advanced state of spiritual joy in the causal world and, dwelling on the thoughts of the more gross and gaudy astral happiness, yearn to revisit the astral paradise. Heavy astral karma must be redeemed by such beings before they can achieve, after astral death, a permanent stay in the causal thought-world, so thinly partitioned from the Creator.

Only when a being has no further desires for experiences in the pleasing-to-the-eye astral cosmos, and cannot be tempted to go back there, does he remain in the causal world. Completing there the work of redeeming all causal karma or seeds of past desires, the confined soul thrusting out the last of the three corks of ignorance and, emerging from the final jar of the causal body, commingles with the Eternal.

MANKIND´S THREEFOLD NATURE

The interpenetration of mankind´s three bodies is expressed in many ways through his/her threefold nature. In the wakeful state on Earth a human being is conscious more or less of their three vehicles. When a person is sensuously intent on tasting, smelling, touching, listening, or seeing, they are working principally through their physical body. Visualizing or willing, one is working mainly through ones astral body. His/her causal being finds expression when a person is thinking or diving deep in introspection or meditation; the cosmical thoughts of genius come to the person who habitually contacts his/her causal body. In this sense an individual may be classified broadly as "a material person", "an energetic person", or "an intellectual person".

A person identifies themself about sixteen hours daily with their physical vehicle. Then they sleep; if one dreams, one remains in ones astral body, effortlessly creating any object even as do the astral beings. If ones sleep is deep and dreamless, for several hours one is able to transfer ones consciousness, or sense of I-ness, to the causal body; such sleep is revivifying. A dreamer is contacting their astral body and not their causal body; so their sleep is not fully refreshing.

A CLOSING CONVERSATION

Yogananda : I had been lovingly observing Sri Yukteswar while he gave his wondrous exposition. "Angelic Guru" I said, "your body looks exactly as it did when last I wept over it in the Puri Ashram."
Sri Yukteswar : "Oh yes, my new body is a perfect copy of the old one. I materialize or dematerialize this form any time at will, much more frequently than I did while on Earth. By quick dematerialization, I now travel instantly by light express from planet to planet or, indeed, from astral to causal or to physical cosmos."
Yogananda : "O Master, I was grieving so deeply about your death!"
Sri Yukteswar with twinkling eyes of love and amusement replied : "Ah, wherein did I die? Isn´t there some contradiction here?
You were only dreaming on Earth; on that Earth you saw my dream-body. Later you buried that dream-image. Now my finer fleshly body - which you behold and are embracing rather closely - is resurrected on another finer dream-planet of God. Some day that finer dream-body and finer dream-planet will pass away; they too are not forever. All dream bubbles must eventually burst at a final wakeful touch. Differentiate, my son Yogananda, between dreams and Reality!
I have now told you, Yogananda, the truths of my life, death and resurrection. Grieve not for me; rather broadcast everywhere the story of my resurrection from the God-dreamed Earth of mankind to another God-dreamed planet of astrally garbed souls! New hope will be infused into the hearts of misery-made, death-fearing dreamers of the world. Tell all that whosoever knows by "nirbikalpa realisation"(state of unconditioned oneness) that your Earth is a dream of God, can come to the finer dream-created planet of Hiranyaloka, and there find me resurrected in a body exactly like my earthly one.... Yogananda, tell all!!"

(These past nine articles have been teachings from "Autobiography of a Yogi". The picture above is the Master Guru Sri Yukteswar Giri with his then student Paramahansa Yogananda.)

Friday 10 January 2020

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART EIGHT



Master and Guru Yukteswar continues....

ESCAPING RELATIVITY

When a Soul finally gets out of the three "jars" of bodily delusion, it becomes one with the infinite without any loss of individuality. Christ had won this final freedom even before he was born as Jesus (Yeshua). In three stages of his past, symbolized in his earth-life as the three days of his experience of death and resurrection, he had attained full power to arise in Spirit.

The undeveloped man or woman must undergo countless earthly and astral and causal incarnations in order to emerge from his/her three bodies. A master who achieves this final freedom may elect to return to Earth as a prophet, to bring other human beings back to God, or like myself he/she may choose to reside in the astral cosmos. There a saviour assumes some of the burden of the inhabitants´ karma and thus help them to terminate their cycle of reincarnation in the astral cosmos and go on permanently to the causal spheres. Or a freed Soul may enter the causal world to aid its beings to shorten their span in the causal body and thus attain Absolute Freedom.

KARMA 

The physical karma or desires of mankind must be completely worked out before his or her permanent stay in astral worlds becomes possible. Two kinds of beings live in the astral spheres. Those who still have earthly karma to dispose of and must therefore reinhabit a gross physical body in order to pay their karmic debts, may be classified after physical death, as temporary visitors to the astral world rather than as permanent residents.

Beings with unredeemed earthly karma are not permitted after astral death to go to the higher causal sphere of cosmic ideas, but must shuttle to and fro from the physical and astral worlds only, conscious successively of their physical body of sixteen gross elements, and their astral body of nineteen subtle elements. After each loss of the physical body, however, an undeveloped being from the earth remains for the most part in the deep stupor of the death-sleep and is hardly conscious of the beautiful astral sphere. After an astral rest, such a person returns to the material plane for further lessons, gradually accustoming himself/herself, through repeated journeys, to the worlds of subtle astral texture.

ASTRAL RESIDENTS

Normal or long-established residents of the astral universe, on the other hand, are those who, freed forever from all material longings, need return no more to the gross vibrations of Earth. Such beings have only astral and causal karma to work out. At astral death these beings pass to the infinitely finer and more delicate causal world. At the end of a certain span, determined by cosmic law, these advanced beings then return to Hiranyaloka or a similar high astral planet, reborn in a new astral body to work out their unredeemed astral karma.

You may now comprehend more fully that I AM (Sri Yukteswar) resurrected by divine decree, as a saviour of astrally reincarnating souls coming back from the causal spheres, in particular, rather than of those astral beings who are coming up from the Earth. Those from Earth, if they still retain vestiges of material karma, do not rise to the very high astral planets like Hiranyaloka.


(Article from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

Monday 6 January 2020

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART SEVEN



Divine Guru Yukteswar continues...

THE CAUSAL WORLD

The Causal world is indescribably subtle. In order to understand it, one would have to possess such tremendous powers of concentration that he/she could close their eyes and visualize the astral cosmos and the physical cosmos in all their vastness -- the luminous balloon with the solid basket -- as existing in ideas only.

If by this superhuman concentration one succeeded in converting or resolving the two comoses with all their complexities into sheer ideas, one would then reach the Causal world and stand on the borderline of fusion between mind and matter. There one perceives all created things -- solids, liquids, gases, electricity, energy, all beings, gods, mankind, animals, plants, bacteria -- as forms of consciousness, just as a person can close their eyes and realise that they exist, even though their body is invisible to the physical eyes and is present only as an idea.

Whatever a human being can do in fancy, a Causal being can do in reality. The most colossal imaginative human intelligence is able, in mind only, to range from one extreme of thought to another, to skip mentally from planet to planet, or tumble endlessly down a pit of eternity, or soar rocketlike into the galaxied canopy, or scintillate like a searchlight over the milky ways and the starry spaces. But beings in the Causal world have a much greater freedom, and can effortlessly manifest their thoughts into instant objectivity, without any material or astral obstruction or karmic limitation.

A COSMIC MIND

Causal beings realise that the physical cosmos is not primarily constructed of electrons, nor is the astral cosmos basically composed of lifetrons (Prana) -- both in reality are created from the minutest particles of God-thought, chopped and divided by "Maya" (Illusion), the law of relativity that apparently intervenes to separate creation from Creator.
Souls in the Causal world recognise one another as individualized points of joyous Spirit; their thought-things are the only objects that surround them. Causal beings see the difference between their bodies and thoughts to be merely ideas. As a man or woman, closing their eyes, can visualize a dazzling white light or a faint blue haze, so Causal beings by thought alone are able to see, hear, smell, taste, touch; they create anything, or dissolve it, by the power of Cosmic Mind.

SEA OF BLISS

Both death and rebirth in the Causal world are in thought. Causal-bodied beings feast only on the ambrosia of eternally new knowledge. They drink from the springs of peace, roam on the trackless soil of perception, swim in the ocean-endlessness of bliss. Lo! see their bright thought-bodies zoom past trillions of Spirit-created planets, fresh bubbles of universes, wisdom-stars, spectral dreams of golden nebulae on the skyey bosom of Infinity!
Many beings remain for thousands of years in the Causal Cosmos. By deeper ecstasies the freed soul then withdraws itself from the little Causal body and puts on the vastness of the Causal Cosmos. All the seperate eddies of ideas, particularised waves of power, love, will, joy, peace, intuition, calmness, self-control and concentration melt into the overjoyous Sea of Bliss. No longer does the soul have to experience its joy as an individualized wave of consciousness, but is merged in the One Cosmic Ocean, with all its waves -- eternal laughter, thrills, throbs.

When a soul is out of the cocoon of the three bodies it escapes forever from the law of relativity and becomes the ineffable Ever-Existent. Behold! The butterfly of Omnipresence, its wings etched with stars and moons and suns!! The soul expanded into Spirit remains alone in the region of lightless light, darkless dark, thoughtless thought, intoxicated with its ecstacy of joy in God´s dream of Cosmic Creation.


(Article/Teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

Saturday 4 January 2020

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL. --- PART SIX


Master Yukteswar Giri continues....

THE CREATION OF MANKIND

God thought out different ideas within Himself and projected them into dreams. Lady Cosmic Dream thus sprang out, colossally decorated in her endless ornaments of relativity.
In thirty-five thought categories of the Causal body, God elaborated all the complexities of mankind´s nineteen astral and sixteen physical counterparts. By condensation of vibratory forces, first subtle, then gross. He produced mankind´s astral body and finally his/her physical form. According to the law of relativity, by which the Prime Simplicity has become the bewildering manifold, the Causal Cosmos and Causal body are different from the Astral Cosmos and Astral body; The Physical Cosmos and Physical body are likewise characteristically at variance with the other forms of creation.

The fleshly body is made of the fixed, objectified dreams of the Creator. The dualities are ever-present on Earth; disease and health, pain and pleasure, loss and gain. Human beings find limitation and resistance in three-dimensional matter. When man´s desire to live is severely shaken by disease or other causes, death arrives; the heavy overcoat of the flesh is temporarily shed. The Soul, however, remains encased in the astral and causal bodies. (Body signifies Soul encasement). The adhesive force by which all three bodies are held together is desire. The activating power of unfulfilled desires is the root of all mankind´s slavery.

DESIRES

Physical desires are rooted in egotism and sense pleasures. The compulsion or temptation of sensorary experience is more powerful than the desire-force connected with astral attachments or causal perceptions.

Astral desires centre around enjoyment in terms of vibrations. Astral beings enjoy the ethereal music of the spheres and are entranced by the sight of all creation as exhaustless expressions of changing light. The Astral being also can smell, taste and touch light. Astral desires are thus connected with an astral being´s power to precipitate all objects and experiences as forms of light or condensed thoughts or dreams.

Causal desires are fulfilled by perception only. The nearly free beings who are encased only in the Causal body see the whole Universe as realizations of the dream-ideas of God; they can materialize anything and everything in sheer thought. Causal beings therefore consider the enjoyment of physical sensations or astral delights as gross and suffocating to the Soul´s fine sensibilities. Causal beings work out their desires by materializing them instantly. Those who find themselves covered only by the delicate veil of the Causal body can bring universes into manifestation, even as does the Creator. Because all creation is made of the cosmic dream-texture, the Soul thinly clothed in the Causal has vast realizations of power.

SOUL ENCASED

A Soul, being invisible by nature, can be distinguished only by the presence of its body or bodies. The mere presence of a body signifies that its existence is made possible by unfulfilled desires.

So long as the Soul of a person is encased in one, two or three body-containers, sealed tightly with the corks of ignorance and desires, he/she cannot merge with the sea of Spirit. When the gross physical receptacle is destroyed by the hammer of death, the other two coverings - Astral and Causal - still remain to prevent the Soul from consciously joining the Omnipresent Life. When desirelessness is attained through wisdom, its power disintegrates the two remaining vessels. The tiny Human Soul emerges, free at last; it is one with the Measureless Amplitude.


(Article/Teaching from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART FIVE



 The Master Guru Sri Yukteswar continues....

RECOGNIZING LOVED ONES

An astral person meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, children and friends, acquired during different incarnations on Earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral cosmos. He/she is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; but one learns in this way to give divine and equal love to all beings, as children and individualized expressions of God.

Though the outward appearance of loved ones may have changed (more or less, in conformance with their development of new qualities in the previous life), an astral-world resident employs his or her unerring intuition to recognize all those once dear to them on other planes of existence and welcomes them to their new astral home.

Because each atom in creation is inextinguishably dowered with individuality, an astral friend will be recognized by others no matter what costume he or she may don, even as on Earth an actor´s identity is discovered by close observation, despite any disguise.

AN ASTRAL TIMESPAN

The normal span of life in the astral spheres is much longer than on Earth. A person dwells on an astral planet for a certain period, determined by the weight of their material karma that draws him/her back to the terrestrial realm at a lawfully fixed time. Some beings, after physical death, return to Earth immediately, usually because of their strong desire to do so. The average length of astral embodiment for fairly advanced persons is from five hundred to one thousand years (measured in terms of terrestrial standards of time). A sequoias redwood will outlive other trees by millenniums, or as a number of yogis live for several hundred years though most people die before the age of seventy, so exceptional persons live on an astral sphere for about two thousand years.

The astral being does not have to contend painfully with Death at the time of shedding his/her luminous body. Many of these beings nevertheless feel slightly nervous at the thought of dropping their astral form for the subtler causal one. The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease and old age. These three dreads are the curse of Earth, where mankind has allowed his/her consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food and sleep in order to exist at all.

ASTRAL DEATH & PHYSICAL REBIRTH

Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons (Prana), those manifest units of cosmic energy which constitute the bodily life of astral beings. At physical death mankind loses his/her consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of the subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time a person thus passes from the consciousness of astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. The recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometime stir man´s deeper-than-subconscious memories of his lonng series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds.

AN INDIVIDUALISED SOUL

Mankind as individualised souls are essentially causal-bodied. That body is a matrix of the thirty-five IDEAS required by God as the basic or causal thought forces from which God later formed the subtle astral body of nineteen elements and the gross physical body of sixteen elements.

The nineteen elements of the astral body are mental, emotional and lifetronic (Prana). the nineteen components are intelligence; ego; feeling; mind (sense-consciousness); five instruments of KNOWLEDGE, the subtle counterparts of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch; five instrumets if ACTION, the mental correspondence for the executive abilities to procreate, excrete, talk, walk and exercise manual skill; and five instruments of LIFE FORCE, those empowered to perform the crystallizing, assimilating, eliminating, metabolizing and circulating functions of the body. This subtle astral encasement of nineteen elements survives death of the physical body, which is made of sixteen gross chemical elements....


(This article/teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL. --- PART FOUR



The Master Guru continues....

ENTERING THE CAUSAL WORLD

Joyous festivities on high astral planets like Hiranyaloka take place when a being is liberated from the astral world through spiritual advancement and is therefore ready to enter the heavens of the causal world. On such occasions the Invisible Heavenly Father, and the saints who are merged in Him, manifest Themselves in exquisite astral bodies and join the celebration.

To please His beloved child the Lord assumes the form desired by him/her. If the devotee has worshipped through devotion, he/she will see God as the Divine Mother. To the Master Jesus, the Father-aspect of the Infinite was appealing beyond other conceptions. The individuality with which the Creator has endowed each of His creatures makes every conceivable and inconceavable demand on the Lord´s versatality!

IMMORTALITY OF FRIENDSHIP

Friends of other lives easily recognise one another in the astral world. Rejoicing at the immortality of friendship, they realise the indestructibility of love, often doubted at the time of the sad, delusive partings of earthly life.

By intuition astral persons pierce the veil and observe human activities, but mankind cannot view the astral spheres unless their sixth sense is somewhat developed. Thousands of earth dwellers have momentarily glimpsed an astral being or an astral world.

NIRBIKALPA ECTASY

Nirbikalpa ectasy is union with God/Creator. The advanced beings on Hiranyaloka generally remain awake in Nirbikalpa ectasy during the long astral day and night, helping to work out intricate problems of cosmic government and the redemption of the prodical sons and daughters earthbound souls. When Hiranyaloka beings sleep, they have occasional dreamlike experiences and astral visions.

Inhabitants of all parts of the astral cosmos are still subject to mental agonies. The sensitive minds of the exalted devotees on planets like Hiranyaloka feel keen pain if any mistake is made in conduct or in perception of truth. These advanced beings endeavour to attune their every act and thought with perfection of spiritual law.

COMMUNICATION

Communication among all astral-world residents is effected entirely by telepathy and astral television. The confusion and misunderstanding of the spoken and written word, prevelant on Earth, are unknown in astral worlds.

Just as mankind on the cinema screen, through a series of light-produced pictures, move and engage in activities but do not actually breathe, so astral persons walk and work as intelligently guided and co-ordinated beings whose essence is Light and who require no oxygen to animate them. Mankind is vitally dependent on solids, liquids, gases, and life energy in the air; but astral-world inhabitants are sustained principally by Cosmic Light.

ABOUT ASTRAL EATING

Luminous raylike vegetables abound in the astral soils. Astral-world dwellers consume fruits and vegetables, and drink a nectar that flows from glorious fountains of Light and in astral brooks and rivers. Just as the ordinarily invisible images of mankind on Earth can be summoned from the ether and made visible by a television device, later being dismissed into space, so the God-created, unseen astral blueprints of vegetables and plants and fruits that float in the ether are precipitated on an astral planet by the fiats of the inhabitants. In the same way, from the wildest fancies of astral beings, immense gardens may be materialized, returning later to etheric invisibility.

Although dwellers on heavenly spheres like Hiranyaloka are almost freed from the necessity of eating, still higher is the unconditioned existence of nearly perfect beings in the causal world, whose only food is the manna of bliss.


(Article and Teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL. --- PART THREE


The Master Guru continues.... (To find Part 1 & 2 click on the label below marked "Soul journey).

ASTRAL CREATIVITY

The Earth is dark with warfare and murder in the sea, land and air, but the astral realms know a happy harmony and equality. Astral beings dematerialize and materialize their forms at will. Flowers or fish or animals can metamorphose themselves, for a time, into astral men. All astral beings are free to assume any form, and can easily commune together. No fixed, definite, natural law hems them round -- any astral tree, for example, may successfully be asked to produce an astral mango or flower or indeed any other object. Certain karmic restrictions are present, but there are no distinctions in the astral world about desirability of various forms. Everything is vibrant with God´s creative Light.

YOUR ASTRAL BODY

No one is born of woman. Astral persons, through fiats of their cosmically attuned will, bring offspring into being in significantly patterned astral forms. a recently physically disembodied person arrives in an astral family by invitation, drawn by similar intal and spiritual tendencies.
The astral body is not subject to cold or heat or other natural conditions. The anatomy includes an astral brain, in which the omniescient "thousand-petalled lotus of Light" is partially active; and six awakened centres in the "sushummnu" or astral cerebro-spinal axis. The heart, drawing Light and cosmic energy from the brain, distributes them to astral nerves and body cells. Astral beings are able to effect changes in their forms by lifetronic (prana) force and by holy "mantric" vibrations.
In most cases the astral body is an exact counterpart of the last physical form. The face and figure of an astral person resemble those of his/her youth in their previous earthly sojourn. Occasionally someone, like myself, chooses to retain his/her old age appearance.

SIXTH SENSE INTUITION

Unlike the spacial, three-dimensional physical world cognized only by the five senses, the astral spheres are perceptible to the all-inclusive sixth sense -- intuition. By sheer intuitional feeling, all astral persons see, hear, smell, taste and touch. They possess three eyes, two of which are partly closed. The third and chief astral eye, vertically placed on the forehead, is open.

Astral men/women have all the outer sensory organs -- eyes, ears, nose, tongue and skin -- but employ the intuitional sense to experience sensations through any part of the body; they can see through the ear or nose or skin. They are able to hear through the eyes or tongue, and can taste through the ears or skin, and so forth.

Mankind´s physical body is exposed to countless dangers, and is easily hurt or maimed; the ethereal astral body may occasionally be cut or bruised but is healed at once by mere willing.

BEAUTY IN THE ASTRAL WORLD

Beauty in the astral world is known to be a spiritual quality and not an outward conformation. Astral beings therefore attach little importance to facial features. They have the privilege, however, of costuming themselves at will with new colourful, astrally materialized bodies. Just as worldly mankind don new array for a gala event, so astral persons find occasions to bedeck themselves in specially designed forms.


(This article/teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART TWO



The Master Yukteswar continues.....

THE ASTRAL WORLDS

There are many astral worlds teaming with astral beings. The inhabitant use astral vehicles or masses of Light, to travel from one planet to another, faster than electricity or radioactive energies.

The astral universe, made of subtle vibrations of Light and colour, is hundreds of times larger than the material cosmos. The entire physical creation hangs like a little solid basket under the huge luminous balloon of the astral sphere. Just as many material suns and stars roam in space, so there are also countless astral solar and stellar systems. The astral suns and moons are more lovely than the physical ones. The astral luminaries resemble the Aurora Borealis -- the sunny aurora being more dazzling than the mild-rayed moon aurora. The astral day and night are longer than those of Earth.

The astral universe is infinitely beautiful, clean, pure, and orderly. There are no dead planets or barren lands. The terrestrial blemishes -- weeds, bacteria, insect, snakes -- are absent. Unlike the variable climates and seasons of the Earth, the astral spheres maintain the even temperature of an astral Spring, with occasional luminous white snow and rain of multicoloured Light. Astral worlds abound in opal lakes and bright seas and rainbow rivers.

THE ORDINARY ASTRAL UNIVERSE

The ordinary astral universe -- not the subtler astral heaven of Hiranyaloka -- is peopled with millions of astral beings who have come, more or less recently, from the Earth, and also with myriads of fairies, mermaids, fishes, animals, goblins, gnomes, demigods, and spirits, all residing on different astral planets in accordance with karmic qualifications. Various spheric mansions or vibratory regions are provided for good and evil spirits.

Good spirits can travel freely, but evil spirits are confined to limiited zones. In the same way that human beings live on the surface of the Earth, worms inside the soil, fish in the water, and birds in the air, so astral beings of different grades are assigned to suitable vibratory quarters.

Among fallen dark angels, expelled from various astral worlds, friction and war take place with "lifetronic bombs" (finer electronic energies), or mental Mantric (a chanted seed-sound discharged by the mental gun of concentration), vibraratory rays. These outcasts dwell in the gloom-drenched regions of the lower astral cosmos, working out their evil karma.

SHINING AND BEAUTIFUL

In the vast realms above the dark and astral prison, all is shining and beautiful. The astral cosmos is more naturally attuned than the Earth to the divine will and plan of perfection. Every astral object is manifested primarily by the Will of God, and partially by the will-call of astral beings. They possess the power of modifying or enhancing the grace and form of anything already created by the Lord. He has given His astral children the freedom and privilege of changing or improving at will the astral cosmos.

On Earth a solid must be transformed into liquid or another form through natural or chemical processes, but astral solids are changed into astral liquids, gases, or atomic energy solely and instantly by the will of the inhabitants.


(This article/teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)

THE JOURNEY OF THE SOUL --- PART ONE



The Soul must travel through three different levels of existence, with their corresponding bodies/vessels, for the necessary experience before returning to its eternal Oneness with Creator. On all three levels of existence the Soul must clear accumulated karma before progressing to the next level. These levels to be mastered consist of the physical world, the Astral plane and the Causal level of life.

The following is a teaching given by the ascended Master, Sri Yukteswar Giri, to his, then student, Paramahansa Yogananda whom is now, himself, a great Master. Shortly after his passing over, Sri Yukteswar manifested to Yogananda to deliver the following information to be shared with humanity.

AN ASTRAL PLANET

As prophets are sent on Earth to help mankind work out their physical karma, so I have been directed by God to serve on an astral planet as a saviour. This planet is called "Hiranyaloka" or "Illumined Astral Planet". There I am aiding advanced beings to rid themselves of astral karma, and thus to attain liberation from astral rebirths.

The dwellers on Hiranyaloka are highly developed spiritually; all of them have acquired, in their last incarnation on Earth, the meditation-given power of consciously leaving their physical bodies at death. No one can enter Hiranyaloka unless he/she had experienced during their previous terrestrial life, the states of "Subikalpa" (realisation of oneness with Spirit) and "Nirbikalpa samadhi" (superior state with liberation from earthly karma).

Hiranyaloka inhabitants have already passed through the ordinary astral spheres, where nearly all beings from Earth must go at death; there they destroyed many seeds of karma connected with their past actions in astral worlds. None but advanced devotees can perform such redemptive work effectively in the astral spheres. -- (This is because most persons, enjoying the beauty of the astral world, do not see any necessity for strenuous spiritual effort.) -- Then, in order to free their Souls fully from all traces of astral karma, these aspirants were drawn by cosmic law to be reborn in new astral bodies on Hiranyaloka, the astral Sun of heaven, where I am present to help them. There are also nearly perfect beings on Hiranyaloka who have come from the superior Causal World.

THE HUMAN SOUL ENCASED

You have read in the scriptures that God encased the human Soul successively in three bodies -- the idea, or Causal body, the subtle Astral body, seat of mankind´s mental and emotional natures; and the gross material body. On Earth a man is equipped with his/her physical senses. An Astral person works through their consciousness and feelings with a body made of "lifetrons" or Prana. A Causal-bodied being remains in the blissful realm of ideas. My work is with those Astral devotees who are preparing to enter, or re-enter the Causal world.


(This article/teaching is from "Autobiography of a Yogi".)