Light on Life: The Yoga Journey to Wholeness, Inner Peace, and Ultimate Freedom

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all of our atoms are mostly composed of space. Sound and vibration
correspond to space and can travel through them like the radio waves
that we send out through space in the expectation that intelligence will
some day be able to communicate fully. Is sound not even more pow­
erful and more intimate than air? The vibration of a whale's song can
penetrate hundreds of miles of ocean. Is not the sound of God (AUM)
more holy than any idol? Is not music the highest art? Vibration is a
wave. It comes from three points-all that is needed to make a sine
curve-and is the first step of manifestation. It is very close to the root
of nature, and it is very powerful for that reason. As I have said,
"When you collapse your posture, you collapse your soul." When you
collapse the space, you collapse the soul.
The eyes are the index of the brain. The ears are the index of con­
sciousness. The eyes belong to mind and fire, the ears to awareness and
space. When one is in a meditative state, the frontal brain is resting and
without interruption. Whenever we are thinking about a problem, we
lean our heads forward. If you let your head drop forward in medita­
tion, the frontal brain will feel distress. But if there is harmony between
the eyes and ears, the focusing of awareness becomes easy. The eyes are
the window of the brain, the ears are the window of the soul. This is
contrary to popular wisdom, but when the senses are withdrawn
(pratyahara) this is the true experience. The ears are able to discern vi­
bration. Our inner space corresponds to what we normally call Heaven.
This is how we can hear the divinity of our inner heaven before we see
it. The ears also witness silence. Silence is the music of samadhi.
Let me be more prosaic. Just as we cannot separate the element of
earth from the sheath of our physical body (annamaya kosa), so we
cannot separate space from the blissful sheath (anandamaya kosa). In
asana, we are playing with the elements. When we twist, for example,
we are squeezing space out of the kidney, and on release, space returns,
but space renewed. Similarly, we are squeezing water, fir�, and air, as
well as to some extent earth, out of an organ wht•n Wl' twisl or l·onlr;KI.


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