There are capacities we have, energies that could produce radically different results in our lives, up to the point of even producing another kind of body: an energetic body, another higher level body which has more of a cosmic significance and cosmic reality than a physical reality. This higher-level body is more like the stars and the sun and space than it is like the ground and the earth. But right now we experience the body as a very material thing. And because we experience it that way, as dense and solid, and because of the way that we conduct ourselves, because of the fuel sources we take in, and the rhythms that we have – those subtle energies cannot move in us.
We live on the side of the wall which is gross and dense and physical, but we could create the conditions in us by consciousness, by body position and orientation toward space, through which we could avail ourselves of the other potentials that are there. In every spiritual and religious tradition there is always some regulation of life that attempts to get one’s outer life in reasonable order, free of chaos and frenzy, so that we’re not so preoccupied with mundane concerns that we can’t explore the greater realities within us. There is also in every spiritual tradition some regulation of bodily habits so the body doesn’t become a nuisance or a discomfort to us. Hatha Yoga is a perfect example of a discipline done to make the body pure, supple, and strong, so clean and clear that in meditation, it’s as if the body is transparent, or not even there at all, and one can easily move toward that subtle inner realm which the normal consciousness of the body veils.
When you are calm and still, there will not be so much noise, and where there is quiet, there is an entrance point for God. This is very important, and this is why every tradition stresses laying time aside for meditation or contemplation. The subtle enters through the things in us that are like the subtle, one of them being quiet, one of them being calm, so it’s essential to cultivate those aspects and atmospheres. It’s becoming like a clear, still lake that can truly reflect reality and seems to welcome you into its depths.
