Topic 6.01.03 The Body in Shanti Yoga

Topic 6.01.03 The Body in Shanti Yoga. VERSION CONTROL: 1 August 2017

Your own body is the first instrument. It is part of the beauty of life and the wonder of creation.

The physical plane is where the Divine presence yearns to be. One life pulsates in every body. Consciousness projects itself … and Spirit flows through matter … matter through spirit. Creations and Creator are joined in physical flesh. Spirit is made durable, matter inspired. Light is introduced into a world that has too long been asleep, and the wisdom of the Universe is mirrored. Through a body of interwoven galaxies and countless stars, Truth takes form. A biosphere plays with endless variations, arranging molecules in patterns, mingling earth and sun, time and eternity, place and infinity, integrating the Divine with the human, balancing spirit and matter in uncountable lives.

So that a star might be born, you took birth. The world of light is made flesh in all beings. Sparks of such intensity that no ordinary search could uncover are buried in the deepest bowels of the material realm and locked away in thick darkness. Your eyes would be blinded by their brilliance…and by the profundity of the darkness surrounding them. Intellect has no power to approach them, good deeds could never dig that deep. Hidden in the world, the only tools to liberate these sparks are ones that supersede the intellect and senses.

The restoration from the vision of Tantra, a term that derives from the Sanskrit verb tan, to stretch, to expand. It refers to a set of spiritual and physical exercises designed to initiate the practitioner directly into the divine ground of life, to ‘stretch’ and ‘expand’ her or his consciousness so that it can embrace all levels of reality in one overwhelming experience of interdependence and unity.

Alone and clean in body and mind, focused in attention and will, in ShantiYoga you bring yourself to the altar…offering in simplicity and innocence, not a burnt sacrifice, but simply yourself, raised to your own highest potential. The vision of perfection and innocence in which human beings were first created – unarmed, unashamed.