The planet’s finest machine
There is a whole science and technology as to how to evolve the body from being just a heap of food, just an accumulation of what we have taken from the earth, into something beyond flesh and blood, beyond the compulsions of our chemistry. The body is the most sensitive and capable instrument on this planet – there is no other instrument like this. If you know how to use it, it can tell you everything that is here and beyond. You must keep this machine, this body, such that it must be on for whatever it needs to do – suppose it has to stay for three days without food or sleep, it is just on. Then it is not a compulsive process, it has become a conscious process, it will just do what you want it to do.
One simple release that this body needs is, if you can simply sit here without being identified with the physical process that is on right now, not identifying this either as a man or a woman or as this or that, if you allow it to reverberate the way it should and can, it can become the very center of the cosmos because there isn’t one center for this cosmic manifestation. The opportunity to become the very center of existence is always wide open to you.
This science of getting there, this dimension of making this happen to yourself is what we are referring to as yoga. But the reason why it looks so far away for many people is simply because they have tied their boat to one shore but are working hard to get to the other shore. It is a simple understanding, a simple intelligence that if you want to go from this shore to that shore, if you want to make a journey from the physicality to a dimension beyond the physical, unless you cut this rope, you won’t get there.
So bending your body, holding your breath, all these things are just so that slowly, it will cut the ropes of the physical and create a distance between you and the physical. Once there is a distance, rowing your boat away is very simple; just the water-current or the breeze may take it. Even if you sleep, it may still make it to the other shore. If you row hard, you will definitely get there very quickly.