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The Expanding Body-Consciousness THE
field of our physical activity is very limited. If you look at it closely you
will find it indeed extremely narrow and our capacities confined within a small
circle. Weare bound by the outline of our material body. I cannot, for
instance, be sitting in my room and at the same time doing gymnastics in the
playground. If you wish to do one thing you cannot do another; if you are at
one place you cannot be at another simultaneously. How convenient it would be
if while I was writing at the table, I could get there immediately a book from
a far-off shelf for consultation without moving or taking anybody's help! And
yet is the thing so very impossible? We know, for example, of extraordinary – at
least, queer – things happening at what are called "spirit séances",
things that cannot be explained by the normal functioning of the physical
senses; they are explained as interventions from the spirit world. In reality,
however, spirits or ghosts have, in general, very little to do in this matter.
It is action not of disembodied beings but of the normal human energies – especially
the vital or life energy – freed from the body's control and exerting itself
independently. An example, a true fact that happened, will best illustrate what
I mean to say. A young man, in Paris, a clerk at a railway station, used to receive there his fiancée and her mother from time to time. One day he was expecting them and waiting for the train time; they had to come by train. As he was busy with his work at the table, at about the appointed hour, people around saw him all on a sudden bending down his head with a loud scream and then resting it on the table; he lay unconscious. In the meantime, what happened on the other side was a terrible railway disaster: the two women were involved in it.
Page – 242 The trains
were smashed and all the passengers killed or mortally wounded. But, curious to
say, the young woman, the fiancée, was found, living and almost
unscathed, in the midst of the debris, within a sort of cover made by a fallen
beam that lay across over her. She was pulled out with only a few bruises upon
her body. Here is, however, the young man's version of the story. He said that
as he was working at the table, suddenly he heard the voice of his fiancée calling
loudly for help and he saw in a flash, as it were, the situation she was in, he
rushed out, not physically indeed, and ran and threw himself over the body of
his fiancée to protect her; that is the only thing he could do. As a
result he did in fact protect her. True, he did not rush out in his body, for
that matter, if he had done, it would have been of no use. What rushed out of
him was his vital body, a formation of that life energy which is most close to
the body and almost as concrete as physical energy but much more powerful and
effective. This vital power concentrated and projected out of him acted as a
veritable shield over the woman. The young man himself, curious to say, bore marks of bruises upon his head as if a huge load
had fallen upon it. A strong impact upon the vital can and does leave scars
upon the material body: it is not an uncommon phenomenon. Many of the Christian
saints (Saint Francis of Assisi, for example) are reported to have borne on
their body the marks – the stigmata of crucifixion of Christ's body;
Ramakrishna, too, it is said, once showed marks of scourging on his back when a
boy was whipped in his presence. All this means that the physical body is not man's sole means of action in the physical world. The physical extends and expands into more and more subtle modes of activity and all the more, not less, effective for that very reason. Behind the physical lies the subtle physical, behind which again is the vital physical and then the various grades of the vital. Indeed the vital or life energy as a whole is the real dynamism of all our physical activities and if it usually acts through its bodily instruments, it can act independently of them too; normally, too, it often acts in this way, only we are not conscious or observant enough to notice. A conscious concentration of the vital energy directed upon a material object can
Page – 244 handle it with the effectivity of material energy. When it
needs physical conditions it creates them, as the protective vital energy of
the young man created the physical disposition of objects that formed a covert
for the girl. In
the present case, the phenomenon happened automatically without any
premeditation on the part of the persons concerned; because the sympathy
between the two was so strong, other considerations did not weigh in the
balance against it. Needless to say, if one wishes to obtain conscious mastery
of this occult power, one will have to go through a long and arduous
discipline. But, if difficult, the thing is not impossible. In the matter of
physical feats, for example, a particular development may seem for the moment
beyond your reach; but with practice and perseverance, stubborn will and wise
guidance, you can not only arrive at your immediate end but do much more. The
story of many who have broken Olympic records is revealing in this respect. In
the same way, one can master the subtle forces, if one goes about the thing
earnestly and in the right way. It is more difficult – much more perhaps – but
the way is there provided the will is there.
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