This Dynamic World

There are Christian saints, Muslim saints, and Jewish spiritual communities like the Essenes as well as Lord Siddhartha who became the Buddha (the Enlightened One). They all embraced an ascetic way of life. This focuses on spiritual rather than material life and is not fixed on food, sex, or other material gratification. Indeed, Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights to prepare for his ministry.

Fixation on sexual pleasure without love has been the downfall of great societies of our world. What I get from the Kriya Yoga, the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the teachings of the Buddha, Confucian Ethics, and the synthesis of all these doctrines in New Age Aquarian thought is that sex is for a purpose. That purpose is love in marriage that results in children. I have learned that the sex fluid is precious and the sex organs are the easiest to harm. Throughout history a symptom of social decay has been when sex kills instead of giving life. As we can become addicted to tobacco or alcohol, so we can become addicted to a degrading fascination with sexual pleasure. Along with alcohol, drug, or tobacco suicide, we can commit sex suicide. I say love God, not sex and your sex life will be glorious. Think of your beloved as a human being, not a sex object. Look on human beings as your spirit brothers and sisters whom you would never harm.

These doctrines of denial are actually liberation from slavery. For example, free yourself from the highs and crashes of processed food. Eat raw vegetables as much as possible. Cook vegetables as little as possible. Their enzymes help make energy in you from the action of the sun upon the chlorophyll in the plants (photosynthesis). The Hindus call this cosmic energy. Don't commit processed food suicide!

This belief that spirit and matter are extensions of each other or rather different manifestations of the same thing is behind the Hindu doctrine of reincarnation and the Christian doctrine of the Plan of Salvation.

The essence of both is that you do not die. You just give up your mortal body for a time until you advance to the next level of being. The story of Jesus and Lazarus shows us that the dead are alive. The truth is that we are all spirit children of God who grow up through life and death and life. I say believe you are a child of God. If you don't believe it, you won't act like it. The way you lived your previous life indicates how you live today. How you live today indicates how you will live in the next life.

George King said we do it to ourselves. What we do to the environment of life is what we do to each other and to ourselves. Raise the environment with love. Speak words of love. Lower the environment with hate, speak word of hate to bring about war, jealousy, and destruction. These are the real environmental disasters.

This, then, is the difference between deprivation and leaving behind physical desires. It may well be that living in the world but not being of the world is the correct way to live. The story of Giri Bala living without eating or drinking for 56 years inspires us to want better things. Giri Bala achieved the highest level of consciousness and connection. She left behind materialism and embraced spirituality. Her angel taught her to convert energy to mass by drinking in the benefits of the sun, the highest source of energy. Giri Bala learned to live on cosmic energy.

Yogananda never did without food and drink and he never expected anyone else to do that. He did, however, live a life of peace, love, and health. His yoga included an Indian Ayurvedic health code that kept him seemingly ageless.

I have meditated often on the concept that the human body is a temple. In 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul exhorts the members of the Church of Jesus Christ, “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”

Remember that I come from way back in the hills, up by the Allegheny Trail. One of our favorite dishes when I was little was fat back pork cooked with hominy or corn pone. Now, 80 years later, I eat a healthy diet and not too much of anything. I learned that moving through the chakras is the journey of a life time and that your soul cannot be perfected in only one life. Giri Bala and Paramahansa Yogananda would say that the principle is to avoid physical and spiritual suicide by shedding bad inputs and searching for good inputs.

Start by eliminating addictions like drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol. Continue with bad meat, like pork. Continue on until you eliminate all meat. Continue with this process until you have eliminated dependence on material things. The point is to rise above your addictions and appetites to a spiritual life.