The Journey Inside

Wisdom Teachings
The Journey Inside

Our planet can be compared with a station where many travellers arrive, stay for a while and leave it again. We are travellers who through long cycles of time proceed on the path of evolution. The traveller is the inner man or the soul, the outer man or the body is the vehicle. All of us are on a great journey and use for it different vehicles. With the time they get broken and we need new ones. We should not try to look too much after an old vehicle and hold on to it. With a new and better vehicle the journey is faster and more comfortable.

A bad vehicle doesn’t allow us to go on a long journey. If we have developed obstructions in our physical body, it delays our high endeavours. With yoga asanas we can make our physical bodies limber and flexible like a leaf, which doesn’t break when it is bent. Regular exercises help to establish harmony between the gross and the subtle.

The human bodies, which have emerged since 1945 are considered to be better models that the earlier ones, because today new energies are available. The bodies conceived since 1962 are even better, and later there were further improvements. So there is a constant work on producing a better technology and design. Therefore today’s children are more electric; their apprehension is far superior to that of their ancestors.

Each time a soul comes into a body in order to continue its journey; it is accompanied by the personality. The personality uses the body more for its purposes than for the purposes of the soul, and it accomplishes more its intentions. We look for the pleasing, for ease for the body, for comfort at home and for a financial cushion. We confine the soul through our desires and through accumulating material or mental ballast and restrict ourselves. The activity of the senses also keeps us in the objective world: Our attention continues to travel to the outside. Even when we close our eyes and want to turn inward, the mind has an urge to go outside, and the thoughts carry us along. There is no real inner contemplation taking place, even if we seem to meditate seen from the outside.

When we want to go on the inner journey, the first requirement is to moderate the personality and to rearrange our own economic, familiar and social situation in a way that we find enough time to be able to turn inside. The only way to cross the door to the inside is to serve the fellow beings, without pride, laments and complaints. In this way we can pay back our debts towards life. In so far as we serve the fellow beings – plants, animals and men – we can be admitted into the chambers of the inner temple. If we feel the fellow beings as manifestations of the Divine, we come closer to the Divine. Otherwise all remains only theoretical knowledge, no matter how much knowledge we have. It is already good if we are at least of use for ourselves.

We only can travel into subjectivity, if we create the habit to turn inward and to calm down the sense activity. In this way we develop the observer, and we can observe the thoughts emerging in us. Little by little we dip a bit deeper and develop the subjective mind which explores the inner side of things, the in-sight. In time we begin to see what happens in the inner temple. In doing so the sound of OM leads us into the inner chambers.

In the heart centre there is the door to the inner reality, to the frontiers of the inner temple, where there is the Holy of the Holiest, as the wisdom teachings call it. In the heart we find the subtle pulsation which is at the basis of the respiration. We can approach it by observing the respiration. When we are together with the pulsation, we can enter the system of the vertebral column. It leads us into the etheric column of consciousness, where from head to the base of the spine we find the energy vortices of the chakras. When we travel upwards in this column to the ajna centre, we find the inner man, who carries out the pulsation and the intelligent activity as well as the entire body mechanism. We discover ourselves in our inner. The outer man or the lower self is only a copy of the inner man or the soul. The connection between the two is done through the yoga path.

The journey from the base of the spine to the head centre is symbolically represented as a pilgrimage and described as a path over 7 hills. In South India this is still done today as a pilgrimage to the temple of Tirupati, which lies behind seven hills representing the seven chakras. Many people go on pilgrimages to holy places, to sources or mountains, in order to align the mind and to experience the Divine. If however we don’t make the right preparation for the “journey to Jerusalem” through the inner orientation, the mind draws us away from our actual intention to focus on the Divine, even with an outer journey.

On the journey we meet many fellow travellers. Even if some relations are difficult, we shouldn’t be bothered by them or let ourselves be thrown out of balance. People are what they are; they cannot but behave according to their nature. The spiritual journey demands that we deeply see to our own behaviour and don’t bother about the behaviour of the others. As souls we are brothers, as personalities however we are different. The sages never look upon people as being bad, but that some have only just begun their journey and that they were just like them, as they didn’t yet know the whole route. Some are further ahead on the way, some further back. Those who travel ahead of us are an inspiration for us. Those behind us challenge us. And those who are around us during the journey are there in order to give us the required training. Particularly people with whom we live closely together force us to accept viewpoints, even if we don’t share them. The family therefore is the best training ground for spiritual practice.

Without signposts you can easily get lost in the roads, without a map it is difficult to orient in a big city. The scriptures give us the plan of the journey. And if we perseveringly strive for knowledge and service, beings of Light guiding us approach us. The Divine comes closer to us; it becomes active in us and even guides the journey as a driver.

If someone has confused thoughts, he is like in fog. “A man in fog is a blind traveller”, says Master DK. In some of his books it looks as if already tomorrow all will be light and this for the whole of humanity. We feel inspired by reading it and already have the feeling to be a disciple. We elect our own master and decide that tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we take the third initiation. Thus the children’s plays go on until we really begin to live with the practical steps of truth.

The journey is very long and takes many incarnations. We shouldn’t think that we complete it in just one life. But if we perceive the time dimension correctly, we will progress slowly but surely. We should know the outline of the journey and understand the goal, but then work with the next step lying ahead of us. “Man can overcome all hindrances if the goal of his journey is clear to him. When he sees the Light in the distance, he will pay no attention to the hardships of the journey. He will not count the steps to this Light, for it shines also in his heart.” (Supermundane III, 634)

Sources used: K. P. Kumar: The Path to Immortality. Venus / seminar notes / E. Krishnamacharya: The Book of Rituals. The World Teacher Trust - Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India. - Supermundane III. Agni-Yoga Society, New York, (www.agniyoga.org )