Body and House

Wisdom Teachings
Right Living

Like the human body is the home of the soul, man also creates a home for the body. We want to live well in our body and also comfortably in our house. An unhealthy body is no comfortable home for the soul; an uncomfortable house is a problem for the inhabitants. If the body constricts the soul, the soul doesn’t feel well in it. The house should serve us; it shouldn’t control our life, so that we become its servants. The house and our life should be arranged according to natural basic patterns. Certain houses improve our energy, others absorb it. The house in which we live should contribute to our energy. For this air and light are very important. It should be possible that the air moves freely and the sunlight enters into every corner of the house. Places without light and air promote diseases and paralyse our vitality and our awareness. Like a man who doesn’t breathe a room without circulation is dead.

In the name of civilisation we build pigeonholes as houses, in which there are a dining and a living room, a kitchen and also a toilet. There isn’t enough air and light. In many offices and public buildings you cannot open the windows, or there is no sunlight at all. Closed rooms make us slowly dozy and tired. We have a wrong architecture, that doesn’t allow the body to experience the soul energy properly, and the soul cannot work through the body. It is much better to live in a hut than in these modern houses.

Dark bathrooms are dangerous; we cannot take a shower or a bath in a dark room and at the same time switch on electric light; this doesn’t help the physical body. We need a window in the bathroom, through which air and sunlight can enter. The windows are the openings through which prana, the vital energy, can enter into the house. You shouldn’t use a kitchen without window, because otherwise the food – an aspect of prana – is cooked in an atmosphere, where there is no pranic energy. Those who live in bedrooms, which are dark during the day, don’t have good health. The bedroom should be able to receive sunlight during the day and should be aired the whole day long. Wind sets congested energies in motion, light burns up the impure. The air should be able to pass through from one side of the apartment to the other. By using right colours we can bring a lot of energies into the house. Bright colours – white, cream, light blue, yellow and orange – give liveliness, brown, grey and dark green colours devour the vitality and should be avoided, also black and blood-red.

The vitality enters through two main centres into the body, the sacral centre and the centre between the shoulder blades. These two should be exposed to sun and air during the twilight hours, because at this time we can receive very much vital and consciousness power from the solar centre, when we take them in consciously. It is not recommended to expose the body at other times to the sun. He is the giver of life, but absorbs it also. Ayurveda recommends for the morning: “Clean your mouth including the tongue, drink a glass of water, take a shower, put on fresh clothes, i.e. only to the lower part of your body and move during the dawn hours, also in the house. Wear only minimum clothing. When the light emerges from the east, it does the magical work relating to your health and vitality.”

Deep breathing and singing of the Gayatri during dawn also calls the sun energy into ourselves.

In our body we have a kitchen, a toilet, a drawing room and a bedroom. The kitchen is the solar plexus and the stomach, the toilet the excretory organs. The places of intake and excretion should be far apart from each other, it is unhealthy to put kitchen and toilet closely together.

The bedroom is the place from where we “take off” every night, there should be no disorder. If we leave the bedroom behind with confused energies and don’t prepare ourselves well for sleep, this involves dangers. We should sleep with a pure body, in a well prepared clean bed and leave a light or a candle on in the room, so that it protects our body during sleep.

In the house there should be a shrine room, where there are no other activities except meditation and study of the Scriptures. This is the heart of the house; a house without a shrine room is like a man without a heart. Even if it is just a very small place, it is all right. Maybe we have a lot of arguments why this isn’t possible, but then we are not yet ready for this work. It is necessary to magnetize a place through continuous meditation and study, so that the energies co-operate there with us. In the same way the group should also have a place. This is a great healing work and will also help those who follow on us later. We should always read at the same place, looking into the same direction – if possible always at the same time, with a concentrated mind. The place should be pure and the things in the room should be clean and shining. Order brings an electric and magnetic effect. Daily we should wash the floor, no matter if it is dirty or not: Water can insulate us from non-good elements. There should be lit regularly incense and a candle. The candle and the study material should not lie on the floor, but at least on a chair. It is good when this room points towards north or east, since this brings an orientation towards the subtle nature. When a house is oriented towards south or west, rather the objective side of life gains admission. When planning the house and the furnishing you should mind that the directions represent certain energies. North stands for silence and contemplation, east for light and wisdom, south for love and strength and west for will and solidity of matter. Northeast is a combination of silence and of light and is regarded as the place of the presence of the male-female God. Each spiritual activity in the house should be directed towards north, east or northeast. Through the southeast we receive the fire, the medium of the spirit towards matter. Therefore the kitchen should be installed in the southeast of the house, so that you cook with the face looking towards southeast or east.

Man is a septenary symbolized by a triangle on a quadrangle. The eternal, immortal part is the triangle representing the head, and the mortal part is the square representing the lower part from the neck to the feet. According to this principle man built houses since antiquity, with a square as surface area and a triangle as roof. Today they build square blocks without a pitched roof. If there is no triangular roof, this is like a man without a head: The subtle energies cannot be absorbed well. The energies get attracted by what is projected into the atmosphere. A pointed roof allows the down-flow of certain energies into the gross matter. Therefore churches and cathedrals were built with a spire as projection into the atmosphere. The more pointed it is, the easier subtle energies are drawn down.

Every material accumulation draws off energy. We should only have those things needed for a minimum comfort without feeling uncomfortable – starting with shoes and clothes. By giving away money is also released, which we could use for service. Things like wisdom books, crystals and the like we can have at home, they help us with the work. If we want to make headway on the spiritual path, we have to comply with these fundamental things, otherwise it doesn’t work. Only when everything in us and in the house is all right, we can go outside and take charge of larger service responsibilities.

**Sources used: K. Parvathi Kumar: Seminar notes. The World Teacher Trust / Dhanishta, Visakhapatnam, India.