Know

"The methods of the Yogin are also different for he tends more and more to the use of direct vision and the faculties of the vijnana and less and less to the intellectual means. The ordinary man studies the object from the outside and infers its inner nature from the results of his external study. The Yogi seeks to get inside his object, know it from within & use external study only as a means of confirming his view of the outward action resulting from an already known inner nature."

Record of Yoga, Sri Aurobindo

This is another stage of passage. For me this includes two problems. The first is simply refining the faculty by which knowledge is received. Quieting the mind, concentration, give clarity of perception then comes inspiration and vision as you move from the mind sheath into the vijnana kosha. Most people come to a stage of development where they recognize the flow. They see things coming together for more than the externalized mind's viewpoint. This is the realm of flow stories, of signs, etc. From here often begins the journey of following/perfecting, the inner guidance. This involves all sorts of purification, one may think of screening out those inner voices/impulses that lead towards fulfillment of the desires of the lower nature and lack the truth power. One has to recognize, in my case it is by feel, the intuitive. From my experience clear seeing, clairvoyance also looms large and one has to integrate this ability.

On the down side of this is the habit of physical causality. Someone calls you on the cell and you hear their voice and know who they are. Practical enough, but some times you are just thinking of them before they call. Refining the ability to listen to that sense, and know when it is working is more challenging. Inner guidance is the same.

Just making the distinction between the subtle senses such as empathy, the subliminal information, such as from people's body language, vision into subtle realms, and the flow of knowledge from the spirit take time and awareness.

The second thing working against you is the authority of knowledge which is dominated by the mental demons. Small gods if you will. You can know perfectly well something by yogic sight, but all sorts of voices creep in. This cast includes the very popular, doubt, speculation, opinion, judgment, lack of knowledge. So you can see why something is occurring, for instance I know someone who has caused themselves work related medical problems. I know that this was cause by a need to avoid dealing with personal feelings. They learned this from their mother. They work hard in order to distract themselves. It works. They were successful in their career up until their body began to express other things.

However this ability to see into people could easily be retarded. First as the insight comes into thought it passes into the mental realm where one will naturally doubt any articulated statement of cause. That's the mental for you. The second thing is it can be attacked as speculation, one can think that it is being seen as a projection. I am projecting my own viewpoint on the subject matter. Or thirdly I have an opinion nothing more. Fourth, it will be attacked on a moral basis, I am being critical or judgmental of others. Fifth, the view may be correct, but you lack knowledge, you don't know enough or there is more to know. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and some of it is the mental's need to have shifting opinions and to work from thought to counter thought. Some is the emotions dominating the thought.

This purification is only possible when someone excepts the flow of inspiration, the ability to see. Occasionally in extreme situations people have intuitive flashes, but to integrate subtle senses, higher knowledge, foreknowledge, clear seeing, etc.. one has to do the work. For instance there is the impulse to know, and the impulse to go and read (google search.) One involves quieting the mind and concentrating inwardly, keeping that concentration, sometimes over the course of many days or years until all is revealed.

There is also the problem initially of self knowledge. The example I like to use is 911. Having dreams that preceded it, the dreams showed me foreknowledge of the events, but not in a predictable way. The event was only clear in hindsight. However the predictive power was accurate and useful for predicting how I would react to the event and the personality changes that would result. More than a prediction it showed that in the inner self things were all ready being prepared and the evolutionary problems to be dealt with were understood. Self knowledge is not what some are lookin' for. They tend to only see in terms of the external physical knowledge. They want stock market numbers, not insight into one's emotional-mental configurations with money.

All of this has to be purified. Acceptance of sight is a big obstacle for some, especially those who need external validation for their thoughts. If one were to express some of the insights to others they would dismiss them for their own agenda.

One the one hand there is those people working to mend the rift between science and spirituality. On the other hand there is Small Mental Gods that creep in and distort this endeavor. If all it all boils down to a matter of theoretical, or authoritative supremacy, a matter of broadening the mind of science so they use the scientific method to investigate more things, things that might have been considered taboo in earlier times then that is hardly an integration. If consciousness and the tools of consciousness such as the practice of pranayama need to be validated in order for them to be thought of as useful practices then you are still operating from the mental asura rather than from the realm of the spiritual Gnosis. Everything will have to be measured by science first, pass inspection, and this is the way it is now already. Instead of denying spirit, science can open the door to spirit so long as spirit passes the test. This will help science and our world immensely, but doesn't really represent any change. Even if it is part of the work towards integration. The problem not being in the science, like brain wave analysis in meditators, but in the propitiation of the mental gods.

The main thrust of practice is to be able to develop the flow of insight, rather than be dependent on the external. For instance at higher levels of development one can acquire the power to know medicinal plants. Meaning that you can encounter an illness in someone, meditate on that and know what to do. You will know the plant, where to find it, and how to use it. This is different from looking it up in a book, memorizing the properties of various herbs and the like. So one could make a big deal over the writing of words on water and then looking at the snowflakes formed, which I am skeptical about as presented in The Messages from Water by Masuro Emoto (freezing temperature determines the size of snowflakes, a warm day has bigger flakes that a very cold day.) Though as the art of blending science and spirituality, in the same way I like the verisimilitude of Michael Crichton (http://www.crichton-official.com/). It's most wondrous.

You can argue with a fundamentalist and listen to the word belief over and over again, and you can enjoy the same fighting argumentation by reading science. There are things understood, verifiable things even in medicine, but go to more than one doctor and you will get different answers. This is the mental realm of external knowledge. We live in it. We live it.

It is an ancient practice to say mantras over water and then ingest the water. The effect of consciousness on food is a big consideration also. People cooking while chanting mantras is a good thing. I notice differences when receiving prasad from a highly evolved person than eating something at a potluck. Here the knowledge comes from awareness and experience. That is what you want.

To come to know something through putting the will of concentration on it. To hold it in awareness until its nature is revealed has to come hand in hand with the reason for knowing.

At one point in my development I began to use off the body energy work. No one taught me this, and it wasn't something that was popular like it is now, such as with Reiki, or Quantum Touch. I could feel people's energy from doing lots of breathing exercises, chi kung, and internal martial arts, and would begin to balance them, working out blocks, etc. This was valuable for me for several reasons. One it showed me that Pranavidya was extremely important. Doing pranayama to open up energy pathways and increase the flow of energy. The second reason was that as I worked on people they would inevitably start talking about the emotional reason behind their illness. The illness was a symbolic expression of the problem. So this meant that the inner work, on emotional traumas, personality defects, dysfunctional ideas etc could be changed by non mental means. This I already knew, yoga, meditation will slowly transform you, or quickly if you cooperate. If the yoga that you are doing is really working and built upon that knowledge. Just doing poses, or working on your abs won't do it, or it may do it, but be limited in it's effect. Super precise alignments are not necessarily it either since it is a process that incorporates all levels of the being. You could do the exact pose, but the internal alignment, the mindset you are doing it with could be wrong. The aspiration is more effective, see below...

The third thing that became obvious was that improper practice led to imbalances. The most obvious one I could see was over-centering in Tai Chi. Or in Yoga over developing the will with a strong ego that reduces receptivity, often because of insecurity about right knowledge, corrected by an overly mental fixation on alignment details in an attempt to fill in the lack of security. This brings in the need to control and force the body. That attitude to force and control the body is then projected on the students. Knowledge is rajas.

Fourth was discovery that working on peoples' stuff meant that you could pick it up. If you concentrate on something imbalanced you take on the same flow. In the same way we can talk about mirror neurons your body will adapt to theirs. I have a friend who used to come into conversations and we would lose all the spiritual quality. You could feel this inert dropping of the energy to dullness. The friend was working as a blood tech at the VA taking care of severely mentally impaired patients. This meant one needs protection. I found a simple method of protection that is discussed below.

Fifth was the problem of lack of development. I found people that I could see the problem, and alleviate the symptoms, but not be very effective on in terms of healing, because the person needed to resolve the issue and was unwilling. I could see things and the reason. The message was loud and trying to get through. It was having to be loud and trying to come through me because the person didn't want to hear it.

Sixth was the feeling of receptivity. I could feel when I could really help someone and when they were resistant. This is a big time saver. If they are not receptive don't waste time. Why argue with a fundamentalist when it is not about rational thought, it is about emotion?

Now this is where it all sums up, at least for awhile.