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The nervous system has two duties. The nerves allow you to interact with the world; and, as the yogis of ancient times discovered, the nerves also serve to connect you with God.
The life force in man’s body ordinarily flows outward from the brain and spine through the nerves to the senses and their external experiences. When in yoga meditation that energy is reversed to flow inward, it draws the consciousness to the subtle spiritual cerebrospinal centers of divine perception and God-realization.
Yoga teaches that within man’s brain and spine are seven subtle centers of life and consciousness. Yoga treatises refer to these centers as muladhara (coccygeal); svadhisthana (sacral), manipura (lumbar), anahata (dorsal), vishuddha (cervical), ajna (medulla and Christ (Kutastha) center between the eyebrows), and sahasrara (thousand-petaled lotus in the cerebrum).
Without the specialized powers lodged therein and flowing outward into the physical organs and senses, the body would be an inert mass of clay. Conversely, when the energy and consciousness are focused inward, the wondrous source and sustaining power of life is revealed, evolving from the supreme consciousness of the soul and Spirit.
Nervousness, the overstimulation of the nerves, ties the consciousness to the body; calmness conduces to God-communion. When you turn off external nervous energy and calm yourself in meditation, and the life force retires from the senses to the cerebrospinal centers of spiritual perception, your nervous system is then connected with superconsciousness, and you have God.
You are in the land of light, which is beyond the subconscious realm of sleep. Sleep is an unconscious way of turning off life energy from the nerves. You therefore get some rest during slumber, but you do not have the conscious experience of bliss that the superconscious state produces.
When you awaken from sleep, you are just the same as you were before sleep. But if you can cross the subconscious realm into the superconscious land of light, you will have the most wonderful experiences, and these produce lasting spiritual changes in the consciousness.
The more you can remain in that interiorized state of bliss in meditation, the more you will feel that joy with you all the time, even in the midst of activities.
Source: Paramahansa Yogananda in his book: Journey to Self-realization pp 90-91.
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