umunhum: > This is good stuff! The impulses from the individual's sensory perception is filtered through a mechanism that is influenced by the current body and

umunhum: > This is good stuff! The impulses from the individual's sensory perception is filtered through a mechanism that is influenced by the current body and it's stored history of retained memories. This influences the experience bringing the mind into the picture as it tries to gain an understanding of the perception using the history it has cataloged. > As long as your consciousness is plagued by the breath and the senses it cannot perform its proper function and is dominated by the mind. The breath gives life to the ego which is your thoughts on your life situation, a time based reality. Your mind then spends a good deal of time in the past and future, neither of which you are interested in. As long as the consciousness is plagued by senses, your mind is focused on body awareness that makes you believe you are a separate individual. The breath and the senses block your consciousness from it's most important job which is to tap into God consciousness and the all knowingness that it provides. > The goal is to shut down everything that is causing us to think we are having an individual experience and to turn on our communication system to God consciousness. So when your kundalini is completely functional, you tap into universal knowledge and discard your experience as an individual, realizing you are one with all. The rewards from this knowingness are so much greater than anything that could be gained by experiencing life as an individual. And so you start working for the good of all humanity and realize that God is the doer, you are just experiencing his work through you. You gain complete understanding of the temporary nature of your body, a prison that is the cause of your consciousness' feelings of separateness. In this state, your former desires and discomforts are either washed away or become trivial to you in the grand scheme of things. > This is why Satyananda writes that there are essentially two types of human beings: those who are on the pravritti path and those who are on the nivritti path. A man following the pravritti (outward) path looks away from bindu towards the outside world. He is almost entirely motivated by external events. This is the path of most people today and it leads away from self-knowledge and into bondage. The other path, the nivritti (reversed) path, is the spiritual path, the path of wisdom. On this path the individual begins to face the bindu, turning in towards the source of his being. This path leads to freedom. The path of evolution is the pravritti path of manifestation and extroversion. The path of involution leads back along the path that has produced your individual being. It leads back through the bindu to sahasrara. In fact, the whole purpose of yoga practice is to help direct your awareness along the involutionary path.