Читать книгу A Woman's Guide to Tantra Yoga - Vimala McClure - Страница 32

Long ago, in many primitive cultures, when someone had a disabling disease, it was thought to be the work of a demon who had either projected some object (a dart, a worm, etc.) inside the person’s body, or had extracted the patient’s soul. The best cure was thought to be trepanning, or making a hole in the person’s skull so the evil spirit or object would come out, or the soul would reenter.

Later, as recently as the nineteenth century, healers remained convinced that such diseases could be removed from the body somehow; they cut arteries or applied leeches to the patient’s body in hopes of draining the “bad blood.” All through history, people have disbelieved or misunderstood that which they could not see. Medical science has been greatly aided by the anatomists who dissected and examined animal and human bodies. We were finally able to grasp, after thousands of years of trial, error, and superstition, the subtler workings of the physical organs. Yoga experts say that we are almost as primitive in our understanding of the human body and mind now as those ancient physicians. We have yet to realize that the physical body is only one layer in the human organism, one layer of mind. There are many subtle organs, of a psychic nature, that have yet to find their way into anatomical textbooks.

Yoga practitioners long ago discovered these subtle anatomical parts through deep meditation. They experimented, they observed, and they discovered a body “beyond the body”— a kind of psychic structure. They found its development essential to spiritual progress. All of the Tantric spiritual practices came out of these discoveries, updated and refined over thousands of years. Yogic physicians of the future will work with the subtle psychic systems as well as our physical organs to help us heal ourselves, to prevent disease, and to correct imbalances that may affect our mental and spiritual well-being. They will look back with horror upon some of the primitive practices of modern medicine; they will probably shake their heads at the astounding ignorance of human beings in our time.

The physical body and the subtle body are interrelated; they have an impact on one another. For example, a blockage or disturbance in one of the psychic centers can affect physical health because the glandular system is intimately associated with and affected by these psychic centers. Similarly, if the glandular system is out of balance, your mental health will be compromised, a disturbance will arise in one or more of the psychic centers, and your meditation will be impaired. As you progress in your meditation, you will have experiences related to the psychospiritual anatomy. Your spiritual practices and higher lessons in meditation will directly involve these subtle systems; it may be helpful to gain a basic understanding of them now.