Projecting union with diety

[cognition]

THE SYSTEM OF NYASA
In certain forms of ritualistic worship performed in temples, the person performing the worship makes certain gestures called nyasa. There are varieties of nyasas called anganyasa, karanyasa, etc. Only religious priests or a person expert in performance of ritualistic worship will know what nyasa actually means. It is a Sanskrit word which means 'placing oneself', or 'the placement of anything', in a particular location, in a given manner.

This system of 'placing' is followed in ritualistic worship of a deity in a temple by touching different parts of one's body and concentrating in the mind at the same time the corresponding part of the object, the deity, or divinity concerned. We must remember that ritualistic worship also is a kind of meditation. Worship is not a mechanical action. The mind is actively operating there; otherwise, it would become lifeless and would not bring the desired result.

In this placement of the process of nyasa the parts of the shape, contour or bodily structure of the divinity adored are correspondingly placed in the respective parts of the body or the personality of the worshipper. When I touch my forehead, or a part of my head, I utter a prayer, a word, a mantra signifying that the forehead or the head of the divinity has entered my head and is my head. So, I am not seeing the head or the forehead of the divinity with my eyes as something looking at me; rather it looks through me, through my eyes, and is 'me'. A little bit of strong imagination and feeling is necessary here, in this practice.

Suppose, instead of the idol or the murti of the divinity worshipped, we consider a person in front. You have to make that person one with you. There is a great philosophy behind this technique. It is highly beneficial and also dangerous, if the mind is not pure while attempting the technique.

I am looking at you, and when I look at you I am seeing your eyes; they are outside me. But that is not the proper way of looking at you. You have to look through my eyes and I have to look through your eyes, so that instead of myself and yourself being face to face, we stand in collaboration parallelly – one 'enters' the other. The two eyes have become one eye; the two heads have become one head and they come to a state of coalescence. Who is seeing? This question will not arise at that time. Are you seeing the object or the object is seeing you? You may say it is either way. It may be that you are seeing through the eye of the object or the object is seeing through your eyes. If this practice of nyasa in the process of worship becomes successful, divinity will enter the worshipper.

The great god, the incarnation, whoever be your ideal you are worshipping, is seeing through your eyes and you are seeing through its eyes so that it 'is' you and you 'are' it. I hope you are able to appreciate what this means. Its hands are your hands and your hands are its hands. Your heart is its heart; its heart is your heart. Your feet are its, and vice versa. Every part of your body is correspondingly the part of the body of that divinity you are adoring in meditation.

Then what happens? You have absolute control over that object in the same way as you have complete control over the limbs of your own body. I can tell my hand to lift, and it lifts; I can tell my legs to walk and they walk. But if I tell the legs of somebody else to walk, they need not, because they are not identified with my consciousness. The legs of another person have not become one with my legs; therefore, I cannot tell them to walk. They will not move. But if my legs have become another's legs, and if I tell them to move, they will move.

The whole building will move if your consciousness has identified itself with it, part by part, little by little, bit by bit, in every little detail, and you become the whole building itself. This is the secret behind the nyasa technique of worship in the ritual of daily performance in temples, or even in one's own altar at home. Such a process has to be adopted in our meditation on the object, whatever be that object which we have chosen for the purpose.

There is an interesting aphorism of sage Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras which refers to this kind of process: The identification of yourself with the object of meditation is somewhat like the identity seen when a coloured object is brought near a clear crystal, so that the colour has entered the crystal; the crystal becomes red if a red flower is brought near it. The objective and subjective sides enter into each other and the one is indistinguishable from the other.

The crystal may be compared to the meditating consciousness. The object of meditation may be regarded as something similar to that which is brought near the crystal. In the process of the entry of the structure of the object into the structure of the crystal, and the very substantiality of the crystal itself, the two get identified into a single mass of being, so that one will see that the object itself has become the crystal or the crystal has become the object.

The object 'flows' into the subject; the subject 'flows' into the object. Or to cite another illustration, imagine that there are two tanks filled with water up to the brim and they are on equal level (not one high and one below). There is a passage between one tank and the other tank so that water flows slowly through that passage from one tank to the other tank, and from the other tank to this tank. One will not know the water of which tank is flowing to which tank. There is a mutual commingling of the waters of two tanks. The water in between, in that passage, may be considered as the water of this tank or that tank.

In this consciousness of the identification through the placement of nyasa mentioned, the object becomes united with the consciousness of the meditator in such a way that, at that time, in that experience, one will not know whether the object is within oneself or oneself is within the object. Who is in whom? Is the object meditating upon you, or are you meditating upon the object? If the great God is in front of you, is He contemplating you when He gazes at you, or are you contemplating on Him? Either way the answer is correct.