Body is the Temple for the Dehi

It was to remind people in the villages to think of God that the ancients built temples which towered above all other buildings. The temple tower was the first thing the villagers saw when they woke up in the morning. The sight of the temple spire immediately aroused in them spontaneous feelings of adoration. It must be recognized that it was not a crazy feeling which inspired the ancients to build huge temples at great expense. These multi-storied temple towers were built so that they might constantly evoke sacred thoughts about God in the minds of the people.

It has been said: "The body (deha) is like a temple for the Dehi (indwelling eternal Spirit)." Just as a doctor reminds you of illness, and a lawyer makes you think of litigation, in the same manner when you look at your body you must remember God.

Baba (thought for the day)

I had to get used to it first to see in the body a temple of God. But it was at the same time charming and nice to think that way. I only noticed much later that I had to see it that way, because I was focused on the watcher and began to get insights and those insights didn’t make sense, if we don’t see the body as a temple.

The higher self was living in that body, but in the inner view it was separate from the body, it was light and beautiful, transcendental and only love and of course, never affected directly by the body, because there was a gap between the body and the light body of the higher self. In that gap was just a ribbon of a blue color and written in it was ‘self’. I was glad that it was there written that ‘self’, because I would have thought that it was God I saw in that light and beauty and love and outside of myself, but like that as it was my own self, it was not possible to project it outside even though it was outside, in that other body and that gap in between, it was like someone else was my own self, it felt more like seeing the neighbor as my own self than seeing my own self. It was the mirror of the other reflecting in love my own self and it was beautiful beyond measures and only love, it was an amazing insight.

The body is the temple of that beautiful being which is our own higher self and ever since I try to understand how it got there, why it looked like it looked and why it was in the dream that insight and why it is not possible to just know that we are that and not even after we have had the insight of it.

The thing is with insights, they need to get confirmed. So when after already a while Darshan in Baba’s presence and insights began to be positive and beautiful and we felt good, because he reflected as our parents and that felt like home, when it was in the air as ‘I am That’, it reflected that reality of the higher self, no doubt, he is that. 

It was understood on the intellectual level, I was convinced of it totally, only one thing was missing, the inner confirmation.

tat tvam asi, ( Sanskrit: “thou art that”) in Hinduism, the famous expression of the relationship between the individual and the Absolute. The statement is frequently repeated in the sixth chapter of the Chandogya Upanishad (c. 600 bce) as the teacher Uddalaka Aruni instructs his son in the nature of brahman, the supreme reality. The identity expressed in this judgment was variously interpreted by the different darshans (schools) of the orthodox philosophy of Vedanta. The phrase was given its most literal interpretation by the 8th–9th-century thinker Shankara of the Advaita(Nondualist) school, for whom the statement was one of the great assertions fundamental to his doctrine. (Wikipedia)

The experience of ‘I am That’ in the air during Darshan was a confirmation of the ‘higher self’. It said more or less, ‘I exist, I am real’, even if it was ‘only an insight’ and in the dream and it would be possible if we are in a real bad mad monkey mind to ignore it, because of outer reasons like job, family, fame, name and money, all that what we think has a value for our mind and what helps us to live in self-aggrandizement.  

I noticed with Osho all those Sannyasins had the name added to Deva and I got it in the ‘insight’ and in the dream and he said Devi Ma. I was not initiated by another Sannyas, but by the inner master and he was in the dream.

One lady I had met in disco called me once ‘Priya Deva’ and I thought that she shouldn’t change my name. I guess she felt disturbed that it was ‘Devi’ and I was in myself smiling, because it is also a confirmation of that ‘higher self’, it is that level of ‘that’ and sat, the eternal non-changing value and in that light will everything in that world and in the mind be limited and always changing. It is the non-changing principle and part of my higher self and that is also a confirmation of it that my name is not Deva, but Devi.

The Deha, the body is a temple from the very moment when we get aware that we have the ‘Dehi’ the indweller as observer and light and non-changing principle in our own higher self.

So it is essential to see the body as the temple of God.

It has been said: "The body (deha) is like a temple for the Dehi (indwelling eternal Spirit)." Just as a doctor reminds you of illness, and a lawyer makes you think of litigation, in the same manner when you look at your body you must remember God.

We might think it is easy, but it is not. We always forget it and in Baba’s presence we all thought that he is God and we are human, there was that gap between the avatar and master and just being human and in the mind and it was easier to adore him than to realize that we are God as well and that is still the same today. People go and sing Bhajans and feel good and he takes care and we have nothing to do but feel good and that is not it.

Who am I? That is the main question and if we do not enquire and try to get the right answer and we just feel good in singing once a week, that is certainly not what we experiences in being with Baba in Darshan, because it is not enough, it is not enough Tapas, not enough discrimination, seeing it in our own life and going on no matter what obstacles are there.

Fire emerges when one wooden stick is rubbed against another. Can two sticks placed next to each other produce the fire? No. Fire though latent in them, emerges only through the act of rubbing of the sticks. What do these sticks symbolize? The sticks represent the human body. The fire of wisdom (jnana) is present in subtle form within us since our birth and is inert. Spiritual effort (Sadhana) is the process of rubbing the sticks. Where is the butter present in the milk? Butter has always been present in the milk and could be obtained only after the milk had been converted to curd and the curd was churned. Once butter is obtained from the buttermilk, it remains as butter without becoming milk. Likewise, in the human body, a divine power pervades every part of the body, which, after the experience of a Sakshatkar (vision of the Divine) will not be attached to the body.

The higher self is the butter in the milk and it has to be churned to find it, to realize it as light and love in our own higher self. Spiritual effort is the process of rubbing the sticks. We have to constantly discriminate, what does that mean?

As Baba always tells, ‘I am God, I am God, I am not different from God’, and body is the temple of God. Seeing it in our own life means to know the difference between mind and Atman. If we tell, ‘I am Atma Swarupa, the embodiment of Atma, it is the same as ‘I am God’ or that the body is the temple of God.

Who is God? He is in the observer, it is an universal principle in our own ‘I’ waking up in all beings as being present in the higher self and it is different from the body and the mind. What do we have to do? Go on no matter what obstacles are there …

It is not so easy to recognize an obstacle. If we are in the mind we are the mind, we are identified in the mind and not aware that it is an obstacle.

We have to be in the watcher, we have to be identified with the higher self and watch and discriminate between what is real and what is not real, between what is truth and what untruth. The higher self is that always existing, never changing being, it has no birth and no death, our eternal being and in that sense the body is the temple of that universal being.

If we are in a mind-hole in a deficiency hole, we are maybe not even able to discriminate between mind and just being, we project God outside of us and far away, just close enough to make our life more comfortable and to fill the hole of the mind, we think it is nice to be God blessed beings. God is out there and we are here.

He is the ocean and we are the waves tells us that there is no difference, there has to be oneness to awake in that reality that we are the same and not different from the universal being. He is the ocean and that is huge, bigger than the biggest and we are the waves and that is small and smaller than the smallest, but nevertheless part of the same oneness.