Internal Worship

  Sage Vasishtha

THE LORD continued:

I shall now declare to you the internal worship of the self which is the greatest among all purifiers and which destroys all darkness completely. This is the nature of perpetual meditation - whether one is walking or standing, whether one is awake or asleep, in and through all of one's actions. One should contemplate this supreme Lord who is seated in the heart and who brings about, as it were, all the modifications within oneself. One should worship the 'bodha lingam' (the manifest consciousness or self-awareness) which sleeps and wakes up, goes about or stands, touches what is to be touched, engages in varied external activities, lends value to all actions and remains as peace in the vital organs in the body (deha-lingam in the text may also refer to the three lingams associated with the psychic centers). This inner intelligence should be worshipped with whatever comes to one unsought. Remaining firmly seated in the stream of life and its experiences after having bathed in self-knowledge one should worship this inner intelligence with the materials of self-realization.

One should contemplate the Lord in the following manner: he is the light illumined by the solar force as well as the lunar force, he is the intelligence that eternally lies hidden in all material substances, he is the extrovert awareness that flows through the bodily avenues on to the external world, he is the prana that moves one one's face (nose), he transforms contacts of the senses into meaningful experiences, he rides the chariot composed of prana and apana, the dwells in secret int he cave of one's heart. He is the knower of the knowable and the doer of all actions, the experiencer of all experiences, the thinker of all thoughts. It is he who knows all parts or limbs thoroughly, who is recognized by being and non-being and who illumines all experiences.

He is without parts but he is the all, he dwells in the body but he is omnipresent, he enjoys and does not enjoy, he is the intelligence in every limb. He is the thinking faculty in the mind. He rises int he middle of prana and apana. He dwells in the heart, in the throat, in the middle of the palate, the middle of the eyebrows and at the tip of the nose. He is the reality in all the thirty-six elements (or meta physical categories), he transcends the internal states, he is the one that produces the internal sounds, and he brings into being the bird known as mind. He is the reality in what is described as imagination and non-imagination. He dwells in all beings as oil dwells in the seed. He dwells in the heart-lotus and again he dwells throughout the body. He shines as pure consciousness. He is immediately seen everywhere, for he is the pure experiencing in all experiences, who apparently polarizes himself when apprehending the objects of such experiences.