The Inner Journey

CHAPTER 1

Body: The first step for a seeker
3 February 1968 am in Ajol Meditation Camp

[Note: This is the final edit of the Hindi translation of Antar Yatra, later published as part of Sadhana
Path. This is for reference use only, pending publication.]

My Beloved Ones,
In this first meeting of the meditation camp, I would like to talk about the first step for a meditator, a
seeker. What is the first step? A thinker or a lover follow certain paths but a seeker has to travel on
a totally different journey. For a seeker, what is the first step on the journey?

The body is the first step for a seeker – but no attention or thought has been given to it. Not only at
certain times, but for thousands of years, the body has been neglected. The neglect is of two kinds.
Firstly, there are the indulgent people who have neglected the body. They have no experience of life
other than eating, drinking and wearing clothes. They have neglected the body, misused it, foolishly
wasted it – they have ruined their instrument, their veena.

If a musical instrument – for example, a veena – is ruined, music cannot arise out of it. Music is an
altogether different thing from the veena – music is one thing, the veena is another, but without the
veena music cannot arise.

Those people who have misused the body through indulgence are one type and the other type of
people are those who have neglected the body through yoga and renunciation. They have tortured
the body, they have suppressed it and they have been hostile towards it. And neither the people who
have indulged the body nor the ascetics who have tortured the body have understood its importance.
So there have been two kinds of neglect and torture of the veena of the body: one by the indulgers
and another by the ascetics. Both have done harm to the body. In the West, the body has been
harmed in one way and in the East, in another way, but we all are equal participants in harming
it. The people going to the whorehouses or to the pubs harm the body in one way, and the people
standing naked in the sun or rushing into the forests harm the body in another way.

Only through the veena of the body can the music of life arise. The music of life is an altogether
different thing from the body – it is totally different, something else – but only through the veena of
the body is there a possibility of attaining it. No proper attention has yet been given to this fact.
The first step is the body and the proper attention of the meditator towards the body. In this first
meeting I want to talk to you about this point.

A few things need to be understood.

The first thing: the soul has a connection with the body at some centers – our life energy comes
from these connections. The soul is closely related to these centers; from them our life energy flows
into the body.

The seeker who is not aware of these centers will never be able to attain to the soul. If I ask you
which is the most important center, which is the most important place in your body, you will probably
point to your head.

Man’s very wrong education has made the head the most important part of the human body. The
head or brain is not the most important center of life-energy in man. It is like going to a plant and
asking it what its most important and vital part is. Because the flowers can be seen at the top of the
plant, the plant and everybody else will say that the flowers are the most important part. So although
the flowers seem to be the most important they are not, the most important part are the roots, which
are not visible.

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