Passage 4

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In plain words

He gave five organs of knowing. Seeing. This itself is light. We must put this light to good use. We must not misuse it. We must see the good. Only then does this light stay a divine kalā and make this kalā worthwhile. The second is hearing. Through this ear we must hear only the things that develop the holy supreme principle. We must not waste this divine sound called the ear. Now the third. We must take in fragrance. It gives not only health but joy and delight. A foul smell brings not only ill health but unrest as well. So this fragrance itself is God's form as air. Now the skin. We must not touch everyone. This touch is very holy. To keep it holy, the great sages of those days left villages and hamlets and all of this, went into the forest in solitude, and kept to dhyāna alone. In the body there is a divine power. That is called the power of Cit. That power of Cit is like a current. When this current touches another, that current enters this one and this current enters that one. Through it the good qualities in us may vanish, and bad qualities may enter. That is exactly why they laid down that we should bow only to holy men, only to holy persons, touch their feet or make contact in some other way, and so rid ourselves of the bad feelings in us. Those who sit for dhyāna must not sit together, close to one another. One person's body must not touch another's at all. We must sit apart, draw forth the power within us, and experience the hidden divine power inwardly, with Ānanda. ‘Antarbahiśca tat sarvaṃ vyāpyanārāyaṇasthitaḥ’: this alone is the true principle. So, precisely because we keep company with anyone at all, touching as the fancy takes us, and go on experiencing these acts in many ways, our divinity keeps wasting away. So the divine men of those days became divine men because they set the five elements within them on a holy path.

Now the five prāṇas. I spoke of them yesterday. In our body there are seventy-two crore nāḍīs. The power called vyāna flows evenly through the nāḍīs. Precisely because this divine power of prāṇa called vyāna flows evenly through these seventy-two crore nāḍīs, it gives health.