Comparisons

This posting is more of a ‘note to self’; a collection of ramblings and musings that I feel the need to investigate further. 

I was woken in the early hours, as has been usual recently, by a compulsion to go downstairs and meditate in the peace of the night.  I followed my instincts, but found it very difficult to focus and let go, so took myself back to bed a short time later.  Ordinarily when I wake I meditate and pray, but this morning I was feeling a bit jaded so reached for my iPhone and checked my Twitter account.  There I saw a posting from @Bhava_Jim, ‘Enlightenment and Meditation: A new vision of Christ Jesus’.  I clicked on the link and saw the text made reference to Paramahansa Yogananda.  Knowing nothing about him, other than the fact that at a guess he had something to do with the yoga of today, I Googled him and was immediately struck by how much the photo of him in Wikipedia looked like Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, both of whom had that enigmatic expression of inner peace and somehow transcend gender. It's almost as if da Vinci was inspired to look into the future. Aware that I know as little about da Vinci as I do about Yogananda I felt compelled to learn more, so started reading through the Wikipedia entries about him.  My hands were tingling with energy as I did so.

 

I was struck by so many similarities between the two men and was fascinated and intrigued by their respective lives many centuries apart. It is clear from his work that Leonardo da Vinci was very deeply connected to God but I can’t help wondering if not only was he a talented artist, philosopher and engineer but also one of the ‘seers’ who had an understanding beyond mere religion. An understanding of consciousness and the God within each of us that reaches through time and across many eras.

Yogananda taught ‘Self-realisation is the knowing in all parts of body, mind, and soul that you are now in possession of the kingdom of god, that you do not have to pray that it come to you, that god’s omnipresence is your omnipresence; and that all you need to do is improve your knowing’ , which resonates deep within me as the truth.  I see he practiced Kriya Yoga, and Wikipedia shows me he gave an explanation of it in his Autobiography:

‘The Kriya Yogi mentally directs his life energy to revolve, upward and downward, around the six spinal centres (medullary, cervical, dorsal, lumbar, sacral and coccygeal plexuses) which correspond to the twelve astral signs of the zodiac, the symbolic Cosmic Man.’

This immediately made me think of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and to wonder if there was any link to the zodiac (remember, I am uneducated in spiritual and artistic matters).  Sure enough a Google search ‘Vitruvian Man zodiac’ immediately throws up a wealth of speculation on the subject.  I read also that da Vinci was intrigued throughout his life by mathematics, ratios and proportions and again, I can’t help but wonder how spirit, religion, numerology, astrology, clairvoyancy and the like are linked. 

This hasn’t led me to any great insight or conclusions, but it has prompted me to learn more about both men, and to try to find out more about Kriya Yoga.