How One Should Meditate and Consider His Universal Form

Seeker: "Swami, thank you very much for your exposition on the conceptual framework of filognosy, the intelligence of uniting in respect of the Original Person of Yoga. Thus being motivated I am most glad to be able to engage in yoga and find enlightenment that way, but I have a few questions. What is the meaning of the path of perfection when I inevitably am physically bound to the material affair that time and again distracts me from the pure purpose of meditation? Within the time of a week I cannot hold on to that purity any longer and have to make love, engage in some sport, go to the cinema, take care of material matters or do something with my favorite club. I cannot just like that neglect my life in this respect, those kind of matters are part of my psychic, physical and social health. What advise should I go for, the one of material interest or the spiritual one? Whereupon should I meditate now, what should I do, what should I think of, what should I work for? And what should I forget about and give up?"

Teacher: "It is good to ask yourself questions about the Person of the True Self. That purifies the mind. Normally you keep on ruminating about household affairs, material affairs and forget to think of the reality of the soul. Generally you are busy at home with sleeping and being of love towards your partner or relatives and away from home you occupy yourself with making money and your relations. Against your better knowledge, you thus attach too much to temporary affairs that pretty soon cause you more trouble than give you satisfaction. Therefore you must try to keep the Person of the Highest Satisfaction in mind and for the sake of Him, your Ideal Self, try to speak in a positive sense. That, as a consequence, will liberate you from the never ending desires and fear about your material existence. Successfully engaging in yoga, in your self-realization, and how you by your three births (see Inspiration 1.9) arrive at the full awareness of your potential, all depends on your ability to remember the Ideal Person of goodness, conscience, happiness, knowledge and stability. Grown wise having mastered the precepts and restrictions of a spiritual life, you are above the hassle belonging to a material life and take a healthy interest in the qualities of the Person of Purity.
This story about the completeness of self-realization we call filognosy, constitutes a supplement to the known classical scriptures and culture of yoga. It essentially does not deviate therefrom and is dovetailed with the so-called 'Story of the Fortunate One' that more or less constitutes the great storybook, a bible if you want, about the Great Person of Yoga. Despite myself pretty well being versed in the knowledge and practice of yoga, my attention was drawn to the clarifying explanations of this book about the Person of Self-realization and thus I studied it. You are a courageous soul and therefore I in these inspirations will report to you about the contents of this book. Anyone who sincerely attends to these inspirations and attaches belief to them, will soon develop a firm faith in the Person of Liberation.
Whether you are full of desire exercising no respect or a yogi full of devotion free from anxiety and fear, for both kinds of people the meditative - aloud together and alone or else in silence for oneself - repeating of the names of the Person of Meditation constitutes the way (see introduction). You have wasted your life in foolishness when you never had this experience. When you manage to serve the higher cause thus for but one hour a day, you already have a better life. A mighty king who once was about to die cast aside everything for it and then experienced His full protection. Therefore, dear seeker bound to matter, your life, which is so very fixed week by week, should inspire you to all those practices that traditionally belong to finding a better life. Someone like you who after a week cannot manage the discipline any longer, must be able to live without fear. Live your life therefore the way you think is good for your health, but do break again and again, in order to be able to meditate, with the help of the weapon of detachment, with all desires and the other ruminations concerning your material existence.
For the sake of your meditation, that way being of self control, discard your household worries and such and choose, with your body clean, a quiet place to sit for meditation. Submit your mind using the primal vibration of AUM and next keep your mind silent by controlling your ingoing and outgoing breath in a balanced way in order not to forget the essence of the Absolute Person Inside. The mind always eager to engage, distracts you and arrests your breath, for as long as you, like with your work, are motivated for results. Lead therefore with your intelligence your senses away from their objects and consciously fix the mind on the names of the Person of Virtue. That on itself should be enough. When that does not do the job, you can form an image in your mind of His form you next systematically observe. Ultimately it is the purpose not to be distracted, that there is nothing else but the refuge formed by Him as the Person of Maintenance who appeases the mind. By thus concentrating yourself you can control the mind agitated and bewildered by passion and ignorance. Stable and undisturbed, the peace that follows puts an end to all the impurities originating from those  natural qualities. When you as a yogi make it a habit to reserve some time next to your material duties to focus yourself that way in devotion on the Person of Transcendence, you as a consequence, with the positive experience of that refuge, quickly will manage to unite your consciousness in His beatitude."

Sesker: "Concerning that attention... Can you summarize for me how exactly that concentrating works on the image of Him with which a person directly may put an end to the impurity of his mind?"

Teacher: "Once you have assumed the proper posture, have controlled your breath, conquered your attachments and have subdued your senses, then use your intelligence to direct your mind at the gross material form of the Supreme Personality. This gross material universe, wherein you perceive all kinds of material matters from the past in the present and also in the future, constitutes the undeniable truth of His personal, with the Time changing and thus living, more or less material appearance. This body of His constitutes a covering of seven layers that is traditionally called the universal form of the Supreme Personality. These layers of His body consist, from the outside inwards, of the ones of the material, the vital, the mental, the spiritual, the blissful, the consciousness layer and the last layer of the individual soul. His outer appearance knows different higher and lower worlds or spheres of life.

The lower worlds you can compare to the soles of His feet, His heels, ankles, shanks,  knees, thighs and buttocks. The cosmic space you can compare to His navel and the higher worlds you can imagine to be His chest, neck, mouth, forehead and top of his head. The gods you can consider His arms, the directions His ears and sound His sense of hearing. His nostrils constitute a pair of twin gods, fragrance is there as His smell and His mouth you can recognize in the blazing fire in which one offers oblations. The atmosphere you can regard as the sockets of His eyes, the sun as His eyeball, day and night as his eyelids, the supreme authority as a representation of His frowning eyebrows, water as His palate and the sweet juice as characteristic for His tongue. The verses in the scriptures constitute His thoughts, and the power of death is there as His jaws. In proofs of affection you can recognize His teeth and in the beauty of nature you can recognize His attractive game of the bewildering material world. The entire projection of creation is nothing but the glance He casts.
Qualities like modesty, hankering, belief and disbelief you can regard as respectively His upper lip, His chin, His breast and His back. Consider the original procreator as His genitals, the friends as His testicles, the oceans as His middle and the mountains as His bones. Think about rivers as His veins, about plants and trees as His bodily hairs, about the sky as His breath, about time as His movement and about His actions as the interaction of the natural qualities. The clouds you can regard as the hairs on His head, the cause of the creation as His intelligence and the moon, which is there as the beacon for all changes, you can regard as His mind. His complete whole you can see as His consciousness, the inner cause you can regard as His Mercifulness, in animals as the horse, the mule, the camel and the elephant you can recognize His nails and with the wild animals and the rest of the quadrupeds you can think of His hips. Singing birds are suggestive of His art, the founding father is indicative of the contents of His thoughts and humanity you can regard as His residence. The inhabitants of heaven constitute His music and the memory of the horrors of war constitutes His power. Intellectuals you can see as His face, rulers as His control, traders as His legs and laborers as His feet. His many names and divine appearances are there as the providers of all that is needed as acquired from performing sacrifices.

The enumeration of all these parts of His universal form I presented to you so that you in an intelligent way can fix your mind on His gross body, the form outside of which nothing else can be found. The Person of All Persons thus can be seen in many ways in many appearances, just like a dreamer can see himself in many situations. When you do not want to be lowered by attachments, you have to concentrate on Him as the Supreme Truth and ocean of bliss and on nothing else."

Source for this Inspiration:
S.B. Canto 2, Chapter 1