What or who is our Higher Self? Are we our gross physical body? Or maybe we are a group of bodies? This is a very complex topic, so there is no understanding of it due to the fact that the answers to these questions come to a person when he is sufficiently self-aware of himself! What is the way to go to practice for this understanding to come?
One of the methods to help us understand who we really are is meditation. For example, meditation on the physical body gives us the understanding that our body is not our Self. Similarly, meditation on the subtle and causal body, or bodies, leads to the understanding that the Self is not our body.
As soon as these three levels are worked out, that is, we have worked with the gross, subtle and causal body, the ability to control our body comes. As soon as we dis-identify with our bodies in our understanding, this skill comes very quickly.
Why is this happening? This comes from the fact that we understand that we and our bodies are completely different things. We not only know this at a theoretical level, at the level of trust in knowledge, we can already feel it! We already know that we are not dependent on the body! And what we do not depend on falls under our control!
We can work with the body at the level that if, for example, we don’t like something in it, we can easily remake and change it the way we want! If we have not fully realized that we are not dependent on the body, then this is like a situation when we ourselves are trying to pull ourselves out of the hole by our hair.
If we try to control our body at a time when the knowledge that we are not this body did not come to us, then such attempts will lead to disappointment and failure! On the one hand, we subconsciously consider ourselves to be our body, and on the other hand, we try to control it. This is a contradiction! It turns out a situation, as if in one hand they were holding an apple, and with the other hand they would try to pull it out.
All our attempts to control our body until the moment we have not worked it out in meditation are useless!
There is a film made in the seventies called “Indian Yogis, Who Are They?”. There one man drank hydrochloric acid and ate a glass. This is how the strongest ability to control your body is manifested! Westerners are attracted to such abilities. For example, the ability to sit on nails or walk on broken glass. Such abilities will come by themselves the moment you realize that you are not your own body!
This is for the physical, gross body. The next stage is when the practitioner works with his subtle body. When the understanding comes that the subtle body is also an outsider for you, like clothing, the ability to control your experiences and sensations comes. This is a very high level of yoga!
Finally, the third stage is managing your thoughts! This is already the highest stage. And the people who achieved it are the Yoga Teachers! It is at this stage that we will be able to completely control our body! Something, for example, does not suit us in us. We can easily change this whenever we want!
In the book "Victory of Gorokho", it is said that in order to enlighten the Teacher, Gorokho turned into a woman. He did this because only dancers were allowed into the palace. And in this guise, Gorokho danced for his teacher until he came out of his darkened state. Then he turned into a man again.
Yoga tells us that at such a high level of consciousness it is not difficult to do this! If we take an axiomatic approach to this question, then it really is not a problem for a highly developed soul. Because we have no gender! In this life we, for example, are a man, and in the next, very much can be, we will become a woman.
