Thrust of Willpower Makes Your Sadhana Miraculous

The Life Energy (PRANA)

A person's identity remains the same when he is dead. You would continue to refer him by the same name; his face in the photographs would remain what it was when he was alive. Every one who knew him will recognize the face, as before. Unless it is damaged due to some accident or so, the face of a dead-body looks the same as what it was when the person was alive. Those of you who have seen some relative's or acquaintances dead body must have noticed it! A person, who was alive moments before, is now dead; no change in the appearance of his body, but it in now his dead-body. Why? What has changed? You may say that his heart is no longer beating; his body is not moving, etc. But you see the biochemical activities inside continue in the dead-body as well! That is what accounts for its gradual biodegradation. So instead of heartbeat and other normal reactions, some new activities start in the body. If no preservatives are applied, these reactions progress very rapidly. What was that which used to prevent these degrading reactions earlier? What was that because of which there was auto-regulation of the body-functions including the heartbeats and the brain impulses?

It is the energy of consciousness-force (chetana or chit-shakti) that is no longer available to the body. It is this vital spiritual energy (prana) because of which the body (and the person who was identified by the name given to the body) was alive. The physical components, material form, appearance, and the name and identity of the body are the same but it is dead and cannot do anything, cannot even prevent its degrading, if there is no chit-shakti in it. You may keep it in the graveyard, build Samadhi (tomb) on it, take its photograph, save its external physical existence (as mummy) by filling it with chemical preservatives and applying medicines on the skin, but by no means you can make it do anything on its own. Because, it is dead!

Do you notice a somewhat similar difference in the idols/statues or the pictures of gods kept in a shop or in a sculpture museum and those enshrined in a temple? Both the kinds are made up of pulp-papers, metal or wood, but those in the shop or museum are not worshipped. Why?