The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent carry it away by force! (Matthew 11:12) These are the words of Jesus. The kingdom must be taken violently, by storm. What could this possibly mean?
We can understand Jesus' words in the context of the practice of Yoga, especially the practice of Sudarshan Kriya.*
Jesus taught that the kingdom of heaven is within you (Luke 17). Therefor, we know that when the violent carry it away, Jesus depicts no physical pillage, no conquest of an earthly kingdom. The verse must describe an inward passion, a movement of attention to seize a new state of consciousness.
Jesus uses the Greek verb harpazzo: to carry away by force. It means to seize, rob, even to sexually seduce. This verb also describes a mighty wind transporting objects utterly helpless to resist. The Old Testament uses the same image of whirlwind (in Hebrew, galgal) to describe how the Lord carries away prophets like Ezekiel and Elijah in a breath of divine inspiration.
In the Bible's highly charged language, a rapture seizes our soul and has its way with us. We are like chaff in the wind, like lovers seduced by the beloved. This is how we enter the kingdom of God: not by intellectual reasoning, not by repeating prayers of conventional piety, but through a wild movement, a bewildering force, a kriya.
In Sanskrit, kriya literally means creative movement. It is the root of the English word, create. When the grace of the guru stirs in us the transforming wind of kriya, the rhythm and power of this creative breath transports each cell of our body to a higher state of vibration, and carries the mind up into a silence beyond thought.
If we want to be re-created, we must be destroyed, for God is a consuming fire (Deut. 4:24). The fiery breath that destroys what is old creates what is new. Meditation is knowing how to surrender to the wind. In Jesus' language, spirit, wind, and breath are exactly the same word, pneuma. When we surrender to the movement of kriya, we surrender to the divine Spirit through our breath.
In the science of Yoga, this ever destroying and creative storm of the Spirit is called Shakti. Shakti is the creative fire of the Goddess within us. Her movement spirals up our spine, lifting our soul to divine love through the transforming whirlwind of kriya.
To practice the kriya, we need courage. The word courage is from a Latin root meaning the heart. In Old French and Old English, courage meant love. True courage is not resistance but surrender. The Master's Kriya seizes our heart, overpowers our mind, burns away what binds us to the past, and refines our karmic dross until all that remains, by grace, is the radiant eternal jewel of awareness, glistening in the now.
Do not resist the wild wind of the Master's grace!
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* Sudarshan Kriya is the specific healing breath practice taught by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in the Art of Living program. LINK (http://srisriravishankar.org/)
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