Baba ji teaches me to respect my body as the temple of God—and then gives me that experience.

Just by holding, touching, and reading Baba ji’s books, I experience bliss sprouting from within, and the truth that the body is the temple of God. By remembering Baba ji, I enter the pool of Consciousness and bathe in “the bliss of freedom,” repeating to myself that the body is the temple of God.

By repeating the mantra, in the early hours of meditation, through the recitation of Shri Guru Gita, by offering arati, and by contemplating his words, I am shown again and again that the body is the temple of God.

By remembering Baba ji’s teachings, I laugh, sing, and dance, experiencing that the body is the temple of God. In the deepest silence, with incredible love and serenity, I experience that my body is the temple of God.

Thank you, Baba ji, Bade Baba ji, and Gurumayi ji, for showing me that the body is the temple of God.

Pune, India

The understanding that the Guru, God, and I are one is beginning to manifest for me as a subtle experience of oneness. A quiet sense of union is arising, shifting my identity from something separate to a felt connection with what is infinite and eternal.

Reading Eesha’s reflection on her childhood stirred a memory of my own. When I was four or five, I met a girl on a swing set who said her name was the same as mine. I was stunned and told her, “That can’t be!” When she explained that others could share the same name, I ran to my mother in tears and asked, “If other people have my name, how will God find me?”

In that moment, I felt a deep terror of being lost from God’s awareness—a powerful experience of separation. Now, more than sixty-five years later, I sense a gentle reunion, a tender shift as that sense of separation dissolves, revealing that the divine has always lived within me—that I have always been home in the temple of God.

California, United States

After hearing Baba’s words in the Easter satsang, my focus has increased on holding this understanding of the body as the temple of God. I have been able to take care of my physical body better than before.

For some years now, I have contemplated the poem by Gurumayi ji “A Temple Without Form.” It has taught me how to be in touch with the heart, to experience Bade Baba’s energy within and without, and to see divinity in nature as an open-eyed meditation.

Seeing the orange flag and blue sky here in Gurudev Siddha Peeth seems to symbolize for me the union of the inner and outer being. Every day this reminds me that all that is outside is also in my being. And experiencing that Bade Baba is in everything brings me to my center, my heart, and refreshes for me the teaching that I have to enter my heart, where God dwells within me.

This thought, this belief helps me get in touch with the sacred space within. It is a blissful experience.

a Gurukula student in Gurudev Siddha Peeth

Early on in my sadhana, when I heard the teaching, “The body is the temple of God,” it did not land. On the other hand, the teaching, “I am not my body” did land. This understanding felt like a relief to me because my outward focus on societal norms led me to be judgmental about how I looked. At that time, eating well and exercising always felt like such “shoulds.”

After almost five decades of actively pursuing the Siddha Yoga path, I feel so much more content in my body! Judgmentalness and “shoulds” have dropped away considerably. I feel grateful for my body as it is. This in turn has prompted me to take better care of my body by eating better and regularly doing gentle exercises to help me stay balanced and healthier.

The teaching that my body truly is a temple of God lands now. I want to take care of my body out of respect and gratitude for the divine gift that it is—a vehicle to realize the Self.

Michigan, United States

For me going to a temple is to experience the divinity of the deity of the temple, within my heart. After offering my salutations to the deity, I sit in a quiet corner to experience the divine shakti of the deity. Regardless of who the deity is, I’m drawn deep within my heart, which leads me to a state of equipoise and the reflection of the deity within my heart.

Similarly, with the awareness that Gurumayi dwells within my heart, I keep analyzing my words, gestures, and actions wherever I am. This awareness helps me to be joyful, blissful, and peaceful.

I am grateful to Baba ji and Gurumayi ji for giving me the experience that God dwells within my heart and my body is the very temple of God. I know I need to keep this temple clean by all means, which includes doing my sadhana and the Siddha Yoga practices with genuine effort and sincerity.

Lucknow, India

I’d like to answer this question from Eesha: “What steps do you take to remind yourself that your body is an expression of God?”

As I chant mantras, I ask that they fill my body, that they take residence in my body, that they purify and strengthen my body and mind so that I can embody the meaning and goal of the mantras. I also ask that I carry them with me and, in doing so, offer them as blessings to those around me.

Colorado, United States

I feel awakened to a new way of regarding my body! It is truly a revelation. I take care of my body, knowing that I need it to complete my journey in this life. I am timely in taking care of my eyes and face and in taking necessary medications, and I feed myself well.

I am eighty now and have been practicing sadhana for many years. I stopped short when I was reminded that all of these ministrations are for a body that holds God within. Oh, I am taking care of a temple! It turned me upside-down: how precious it is to bathe this body, to feed it, and to rest it, and to see nature as God would, looking upon his creation. When I pray, it is from the soul in my heart which holds the part of God that is within me as me.

I am grateful for this insight drawn from Baba’s tremendous gifts to us, for Eesha’s words, and for Swami Ishwarananda’s talk.

California, United States

I am thankful to be reminded of this teaching from Baba. Just as Eesha describes, my own life-value perception has been blurred by clouds of negativity, by quotidian worries, and mostly by not remembering my life’s true purpose and goal. Although I am committed to meditation and other Siddha Yoga practices, somehow I’ve found myself taking more of a doership attitude.

I had also not been contemplating, but after reading these invaluable reminders, I’ve started this practice too. Just by doing so, my sense of my own value is re-appearing in the form of feeling my inner worthiness throughout my whole body. On its own accord, this is also revealing to me the intrinsic value of my God-given temple, the shrine to the kundalini energy that my Guru awakened. I have been recognizing the splendor of this temple more and more, and the inner pulsation of Baba’s core teaching: “God dwells within you as you.”

All this uplifts me and gives me the impetus for a stage of sadhana renewal.

Mexico City, Mexico

Reading “The Temple of God” reminded me of an experience I had in Gurudev Siddha Peeth many years ago, when I was a young adult. During darshan I asked Gurumayi for a spiritual name. She paused, looked up toward a large photo of Baba, and then said, “Keep your own name.”

I was surprised by her response and thought about my own name. My birth name means “house of God.” In telling me to keep my own name, I  felt Gurumayi was saying to truly make this name “my own”—by genuinely experiencing that I am the house of God.

California, United States

Ever since visiting Gurudev Siddha Peeth, where I participated in daily hatha yoga sessions, I have incorporated my own hatha yoga routine into my daily morning practices. Before I start, I perform a simple puja and offer my body and my practice to Gurumayi. I acknowledge that this body is a temple of God.

With this sacred attitude, I perform my hatha yoga routine with the intention of nourishing and strengthening this temple of God.

Christchurch, New Zealand