The soul having been engaged through ages in the three bodies-physical, astral and ideational-is unable to cast off it’s shackles and escape into omni-present cosmic consciousness. The union of human consciousness with cosmic consciousness is impossible through imagination and intellectual study of the scriptural truths alone. Such union is possible only through the deep intuitional realization of the above mentioned seven astral cerebralspinal doors (the seven candle sticks or churches and their stars or angels) and through withdrawing the life force and consciousness from the body into the infinite and then bringing it back again.
The way Paramahansa Yogananda describes it we are literally prisoners of different bodies which our soul has been inheriting through ages and countless life times. This being true we are all beginning to look at the bodies we have as something and someone we have identified with that has imprisoned our true understanding of what we really are. We have been fooled by the illusions of our physical, astral and ideational bodies to believe they are real. When in fact we are spirits free from any bodies and merging into infinite cosmic consciousness.
Most of the beings on this planet are so engrossed and identified in worldly activities that they cannot even understand the ideas Paramahansa Yogananda has related to us here. Let alone feeling the necessity of gaining freedom from these imprisonments of our Self.
