Lesson 212 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is Signified by Universal Dharma?

ŚLOKA 57
Universal law, known in the Vedas as ṛita, is cosmic order, God’s rule at work throughout the physical province. It is the infinite intelligence or consciousness in nature, the sustaining cosmic design and organizing force. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Ṛita is the underlying divine principle and universal law regulating nature, from the voyage of stars in vast galactic orbits to the flux of infinitesimal subatomic energies. Ṛita is the Tao. It is destiny and the road to destiny. When we are in tune with universal dharma, and realize that man is an integral part of nature and not above it or dominating it, then we are in tune with God. All Hindus feel they are guests on the planet with responsibilities to nature, which when fulfilled balance its responsibilities to them. The physical body was gathered from nature and returns to it. Nature is exquisitely complex and orderly. The coconut always yields a coconut tree, a lotus a lotus, a rose a rose, not another species. How constant nature is, and yet how diverse, for in mass producing its creations, no two ever look exactly alike. Yes, the Hindu knows himself to be a part of nature and seeks to bring his life into harmony with the universal path, the sustaining cosmic force. The Vedas proclaim, “Earth is upheld by Truth. Heaven is upheld by the sun. The solar regions are supported by eternal laws, ṛita. The elixir of divine love is supreme in heaven.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 212 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Robotic Learning

A human teacher would know the student’s state of mind and special gifts or needs, and society would guide him. While teaching English, French, German or any of the fourteen major languages of India, all the teacher’s good qualities go into the student, enriching and blessing him, along with the experience the teacher has gained through the years. When the magic happens, a certain amount “rubs off,” and a life is transformed. This is real education. This is training through sampradāya—people to people, heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul. This is how it used to be and how it still can be.

In a student-teacher relationship, the novice must deal directly with a human, talk to a human, be with a human, and love or hate this human, as the case may be, depending on the student’s evolution or spiritual development, not to mention that teacher’s own personal qualities. But school classes, from the lower grades to the highest are tending to dispense with human contact by replacing humans with machines. These are not just machines to write letters on, design buildings with or do the many other things this remarkable technology can do, but machines of learning that do not have a heart, machines which the child has total control over, machines which parents and teachers sometimes use to subdue or occupy a child for hours, and thus simplify their own duties.

That’s the big problem—the complete isolation. He can turn it on. He can turn it off. He can disagree with what is being taught or totally misunderstand, and no one ever knows. These children are deprived of life’s most precious gift, the passing down of knowledge, with respect and love for the knowledge imparted, at certain psychological moments in a child’s life. These children are deprived of the fulfillment gained by learning from a person with a heart, a person yearning to fulfill dharma and pass on his knowledge and, most importantly, his knowing earned through experience and his passion about the subject he ardently wishes to convey to youthful minds. This can never, ever be programmed into any software on the Internet or burned into a CD-ROM.

The Information Highway is an uncensored, unsupervised world. In all previous methods of conveying knowledge to children, there was a responsible adult involved, be it a teacher or librarian or parent. But the Internet’s vast spectrum of information is equally available to every individual with access—at last count hundreds of millions. Sadly, we are developing a generation—or two generations, for one is already established—of heartless children, deprived of love: an unhugging, cool, calculating, computer generation exposed to worldly sights that even most adults did not encounter ten years ago. Where will it all lead? That is a question Hindu families around the world are beginning to ask.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 212: FORGIVING AND SEEKING FORGIVENESS
Śiva’s devotees facing death perform vāsanā daha tantra, reconcile with and seek forgiveness from anyone they have offended, lest they leave unresolved kukarmas to go to seed and bear bitter fruit in future births. Aum.

Lesson 212 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Expressions of Actinic Force

Did you know that the physical body reflects the higher states of your consciousness and actually registers the flow of actinic force? There are advanced yogīs who can look at the physical body of a beginning seeker and observe how evolved he may be on the spiritual path. He would also be able to intuit from his observation the remaining subconscious seed experiences that yet must be worked out either physically or mentally.

Your physical body will express the highest that is within you when the actinic forces are flowing freely through it. Often the physical body reflects the lower nature when the odic forces are turbulent and in or out of control. The best way to keep the actinic force flowing through the physical body is practicing the art of giving, doing little things for others that you have not been asked to do. This keeps you creative, and being creative is actinic, superconscious and religious. Giving, doing without thought of return, affectionate detachment, creates an odic vacuum which your actinic, spiritual forces flow into and fill. As you practice this bhakti and karma yoga art, your relatives and friends, even strangers, will recognize your unfoldment, for the actinic forces, the real you, will permeate your physical body, making each of your features alive.

Here is a five-minute routine for rising in the morning that will help keep the actinic forces flowing. 1) As soon as you awaken in the morning, take a deep breath, slowly exhaling. Say aloud, “Jaya Gaṇeśa! Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam.” Then, to move the vital health body into action, stretch out the fingers of both hands so that the palms are flat, then close the fingers into the heel of the palms pressing with a firm pressure, and scrape the fingertips up the palm of the hand until the fingers are again extended straight. Do this several times with a firm, even pressure. This stimulates the vital prāṇic body and the subtle nerves. 2) Again extend the fingers of both hands out straight. Slowly move first the little finger in toward the palm of the hand, followed by the next and the next, making a fanlike motion until all the fingers are again parallel and pressing into the heel of the palms. Again scrape the fingers up across the palm of the hand and extend them. Each finger is connected to vital nerves which govern one of the organs of the body. Through stimulating the movement of the hand, you are actually organizing and awakening the odic forces in the entire body. 3) The next exercise is also done before you get out of bed. Clasp the hands behind the neck and with knees straight and toes pointed, raise the body, touching the right elbow to the left knee. Lower the body slowly to the prone position, then raise again and touch the left elbow to the right knee. Practice this each morning, to strengthen the abdominal muscles and stimulate visceral activity, until you can do sixteen to twenty repetitions with ease. 4) Next clasp the hands behind the back of the neck, lifting the head up six or eight inches, pulling the elbows down toward the chest. 5) Next, rotate the ankles around and around. Do this eight or ten times, then point the toes down, pull them back, down and back. These exercises will contribute to moving the vital health body into action. They bring vital health odic force and prāṇa into the muscles, the bloodstream and the vital nerve currents of the body. This entire series of exercises should take about five minutes, after which time you should feel like jumping out of bed and facing an actinic day. This series of exercises immediately breaks up the astral congested, instinctive odic forces of the mūlādhāra that may have accumulated during sleep, flushing the vital fluids into the circulatory system and on into the muscular structure. A strong, healthy body is an emblem of a stable, well-balanced conscious and subconscious mind.

Lesson 211 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is Dharma? What Are Its Forms?

ŚLOKA 56
Dharma is the law of being, the orderly fulfillment of an inherent nature and destiny. Dharma is of four main divisions, which are God’s law at work on four levels of our existence: universal, human, social and personal. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
When God created the universe, He endowed it with or­der, with the laws to govern creation. Dharma is God’s di­vine law prevailing on every level of existence, from the sustaining cosmic order to religious and moral laws which bind us in harmony with that order. We are main­tained by dharma, held in our most perfect relationship within a complex universe. Every form of life, every group of men, has its dharma, the law of its being. When we follow dharma, we are in conformity with the Truth that in­heres and instructs the universe, and we naturally abide in closeness to God. Adharma is opposition to di­vine law. Dharma pre­vails in the laws of nature and is ex­press­ed in our culture and heritage. It is piety and ethi­­cal practice, duty and ob­ligation. It is the path which leads us to libera­tion. Univer­sal dharma is known as ṛita. Social dharma is varṇa dhar­­ma. Hu­man dharma is known as āśrama dharma. Our per­sonal dharma is sva­dharma. Hin­­duism, the purest expression of these four timeless dharmas, is called Sanātana Dharma. The Vedas proclaim, “There is nothing higher than dharma. Ver­ily, that which is dharma is Truth.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 211 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

The Computer Generation

You have all met the new, cool, calculating computer generation, about which I have an observation. And it is truly the human right of every soul on the planet, at this time in the Kali Yuga, to make observations and comment on them. Furthermore, it is the duty of concerned men and women to speak out on what they observe, to thus reaffirm the dharma. My observation is that learning from computers is taking youth in the opposite direction from sampradāya, the imparting of wisdom person to person, heart to heart, mind to mind, teacher to student, satguru to śishya. The teacher passes on not only information, but the mature refinements of attitude and behavior through personal guidance and healthy association.

Young people used to love and respect, honor and extol their teachers. They would work to qualify to get into prestigious schools and vie with one another for the privilege of sitting before an Einstein or a Bose. Now they can buy advanced teachings on a CD or order them up freely on the World Wide Web. Maybe soon they will be able to download their diploma, to sign, frame and hang on the wall!

In 1993, Prodigy, one of the largest producers of computer educational material, said that 300,000 of its two million online users are children. There they find encyclopedias, games, chat forums and interactive books and magazines, such as NOVA, National Geographic and more. There are several “homework helpers” that can access volumes of data at the click of a mouse. The Software Publisher’s Association, a research group based in Washington, D.C., says the market for CD-ROM educational software is skyrocketing. For example, entranced before the computer, a child can explore every inch of an eighteenth century warship, displayed in cross-sectional views, meet the crew, study navigational tools and search for the young stowaway hidden somewhere in the hull.

“What’s wrong with that?” you might ask. In itself, nothing. I am not against computers. We have dozens of them in our monasteries. My concern is that the student who learns predominantly from the computer receives too little person-to-person nourishment, and is not even obliged to express human feelings anymore. The feelings of love and appreciation, respect and adulation, of thankfulness, acceptance and responsibility can all be suppressed or, worse, never developed during the formative years of life.

Since the computer craze began, when Apple produced the Macintosh and Microsoft began marketing software, I have observed the impact on youths of learning mainly from computers rather than people. The outcome is a cool, calculating, almost robotic individual with a blank look in his eyes. He can just turn the computer off anytime and be the smartest one in the family. Does anyone really yet know what registers in the objective and subjective mind of a youth being educated by the computer, who spends nearly all of his waking hours glued to a computer screen? Does anyone care?

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 211: FACING THE PAST TO PREPARE FOR DEATH
Śiva’s devotees give spiritual counseling to the terminally ill who are blessed with the knowledge of death’s approach, showing ways to resolve the past so that Śiva consciousness is their bridge during transition. Aum.

Lesson 211 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Meet Your Physical Body

Introduce yourself to your physical body by looking into a mirror today, a full-length one if possible. Say to yourself aloud, “I am not my physical body. I am much greater than my physical body.” You will immediately see this to be true if you approach the mirror and stand before it with these two thoughts in mind. Then listen to yourself saying, “I am not my physical body. I am much greater than my physical body.” The physical body is only one of the vehicles through which your highest being functions. To gain a concept of how much greater you really are, you must first begin bringing those several vehicles under your conscious control. This is done first by using the power of understanding, which is about fifty percent of the application of control when it comes to the world of the mind.

Quite often new aspirants coming to me to enter the classical yoga path will say, “I am sick of this body and its desires. I want to renounce it and live entirely spiritually.” There is nothing wrong with such a resolve, except that usually the aspirant really means, “I have no control over my body. I don’t understand it, nor any of my emotional drives. They control me, and somehow I can’t get away from the consciousness of them.”

As long as you react to your physical body, despising or cherishing it too much, you cannot progress well in sādhana or religious life. However, through the practice of concentration of the flow of thought forces, and through the deliberate use of your willpower, the power of cognition, deep understanding will unfold within you, acting as a controlling agent of the odic forces that sometimes can be so turbulent.

As an exercise in concentration, locate the different parts of your physical body through feeling while sitting still. Feel all of your muscles. Feel each bone. Locate them with your mind’s eye. Feel every organ, your heart, your liver, etc. Feel your circulatory system, the warmth, the flow. You are using the feeling faculties of the subconscious mind, the part of the subconscious that governs the involuntary processes of the body. The other part governs the involuntary processes of the mind, such as habits. In feeling the various parts of the body you are actually becoming consciously conscious of odic force, using the aggressive vibration of this force to become conscious of the physical body.

Lesson 210 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Does God Ever Punish Wrongdoers?

ŚLOKA 55
God is perfect goodness, love and truth. He is not wrathful or vengeful. He does not condemn or punish wrongdoers. Jealousy, vengefulness and vanity are qualities of man’s instinctive nature, not of God. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
There is no reason to ever fear God, whose right-hand gesture, abhaya mudrā, indicates “fear not,” and whose left hand invites approach. God is with us always, even when we are unaware of that holy presence. He is His crea­tion. It is an extension of Himself; and God is never apart from it nor limited by it. When we act wrongly, we create negative karma for ourselves and must then live through ex­pe­r­iences of suffering to ful­fill the law of karma. Such karmas may be pain­ful, but they were gen­­er­ated from our own thoughts and deeds. God never punishes us, even if we do not be­lieve in Him. It is by means of wor­ship of and meditation on God that our self-created sufferings are softened and assuaged. God is the God of all—of the be­lievers within all religions, and of the non­­believ­ers, too. God does not destroy the wicked and re­deem the righteous; but grants the precious gift of liberation to all souls. The Āgamas state, “When the soul gradually reduces and then stops altogether its par­tici­pa­tion in darkness and inauspicious powers, the Friend of the World, God, reveals to the soul the limitless character of its knowledge and activity.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 210 – Living with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Bribery in The Home

Then there is bribery of children: “I’ll give you a sweet if you do what I want you to do. I’ll take the sweet away if you don’t.” Some call this discipline, but true discipline is training and teaching, learning to uphold a known rule. Anything else is punishment, which closes the lines of communication between the elder and the child. The child has to be clearly taught what the rules are and who is in charge. The child has to know what he is going to get and not get, according to his or her misdeeds. But to bribe the child who has not been educated in this way, to awaken his desire for something and not give it to him, that is a form of corruption. The child will carry that out into the community. He will not be a good citizen, and his kukarma will reflect upon the family and several generations back and several generations in the future. The blame is upon the father and the mother, because children follow the example of the parents. Bribing and beating go hand in hand. When it becomes a way of life, children are bribed to behave, to get good grades, to go to bed on time.

There is still another, even more insidious, form of bribery that happens within the home. This is emotional bribery: “I shall be unhappy unless you please me,” “I shall be happy to include you in my will if you do what I want, but if you don’t, you’re out of my will.” That is bribery. It inhibits the freedom of the individual. “Marry this girl and you will please your family. After all we have done for you, you have to marry the way we want you to marry, and you have to give up the girl you really, really love.” Even if the boy has been having an affair with that girl, even if she is pregnant, his family will bribe him to marry someone else by threatening exclusion from the family, disrespect and the ruin of his name in the community. Oh, that is a favorite form of bribery: “I shall blacken your name in the community, make up stories about your character. I shall ruin your reputation. Your name will look like mud in the minds of an ever-increasing group of people unless you buckle down and do what we say.” That is a form of intimidation or blackmail that is used quite often in today’s world. Blackmail is a kind of reverse bribery. While a briber demands money to do something for you, a blackmailer demands money to not do something against you. The blackmailer says, “Give me what I want or I’ll expose the secrets I know about you.” This demand for hush money is an ominous form of reverse bribery, but bribery nonetheless. There is serious karma involved in all forms of bribery, which are part of the negative culture which tears down a nation, which tears down a community, which tears down a family, which the younger generation, hopefully, will not put up with.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 210: RENUNCIATION AFTER AGE 72
Śiva’s unmarried men and widowers may renounce the world after age 72, severing all ties with their community and living as unordained, self-declared sannyāsins among the holy monks of India. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 210 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Become The Watcher

We must be aware that it is only reawakening consciousness into a natural state, and that there is nothing mystical, difficult or inward that has to occur to hold an awareness of the inner and outer simultaneously from one central point in the mind. It is only because one is not accustomed to thinking in this way that it may seem difficult. But little children are in this state much of the time, and it is natural to them.

The beginning stages of watching the mind think I shall describe as similar to sitting quietly with your eyes open and, while not thinking about anything in particular, simply looking at what is around you—all of the time feeling somewhat empty on the inside, but seeing what is in front of you, to the left side of you, to the right side of you, above you, below you, and knowing what each object is, but not thinking about any object or collection of objects. Your eyes are watching; who lives behind them is the watcher. The objects that the mind perceives are similar to thoughts.

When you close your eyes and begin thinking about the objects you have been looking at, duplicating your surroundings in your mind by creating thought pictures of those objects, there is a deeper you who is the watcher of those thoughts. This you can practice all through the day almost anywhere you are. It takes no particular skill or practice. It can be done at any time. You are simply becoming conscious of the natural processes of awareness, consciousness and thought which have been going on day after day all through your life up to this point.

Each time you practice being the watcher, using the method just outlined, as soon as you begin to succeed, you will immediately receive the impact of realization of the extent of involvement in the external mind that had occurred between these periods of practice. You will find that the more you practice regularly, increasingly, more frequently, you will remember to continue “the witness” in the midst of daily life—while riding in conveyances, talking with people, shopping in crowded stores, even in the midst of a disagreement or at the pinnacle of a creative flow. “You,” the watcher, will preside, and in presiding will carry that inner presence so necessary for a full and fruitful life.

With this in mind, be encouraged, for we must remember that total involvement in the externalities of the mind seems to be the cultural trait of this century. Therefore, it may take a few years to change the pattern. To send awareness soaring within to home base is not easy when the rest of the world is plunging in the opposite direction. If at first you only succeed a few minutes a day being able to watch the mind think or watch the eyes see, that is sufficient, as long as the practice is regular and consistent, day after day.

Other kinds of practice previously outlined in the sādhana of this book will strengthen this ability and increase your capacity to maintain that equal balance between the inner and the outer, if performed with regularity. This intricate study of awareness steadied versus fluctuating thought can only be pursued by taking the slow and sometimes arduous approach, not being overly enthused by success or discouraged by failure.

Lesson 209 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Consequence of Sinful Acts?

ŚLOKA 54
When we do not think, speak and act virtuously, we create negative karmas and bring suffering upon ourselves and others. We suffer when we act instinctively and intellectually without superconscious guidance. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
We are happy, serene and stable when we follow good conduct, when we listen to our conscience, the knowing voice of the soul. The superconscious mind, the mind of our soul, knows and inspires good conduct, out of which comes a re­fined, sustainable culture. Wrong­doing and vice lead us away from God, deep into the darkness of doubt, despair and self-condemnation. This brings the asuras around us. We are out of harmony with ourselves and our family and must seek com­pan­ionship elsewhere, amongst those who are al­so crude, unmindful, greedy and lacking in self-control. In this bad company, burdensome new karma is created, as good conduct cannot be followed. This pāpa ac­cum­ulates, blinding us to the religious life we once lived. Pen­ance and throwing ourselves upon the mercy of God and the Gods are the only re­lease for the unvirtuous, those who conduct them­selves poorly. Fortunately, our Gods are compassionate and love their devotees. The ancient Vedas elu­cidate, “The mind is said to be twofold: the pure and al­so the impure; impure by union with desire—pure when from desire completely free!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.