Lesson 197 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Nature of the Physical Plane?

ŚLOKA 42
The physical plane, or Bhūloka, is the world of gross or material substance in which phenomena are perceived by the five senses. It is the most limited of worlds, the least permanent and the most subject to change. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The material world is where we have our experiences, man­ufacture karma and fulfill the desires and duties of life in a physical body. It is in the Bhūloka that consciousness is limit­ed, that awareness of the other two worlds is not always remembered. It is the external plane, made of gross matter, which is really just energy. The world is re­markable in its unending variety and en­thral­ling novelty. Mystics call it the unfoldment of prakṛiti, primal nature, and liken it to a bub­ble on the ocean’s surface. It arises, lives and bursts to return to the source. This phy­sical world, though necessary to our evo­lu­tion, is the em­bodiment of im­permanence, of constant change. Thus, we take care not to become overly at­tached to it. It is mystically subjective, not ob­jective. It is dense but not sol­id. It is sentient, even sacred. It is rocks and rainbows, liquid, gas and conflagration, all held in a setting of space. The Vedas affirm, “The knower, the author of time, the possessor of qualities and all knowledge, it is He who envelopes the universe. Controlled by Him, this work of creation unfolds itself—that which is re­garded as earth, water, fire, air and ether.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 197 – Living with Śiva

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

The Curse Of Profanity

Many people, even those who consider themselves religious, go through life using profane language to express their frustrations at each difficulty they meet. Do they know the effect of these negative mantras? Apparently not. People who swear—even if it’s just under their breath—are cursing themselves. What does that mean? It means they are holding themselves back in life. They are demeaning themselves and making themselves unsuccessful. Their lack of success will create more frustrations within the home, and more swearing. Even thinking a swear word is a mantra.

Why do people repeat mantras? To generate a positive force for successful life. Why do people swear mentally, under their breath, or verbally, or at their children, or at their wives, or wives at their husbands? To vent their anger, spite or sarcasm, or just by mindless habit. But in the process they unleash a negative force that will ruin their lives and break up their homes. Every time you swear, that swearing goes into your subconscious and hooks up with all the other swear words you’ve said since you were a kid.

Many people habitually say, “I’ll be damned,” “Damn you,” or “Damn it” as emphatic figures of speech. But all speech has its effect. Such mantras block their future and bind them to what they wish on others or crassly blurt out. This is a good way to curse oneself, to be sure—to build up a big balloon of negative energy. Under that negative force, they will never be able to relax or enjoy a vacation. Many people live together as a family, but their home is broken, their lives are broken, because they broke their own heart and forfeited their own courage simply by swearing a repeated mantra. Using profane language is a curse upon the system we call life.

What is even worse is knowing you shouldn’t do something and then doing it anyway, even knowing why you shouldn’t do it and doing it anyway—knowing why you shouldn’t swear, why you shouldn’t be abusive to the children, why you shouldn’t be abusive to the spouse, and then doing it anyway! It has a triple impact of negative force on the subconscious mind of the individual if he knows what he is doing to himself and to the minds of others, if he knows the law and yet ignores the law, the divine karmic law that he accepted.

Now, having heard this, if you continue to break the law, you bring a triple curse upon yourself! That is the built-in prāyaśchitta, the automatic penance or penalty. Those of you who know how the subconscious mind and the sub of the subconscious mind work can see the negative impact very, very clearly. And if you continue knowingly doing what you know is harmful to you, you will earn a bad birth. Do you want that? Maybe you do. Or maybe you don’t believe in reincarnation. Well, it’s going to happen anyway.

I was on a United Airlines flight. A stewardess spilled something. She didn’t use the “d” word or the “s” word. She kept a smile on her face and cleaned up the mess! Why didn’t she swear? Because if you’re an employee on a United Airlines flight you don’t swear, or else you don’t take the next flight! That’s why. This shows there is an integrity built within everyone by which they can break a habit cycle if it means some benefits to them. In this case it was financial benefit, also avoiding the embarrassment of losing her job.

The motivation to change isn’t that clear when, for example, someone is working at a construction site where everyone else is also swearing. But the motivation to stop swearing should be clear, because it takes its toll even if you don’t realize it. It is simply taking longer to lose your job, because swearing will make you less productive, less efficient, less liked by others. You’ll be cheated, you’ll make wrong financial decisions, and your income will go down. Your inspiration will go down. You can count on it, because you are repeating mantras to destroy everything that you have. You won’t be able to appreciate that sunset. You will be so confused on the inside that all you’ll see is your own mind. Avoiding all that should be the motivation; but the effect of swearing is slow, insidious, and in most cases not appreciated.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 197: NOT USING DANGEROUS DRUGS
Śiva’s devotees are forbidden to use drugs of abuse, such as cocaine, heroin, amphetamines, barbiturates, psychedelics and marijuana, unless prescribed by a licensed physician. They know their devastating effects. Aum.

Lesson 197 – Merging with Śiva

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

The State of Perfect Timing

After the subconscious mind has been very, very carefully reprogrammed into the contemplative lifestyle, there is little difference to us between the subconscious and the superconscious states. Therefore, basically, we have moved our awareness into an entirely new mind structure, or at least it seems new to us. This is called the subsuperconscious mind, or the area of the superconscious that has a subconscious which is connected with the physical-body functions and everyday life affairs.

The subsuperconscious state is the total man, functioning at a higher vibratory rate than he did when in the instinctive-intellectual area. What is the subsuperconscious mind? It is the superconscious of the devotee, well-programmed in the contemplative life. This devotee can work with himself and move awareness freely through any area of the mind that he wants to, consciously, without being hindered by habit patterns and reactionary conditions of the past which were programmed in the subconscious for him by parents, schoolteachers, friends and the public in general as he came along through life from birth.

When your timing is perfect and everything works correctly around you, things happen as you expect them to happen, or even better, you are in the subsuperconscious area of the mind. Certainly you are not in the subconscious area or in the external conscious mind. You are subsuperconscious. You are aware within the inner realms and the external realms at the same time. When you feel stationary, stable, as if the whole world stopped and there is only you in the center, and yet you are able to converse with your friends—this is a subsuperconscious state. Subsuperconsciousness is really awareness traveling, propelled by energy and willpower.

The devotee who has developed the subsuperconscious area of the mind can sit quietly as a being of pure cosmic energy and observe the many thoughts of the mind without being affected by them. The intuitive knowing that we are pure awareness, the soul, and not the thoughts that we think gives the security to move from concentration into deeper meditation. The subsuperconscious state gives that inherent feeling of inner stability, the feeling of being stationary or centered within the realms of the thinking mind.

Let us look at a mystic walking down the street who is conscious of his energy, only doing one thing—walking, moving the physical body. He is aware of pure energy moving that physical body and walking, and yet many different things are passing by him, or he is passing by them. He sees store windows, automobiles, people, things. Many, many things are happening around him as he is walking down the street, conscious of being pure energy.

Man in the subsuperconscious area of the mind in meditation is sitting as a being of pure energy. Even if many thoughts go past his vision, he knows he is flowing through the world of thought as a subsuperconscious state of awareness. Awareness is in a stationary state within the realms of the thinking mind. When we are out of the thinking mind, we are in the conceptual, subsuperconscious areas.

Lesson 196 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Where Did This Universe Come from?

ŚLOKA 41
Supreme God Śiva created the world and all things in it. He creates and sustains from moment to moment every atom of the seen physical and unseen spiritual universe. Everything is within Him. He is within everything. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
God Śiva created us. He created the Earth and all things upon it, an­­imate and inanimate. He created time and grav­ity, the vast spaces and the uncounted stars. He created night and day, joy and sorrow, love and hate, birth and death. He created the gross and the subtle, this world and the other worlds. There are three worlds of ex­istence: the physical, subtle and causal, termed Bhū­loka, Antarloka and Śivaloka. The Creator of all, Śiva Him­self is uncreated. As supreme Mahādeva, Śiva wills into man­­ifes­tation all souls and all form, issuing them from Himself like light from a fire or waves from an ocean. Ŗishis de­scribe this perpetual process as the un­foldment of thir­ty-six tattvas, stages of manifestation, from the Śiva tattva—Parā­śakti and nāda—to the five elements. Creation is not the mak­ing of a separate thing, but an emanation of Himself. Lord Śiva creates, constantly sustains the form of His creations and absorbs them back into Himself. The Vedas elucidate, “As a spider spins and withdraws its web, as herbs grow on the earth, as hair grows on the head and body of a person, so also from the Imperishable arises this universe.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 196 – Living with Śiva

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

The Family Profession

Nowadays many people believe that somehow it was an accident that one was born in a family of a certain profession and that the youth deserves a so-called better profession than that of the parents. But the traditional wisdom is that a person is born into a family to fulfill the profession of that family, and ideally to stay within that family business. Being raised in the family business, the person learns from a young age, even prenatally. Going into another profession, he leaves the family dharma and goes into worldly adharma. It then takes two or three generations to establish a new family dharma in that profession.

Now, of course, if the father and mother do not have a formal profession or business when their offspring are babies, from prenatal to six, whatever they are doing is absorbed and becomes the children’s habit pattern of how they should live their lives on Earth. In such conditions, the chances for the son or daughter to follow the father’s or mother’s footsteps in a formal profession at a later age, such as at puberty, lessens because the children have already been programmed, from ages one to six, to live from day to day without a goal, without strong material security, without a profession, as their mother and father did, as casual, temporary employees or students, often unemployed or seeking employment.

Obviously, there is no greater boon to a youth than to enter the family business or profession, that is, provided this is his inclination as well. Occasionally, however, there comes into a family a child who is to become a leader in another field, not a follower of the family profession. Perhaps he shows special aptitude as a religious leader, a swāmī, a community leader, a politician, a social organizer, an activist, an investigative genius, a scientist or a scholar. Such a child will identify himself at an early age and must be especially carefully nurtured, for he was born with a mission.

Then there are others who will shy away from the family profession, whatever the rationale. There are many reasons that youth reject the family profession, but the point is that it is the duty of the family to make that profession available to them, knowing this can stabilize them throughout life. Therefore, we should encourage the traditional family ideal in any case, at any age. There is great mental, emotional and physical security for the son or the daughter to follow the family vocation. Such children have observed their parents, learned from them, slowly become partners with them in life. It is not always wise to allow your children to make the decision of what they want to do, allowing them to leave the home and make a stranger wealthy in another profession because of their service to him. Lovingly encourage them to do what you do and to become an extension of yourself. The ideas of “do your own thing,” “satisfy your own desires,” “wander into a career,” “move from one career to another midway in life” are modern adharmic concepts. It may work out, but there is a fifty percent chance of failure and crippling debt. Then, too, the family has lost a great asset. The children have lost half their family connection, as they no longer have a shared interest in what mom and dad are doing, and vice versa. And the stranger, way out there, benefits. A family should not end at the puberty of its children, who then go off into other spheres of interest. It should continue and mature into father-and-son corporations, father-and-daughter corporations, with mother and father, sons and daughters all sharing the same interests, all working to increase the family assets.

The dharma of the householder is to build up wealth and knowledge, and to pass these on to the children, generation after generation. If they are in the jewelry profession, the wealth should go to the jewelers of the next generation, not to the musicians or computer programmers. Family wealth equals community wealth. Community wealth equals national wealth. National wealth equals global abundance. Hindu elders say that by following the occupation of the father and mother one will never go hungry, even if the occupation is a meager one. This is what I learned in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, at an early age. One might not become rich, but security is virtually assured.

So, don’t be afraid to bring your sons and daughters into the family business deliberately. Get them interested. Get them working with you. Your business or occupation is what feeds them. Naturally they should be interested in it. The simple answer for modern Hindu families following the traditional gṛihastha dharma is to form a family corporation and bring sons and daughters at an early age into what mom and dad are doing. Educate them in the family occupation from age six to thirteen and then engage them as partners all through life. What better partners could one have? Who would be more honest and loyal than your own children? Need we say more? You have caught the idea.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 196: FORBIDDING TOBACCO
Śiva’s devotees are forbidden to smoke, chew tobacco or inhale snuff. They know nicotine’s deadly, addictive power and value health and longevity as primary to fulfilling good karmas and serving the community. Aum.

Lesson 196 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Self Never Changes

When you begin to sense this changeless existence within, your intuition begins to awaken, and if you function through the use of your intuition you are able to clear many misunderstandings about the experiences of life. In this clarity, intuition is born. Right now you perhaps think you are the mind; you may feel remote from your Inner Being, but ask yourself each time you think you have found yourself, will this change? You will find that every image you hold of yourself is subject to change—even your soul, or your superconscious mind, is subject to change through evolution and, therefore, is impermanent. Only the Self, the very core, is eternally the same, eternally Real. Find your Inner Being through feeling; realize it is closer to you than your hands or feet, closer to you even than your breath. Your mind will want to leave this consciousness as soon as you attain it, but gently guide your mind back through the channel of concentration until once again you become rejuvenated, uplifted in the awareness of That which has never changed. That is your very Self, and That is God.

Jnanaguru Yogaswami said, “Search without searching.” By this he meant that as long as we are searching for God in meditation, there are two—God and the seeker. He did not mean that we should stop looking for God, stop meditating or stop striving and live an ordinary life or give up sādhana. He was saying that to deepen your meditation, while seated in the lotus position, doing prāṇāyāma, to deepen this state, stop looking and begin to realize that you are That which you are looking for. As long as there is searching, Paraśiva has not been found, for searching is two, and It is one. But you must keep searching until It is found. How to attain That? Satguru Yogaswami said, “Stop looking, and just be.” Give up consciousness which is seeing and registering that which has been seen. Become the sound, nāda; just be and merge into the Ultimate Quiet. When the disciple is on the brink of the Absolute, the timeless Paraśiva, twoness disappears in the overpowering presence of Śiva, and consciousness is absorbed and annihilated in His transcendental Being, which is nondifferent from the disciple’s. However, if the disciple continues looking for this experience and thus, in the act of his search, solidifies himself and the sought-after experience as two different things, he becomes the obstacle and the problem to be eliminated. In the end, the Great Mystery is known as one, as two, as neither one nor two.

Lesson 195 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Nature of the Jñāna Pāda?

ŚLOKA 40
Jñāna is divine wisdom emanating from an enlightened being, a soul in its maturity, immersed in Śivaness, the blessed realization of God, while living out earthly karma. Jñāna is the fruition of yoga tapas. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
The instinctive mind in the young soul is firm and well-knit together. The intellectual mind in the adolescent soul is complicated, and he sees the physical world as his only reality. The subsuperconscious mind in the mys­tically inclined soul well perfected in kriyā longs for realization of Śiva’s two perfections, Satchidānanda and Para­śiva. Through yoga he bursts in­to the super­con­scious mind, experiencing bliss, all-knowingness and perfect silence. It is when the yogī’s in­tellect is shattered that he soars into Paraśiva and comes out a jñānī. Each time he enters that unspeakable nirvi­kalpa samādhi, he returns to consciousness more and more the knower. He is the liberated one, the jīvanmukta, the epitome of kaivalya—perfect freedom—farseeing, filled with light, filled with love. One does not become a jñānī simply by reading and understanding philosophy. The state of jñāna lies in the realm of intuition, beyond the intellect. The Vedas say, “Having realized the Self, the ṛishis, perfected souls, satisfied with their knowledge, passion-free, tranquil—those wise beings, having attained the omnipresent on all sides—enter into the All itself.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 195 – Living with Śiva

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

So Many Choices

Society drastically changed after the two world wars, and the country’s crime rate went up. Mental institutions became overpopulated, hospitals overcrowded. People who have no commitment to family, friends, community and religion end up making the wrong choices in life. And today we have a new group called the New Age which, ironically, is totally committed to being uncommitted.

Many people are not committed to anything. They take a vow, they take a pledge, but it doesn’t mean anything. Even a marriage vow or pledge doesn’t mean anything anymore. But that is not religion. That may be secular humanism. That may be existentialism. That may be just a big nothingism; but it is not religion. Religion is the acceptance of spiritual laws that guide our life. We have to make decisions and make commitments, and live up to those commitments so that we can look in the mirror every morning and say, “You did a good job with yesterday. Now what about today?” This is the ethic we need to instill in teenagers. Then the strength of the soul comes forward. When the strength of the soul comes forward, it permeates the intellectual mind. Creativity comes forth. New, inspiring, insightful thoughts that you didn’t even know you were able to think come into your mind from your superconscious, and many wonderful things begin to manifest in your life.

Nowadays the mind seems to be confused for young people and older people alike. There is too much television, too much surfing, too much input, and not enough planning, not enough talking, not enough camaraderie to sit down and plan out what you are going to do this year, next year, the year after and the year after that. But that’s how you keep your karma under control: short-term goals and long-term goals planned out according to Śaiva Dharma.

Families have been asking me about careers for their maturing youth. What courses should they pursue in college? Higher education should prepare a youth for what he is going to do in life. This applies to women as well. That is why we are educated, to prepare ourselves for our future. There is no other point of being educated but for that. If a young lady is going to be a homemaker, it would be wise to be educated to be a homemaker. Many women these days are married and can’t cook, don’t know how to put on a band-aid, don’t know how to take care of the children when they come, because they’ve never been educated to be a wife. Women who foresee another kind of life for themselves should choose an education that will prepare them for that. It is also wise these days for a woman who is a homemaker to have an education in a profession, such as nursing, that she can fall back on in case misfortune befalls the family, a death or a divorce, so she can get a job to support the children and herself. Education is for the future career, whether it be a homemaking career or another kind of career. That is the purpose of it. There is much education now available that is just general education. It goes on and on and on. You go in wanting to know, and you come out confused at the end of it. We see this happening all the time. This type of education should definitely be avoided.

It is through prenatal experience and influence during year one, year two, year three, year four, year five, that a youth is absorbing the knowledge from the cells of his father’s body into his, from the emotions of the father into his, from the mind of his father into his. If the child is a girl, she learns mostly from her mother. These vibrations, in the very same way, enter her inner psyche. Thus children establish the foundation on which they will later build their adulthood. They are their father’s and mother’s children. It was no accident that they incarnated into their family. They had a choice before they were born. Every family is an expression of such choices.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 195: EXERCISING DAILY
Śiva’s devotees keep strong and healthy by exercising at least one half hour each day through such activities as brisk walking, swimming, dancing, salutations to the sun, haṭha yoga and vigorous work. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 195 – Merging with Śiva

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

Subduing The Intellect

Here’s a fine example of the use of intuition. You have often been in a situation in your own mind where you felt a subtle, direct impulse from deep within you as to how you should proceed. Most probably you denied it as fantasy and commenced in a logical way to fulfill your impulses and desires from previous patterns of experience, only to find that you would have traversed agonies and confusions had you followed the subtle impulse of direction which was rejected to enhance established patterns of procedure. But I might add that that first impulse must have registered itself as cold and clear, direct and profound. Only if it did would it have indelibly imprinted itself within your memory patterns, clear and sharp, thus distinguishing itself clearly from all warm, emotional feelings that appear to be reasonable and totally in line with the current pictures of the day.

In current events, most people guide their lives on prior reasonable patterns. This knowledge is only prophetic. It has absolutely no relation to the other courses of action entered into by intuitive decision, which in turn would encase man’s individual awareness into the strong, dynamic superconscious being that he ever was, is now and always will be.

Though we often use the terms “unfolding intuitive faculties” and “developing intuition,” they are only used in an effort to encourage the aspirant on the path to work within himself in subduing his intellect so that he can actually observe the already functioning totality of the intuitive area of the mind.

In order to subdue the intellect, that conglomerate of thought patterns and established modes of procedure according to the culture of the day, it is first quite necessary to inwardly observe how one’s acquired intellect actually functions. Observation is a faculty of the intuitive area of the mind, and this particular aspect of observation that I have just described comes into usage only after regular periods of meditation have been maintained over a long period of time. True, our intuitive faculties do constantly mingle through thought sequences each day, but our ability to distinguish one from another is accrued only through regulated discipline of our individual power of awareness. Once an inkling of success comes in knowing intuition and how it differs from reasoning, emotional impulses and pre-programmed patterns within the subconscious, the contest is won. Then and then only we must persist to sustain this knowledge and dive deeper into the inevitable, all the time losing the future and the past, and loosening the reins of the intellect.

Lesson 194 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Nature of the Yoga Pāda?

ŚLOKA 39
Yoga is internalized worship which leads to union with God. It is the regular practice of meditation, detachment and austerities under the guidance of a satguru through whose grace we attain the realization of Paraśiva. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Yoga, “union,” is the process of uniting with God within oneself, a stage arrived at through perfecting charyā and kriyā. As God is now like a friend to us, yoga is known as the sakhā mārga. This system of inner discovery begins with āsa­na—sitting quietly in yogic posture—and prā­ṇā­yāma, breath control. Prat­yāhāra, sense with­drawal, brings awareness into dhāraṇā, concentration, then into dhyāna, med­itation. Over the years, un­der ideal conditions, the kuṇḍalinī fire of consciousness ascends to the higher chakras, burning the dross of ig­norance and past karmas. Dhyāna finally leads to enstasy—first to savi­kalpa samādhi, the contemplative experience of Sat­chid­­­­ā­nanda, and ultimately to nir­vikal­pa samādhi, Para­­śiva. Truly a living satguru is needed as a steady guide to traverse this path. When yoga is practiced by one per­fect­ed in kriyā, the Gods receive the yogī into their midst through his awakened, fiery kuṇḍalinī. The Vedas enjoin the yogī, “With earnest effort hold the senses in check. Controlling the breath, regulate the vital activities. As a charioteer holds back his restive horses, so does a per­­se­­vering aspirant restrain his mind.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.