Lesson 202 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Why Do Some Souls Act in Evil Ways?

ŚLOKA 47
People act in evil ways who have lost touch with their soul nature and live totally in the outer, instinctive mind. What the ignorant see as evil, the enlightened see as the actions of low-minded and immature individuals. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Evil is often looked upon as a force against God. But the Hindu knows that all forces are God’s forces, even the waywardness of adharma. This is sometimes difficult to understand when we see the pains and prob­lems caused by men against men. Looking deeper, we see that what is called evil has its own mysterious purpose in life. Yes, bad things do happen. Still, the wise never blame God, for they know these to be the return of man’s self-created kar­mas, difficult but necessary experiences for his spiritual evolution. Whenever we are injured or hurt, we un­derstand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a kar­ma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured. Those who perform seemingly evil deeds are not yet in touch with the ever-present God consciousness of their immortal soul. The Vedas rightly admonish, “Borne along and defiled by the stream of qualities, unsteady, wavering, bewildered, full of desire, distracted, one goes on into the state of self-conceit. In thinking ‘This is I’ and ‘That is mine’ one binds himself with himself, as does a bird with a snare.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 202 – Living with Śiva

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

Backbiting And Gossip

There are two very great religious laws, and you have heard me talk about them before, and if you follow them and obey them, you will have the spiritual protection of your own intuitive mind. Your intuitive mind will be available to you all of the time.

One of these great laws is the law of daśamāṁśa, tithing, and the other great law is śaucha kriyā, doing good. Now, what is doing good? Doing good is controlling your mind, really, because when the mind is out of control or when you allow it to be out of control, you are really under the control of the instinctive mind of other people. You are more or less like a puppet in their hands. Therefore, we teach, “Think before you speak, and speak only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary.” This is very, very difficult for most people to do. If you carry each thought on the tip of your tongue, quite often it won’t be your thought at all. It may be what is seething in the instinctive mind of people around you. That’s what makes for backbiting and gossip. Like those who swear, those who gossip do not think. They pick up the low, seething vibrations of the instinctive mind of everyone around and, like stovepipes, emanate the smoke of the fire that is burning or smoldering or fuming or raging underneath. Many undeveloped people believe and repeat the last thing they hear spoken by someone they consider higher than themselves. They gossip freely, hurt freely and are often the pawns of strong-minded, unscrupulous individuals who use their ignorance and weakness to further their own selfish ends.

Do you know what gossiping is like? It’s like scratching an itch. Something is antagonizing your mind, so you gossip, and you go on and on and on until somebody changes the subject for you, or until somebody does something else that you can gossip about. Shall we say that backbiting and hurtful gossip are the dissipation of the creative, spiritual force? That’s all they are, dissipation of your great, God-given inner power. Anyone will tell you that to dissipate your energy is bad for you, but you do that when you gossip. By doing that, you are only the chimney, the dirty smokestack, of the seething instinctive mind, the ugly state of mind, of other people. You are not in control of your own mind. Have I painted a picture that is bad enough, hideous enough, gruesome enough, for you all to stop gossiping and control your mind a little bit? Gossip invokes the asuric beings on the lower astral plane and makes new karmas for the gossiper, who will be gossiped about in the future when the karmas return.

Let’s paint another picture. When you defile others, mentally and verbally, through backbiting gossip about the happenings in their lives, you are hurting them. You are actually making it difficult for them to succeed, to even persist where they are. They sense, they feel, the ugliness that you are projecting toward them. Many women gossip about their husbands over the telephone to other women while their husbands are at work. How can the husband be successful with the wife’s mind, in which he presumably trusts, working and plotting against him in such a chaotic condition? Gossip and backbiting, like verbal abuse, hurt another. You know what happens according to spiritual law when you hurt another. You are only hurting yourself in the future. Of course, you don’t meet the hurt right away, but in a few months you will find that it will come to you. You are hurting yourself in the future if you hurt another in the present.

It takes great sincerity in life to control the mind. And the power to be sincere is based on honesty. Honesty, ārjava, gives a great boon to you. It gives you stability. It makes you strong. It makes every atom in your being vibrate with an inner power. It gives you perspective; it gives you the eye to justice. But you must first be honest with yourself. Then the next time you see something happening in the life of another person that you would just love to sit down and gossip about, stop the menacing wheel of your mind and think about the experience and feelings the other person is going through.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 202: NOT DRINKING ALONE OR WHEN UPSET
Even in moderation, Śiva’s devotees do not drink alcohol in solitude, when depressed, angry or under extreme stress. When one is emotionally unstable, alcohol inhibits the ability to confront and solve problems. Aum.

Lesson 202 – Merging with Śiva

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

Bursts of Light And Intuition

Intense desire for spiritual unfoldment eventually manifests itself in a breakthrough of actinic will, which permeates the subconscious mind of the devotee until he completely identifies himself as an actinic being. This happens from within the deeper realms of man’s mind and eventually manifests itself into consciousness, then into thought patterns and then finally into speech and action. Actinic will also appears from the transference of desire from material objects and activity into finding some real solution within oneself for the eventual quest of all men: peace of mind. This actinic force becomes so strong, finally there is a breakthrough or burst of light. This happens quite naturally within many people who have not even availed themselves of classical yoga teachings. This first breakthrough throws into orbit, so to speak, the subsubconscious state of mind, for an infinitesimal flow of actinic force thereafter begins to permeate the subconscious mind, easing darkness or confusion or pressures of the conglomerated, accumulated force fields. After this first breakthrough, the devotee becomes more creative, kinder, a little happier and more metaphysically inclined, for the subsuperconscious mind becomes another building force field.

Occasionally devotees have flashes of intuition, bursts of prophetic knowing. Some devotees also occasionally enter trance states, when messages may come through their voice from the superconscious mind without their conscious-mind knowledge. When the trance subsides, there is usually no memory of what they said or did. Such subsuperconscious states are often brought forth by intense religious emotion, which occasionally becomes so overwhelming that it pierces the worldly subconscious and conscious mind.

Your belief in your subsuperconscious power will also unfold your destiny in this life. “I will be what I will to be. I will do what I will to do.” You can repeat these two affirmations over and over, time and time again, and rearrange, restructure, the forces of your subconscious mind and create a great inner peace within yourself. Turn on to actinic force and bring the forces of superconsciousness through your subconscious. This creates feeling, a feeling that you are what you say you are—positive, direct, full of life and energy and creative power. Your subsuperconscious mind proves this through your conscious mind, not only through feeling, but you will find yourself acting out the part in all kindness and security, exercising the positive will of “I will be what I will to be” and “I will do what I will to do.”

Lesson 201 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Are Souls and World Essentially Good?

ŚLOKA 46
The intrinsic and real nature of all beings is their soul, which is goodness. The world, too, is God’s flawless creation. All is in perfect balance. There are changes, and they may appear evil, but there is no intrinsic evil. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The soul radiates love, is a child of God going through its ev­olutionary process of growing up into the image and likeness of the Lord. Goodness and mercy, com­passion and caring are the intrinsic, inherent or in­dwelling na­ture of the soul. Wis­dom and pure knowledge, happiness and joy are the in­trin­s­ic nature of the soul. Can we be­lieve the soul is anything but goodness itself, purity and all the refined qualities found within superconsciousness? When God is everywhere, how can there be a place for evil? The soul is constantly one with God in its ever-present Satchidānanda state at every point in its evolution. How, then, arises the concept of evil and suffering? Āṇa­va, karma and māyā, the play toys of the soul, are the source of this seeming suffering. Like a child, we play with the toys of āṇava in the playground of māyā, fall and are bruised by karma, then run to our loving Lord for solace and release into spiritual maturity. The Vedas pointedly state, “As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not sullied by the external faults of the eyes, so the one inner soul of all things is not sullied by the sor­row in the world, being external to it.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 201 – Living with Śiva

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

Advice for Abused Youth

We want to talk to the next generation that’s coming up. Fourteen-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, twenty-year-olds, stand on your own two feet! Make your decisions according to dharma. What is the book of dharma? Weaver’s Wisdom, the famous Tirukural. It gives you all the tools you need to live a very good life. If your parents are verbally abusing you, don’t let their words affect you. Try to have compassion by appreciating what led them to the point where they could say these cruel things to you; but realize that they can offer you nothing but more abuse, because they are in the process of cursing themselves. The message is to “stand on your own two feet, take your life in your own hands, claim your independence,” once you realize that life at home is not going to get any better.

In certain shops in Asian cities, parents can buy bamboo switches, belts and other instruments of torture made just for punishing kids. Few realize that their mean words can cause just as much hurt, if not more. Parents have developed long lists of words used to demean and belittle. It has become an unspoken rulebook of how to bring their child down to feeling like he’s a big nothing, willing to do anything you say, because he inwardly begs: “Don’t hurt me anymore. Don’t hit me with your words. Don’t hurt me with your long silences and by turning your head away from me. Don’t hurt me that way anymore. I’ll do anything. I’ll get a dumb job and work at it fourteen hours a day to give you some money, to pay you for not hurting me anymore.” That’s what we have in the Hindu community around the world. And that’s what we don’t want to have in the Hindu community around the world.

What can a child of eight, ten or twelve do who is being verbally and physically beaten at home and in school? Nothing. It’s a sad situation. I’ve received lists of abuses from children of that age, just exactly what their mothers have said and what their fathers have said. It’s a tremendous pain in their mind. We’ve given young people the prāyaśchitta, the remedy, of putting a flower in front of their parents’ picture for thirty-one days. Most can’t do it. They just can’t do it. We ask them to say each day, “I forgive you for playing my karma back to me,” but they just can’t do it. The hate, the mistrust, the disappointment, the hurt, is so great, they’ve been put down so low, that they just cannot do it.

My counsel to Hindu families is: Stop the physical abuse. Stop the verbal abuse. Stop the war in the home. Use positive discipline. Praise your children. Discover the good things that they do and tell them how well they have done. Celebrate their Divinity. Enjoy them and enjoy good times with them. This is the family tradition and the ideal of Sanātana Dharma, the Hindu Dharma of the past, before the Church of England reigned over India for 150 years and changed education to their way of thinking, making beating a must in schools and homes in accordance with the many biblical verses that highly recommend “not to spare the rod,” and the theological rationale to “beat the devil out of them.” Hindus of today’s world have begun working together to stop the abuse, passing and enforcing laws to bring us back to the true meaning of discipline, which is to teach, train and patiently guide. We must remember that ahiṁsā, nonhurting, physically, mentally or emotionally, is the bedrock of Sanātana Dharma.

My advice to verbally abusive parents: stop tearing them down by telling them they’re stupid, that they’re too small, too fat, too lazy, too ugly or too naughty. If you constantly tell a child he is naughty, he will become naughtier. If you constantly tell a child he’s nice, he will be nicer. It just works like that. All the psychiatrists agree with this approach, to be sure, as do mothers and fathers who really love their children and take an interest in their children.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 201: MODERATION WITH ALCOHOL
All strong and intoxicating distilled alcohols are forbidden to Śiva’s devotees. They may moderately partake of the family of wines and beers, including honey mead, for these are wholesome when properly enjoyed. Aum.

Lesson 201 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Flow of Creativity

A devotee who can command his mind to be instantly creative, and be consistently successful, has acquired a conscious control of the use of the subsuperconscious state of mind. This is because the subconscious mind—made of odic force, a sticky-like substance that absorbs impressions, holds impressions and files them (not always, however, in an organized way)—has been understood, dissolved and brought in line with the cosmic forces through living a religious life. In this pure condition, the devotee’s attempts to direct his own mental forces are quite naturally successful. Unobstructed, the superconscious forces flow into the life of the devotee, and creativity is in abundance. Once the first breakthrough has been made, we find that these brilliant rays from the cosmic mind—which we also call Satchidānanda, the mind of God Śiva, the Gods and your immortal soul—penetrate the sticky-like substance of the subconscious, reorganizing and purifying it.

The next time you feel physically, mentally or emotionally fatigued, use your willpower to command access to the cosmic energies that exist deep inside of you. Do not allow the body or mind to fall into lethargic, depressed states. Feel the life forces stirring, flowing out to invigorate every cell of your being.

When you can see a white light aglow in your head in a darkened room, or even see a flash of it, or hear the inner, high-pitched sound, “eee,” humming in your inner ear, then you know that you are consciously functioning in the subsuperconscious state of mind. Devotees who have had their first flash of white light in their head or heard the constant high-pitched “eee” in their inner ear have awakened the process of the subsuperconscious state of mind, and it works quite automatically after that. All they have to do is to learn how to consciously use their subsuperconscious transcendental powers. All this will naturally occur through their continued sādhana.

The first breakthrough of the clear white light is subsuperconsciousness. The odic force fields of darkness which are seen within oneself are created by beliefs that conflict with the Sanātana Dharma, resentment and past conflicting karma. These are built up through the centuries of man’s intermingling within his own species. This inner darkness or odic force has created man’s subconscious mind, and conscious mind, the way he knows it today. Every devotee is inwardly desirous of breaking through the barriers of this inner darkness, realizing the discontent caused by the influx and outflow of connecting odic forces, not only between himself and family, friends and relations, but also in his association with the world at large.

Lesson 200 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Does the Universe Ever End? Is It Real?

ŚLOKA 45
The universe ends at mahāpralaya, when time, form and space dissolve in God Śiva, only to be created again in the next cosmic cycle. We call it relatively real to distinguish it from the unchanging Reality. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
This universe, and indeed all of existence, is māyā, Śiva’s mir­ific energy. While God is absolutely real, His em­anated world is relatively real. Being relatively real does not mean the universe is illusory or nonexistent, but that it is im­permanent and subject to change. It is an error to say that the universe is mere illusion, for it is entirely real when ex­pe­r­ienced in or­din­ary con­sciousness, and its existence is required to lead us to God. The universe is born, evolves and dissolves in cycles much as the seasons come and go through the year. These cycles are in­­conceivably im­mense, ending in mahāpralaya when the un­i­­­verse un­dergoes dissolution. All three worlds, including time and space, dissolve in God Śiva. This is His ultimate grace—the evolution of all souls is per­fect and complete as they lose in­dividuality and re­turn to Him. Then God Śiva exists alone in His three per­fec­tions until He again issues forth creation. The Ved­as state, “Truly, God is One; there can be no second. He alone governs these worlds with His powers. He stands facing beings. He, the herdsman, after bringing forth all worlds, re­absorbs them at the end of time.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 200 – Living with Śiva

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

Making Up For Abuse

Of course, parents who curse their children can’t hug them, can’t show the same love for them. That would be counterproductive! In fact, many families think it’s weakening to the child to hug a child and to show love or to congratulate the child. Thus we have whole societies and entire countries that hold themselves down, generation after generation and do not flourish, and therefore are held down by other communities who are doing the same thing, and that are held down by other communities.

What is the prāyaśchitta, what is the penance, for foul or abusive language—for language that hurts? If you call a child stupid, or call him a little bastard, counteract it by telling him he is intelligent, wanted in the family, loved. Counteract the abuse by saying five good words for every bad word. Otherwise, the parents will have a bad birth. What is a bad birth? Being born diseased. A bad birth is being born without parents. A bad birth is being born in a land that has no room for children. There are lots of suffering kids these days who abused their children in a past life without mercy, taking out their frustrations on them. Which is worse, beating the child physically or berating him with words? The pain of the beating will go away, even the memory, somehow. But the words will ring deep in the mind of the child throughout his lifetime.

Now, if the child performs certain sādhanas and is able to forgive the family for the verbal beatings, what then happens? It breaks the curse. Then what happens? The whole force of that curse goes back on the mother and the father. The child walks away free, healed, and his parents take the impact of their impropriety. They take the impact of their bad words. To young people who are cursed by your families, I say take your life in your own hands and plan for your own future. After all, why would parents curse and call bad words and put down a child but to control him, use him as a meal ticket, social security, make him so afraid that he can’t talk to them!

In many homes parents are not beating their children anymore, but they still raise their hand in the threat to hit them! The child knows that if he persists, he’s going to get it right in the head. Physical threats and verbal abuse turn a child into a person who is weak, discouraged, without courage—without courage enough to have a conversation with his mother, without courage enough to have a conversation with his father, without courage enough to have a conversation with himself, to develop any initiative, to stand on his own two feet, to be a leader. If your kids cannot or will not talk to you and have a conversation with you, you have probably hurt those kids and scared those kids so much that they don’t want to be hurt by you anymore. It’s as simple as that.

There are awful stories we hear about slavery, how slaves were brought to America, Europe and all over the world, beaten and whipped to bring them down to abject servitude so they wouldn’t cause any problems lest they be beaten without mercy for the slightest thing—beaten even if they did nothing wrong, just to keep them in their place. That’s what verbal beating does, too. It keeps kids “in their place” so they become useless slaves in the family, earning money to give to parents who still curse them, and then feigning love toward the parents lest they get more verbal abuse. We see this happening all the time. I hear and receive by e-mail desperate testimonies from children and young adults on how they have been abused, physically and with words, in their own home. From the many experiences I know about, I can assure you that words can hurt a child as much or more than a bamboo switch, a belt or a fist.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 200: THE DEMONIC DRUG CULTURE
Śiva’s devotees stand against drugs and never mix with those who use them or listen to talk extolling them. The drug culture and its demonic music erode the very fabric of human character and culture. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 200 – Merging with Śiva

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

Security in the Superconscious

When the superconscious forces diminish, the subsuperconscious mind, in effect, recedes from the actual consciousness of the devotee, and he becomes simply conscious of his subconscious mind. In the very same way, from time to time, the conscious mind overshadows the subconscious mind, and the devotee becomes conscious fully in the external world, the subconscious mind receding from his conscious awareness of it. Therefore, the object of the devotee is to control the materialistic forces and the impressions that they create in his mind, so that he can become consciously conscious in the state of mind he chooses.

The greatest sense of security is the feeling: “I am all right, right now.” Simply believing this temporarily quiets not only the conscious but also the subconscious instinctive fears and brings forth an immediate influx of intuitive, superconscious awareness through the subconscious, giving security and solidarity to the entirety of the mind by expanding consciousness through actinic energy. As we expand our consciousness through the conscious control of actinic energy, we become aware of new attributes and possibilities within our nature. Also, we become aware of the realms of knowledge within us that can be tapped through our continued sādhana.

Meditation is conscious use of the subsuperconscious mind to solve problems that confront us in our daily activity and derive creative solutions from the inner recesses of our own mind. Another way of using the superconscious forces is through affirmation. When you say to yourself, “I’m all right, right now,” you immediately bring the forces of the mind together. All fears, worries and doubts cease. An influx of actinic energy fills the subconscious, and a sense of dynamic security permeates your being.

To consciously use the subsuperconscious mind, before you go to sleep at night repeat this affirmation to yourself, over and over again: “Tomorrow, I shall awaken filled and thrilled with the cosmic energy of God Śiva, creatively alive and in tune with the universe.” Say this several times unto yourself and feel the actinic force begin to move, the life force begin to move within your body. You will awaken in the morning filled and thrilled with creative energy and with a desire to be productive, to create. Answers to problems will be immediately unfolded from within yourself. You will experience the mechanism of playback, of finding solutions to questions that have been unanswered within your subconscious mind perhaps for years. All this and more will come to you through the grace of God Śiva and our many Gods if you diligently and regularly fulfill your sādhana.

Lesson 199 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Nature of the Causal Plane?

ŚLOKA 44
The causal plane, or Śivaloka, pulsates at the core of being, deep within the subtle plane. It is the superconscious world where the Gods and highly evolved souls live and can be accessed through yoga and temple worship. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The causal plane is the world of light and blessedness, the highest of heavenly regions, extolled in the scriptures of all faiths. It is the foundation of existence, the source of visions, the point of conception, the apex of cre­ation. The causal plane is the abode of Lord Śiva and His en­tourage of Ma­hā­devas and other highly evolved souls who exist in their own self-effulgent form—radiant bodies of cen­tillions of quantum light particles. Even for embodied souls, this refined realm is not distant, but exists within man. It is ever-pre­sent, ever-available as the clear white light that illumines the mind, accessed within the throat and cranial chakras—viśuddha, ājñā and sa­has­­­rāra—in the sublime practices of yoga and temple worship. It is in the causal plane that the mature soul, un­­shrouded of the physical body’s strong in­stinc­tive pulls and astral body’s harsh intellectual stranglehold, resides fully conscious in its self-effulgent form. The Śivaloka is the natural re­fuge of all souls. The Vedas intone, “Where men move at will, in the threefold sphere, in the third heaven of heavens, where are realms full of light, in that radiant world make me immortal.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.