Lesson 357 – 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 357 – Living with Śiva

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

Realities Of Worship

We approach the temple in a much different way, a humble way. We believe that the Deity lives in the temple, that He comes from the inner worlds, hovers over the stone image in His golden body of light and, as the priest invokes Him, blesses those present. Everyone is elated. Everyone feels His holy presence, and an advanced soul may even see Him there. So, we approach the Deity with a pure mind. We approach Him in trepidation. We want to look our best, for when He takes over the stone image in the sanctum and sends forth His rays of blessing, we don’t want to look disrespectful in His eyes. We therefore prepare the body and the mind before going to the temple. We get our aura looking just right. The aura is the sum of vibrations that emanate out around the body. The colors of the aura are dark or light depending on the nature of our thoughts and emotions. We prepare our aura by chanting mantras, hymns and prayers. We prepare our body by bathing and dressing simply and properly, not in the sexy way that young girls are dressing nowadays. Then we go to the temple, and the Deity actually comes on the inner planes and blesses us, listens to our prayers, clears our minds and calms our emotions.

We take that holy vibration home, back into the community, where we respect our elders and they guide us wisely. Then culture flourishes, because culture has its source right there in the temple. When culture is flooding out of the temple, our actions are productive and our minds are creative, our speech is pure, our hearts rejoice and we become good citizens. Religion makes us good citizens, because we are peaceful inside and want peace in our land. Peace comes first from the individual. It is unrealistic to expect peace from our neighbors unless we are peaceful first, unless we make ourselves peaceful through right living, right worship and right religious culture in the home.

How can we destroy all of this? It’s simple. Stop going to the temple. Culture will begin to go. Refinement and love will begin to go. Arguments will be heard in the homes. Divorces will fill the courts. Stress and mental illness will become the common experience—all because we stopped that one, great, mystical practice—temple worship.

The temple is the great psychiatrist of the Hindu religion. When we forget that, we suffer the consequences of our neglect, personally and as a nation. The temple has mystical powers that surpass the greatest psychiatrists on the planet. Our priesthoods have the tools to invoke and perpetuate this power. The temple can not only analyze your problem, it can give absolution. You can leave the temple wondering what it was that was bothering you on the way to seek the help of the Deity—so complete is the power of the temple.

We are proud to say that we worship God and the Gods. We object to the liberal Hindu propaganda which denies the existence of our Gods and installs its limited knowledge in their place. We object to the notion that all religions are one, and we believe that for us Śaivism is the greatest religion on the Earth and has no equal. I think that Śaivite leaders should rise up against liberal Hinduism and remove it from the minds of the children and the general population. It is a cancer for which there is no miraculous cure, so it has to be surgically removed to preserve Śaivism. That is the only solution available.

Well, you can see that our religion is faced with a lot of serious problems. Yet, there are good, sensible solutions if we, the united Śaivites of the world, all pitch in and work together and have a little selfless sacrifice to offer. I feel the spirit coming up among Lord Śiva’s devotees. But it is not enough. More has to be done. We need religious leaders to come forward from among the gṛihastha community, tens of thousands of men and women who have something to offer, who can serve and teach the Śaiva Dharma. We need Śaivite schools of a fine caliber to be built and managed by devout Śaivites. We need all of you to spread the religion to the next generation, many of whom are not receiving proper religious training. We need field workers and teachers and missionaries to serve Lord Śiva in His work. This is necessary in the technological age, necessary in order that Śaivism will be the religion of the future, not of the past.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 357: PRESERVING THE AUTONOMY OF OUR LINEAGE
My swāmīs rigidly maintain the Nandinātha Sampradāya as independent and absolutely separate from the Smārta daśanāmī orders and all other lineages. Yea, this autonomy shall endure until the end of time. Aum.

Lesson 357 – Merging with Śiva

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

Beyond Liberation

In the later stages of evolution, physical life can be so joyous that one might ask, “Why wish for liberation?” But not wanting to be reborn is not the goal. Obtaining the stability of mind and spirit so that you can function even on the physical plane better, without the necessity of having to do so, is a better goal. After mukti, liberation, one still has responsibilities to complete certain karmic patterns. Even the sapta ṛishis, seven sages, have their offices to perform in guiding the Sanātana Dharma, though they do not have to be reborn in a physical body to do their job. Mukti does not call an end to intelligence, does not call an end to duty. Mukti calls an end to the necessity for a physical birth. It’s like death—you don’t want to die, but you do anyway. When on the inner plane, you don’t want to be reborn, but you are anyway. You have to do these things. The ideal is to live out one’s Earthly life to its full extent, not to shorten it in any way, for during the elderly years, after ninety and the twenty or thirty years thereafter, the sañchita karmas in the great vault which are waiting to come up in another life begin to unfold to be lived through and resolved in this one. By no means should suicide ever be considered, for it cuts short all karmic developments of the current life and may require additional births to work through the lowest possible experiences still held in the great sañchita vault. Many incarnations may elapse after an untimely self-inflicted death before the soul returns back to the same evolutionary point at which the suicide was committed. Suicide is no escape. It only prolongs the journey.

The goal is realization of Paraśiva as the ultimate personal attainment. This is nirvikalpa samādhi. Savikalpa is the by-product of this. Even having had this experience, if the sādhana and tapas and discipline are not maintained, mukti, liberation, will not be the product of effort. The knowledge of Paraśiva, in its total impact, must impact every area of mind, every nook and cranny of the mind. Therefore, the goal is realization; and liberation from rebirth is the by-product of that essential goal. If a soul becomes realized but still has the desire to come back to finish something, he will come back partially enlightened. Hinduism will be an open book to him, and he will understand all of the basic truths and be able to explain it all naturally. He will find his enlightenment later in life and go on, having experienced what he had to.

There is a choice one makes upon becoming illumined and understanding the whole process—whether to be a bodhisattva or an arahat, an upadeśī or a nirvāṇī. This is based on a belief and an attitude in the heart and soul. A nirvāṇī says, “I’ll move on and wait for everyone to catch up with me.” An upadeśī says, “I’ll help everyone on the path.” Occasionally an upadeśī has tasks to fulfill, but they are self-assigned, for this is a personal choice. Likewise, a nirvāṇī will work and make a great attainment. Then he will spin out his own karmas and make his transition. The upadeśī will make his attainment and then work with his own karmas slowly while helping others along the path. Who is to say which is the best choice? It’s a totally individual matter. I personally am an upadeśī. No detail is too small for me to handle. A nirvāṇī would not take that attitude.

In the inner worlds, one who has transcended the need for a physical birth is there like he is here. He has a twenty-four-hour consciousness. He does not have to eat unless he wants to, and he doesn’t have to sleep, so he has a total continuity of consciousness. He has Paraśiva at will and is all-pervasive all of the time. He does have duties. He does relate to brother souls in the same stratum, and he does evolve, continuing in evolution from chakra to chakra to chakra, for there are chakras, or nāḍīs, above the sahasrāra for which he does not need a physical body. This, again, is for the upadeśī. The nirvāṇī would not turn back, but proceed onward. The first realization of Paraśiva, the impact of the aftermath, allows you the decision to choose between the dispassion of the nirvāṇī and the compassion of the upadeśī.

The Śaiva Siddhānta perspective is that Śiva’s wonderful universe of form is perfect at every point of time, complete and totally just, and every soul, in all stages of evolution, is an intrinsic part of it, even Śiva Himself. The true mukti of everyone and of the universe itself would be at mahāpralaya; but meanwhile, mukti is defined in our vocabulary as freedom from rebirth in a physical body. But many other bodies drop off, too. There are more intelligences to come into, great creations of form. Upon death, even a Self-Realized soul does not necessarily “disappear” into nothingness or Allness. The absolute goal, Paraśiva—timeless, formless and causeless—is a release, but not an end. There is, of course, an end, which we call viśvagrāsa. This is total merger, a union with That from which the soul never returns—jīva became Śiva. So, whatever inner body the jīvanmukta is functioning in, in the thereafter, he has no need for Self Realization, the seal has already been broken and never mends. So, claiming “I am That, I am”—That being the Absolute, Paraśiva—is the total stabilizing one-ment of all the māyās of creation, preservation and destruction of the individual mind, as well as the mind of reality it goes through.

Lesson 356 – 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 356 – Living with Śiva

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

Liberal Hinduism

Liberal Hindus preach against sectarianism—against Śaivism, Vaishṇavism, Śāktism and orthodox Smārtism. They teach that sectarianism is some kind of antiquated evil, an unenlightened view of life, a thing of the past. They are absolutely wrong. Sectarianism is the strength of religion. If you ask a liberal Hindu what he is, he will tell you, “I am everything. I am a Christian. I am a Jew. I am a Buddhist.” Of course, the Christians know full well that he is not a Christian. The Jews are certain that he is not Jewish, and the Buddhists will tell you that he does not follow the Buddha’s path. In the West they think he sounds stupid.

The liberal Hindus are out to destroy sectarianism, to break down Śaivism, Vaishṇavism and Śāktism—all in the name of modernization or to unite the people for some political reason. The same thing is happening in America, where liberal Hindus are trying to coax everyone away from their sect into a one group so they can have more political power in their lobbying in Washington. It is a sad thing that people go right along with this line of thinking, giving up thousands of years of beautiful tradition for no reason at all. It is totally insidious. So, here we have the Christian forces working against Hinduism, the Muslim forces working against Hinduism, the atheistic forces working against Hinduism and now, worst of all, the liberal Hindu forces working against Hinduism, which is worse because they are working from within the religion itself.

What is the solution? We have to define the boundaries of each sect in order to protect and preserve this most ancient of all the world’s religions. We have to realize that the liberal Hindus are just creating another sect, and we must refuse to join their modern sect. We want nothing to do with those who call for the end of sectarianism. Those who abandon Śaivism to embrace this liberal Hindu path will later take the next natural step and give up Hinduism altogether, calling themselves nothing, or calling themselves everything, which amounts to the same thing.

To understand how liberal Hinduism fits in, it is helpful to use the Western terms orthodox, reform and liberal, because this is a problem that all of the great religions have had to face. Śaivism is the orthodox and original form of the Sanātana Dharma, the eternal path. Vaishṇavism and Śāktism are the reform sects which developed later but retained most of the ancient patterns of practice and belief. Liberal Hinduism is the liberal branch which postulates a form of the religion which is entirely unorthodox and diverges from the path set down by our Gods, by our scriptures, by our ṛishis and other holy men.

The Tamil people should take a lesson from the fate of the Jewish religion. The liberal Jewish movement is bringing about the end of the race, which means the end of the religion. It is doing this through its modernistic concepts, through its sweeping compromise of the duties and disciplines set down for Jews to follow, through its disregard for Jewish ethics, values and practices. We have to take heed. It is happening in India and in Sri Lanka, too.

What is not well understood here is that in America traditional, sectarian religious people and groups are respected, provided they are firm in their convictions and are really leading a religious life and not harming others. It is human to respect strength and conviction. Śaivites who are firm and proud of their religion will be respected wherever they go throughout the world. But people do not respect those who don’t know what they believe or those who will say they believe one thing in order to get something, in order to fit in, or for whatever reason, while in their heart they believe something entirely different. Liberal groups do not receive the same respect. They are not looked up to but are ignored and then absorbed back into society.

The American Śaivites want the true Śaiva Samayam, not a watered-down, intellectual concoction created by a few discontented Hindus in order to get along with Western scholars. People are becoming more educated, more enlightened, and they realize that the orthodox Śaiva Dharma is far more profound and rewarding to their soul. They love and want to worship Lord Śiva. They love Lord Gaṇeśa and go to Lord Murugan for help. What is the solution? We have to preserve scripture and temple worship.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 356: UPHOLDING YOGASWAMI’S AND MY TEACHINGS
My swāmīs know there is strength and guidance in orthodoxy and avoid adopting the new for its own sake or because the old seems an arduous path. They uphold traditions that have survived the trials of time. Aum.

Lesson 356 – Merging with Śiva

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

Death Rites And Rituals

A lot of people who are about to die do not believe in life after death, so they remain hovering over their physical body when it is lifeless. Astral-plane helpers have to come and “wake them up” and tell them that their physical body is dead and explain that they are all right and are alive in their astral body. It is often not an easy process getting them readjusted.

Is there really a Lord Yama, a Lord of Death, devotees often wonder? The answer is yes, not only He, but there are a lot of Lord Yamas, a wide group of well-trained helpers. These tireless inner-plane attendants work, as part of the Yama group, with the doctors and nurses who are involved with terminal cases, those who assist in the transition process, those who take care of disposing of bodies. These are the Yama helpers in the physical world. Executioners, murderers and terrorists are a less noble part of the Yama group. Anyone, other than family and close friends and religious helpers, who is involved in the transitional process two weeks before and after death is part of the Yama group, including ambulance drivers, hospice staff, nurses, morticians, medics, autopsy staff, insurance agents, grave diggers, wood cutters who prepare fuel for funeral pyres, body baggers and coffin makers. Medical doctors and nurses who secretly err in their practice, after dying, join Lord Yama’s recruits in the inner world as prāyaschitta to mitigate the karma they created.

I am speaking especially about modern doctors who operate too freely, even when sometimes it may not be necessary. It is not uncommon that the patient dies on the operating table due to a known mistake on the surgeon’s part. Yet, somehow or other, physicians are regarded by the public as monarchs, Gods, above the law. But the karma relating to manslaughter nevertheless is constant and unfailingly takes effect in this life or another. A common civilian, or the same doctor, running down a pedestrian would naturally be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, fined and maybe jailed. But the secret manslaughters are never admitted, never accounted for; no one is held accountable—except that the unrelenting law of karma reigns as supreme judge and jury.

There is an entire industry that lives on the fact of death. If a doctor says, “Two weeks to live,” then the inner-plane Yamas are alerted and step in. Lord Yama is Lord Restraint, restraining life and getting it started again on the other side. Then the Yama workers, who are like nurses, say, “You are Catholic; you go to Rome. You are Jewish; you go to Jerusalem. You are Muslim; you go to Mecca. You are Hindu; you go to Varanasi,” and so forth. In the lower astral it’s all segregated. In the higher worlds it is all oneness.

In preparing the body for cremation, embalming should not be done. It is painful to the astral body to have the physical body cut or disturbed seriously within seventy-two hours after death. The soul can see and feel this, and it detains him from going on. As soon as you tamper with his physical body, he gets attached, becomes aware that he has two bodies, and this becomes a problem. Ideally, when you die, your physical body goes up in flames, and immediately you know it’s gone. You now know that the astral body is your body, and you can effortlessly release the physical body. But if you keep the old body around, then you keep the person around, and he is aware that he has two bodies. He becomes earthbound, tied into the Pretaloka, and confused.

Embalming preserves the physical vehicle. For a jīvanmukta, he might want to leave, but some people might want to keep him around for a while for their own benefit. The best way for him is to go off into the hills, to die in the forests where no one knows and none of these questions arise. More than many great sādhus have done this and do this to this day. For my satguru, Siva Yogaswami, they did the right thing by cremating him; they released him and did not try to tie him to the Earth. To come and go from the Śivaloka to the Pretaloka is his choice and his alone. To me, embalming or entombing is a divisive way to hold on to the holy man, and I feel it will draw him back into birth. True, in our scriptures it is recommended that the body of a perfectly liberated saint not be cremated but interred instead in a salt-filled crypt. This may be done so that devotees can continue to be served, but in our lineage it is not the way. In our tradition, the body of the departed is cremated within twenty-four hours. This purifies the physical elements and releases the deceased to the inner worlds. In contrast, the Egyptians wanted their Pharaoh to be born again as a king. They didn’t want a young soul to be their king. So all their preparations helped him to be born into the royal family. The Hawaiians did the same thing, royalty perpetuating royalty.

Lesson 355 – Living with Śiva

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

Strength of Commitment

What is our strength? One Supreme God and many Gods. First we have to decide who is the Supreme God. Are you a member of the Śaivite Hindu religion? The Vaishṇavite Hindu religion? The Śākta Hindu religion? The Smārta Hindu religion? Having made that decision, you will have hope and peace of mind. You will have solace when you need it, and something to pass on to your children. Knowledge is strength. Commitment is strength. Knowing where you stand and what you are, that is strength. Worshiping many Gods is our way, but they are not all the Supreme God. They are His helpers, His creations. There is only one Supreme God, though we call Him by various names. The many Gods, the Mahādevas, will help us. They are specialists created by God.

Hinduism today is a religion of today and tomorrow. It is not just a religion of history books and yesterday. Our religion gives us strength today. It is a religion which worships one Supreme God, with vast scriptures that prescribe the worship and illumine our minds with knowledge about the one Supreme God. Never forget this. Never forsake your Vedic Hindu Dharma, but fulfill it, and you will be rewarded, generation after generation after generation.

There is a movement from within Hinduism itself which poses yet another threat to our religion, a threat to all the sects. I call it “liberal Hinduism.” Liberal Hinduism is a “Chellappa stew,” a confused mixture of many things thrown into a one bowl. This movement was started by your forefathers, and it has to be corrected by us through being good Śaivites in this life.

What does liberal Hinduism teach? It teaches that it is not necessary to go to the temple, that yoga is not necessary, that all religions are one, that we need not listen to the swāmīs, and that sectarianism is wrong. What the followers of liberal Hinduism don’t seem to realize is that if they destroy the temples, the sects and the swāmīs, they will be destroying Hinduism itself.

Liberal Hindus hold an idea that all religions are one. They must not have studied the various religions, or they would have to conclude, as we did in America after years of comparative research, that all religions are not one, not at all alike. I was told that all religions are fundamentally one when I was young, and I believed it until I found out years later that it is a lie. All religions are good insofar as they teach devotion and good conduct, but they are not one. The Christians know that their religion is totally different from Hinduism. They live under no illusions, because they know that the very foundations of Śaivism—namely, karma, reincarnation, yoga, God’s existence in all things and the soul’s ultimate merger in God—these beliefs are not their beliefs. Did you know that for a Christian to believe in any of these things is heresy? Absolute heresy. There is very little beyond a belief in a Supreme God and some good moral laws that is common to nearly all religions, but there are many, many differences.

As Śaivites, we love everyone. We appreciate and encourage all religious paths. That is our way. But that does not mean that we should abandon our beliefs and practices to embrace Islam or Buddhism. That does not mean that we should put Jesus on the altar in our shrine room, which is exactly what the liberal Hindus do. I was at a Śaivite institution the other day and was shocked to find that Jesus, Kṛishṇa and Buddha were there together on the altar in the prayer room. There was no image of Gaṇeśa or Murugan or Śiva, yet they called themselves Śaivites. I asked what it meant. They explained, “We believe in all religions, Swāmī.” They were worshiping every God except their own! That complacent syncretism is the result of faulty, liberal Hindu thinking.

The Christians don’t have Lord Gaṇeśa presiding over Sunday services. Of course not. It would be unthinkable. For Śaivites to put Jesus or Mary on the altar is an invitation to every Christian missionary to enter your home, to enter the minds of your children. It is the first sign of the breaking of your faith. That is certainly how the Christians take it. They will see you as a prime target, and they will say among themselves, “It won’t be long now.”

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 355: DEMURENESS IN CONVERSATIONS
My Śaiva monastics, in respect, stand no closer than an arm’s length during conversations. When speaking to men and women together, they direct their attention mostly to the men, as is traditional. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 355 – 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 355 – Merging with Śiva

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

An Event Worth Celebrating

The tunnel of light that is experienced by so many people at the point of death is the portal they are going through, the window, the chakra. It is a tunnel, and it has distance, because it takes time, consciousness, to go from one end to the other. Passing through the tunnel is leaving this world and going into another. You do that in meditation, too. You leave the light of the physical plane and go into the light in the inner world. Death takes place in a short period, but is a foreboding affair to those who have never meditated. But dying is not such a dramatic experience really. Every night you “die” and leave your physical body. It is very similar. Every night mystics leave their physical body, go and meet and converse with other mystics on the inner planes. That’s why they know each other when they meet on the physical plane. Samādhi, the exalted meditative state, which literally means “holding together completely,” is also a word used to describe dying. Why is that? Because deep contemplation is similar to a death experience; only the silver cord is not separated. This cord is an astral-prānic thread that connects the astral body through the navel to the physical body. It is a little like an umbilical cord. The only full separation comes when the cord is cut at mahāsamādhi, the true death of the physical body. People die all the time, but if the cord is not broken, they come back. You die all the time. The cord being broken makes for a twenty-four-hour consciousness in the inner world, as compared to a sixteen-hour consciousness in the physical world.

Many people wish that they were dead and give up on life, look at death as an escape rather than a fulfillment. These cumulative thoughts and desires can create the near-death experience. The welcoming devonic helpers of Lord Yama, the benevolent God of the death experience, don’t pay any attention, because they know the person is not going to die. The person thinks he is going to die, but they know he is not. He has just conjured it up. Just like a conjured illness.

If a person knows he is terminally ill, that knowledge is a blessing, for he can prepare. He should not hesitate to tell his relatives he is going to die, and that is a wonderful blessing for them, as they can prepare for his great departure. Now all know he has finally arrived at the end of his prārabdha karmas and is going to fly. In turn, family and friends should release him, be happy—he is going to be happy with no physical body—for they know they will be as close to him in his astral and soul body as they were in his physical body. They will visit him every night when they sleep, in the inner worlds, and learn many things from him as to how to prepare for their own great departure, be it sudden or prolonged. Don’t cry; you will make him unhappy. You should be happy for him, because he is going to be happy. It is not a sad occasion. For Hindus, death is a most exalted state, an incredible moment that you spend your whole life preparing for. Birth is the unhappy occasion. Death should be a big party. He has just gone through his day of Brahma.

The sadness at death comes from Western attitudes. Western thought has to be reversed. Here a child comes into birth. It is sad, because he was all right before he was born. Now his prārabdha karmas are going to start to explode. He has to deal with his past, which he did not have to deal with in the Devaloka. He has a chance to make new karmas. The time of birth is the grave time. When he dies, that means that section of the jyotisha is finished and he can go and have a great rest and be with intelligent people. It is great inside there and difficult out here.

When people tell me they or a loved one have cancer, AIDS or some other incurable disease, my counsel is this. Everyone dies, but it is a blessing to know when you are going to die, because then you can prepare for it, make a decision whether you are going to be reborn, do intense sādhanas, make preparations. Eastern men don’t fight terminal cancer or AIDS. They go to an astrologer or palmist, ascertain their time of death, then prepare themselves. It’s really a blessing. It’s best not to fight it or “cure it,” since you are interrupting your timing. Just let it happen. Heed the wisdom of the Vedas, “When a person comes to weakness, be it through old age or disease, he frees himself from these limbs just as a mango, a fig or a berry releases itself from its stalk.”

Hindus go to special sacred places to die, because that’s where holy people live, in that part of the astral plane. That place has access to other planets, or to the moon. A lot of people go to the moon when they die and live there. Jews who die go to Israel. That’s their holy land. You can get caught in the astral plane or some bardo mind-flow that would contain you for a long time, and then get a bad birth if you do not go to a special place to die. So, you want at least to die near a temple. A temple is connected to the three worlds. We brought India to the West with our temples and by encouraging more to be built. These days, Indian Hindus don’t mind dying in the West since all the temples are here. They love all the temples they have built, especially our Kadavul Temple, for it feels so sacred to them. All of the temples in the West are connected to other temples in Sri Lanka and India.

Lesson 354 – 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.