Lesson 115 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Home Shrine’s Significance?

ŚLOKA 115
Every Śaivite maintains a home shrine. It is the most beautiful room in the house, an extension of the temple, the abode for Deities and devas, and a holy refuge for daily worship and meditation. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Every Śaivite home centers around the home shrine, a special room set aside and maintained to create a temple-like atmosphere in which we conduct pūjā, read scripture, perform sādhana, meditate, sing bhajana and do japa. Here the presence of the Gods is always felt, and we remember them especially morning and evening and before meals, which we offer to them before we partake. Worship traditionally begins before dawn, with the simple act of dedication for the coming day. After a bath, morning pūjā is performed which includes the repetition of the Gāyatrī or other mantras and is followed by sādhanas given by one’s guru. The form of home worship, ātmārtha pūjā, is simple: the Deities are invoked and offerings are made. After the final āratī, or offering of the light, we supplicate them to bestow their grace on us, our family and all devotees. Evening devotionals include a simple āratī, bhajana, meditation and reading of scripture, which carries one to lofty celestial realms during sleep. The Āgamas affirm, “Worship of one’s chosen Liṅga by anyone in their own home for divine protection is called ātmārtha pūjā.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 115 – Living with Śiva

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

You Must Purify Yourself

Ask yourself, “Have I followed all the good advice given me?” You come to hear my upadeśa. Your coming is the asking for advice. You get advice, and many of you ignore it and you have your own opinion. If you have your own opinion, why come? Opinions are just of the instinctive and intellectual mind. Most opinions are only moldy concepts! You come to have your opinions changed. You come to have them changed from within you through your own spiritual insight. But if you come with the armor of your opinions, then you are very foolish. You might as well stay home and live with your opinions, because there will be no spiritual progress or unfoldment for you for many, many years, maybe many lives.

Ask yourself these vital questions. What are you going to do with the past that keeps bothering you and sometimes makes today a hell on Earth for you? It is really easy to transcend this state of mind. Just remember and try to understand that the spirit within you flows through you, flows through the mind, like water flows through the Earth. If you build barriers, then you fight your own spiritual Being flowing through you. You develop qualities of jealousy, hatred, anger, revenge, and malice. Negative qualities are just congested masses of mind-stuff that are temporary and do not allow the spirit to flow through. If you have negative qualities as boulders in your mind, the spirit cannot flow through you; but as it tries to flow through, it will automatically set a part of your mind out of control, and you will be emotional. You can’t help it.

So, you must purify yourself. You purify yourself by being kind to others, being generous until it hurts, being benevolent, being ready to serve at all times until you are strained in serving. Put a smile on the faces of other people. Gain your happiness and your positive states of mind by making other people happy. Negative people are always worried about themselves. Positive people are concerned with the happiness of others. Be strong enough to understand, and do not allow yourself to sleep at night until you have understood the problems of the day. If you go to sleep with problems on your mind, you will go into a confused state of mind, and you will toss around and later say, “That is just the dream world” or “I had a nightmare.” All you did was lose your consciousness in a troubled subconscious state. But if you practice yoga, and you sit and master each problem before falling asleep, even if it takes you several hours, you will gain enough rest for the next day, for you will have made this day a perfect day.

If you refuse to do what you should do when you have the chance to do it, what hope is there for anybody else who does not even know what he should do? If you resist a spiritual life, possibly the responsibility for others falls on your shoulders, because everything starts with the one and multiplies into the many. It behooves you to understand very acutely and discriminatingly these basic principles and immediately put them into action in your life. Seize every spiritual opportunity you have to advance your soul, because when you do, the reaction is glorious on you. But when you resent and when you fight within yourself, the reaction is disastrous unto yourself, because you lose the battle when you begin to fight your own inner Self. You win the battle when you begin to express yourself spiritually, when you begin to live with Śiva.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 115: THE ALL-IMPORTANT SUPPORT GROUP
Each marriage within a Śaivite community enjoys support, strength and encouragement from the satguru and all of Śiva’s followers, and counsel from elders when needed, especially in times of trial. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 115 – Merging with Śiva

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

I’m All Right, Right Now

It is one thing to say “I am all right, right now,” and it is another thing to feel it. Can you feel that you are all right, right now? Can you really believe it? Can you hold that feeling, so that this affirmation becomes permeated through your subconscious mind? Let this feeling permeate so deeply through your subconscious mind that it begins working within you, the same way your involuntary subconscious keeps your heart beating and the other processes of your body going.

“I’m all right, right now.” Let the feeling of these words vibrate within you. Then every time you abide in the luxury of worry—and the luxury of worry is one luxury you cannot afford—say to yourself, “I’m all right, right now,” and forget about where you are going, forget about where you have been and just be where you are, where your physical body is, in its immediate surroundings.

When you do that, you find that where you were going and what you were worried about has to do with the egotistical you—your pride and the various qualities that you hasten to rid yourself of when you think you should improve yourself. So, it is really very practical to live now and be all right in all the nows. But remember, since living in the eternal now lifts you into a higher state of consciousness than you have been accustomed to, you have to continue to feel that you are all right, right now. When you continue in the consciousness of the eternal now, something mysterious and wonderful begins to happen—your soul, your superconscious, begins to work out your spiritual destiny. When you quiet your mind, and only when you quiet your mind, you give your soul a chance. What difference does it make if you do have problems? They will work themselves out if you can keep the confusion of your lower states of mind out of the way.

Visualize your soul now as a shaft of light. Visualize your mind as various layers surrounding that soul, covering up the brilliancy of that light. If you live in the layers around the soul, which only cover up the brilliancy of the light, you add to the confusion around the soul. But you can live in that shaft of light. By realizing that you are all right this instant, that light of your soul has a chance to shine through the surrounding layers of the mind just a little, enough to calm your future. For your future is made in the present, in the eternal now.

Lesson 114 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Do Śaivites Worship Only in Temples?

ŚLOKA 114
One can worship God anywhere and be in contact with the inner worlds—in the temple, in the home shrine and in the yogī’s contemplation. However, in the holy Śiva temple the three worlds most perfectly commune. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
In the shrine room gather messengers of the Mahādeva being worshiped to hear the prayers of the devotee and carry them to their Master. The Gods can be worshiped anywhere when the proper saṅkalpa, preparation, has been performed. God’s presence is everywhere, through everything, in everything, for Śiva is the creator of all things, the manifestor of time, form and the space between forms. Śiva is worshiped in the mind, in the heart, through the throat, in the head of the yogī locked in yoga. So great is the power of worship, communion and communication with the centillion devas, that when a little bell is rung, a flame appears in the lamp, the vermilion spot is placed, the flower appears and is offered, God Śiva and the Gods are invoked. Contemplating the aftermath of pūjā or abhisheka, we feel the sānnidhya or divine presence of Parāśakti, tender motherly love, permeating to the outer walls around the temple. The Vedas proclaim, “Assemble all, with prayer to the Lord of Heaven, He is the One, the all-pervading, the guest of men. He, the ancient of days, abides in the present. Him, the One, the many follow on their path.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 114 – Living with Śiva

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

Are You Ready?

When you control your emotions, you are bringing through your spiritual being. It is only your spiritual being, your soul in action, bringing through the spirit, or bringing through God, that can control the mind. When you are living in an emotional state, you are only experiencing the mind temporarily out of control. And like anything that gains its own momentum, even if you do not control it, it will subside automatically after a period of time until it builds up again. This is all caused by subtle transgressions of natural laws of the mind, in this life and in previous lives.

There are many subtle laws. For instance, if you are planning to do something for someone and then you decide for some reason that you won’t, all of the spiritual power that you had previously brought through from your spiritual being will be coagulated and blocked by your hesitation. Then tomorrow will not be as good as today was. It will be worse.

To keep your spirit flowing, always allow yourself to be in the line of understanding. In other words, do not allow misunderstanding to arise in your mind. Should misunderstanding arise, sit down, be quiet and do not get up until you understand the problem. You might have to sit for an hour. Instinctively your animal nature will not allow you to do that, but if you use willpower and persist, tomorrow will be a perfect day. Now, this is easy to talk about, and also easy to understand, but it takes a very discerning mind, utilizing the power of discrimination, to master these laws of the mind.

Train your mind to awaken the spiritual being. This is as difficult to do as it is to train a person to dance or to swim, or to accomplish any athletic feat requiring a highly trained body. You have to always be the master, and be attentive to your goals in life.

What is your goal in this life? Is your goal to sit and wallow in the emotions? Is it to memorize a lot of things that different people have said so you can quote from them? Or is your goal in life to find first your Infinite Being within yourself? If you could only once gain just a glimmer of your true Being—the spiritual Being flowing through the mind which you always thought was you. Instead, you have things that you have to do that you haven’t done, things that you will do, and things that you will not do, things that you haven’t made up your mind to do as yet and things you thought you would like to do but decided you wouldn’t do. All of this is going on as a process within yourself, and it keeps you nicely confused.

A confused mind creates the form to which you give a name, and you become Mr. or Mrs. Somebody from Somewhere. You go along like that for years and years until all of a sudden you drop dead and give up the physical body. Then what happens? What happens to this mind that is so concerned about “What will my friends think?” All of these various concepts that make up your personality, when you lay down your physical body and die, just what happens to them? Are you ready for that experience of death? You should always be ready, especially nowadays when the opportunities are so great. Always be ready, spiritually ready.

Are you spiritually ready? Have you done your duty to your family? Have you done your duty to your temple? Have you done your duty to yourself? Or do you shirk some of your responsibilities? It’s not up to your swāmī to know all those things about you. Somebody once said, “Well, Gurudeva just knows everything about me.” What good does that do? It’s up to you to take a running total on yourself, daily, through feeling. You can’t do it through thought; you’ll get all mixed up. Are you ready to become a spirit, a spiritual being, an illumined mind, at the moment of death? Or at the moment of death are you ready to become a completely confused, congested mass of gaseous matter, which is what a confused mind looks like? These are vital religious questions that the individual must face and find the answers to.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 114: THE WRITTEN MARRIAGE COVENANT
Śiva’s followers compose a written promise to one another before marriage, defining the duties, responsibilities and expectations of their life together. At key junctures in life, they rewrite this vital agreement. Aum.

Lesson 114 – Merging with Śiva

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

Torn Between Past and Future

What is the instant? That is what we have to discover through a moment of concentration. What is the moment? We all know what the past is—many people live in the past, over and over again, and they never catch up with the present. Other people live in the future—but of course when they do, they are really only living in the past, too, and they never find the present either.

Just as an example, how many times have you gone to the temple without being fully there? Part of you was there, part of you was living in the past, part of you was trying to live in the future; and there you were, emoting over the things that happened that should never have happened, and fearful of things that might happen in the future, which probably won’t happen unless you continue being fearful of their happening until you create them!

Do you know that the ability to live right now, in the instant, is a spiritual power, reflecting the awakening of the soul and requiring a subconscious control of the mind? Your soul is never bothered with the things that disturb the rest of the mind! The mind lives in the past, and the mind tries to live in the future. But when you quiet your mind, you live in the present. You are living within your soul, or the higher state of your mind which is undisturbed by the things of time.

Also, when you live in the present, you eliminate fears, worries and doubts. Of course, you might feel a little out of place for a while, as if you weren’t anybody, if for years and years you have been accustomed to making fears, worries and doubts your cherished possessions—more important to you than anything. There are people who just wouldn’t know who they were if you took away from them their fears, worries and doubts. But if you want to be somebody, something, a state of being, you want to live in the eternal now.

There is a simple formula for attaining the eternal now. If you can remember it, you can center yourself within yourself very quickly and experience living right this instant. Imagine yourself now, worried, bothered and disturbed, and in the midst of your disturbance say to yourself, “I am all right, right now. Just this instant, I am all right.” What a shock to the disturbed part of your mind! It will not only be shocked, it will be shattered out of its disturbance when you declare the truth that you are all right in the eternal now.

Lesson 113 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Do Our Prayers Reach the Gods?

ŚLOKA 113
Through temple worship, the three worlds become open to one another, and the beings within them are able to communicate. By means of the mystical arts of pūjā, the worlds act in concert, and prayers are received. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The three worlds are connected when pūjā is performed and worship is begun. There are certain rites that can be performed to enable individuals to communicate directly with beings in the inner worlds. Prayers are given and received in many ways. Among the most intimate, personal forms of communication is the written prayer to the devas or to God. Burned in Agni’s sacred fire, it disintegrates in the physical world and quickly re-forms in the astral world. When a prayer is burned in a temple wherein this practice is consecrated, its astral image is received and read by the devas, and properly dispatched and answered, within the confines of our karmic pattern. Prayers may also be conveyed by slowly, mentally enunciating the words, visualizing them rising up the spine, through the top of the head, reaching beyond to the feet of God. The devas will not intervene unless asked. This is the inner law. The Vedas avow, “He shines forth at dawn like the sunlight, deploying the sacrifice in the manner of priests unfolding their prayerful thoughts. Agni, the God who knows well all the generations, visits the Gods as a messenger, most efficacious.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 113 – Living with Śiva

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

Living In Spirit

Stress is a consequence of the technological age, and these days everybody is talking about stress. Stress and strains of a fast-paced and demanding modern age affect every organ of the body. A calm mind, a peaceful mind, is needed to encompass changing times. Times are changing very rapidly. To cope with these changes, we have to rely on ourselves to keep a balance of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual life. Our religion has ways to combat stress and the diseases it causes, ways to avoid the mental anguish which this fast-paced world brings about. These pressures did not exist in the agricultural age. Things were more relaxed then. All we had to do was plant our crops and wait for the harvest. Plant and wait. Plant and wait. And in-between there was plenty of time for religious activities.

But life in the technological age is a life of constant work, constant activity, all of the time. So, we tend to set religion aside just when we need it the most. We have to rely on our religion to keep a balance in our life. It is a proven fact that religious people can cope with stress and strain better than nonreligious people. The answer to stress is not to take a pill to be able to relax. The answer is not to give up the temple, not to give up the culture, not to give up the scriptures which put everything into perspective, not to give up the art of meditation and the practices of yoga.

Spiritual things you must understand with your heart, with your feeling. Feeling and thinking, working together, give you that deep understanding that you need to cognize the wisdom of the spirit. All you can do in living your life every day is to make today just a little bit better than yesterday was. You will then have confidence in yourself, so that tomorrow will be all right, too, and you won’t fear the tomorrows. Why? Because in striving to make today the perfect day of your lifetime, you bring through your spirit. You allow the spirit, God, to permeate through all layers of your mind.

At our sunrise pilgrimage this morning to the top of Mount Tamalpais we had over thirty devotees. It was a beautiful, inspiring time. Let me explain to you just a little bit what we were researching together on the mountaintop. Your thoughts sometimes literally flood your body or flow through your body. Sometimes you find your thoughts spinning and jumping from here to there. You don’t know where they come from, and they confuse you as they flow through your body or your brain. Just as thought can flow through the body, so can spirit, or God, flow through the intuitive, the intellectual and the instinctive mind. When your thoughts flow through the body, your body becomes either dejected and heavy, or light and happy, depending upon the nature of your thinking. Affirmations can help you to improve the patterns of your thought and feeling. You have to repeat certain affirmations for certain lengths of time to produce a certain result. Every word—and the meaning of each word if you know the meaning—has a certain vibration. As a thought goes into motion, it permeates your nervous system and gives you a particular feeling. Just as your thoughts and your words can make your body feel a certain way, in the very same way the spirit, or God, flowing through the mind, can illumine and does illumine the mind and purify it.

In facing your past, if your past is not exactly what you would like to look at, and you look at it and still react to it, you will create today as a day much worse than yesterday. You will not be living the spiritual life. But if you seek first the spirit within you each day, and make the day a little bit better than yesterday, you flood the spiritual being of you, the real you, through the mind. And you wipe away and clarify much of the past and bring much understanding through your mind.

What is responsible for negative reactions of the subconscious mind? Simply the transgressions that you have caused against the natural laws of the mind, that’s all. If you transgress the laws of the physical body, eat the wrong things, behave in the wrong way, your physical body will suffer because of it. If you transgress the natural laws of the mind, hurt another instead of help another, discourage instead of encourage another person, then your mind will suffer. A part of the mind goes out of control, and that is called being emotional. The emotions are a part of the mind out of control. They gain a momentum of their own and eventually take over the entire mind. But when the will of the spirit comes up and controls the emotional nature, the emotions subside for a period of time until they gain momentum again. This goes on sometimes all through life.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 113: KEEPING WEDDING COSTS REASONABLE
Weddings are spiritual events among Śiva’s followers. Ceremonies must never burden the families financially and, while the bride may bring wealth to the marriage, families are forbidden to demand or pay dowries. Aum.

Lesson 113 – Merging with Śiva

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

You Only Have a Minute

“You have only just a minute, only sixty seconds in it. Didn’t want it, forced upon you, can’t refuse it, didn’t seek it, didn’t choose it, it is up to you to use it. You must suffer if you lose it, give account if you abuse it. Just a tiny little minute, but eternity is in it. For not to love is not to live, and not to give is not to live.” There is really very little to be said intellectually about the eternal now. You have to live in it, and in living in it you discover a higher state of consciousness than you have experienced in your life. Because the vibration of the eternal now is so very high, part of your mind and nature does not like to experience the security of the eternal now, which is really the height of security. It takes practice to maintain a continued experience of the eternal now.

Can you visualize yourself, right at this instant, balanced on the top of a tall tree? If the tree were to bend too far forward, you would fall to the ground, or down into time and thought. If it were to bend too far back, you would again fall. Balanced on the top of this tree, you can look out over the countryside and enjoy everything you see. But if you stop to think about one thing of the past, you would become so engrossed in what you are thinking about that you again fall to the ground. You find that you cannot live in a thinking consciousness balanced so high. Here you live in the eternal now, with great awareness of what is around you and within you, but with no thought on it.

Can you feel like this? Right now you are here. Right now nothing else matters. You are aware. You are alive, and you are in eternity. Finding the eternal now is a vibration even more powerful than that of sound or light, for you are in the consciousness of Being—being intensely aware, being very alive. In that state of consciousness you can see that when you begin to think, it is like climbing down the tree and walking along through the forest. On the ground you cannot see the forest for the trees. On top of the tree you can see the entire forest and enjoy it. In the eternal now you find awareness in every part of your body, every fiber of your consciousness. Your life depends upon your awareness! Here you can enjoy seeing the birds fly by, the waterfall, the countryside.

You can enjoy all that, but you dare not stop to think upon the flight of one bird, because you would become too engrossed in thought and fall into a lower state of consciousness. That bird might remind you of a pet bird you had at home, and the thinking mind would go on and on, landing you on the ground. When you become aware and start living in eternity, in the eternal now, you find that eternity is within you. Then you can see there is no life. Nor is there any death. You have transcended even the laws of reincarnation in that state, holding the consciousness of eternity, for you are beyond the soul which reincarnates and creates a new form around itself.

Lesson 112 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Do Devotees Prepare for Worship?

ŚLOKA 112
We visit a Śiva temple after bathing, dressing in clean clothes and preparing an offering, which can be as simple as a few flowers or fruits. We bring the mind to the holy feet of the Deity even as preparations begin. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Visiting the home of God Śiva or of a God, the temple, is not without its trepidation, protocol and proper conduct, preceded by preparation that we administrate ourselves. Our worship is only as meaningful and effective as we make it. Before we attend or conduct a pūjā, we should carefully bathe the body, rinse the mouth and dress in fresh clothing—sārīs for women and dhotīs or veshtis and shawls for men where this is the custom. Throughout these preparations we may sing hymns or chant mantras or God’s holy names silently or aloud, taking care to keep the mind free from worldly matters. We then gather offerings for the Deity. If mealtime is near, we eat only after pūjā has been concluded. Although the outer details of our worship are important, it is our inner feelings and thoughts, our love and devotion, which are the truest offering we can make. The Vedas testify, “The Gods, led by the spirit, honor faith in their worship. Faith is composed of the heart’s intention. Light comes through faith. Through faith men come to prayer, faith in the morning, faith at noon and at the setting of the sun. O faith, give us faith!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.