Lesson 101 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Nature of the Śiva Temple?

ŚLOKA 101
The Śiva temple is the abode of God Śiva and Gods and the precinct in which the three worlds consciously commune. It is specially sanctified, possessing a ray of spiritual energy connecting it to the celestial worlds. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The three pillars of Śaivism are the temples, the scriptures and the satgurus. These we revere, for they sustain and preserve the ancient wisdom. Śiva temples, whether they be small village sanctuaries or towering citadels, are esteemed as God’s home and consecrated abode. In the Śiva temple we draw close to God Śiva and find a refuge from the world. His grace, permeating everywhere, is most easily known within the precincts of the Śiva temple. It is in the purified milieu of the temple that the three worlds commune most perfectly, that devotees can establish harmony with inner-plane spiritual beings. When the spiritual energy, śakti, invoked by the pūjā permeates the sanctum sanctorum and floods out to the world, Śaivites know they are in a most holy place where God and the Gods commune with them. Within most Śiva temples are private rooms, sanctums, for Lord Gaṇeśa and Lord Kārttikeya, and shrines for the many Gods and saints. The Vedas explain, “Even as the radiance of the sun enlightens all regions, above, below, and slantwise, so that only God, glorious and worthy of worship, rules over all His creation.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 101 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Clearing the Subconscious

After you have practiced meditation for some time, your inner vision will become keen and clear. For a while there may be the feeling of arrival, that you have at last conquered life’s cycles, that you are pure now and free at last. But soon, layer by layer, your past will begin to unfold itself to you as your subconscious mind shows you in vivid, pictorial form all the vibratory rates you have put into it in this life. Like a tape recorder, it begins to play back the patterns and vibrations of previous cause and effect.

Since some of these memories and actions may not have been complimentary, you may try to avoid looking at them. The more you avoid facing them, the more apparent they will become. You might think that everyone is seeing them, but they are not. This natural phase of spiritual unfoldment can be a pitfall, for these associations and attachments of the past seem temporarily attractive as they pass before the mind’s eye. Old desires, old friends, old and comfortable habits you thought were gone now come up to tempt awareness, to pull it back into a seemingly desirable past. This event should not be taken too seriously. It is natural and necessary, but you must avoid a fear of the process, which, in order to stop the unpleasant feedback, often brings people to stop their efforts at meditation. This is not the time to stop meditating. Nor is it the time to avoid the past. It is the time to fully review each year of your life that led you to where you are now.

As you remain inwardly poised, watching the images of life but remaining detached, they gradually fade away, leaving awareness free to dive ever deeper into superconscious realms. This sometimes intense experience brings you into renewed desire to live the kind of life that does not produce distorted images. You become religious and consciously shape up your lifestyle according to the yamas and niyamas, so that the reverberation of each action is positive in the subconscious. You have seen the uncomplimentary results of living according to the moods and emotions of the instinctive mind and the senses, and that experience has taught a great lesson. In reviewing life according to this new guideline, you may change your profession, your address, your diet and values. You will undoubtedly find new friends, for it is essential to associate with people that are of good character. Choose your friends carefully, but don’t get too closely attached. People clinging to people is one of the biggest deterrents to the life of meditation.

Generally as soon as someone gets on the path and starts meditating, he wants to tell everyone else how to do it even before he has learned himself. This socializing never produces inner results. Keep your meditation abilities and activities to yourself. Don’t talk about inner things with anyone but your guru. When it comes others’ time to turn within, they will do so naturally, just as you did. That is the law.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 101: REMARRYING AFTER WIDOWHOOD
Śiva’s widowed followers may remarry, provided it is a spiritual union, astrologically compatible, blessed by their preceptor and their religious community. If they remarry, they are no longer considered widowed. Aum.

Lesson 101 – Merging with Śiva

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

Each Test Is an Opportunity

We carry with us in our instinctive nature basic tendencies to break these divine laws, to undergo the experiences that will create reactive conditions until we sit ourselves down and start to unravel the mess. If we are still reacting to our experiences, we are only starting on the yoga path to enlightenment. As soon as we cease to react, we have for the first time the vision of the inner light.

What do we mean by this word light? We mean light, literally, not metaphysically or symbolically, but light, just as you see the light of the sun or a light emitted by a bulb. Even in the Abrahamic scripture it is given, “When your eye becomes single, your whole body shall be filled with light.” You will see light first at the top of the head, then throughout the body. An openness of mind occurs, and great peace. As a seeker gazes upon his inner light in contemplation, he continues the process of purifying the subconscious mind. As soon as that first yoga awakening comes to you, your whole nature begins to change. You have a foundation on which to continue. The yamas and the niyamas are the foundation.

On the spiritual path to enlightenment, each of your decisions is going to be a basic decision, based on your knowledge of the laws of the mind. You must be aware that if you have not been tested by life through breaking its laws, you will in the future be so tested. You have to be aware that each test is an opportunity for either failure or success, and it is all up to you. Circumstances will always present opportunities for failure, and your reasoning mind will always be able to say, “I could have done nothing else under the circumstances.”

Often, even under the circumstances, advanced souls are able to take the more difficult course through the natural exercise of humility. Decisions of this nature direct the conscious mind to the recognition of natural inner security. When you fail one of life’s tests, all you can fail is yourself, the Self within you.

Lesson 100 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are Other Important Festivals?

ŚLOKA 100
Besides the temple festivals, there is a multitude of home, community and national celebrations, notably Dīpāvalī, Hindu New Year, Tai Pongal, guru pūjā days, kumbha melas, Jayantī and Guru Pūrṇimā. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Dīpāvalī, the “festival of lights” in October-November, is a most popular festival, esteemed as a day of Hindu solidarity, when all sects gather in love and trust. It begins the financial year and is celebrated by opening new accounts, giving greeting cards, clothing and other gifts and by lighting rows of oil lamps. Family bonds are strengthened and forgivenesses sought. The several Hindu New Years are important observations. Tai Pongal, in January-February, is a harvest thanksgiving and invocation for prosperity. God Sūrya, the Sun, is honored, and daughters are presented with gifts. We venerate saints and sages by conducting guru pūjā on the anniversary of their passing, or mahāsamādhi. We celebrate our satguru’s birthday, or jayantī, with special pūjā to his śrī pādukā, “sandals,” or holy feet. We honor him again on Guru Pūrṇimā, the full moon of July. Kumbha melas, humanity’s largest gatherings, are held at four pilgrimage centers in India every three years. The Vedas proclaim, “Thus have we now approached the All-Knower, the one who is the best procurer of good things. Endow us, O Majesty, with strength and glory.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 100 – Living with Śiva

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

Sleep and Dreaming

Get into the habit of meditating before sleep each night. If you catch yourself dropping off to sleep while sitting for meditation, know that your meditation is over. The best thing to do is to deliberately go to sleep, because the spiritual power is gone and has to be invoked or opened up again. After getting ready for bed, sit in the lotus position and have a dynamic meditation for as long as you can. When you feel drowsy, you may deliberately put your body to sleep in this way. Mentally say to yourself, “Praṇa in the left leg, flow, go to sleep. Prāṇa in the right leg, flow, go to sleep. Prāṇa in the left arm, flow, go to sleep. Prāṇa in the right arm, flow, go to sleep. Torso prāṇa, flow, go to sleep. Head filled with inner light, go to sleep.” The first thing you know, it’s morning.

The whole dream and sleep world is very interesting. Often we go into inner planes of consciousness at night. How do you know if you have been in meditation all through the night, studying at the inner-plane school in higher states of mind? You will wake up all of a sudden with no interim period of sleepiness. You wake up invigorated. There you are, as if you came out of nowhere back into external consciousness. Otherwise, you wake up through the subconscious dream world. You feel a little off-key, and you know that you have been in the dream or astral world or the realms of intellectual aggressiveness much of the night. Striving yoga students do go into inner-plane meditation schools for short periods of time during their sleeping hours. This occurs when the mind is a well-trained mind, a keen mind, a crystal-clear mind.

Perhaps by this time you have seen the clear white light, or less intense inner light, and you have seen how crystal clear and sharp it is. Each thought, each feeling, each action has to be crystal clear and sharp to maintain and bring through a balance of your consciousness to the external world. When this happens, you have control over these states of consciousness, so much so that you are your own catalyst, and you can slide into higher states and out to external states of consciousness without being disturbed by one or the other.

When we act and react in daily affairs, we dream at night. We are living in the external or the aggressive magnetic force, called piṅgalā. Thus, we dream in pictures. Should a yogī live in the passive force, the magnetic indrawn force, called īḍā, he feels and emotes on the astral plane. He would have a fretful, eventful night, an emotional night. He would not dream in pictures as much as he would in feeling. When one is living in the pure spiritual force, sushumṇā, the primary life force, he flows from sleep into meditation. The meditator should strive to put his body to sleep consciously and deliberately, after balancing the external and internal magnetic forces. So, whether he is lying down in his body or sitting in the lotus posture, he is in deep meditation, going to schools of learning and schools of spiritual unfoldment within his own mind. In the morning, many of my students remember inner-plane class activities which occurred during the night, not as a dream but as their own experience. So, you can meditate while you sleep, but don’t sleep while you are meditating!

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 100: TAKING ACTION IF ABUSED
Each of Śiva’s married women loves and serves her husband, despite any shortcomings. But if he ever strikes her or the children, she is duty-bound to seek help from family, friends and community. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 100 – Merging with Śiva

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

Learning to Face Yourself

Life offers you an opportunity. As the Western theologian speaks of sins of omission as well as sins of commission, so we find that life offers us an opportunity to break the law as indicated by the yamas, as well as to omit the observances of the niyamas. If we take the opportunity to live out of tune with Hindu dharma, reaction is built in the subconscious mind. This reaction stays with us and recreates the physical and astral body accordingly.

Have you ever known a friend who reacted terribly to an experience in life and as a result became so changed mentally and physically that you hardly recognized him? Our external, conscious mind has a habit of not being able to take the meaning out of life’s most evident lessons.

The basic laws of life are so simple that many people don’t heed them. Why? Generally because the opportunities afforded us to fail these tests are so plentiful that we generate very good reasons for not paying attention to our lessons. Shall we say it is normal to fail some of these tests? Yes, isn’t this like getting a failing grade on a report card in school, not passing some of the tests and having to take a course over again? We must learn from our experiences or find ourselves repeating them again and again.

It is our teaching not to react to life’s experiences, but to understand them and in the understanding to free ourselves from the impact of these experiences, realizing the Self within. The true Self is only realized when you gain a subconscious control over your mind by ceasing to react to your experiences so that you can concentrate your mind fully, experience first meditation and contemplation, then samādhi, or Self Realization. First we must face our subconscious.

There are many amusing ways in which people go about facing themselves. Some sit down to think things over, turning out the light of understanding. They let their minds wander, accomplishing nothing. Let me suggest to you a better way.

In facing ourselves let us relate our actions, our thoughts and our feelings to the yamas and the niyamas, the wise restraints and observances of Hindu Dharma. In aligning ourselves with these universal laws, we can soon see how clear or muddy is our own subconscious. Fulfilling the restraints first allows us to take the next step on the spiritual path, which is the fulfillment of the observances. As long as we are evading our taxes, it is difficult to live up to the ideal of honesty. As long as we are beating our children, it is difficult to adhere to nonviolence. As long as we are swearing, using asura-invoking, profane words in the home, it will be difficult to cultivate patience. As long as we indulge in pornography, a mental form of adultery, it will be difficult to practice purity. Yes, it will be difficult to cultivate a contemplative nature. All these and more will require serious penance, prāyaśchitta, as it is known in Sanskrit, to change the nature and bring it into harmony with the profound ideals of the ancient Indian sages and yogīs.

Lesson 99 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Main Kārttikeya Festivals?

ŚLOKA 99
Vaikāsi Viśākham celebrates the anniversary of Lord Kārttikeya’s creation. Skanda Shashṭhī is a six-day festival honoring His conquest of light over darkness. Tai Pusam is a time of sādhana and public penance. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
On Vaikāsi Viśākham day, Lord Kārttikeya’s birthstar, Viśākhā nakshatra, in May-June, elaborate abhisheka is conducted in all His temples. It is a time of gift-giving to paṇḍitas and great souls, weddings, feedings for the poor, caring for trees, spiritual initiation, dīkshā, and conclaves of holy men. Skanda Shashṭhī is celebrated on the six days after the new moon in October-November with festive processions and pūjās invoking His protection and grace. It honors Kārttikeya’s receiving the vel, His lance of spiritual illumination, jñāna śakti, and culminates in a dramatic victory celebration of spiritual light over asuric darkness. Tai Pusam occurs on Pushya nakshatra in January-February. During this festival we fast and perform public penance, called kavadi, seeking Kārttikeya’s blessings to dispel our selfishness, pride and vanity. His special monthly days are Kṛittikā nakshatra and Shashṭhi, the sixth tithi after the new moon. The Vedas say, “Like the cry of watchful birds swimming in water, like the loud claps of thundering rain clouds, like the joyful streams gushing from the mountain, so have our hymns sounded forth to the Lord.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 99 – Living with Śiva

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

Taming Distraction

Throughout your inner investigations in meditation, cling to the philosophical principle that the mind doesn’t move. Thoughts are stationary within the mind, and only awareness moves. It flows from one thought to another, as the free citizen of the world travels through each country, each city, not attaching himself anywhere. When you are able, through practice, to sit for twenty minutes without moving even one finger, your superconscious mind can begin to express itself. It can even reprogram your subconscious and change past patterns of existence. That is one of the wonderful things about inner life. That’s why it’s inner life—it happens from the inside.

If you just sit and breathe, the inner nerve system of the body of your psyche, your soul, begins to work on the subconscious, to mold it like clay. Awareness is loosened from limited concepts and made free to move vibrantly and buoyantly into the inner depths where peace and bliss remain undisturbed for centuries. However, if you move even a finger, you externalize the entire nervous system. Like shifting gears from high to low, you change the intensity of awareness, and the outer nerve system then is active. Superconscious programming ceases, awareness returns to the body and the senses, and the external mind takes over. By sitting still again at this point, it is just a matter of a few minutes for the forces to quiet and awareness to soar in and in once again. Sitting quietly in this state, you will feel when the superconscious nerve system begins to work in the physical body. You may feel an entirely different flow through your muscles, your bones and your cells. Let it happen.

As you sit to meditate, awareness may wander into past memories or future happenings. It may be distracted by the senses, by a sound or by a feeling of discomfort in the body. This is natural in the early stages. Gently bring awareness back to your point of concentration. Don’t criticize awareness for wandering, for that is yet another distraction. Distractions will disappear if you become intensely interested and involved in your meditation. In such a state you won’t even feel the physical body. You have gone to a movie, read a book or sat working on a project on your computer that was so engrossing you only later discovered your foot had fallen asleep for a half hour because it was in an awkward position. Similarly, once we are totally conscious on the inside, we will never be distracted by the physical body or the outside.

If distractions keep coming up in meditation over a long period of time, then perhaps you are not ready to meditate. There has to be a point where distractions stop. Until then you are hooked very strongly into the instinctive or intellectual area of the mind, and the whole idea of meditation won’t inspire you very much. Therefore, you need something to spur you on inwardly. In Hinduism when this occurs, the grace of the satguru is sought. By going to your guru openly, you receive darśana, a little extra power that moves awareness permanently out of the areas of distraction. You are then able to sit in inner areas for long periods of time. Distractions become fewer and fewer, for he has wrenched you out of the instinctive and intellectual areas and changed the energy flow within your body.

After the meditation is over, work to refine every attribute of your nature. Learn to work and work joyfully, for all work is good. Learn to be happy by seeking happiness, not from others but from the depths of the soul itself. In your daily life, observe the play of the forces as they manifest between people and people, and people and their things. Don’t avoid the forces of the world, for the meditator lives fearlessly, shying away from nothing. The “out there” and the within are his playground, his kingdom. He becomes vibrant and confident in himself. He learns to lean on his own spine and not on any other person, teacher, book, organization or system. Answers begin to become real and vibrant, hooked onto the end of every question. His body radiates new grace and strength. His mind, disciplined and uncluttered, becomes one-pointedly agile. His relationships take on new, profound meanings. His emotions are stabilized and reflect his new-found tranquillity. These and many more are the dynamic rewards of the sincere aspirant who searches within through meditation.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 99: MEALTIME CUSTOMS
Each of Śiva’s married women devotees joyously observes at mealtimes the ancient custom of serving her husband and family first. When they are satisfied, she is fulfilled and only then sits down for her own meal. Aum.

Lesson 99 – Merging with Śiva

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

Restraints and Observances

When we are children, we run freely, because we have no great subconscious burdens to carry. Very little has happened to us. Of course, our parents and religious institutions try to prepare us for life’s tests. But because the conscious mind of a child doesn’t know any better, it generally does not accept the preparation without experience, and life begins the waking up to the material world, creating situations about us—magnificent opportunities for failing these tests. If we do not fail, we know that we have at some prior time learned the lesson inherent in the experience. Experience gives us a bit of wisdom when we really face ourselves and discover the meaning of failure and success. Failure is just education. But you shouldn’t fail once you know the law.

There have been many systems and principles of ethics and morality established by various world teachers down through the ages. All of these have had only one common goal—to provide for man living on the planet Earth a guidepost for his thought and action so that his consciousness, his awareness, may evolve to the realization of life’s highest goals and purposes. The ancient yoga systems provided a few simple yamas and niyamas for religious observance, defining how all people should live. The yamas, or restraints, provided a basic system of discipline for the instinctive mind. The niyamas, or positive observances, are the affirming, life-giving actions and disciplines. From the holy Vedas we have assembled here ten yamas and ten niyamas, a simple statement of the ancient and beautiful laws of life.


The Ten Yamas, Restraints for Proper Conduct from the Vedas


Noninjury, ahiṁsā: Not harming others by thought, word, or deed.
Truthfulness, satya: Refraining from lying and betraying promises.
Nonstealing, asteya: Neither stealing, nor coveting nor entering into debt.
Divine conduct, brahmacharya: Controlling lust by remaining celibate when single, leading to faithfulness in marriage.
Patience, kshamā: Restraining intolerance with people and impatience with circumstances.
Steadfastness, dhṛiti: Overcoming nonperseverance, fear, indecision and changeableness.
Compassion, dayā: Conquering callous, cruel and insensitive feelings toward all beings.
Honesty, straightforwardness, ārjava: Renouncing deception and wrongdoing.
Moderate appetite, mitāhāra: Neither eating too much nor consuming meat, fish, fowl or eggs.
Purity, śaucha: Avoiding impurity in body, mind and speech.


The Ten Niyamas, Observances For Spiritual Life from the Vedas


Remorse, hrī: Being modest and showing shame for misdeeds.
Contentment, santosha: Seeking joy and serenity in life.
Giving, dāna: Tithing and giving generously without thought of reward.
Faith, āstikya: Believing firmly in God, Gods, guru and the path to enlightenment.
Worship of the Lord, Īśvarapūjana: The cultivation of devotion through daily worship and meditation.
Scriptural listening, siddhānta śravaṇa: Studying the teachings and listening to the wise of one’s lineage.
Cognition, mati: Developing a spiritual will and intellect with the guru’s guidance.
Sacred vows, vrata: Fulfilling religious vows, rules and observances faithfully.
Recitation, japa: Chanting mantras daily.
Austerity, tapas: Performing sādhana, penance, tapas and sacrifice.

Lesson 98 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Major Gaṇeśa Festivals?

ŚLOKA 98
Gaṇeśa Chaturthī is a joyous celebration of Gaṇeśa’s birthday. Vināyaka Vratam is twenty-one days of fasting and daily temple worship. Pañcha Gaṇapati is a five-day family festival of harmony and gift-giving. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
On Gaṇeśa Chaturthī, in August-September, elaborate temple pūjās are held. Worship is also given in the home shrine to a clay image of Gaṇeśa that we make or obtain. At the end of the day, or after ten days, we join others in a grand parade, called visarjana, to a river, temple tank, lake or seashore, where we immerse the image, symbolizing Gaṇeśa’s release into universal consciousness. During the twenty-one days of Vināyaka Vratam, in November-December, devotees vow to attend daily Gaṇeśa pūjā, fasting on water and taking a full meal after sunset. Pañcha Gaṇapati, December 21 to 25, is a modern five-day festival of gift-giving, dear to children. Families invoke His five śaktis, one on each day—creating harmony in the home, concord among relatives, neighbors and friends, good business and public relations, cultural upliftment and heartfelt charity. Gaṇeśa’s monthly holy day is Chaturthī, the fourth tithi after the new moon. The Vedas implore, “O Lord of Categories, thou art the Lord, the seer of seers, unrivaled in wealth, king of elders, lord of the principle of principles. Hear us and take thy place, bringing with thee all enjoyments.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.