Lesson 75 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Relation of Sex to Marriage?

ŚLOKA 75
Wisdom demands that the intimacies of sexual intercourse be confined to marriage. Marriages that are free of prior relationships are the truest and strongest, seldom ending in separation or divorce. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
When a virgin man and woman marry and share physical intimacy with each other, their union is very strong and their marriage stable. This is because their psychic nerve currents, or nāḍīs, grow together and they form a one body and a one mind. Conversely, if the man or woman has had intercourse before the marriage, the emotional-psychic closeness of the marriage will suffer, and this in proportion to the extent of promiscuity. For a marriage to succeed, sexual intercourse must be preserved for husband and wife. Each should grow to understand the other’s needs and take care to neither deny intercourse to the married partner nor make excessive demands. A healthy, unrepressed attitude should be kept regarding sexual matters. Boys and girls must be taught to value and protect their chastity as a sacred treasure, and to save the special gift of intimacy for their spouse. They should be taught the importance of loyalty in marriage and to avoid even the thought of adultery. The Vedas intone, “Sweet be the glances we exchange, our faces showing true concord. Enshrine me in your heart and let one spirit dwell with us.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 75 – Living with Śiva

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

Diet and Consciousness

It is wise to have a free mind, a clear, serene and relaxed attitude toward life before partaking of food. That is why people on the inner path traditionally meditate for a moment, chant a mantra or say a prayer before a meal. A simple practice is to intone “Aum.” This harmonizes the inner bodies with the external bodies and frees awareness from entangled areas. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot chant Aum aloud, then chant it mentally. Take several seconds before you begin your meal to recenter yourself in this way. You will find that your food profits you very well. There are many traditional Hindu āyurvedic guidelines for eating. A few rules that we have found especially important include giving thanks in a sacred prayer before meals; eating in a settled atmosphere, never when upset, always sitting down and only when hungry; avoiding ice-cold food and drink; not talking while chewing; eating at a moderate pace and never between meals; sipping warm water with meals; eating freshly cooked foods whenever possible; minimizing raw vegetables; avoiding white flour and refined sugar; not cooking with honey; drinking milk separately from meals; including a balance of protein and carbohydrates in all meals; cooking with ghee or olive oil only; experiencing all six tastes at least at the main meal (sweet, sour, pungent, astringent, bitter and salty); not overeating, leaving one-third to one-quarter of the stomach empty to aid digestion; and sitting quietly for a few minutes after meals. I might add that ginger root is a magical potion. Our āyurvedic doctor has taught us, and experience confirms, that fresh ginger can settle your stomach, relieve a headache, help you sleep if you are restless and keep the agni, fires of digestion, strong, especially while traveling. Grate two inches of fresh ginger, then hold the mash in your hand, add slowly an ounce of warm water and squeeze the juice into a glass. Repeat three times. Drink this extract fifteen or twenty minutes before meals. It is also quite necessary to drink at least eight glasses of water each day. Inadequate water intake results in dehydration, giving rise to many common ailments.

Let us realize this law in our consciousness: we don’t want to place anything into our physical, emotional or mental being that cannot be digested, assimilated and used to the best advantage in giving birth to our highest consciousness. Let every second be a second of discrimination. Let every minute be a minute of realization. Let every hour be an hour of fulfillment. Let every day be a day of blessing, and every week a week of joy. Then, in a month’s time, look at the foundation that you have laid for those who will follow you. Let the past fade into the dream that it is. It is only experience, to be understood as such in the “now.” In keeping life simple through our powers of discrimination, we give our greatest gift to community, loved ones, country and the world, because we are beginning to vibrate in the superconscious realms of the mind. Your very presence is a blessing when you live in the eternal now, in full command of your life’s diet through the process of discrimination.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 75: COMPUTERS
Śiva’s devotees know computers and the Internet are boons from the Gods and approach them as tools, not toys. They moderate leisure use, minimize Web browsing and never play violent games. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 75 – Merging with Śiva

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

All Your Needs Will Be Met

This ancient tantra is often used in gaining the material things of life. Affirmations do work in this respect, maybe even a little better than in gaining spiritual awakening, because the material desires are often stronger. If you need some material possession, and if it will do only good for yourself, your family and your friends, use the power of affirmation and see how quickly your need is manifested through one external channel or another. Distinguish carefully a material need from a desire. Desires are dangerous, because it is easy to manifest material desires, but it is not as easy to assume responsibility for what the fulfillment of the desire might entail. That is why people sometimes do attract to themselves material possessions through affirmations and suffer the complications produced in their lives. This happened because they did not understand the full responsibility of having the desired possessions.

An example of a material need is having sufficient money for necessities. Generate the feeling and the picture that you now have sufficient sums of money to meet every human need, but not necessarily every human desire; just the needs. Then practice this affirmation: “I will always have sufficient money to meet all my needs.” Repeat it once. Now stop affirming. Remain quiet, know, visualize and then feel how it is to be open to a sufficient flow of money to meet your every need. Get that feeling! It is a secure feeling, not a flamboyant, reckless feeling, not a feeling that now you can go out and have a good time. No, this is a quiet, secure feeling, born of being in a judicious state of mind.

Let us look closely at this feeling again: “I will always have sufficient money to meet all my needs.” Now resolve to hold yourself open to ways and means by which you will have money to meet your every need for yourself and for your family. Be open to ways in which you can better budget the money you now have. Live by the ethic, “Waste not, want not.” Soon you will find that you begin to become secure within yourself as the vibrations of your verbal, visual feeling of this affirmation ring through you entirely. Today you will begin handling the funds you have more judiciously, and soon you will begin attracting abundance from unexpected creative sources. Be open to new ideas, new people, new opportunities, expectant and ready to handle the wealth you have proclaimed as yours.

Lesson 74 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Hindu View of Sexuality?

ŚLOKA 74
The purpose of sexual union is to express and foster love’s beautiful intimacy and to draw husband and wife together for procreation. While offering community guidance, Hinduism does not legislate sexual matters. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Sexual intercourse is a natural reproductive function, a part of the instinctive nature, and its pleasures draw man and woman together that a child may be conceived. It also serves through its intimacy to express and nurture love. It is love which endows sexual intercourse with its higher qualities, transforming it from an animal function to a human fulfillment. Intensely personal matters of sex as they affect the family or individual are not legislated, but left to the judgment of those involved, subject to community laws and customs. Hinduism neither condones nor condemns birth control, sterilization, masturbation, homosexuality, petting, polygamy or pornography. It does not exclude or draw harsh conclusions against any part of human nature, though scripture prohibits adultery and forbids abortion except to save a mother’s life. Advice in such matters should be sought from parents, elders and spiritual leaders. The only rigid rule is wisdom, guided by tradition and virtue. The Vedas beseech, “May all the divine powers together with the waters join our two hearts in one! May the Messenger, the Creator and holy Obedience unite us.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 74 – Living with Śiva

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

Balance and Discrimination

Observe your life objectively for a minute and decide how much of a working balance actually exists between your physical, emotional, mental and actinic aspects. Know that you have the power to begin to readjust this balance if you find you are taking in too much “food” at one time or another. Apply the concept of diet to all the areas of your life. Every experience that we ingest is going to produce its own reaction. In surveying our own internal balance of tamasic, rajasic and sattvic tendencies, we need to apply the power of discrimination so that everything we take into our mind and body can be easily and harmoniously digested and assimilated. Life becomes more beautiful in this way, and we become the master of our forces, because we have given the guiding power of our lives to actinic will. But no diet is of much value to anyone unless it can be consistently applied through the power of decision.

Life becomes overly complicated, a series of self-created and unnecessary involvements, when we live too much in the tamasic and rajasic natures. It is necessary to slow down the activity of everyday life by entering into sattvic awareness as a matter of practice. Life is tiring and overactive in the conscious, physical plane when it is not balanced and tempered by the sattvic nature. The greater the sattvic activity, the greater the activity of the spiritual being that man is.

Here is an internal concentration exercise. Allow the activity of your brain to relax. Let the muscles of your body relax. Let your eyes relax and easily shut. Visualize in your mind’s eye a menu with three panels. On the left panel of the menu are all the prepared and cooked foods of the tamasic nature, which are instinctive, heavy and often indigestible. These are the foods which would satisfy the purely instinctive man. In the middle panel are the rajasic foods, such as spices, garlic and onions, which provide physical energy and stimulation. On the right panel of the menu are the sattvic foods, such as fruits, vegetables, grains and nuts, which calm, balance and prepare the body to hold the actinic vibration of a higher consciousness. Let’s examine the three parts of this menu and see where our consciousness is guided from within.

Let us visualize another menu now—which is the menu of our emotional diet. On the left panel are the instinctive, sensual pleasures of the moment and the more raucous forms of entertainment. On the middle panel are the routine emotional experiences of everyday life with family, friends and work associates. On the right panel are high cultural and artistic expressions. Fill in your own list of specifics and see where your consciousness leads you.

Visualize now another menu in three panels. On the left side of this menu are books, magazines, newspapers or websites that lead us into our tamasic, instinctive nature, be they novels, stories, articles or Hollywood exposes. On the middle panel are those intellectual studies, items of current interests and news which stimulate our rajasic mind and therefore require the close use of discrimination. At certain times, some of these readings might offer just the required understanding and intellectual clarity to elucidate important areas of your conscious-mind existence.

On the right side of this menu are the sattvic writings and studies, the scriptures of East and West, the great philosophical ideas of Socrates or Emerson, the dissertations of Plotinus or Kant, the sayings of Lao-tzu and Confucius, Tiruvalluvar or the Upanishads, Adi Sankara, Ramakrishna or Gibran. Compose your own list and then balance out your mental diet by studying this menu from your inner consciousness.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 74: WISE USE OF TELEVISION
Śiva’s devotees may watch television and other media for recreation and to keep informed about the world, limiting viewing to about two hours a day. They avoid nudity, foul language, crudeness and excessive violence. Aum.

Lesson 74 – Merging with Śiva

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

Use the Power Of Feeling

Although each word of your affirmation may have a certain meaning to you intellectually, the rate of vibration of the word may not impress your mind in the exact same way in which you think it should to produce the result that you desire. An antidote to this is to use affirmations in this way. Repeat the affirmation, “All my needs will always be met,” and feel how it is to feel after all of your needs have been met. Until you find this feeling, you should not expect the affirmation to work. Every time that you have a need and that need is met, a certain feeling is then produced in you. That same feeling you have to feel the very instant you speak the affirmation. You then open a channel that instant to your own intuition, through which all good comes. In this state of mind one has inspiration and will. It is from the intuition that, at the eleventh hour, fifty-ninth minute, fifty-ninth second, every need is met.

The next time you have complete feelings from the innermost sources of your being that your every need will be met, quietly repeat that affirmation over again: “All my needs will always be met.” Simultaneously think, visualize and feel deeply with an inner, all-encompassing knowing that each need will be met. This is the esoteric secret of making an affirmation work.

People say affirmations work for them but sometimes they do not. Why do affirmations only work sometimes? It is because the subconscious is receiving the affirmation at a psychological moment, and a greater knowing, visualization and feeling has been awakened to some extent. However, at the times when an affirmation did not work, there was no knowing, no visualization or feeling attached to it. Just words. When affirmations are repeated over and over again without feeling or visualization, occasionally negative results are produced, as the vibrations of the words themselves may not register what is intended in the subconscious.

Here is another affirmation: “I am the master of my body.” Sit and feel that you are the master of your body. Say to yourself over and over again, “I am the master of my body.” Now, quietly, without thinking, feel and visualize that you are the master of your body. Really know that you are director of your physical vehicle. In repeating this next affirmation, “I am the master of my body, my mind and my emotions,” feel and visualize exactly what these words mean. Then repeat time and time again, “I am the master of my body, my mind and my emotions,” all the while visualizing and feeling exactly what you eventually want to be like, because what you cause now you cause in your future.

Lesson 73 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are Special Duties of the Wife?

ŚLOKA 73
It is the wife’s duty, her strī dharma, to bear, nurse and raise the children. She is the able homemaker, standing beside her husband as the mother and educator of their children and the home’s silent leader, gṛihiṇī. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The biological differences between man and woman are part of their human dharma. The two together constitute a whole. They are equal partners in joy and sorrow, companions and helpmates, yet their functions differ. The Hindu home and family is the fortress of the Sanātana Dharma, which the wife and mother is duty-bound to maintain and thus to perpetuate the faith and create fine citizens. As long as the husband is capable of supporting the family, a woman should not leave the home to work in the world, though she may earn through home industry. The spiritual and emotional loss suffered by the children and the bad karma accrued from having a wife and mother work outside the home is never offset by the financial gain. The woman’s more intuitive and emotional qualities of femininity, gentleness, modesty, kindness and compassion are needed for the children’s proper care and development. The Vedas encourage, “May happiness await you with your children! Watch over this house as mistress of the home. Unite yourself wholly with your husband. Thus authority in speech till old age will be yours.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 73 – Living with Śiva

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

Choosing Your Mental Diet

Have you ever given thought to the diet of your mind? Of course, our physical diet and our emotional diet are also diets of the mind, because they affect our consciousness. But let’s now consider the intellectual processes. How much information, how many facts is it necessary and healthy for us to ingest in a single day? It’s a good idea for a devotee to budget his reading, to choose and discriminate what he wants to make a part of himself through the process of mental digestion. We have to discriminate to the nth degree whether or not we will have the time and the capacity to digest everything that we desire to place in our minds. For instance, quickly reading an article in a newspaper might stir your mind and emotions. If it is not properly digested, it could conceivably upset your whole day. In the realm of intellect, the commonsense rule “Don’t eat when you are already full” also applies.

You may read a book of philosophy, and if you have time to digest it, well and good, but many people don’t and suffer from philosophical indigestion. They have read so many things and only digested a small part of what has passed through the window of the mind. Then again, it is one thing to digest something, and it is still another to assimilate it and make it a part of you, for when it becomes fully a part of you, you have a hunger and room for something more.

Many people come to lectures and then tune themselves out and simply benefit from the vibration created by the teacher and others in the room. They tune themselves out so that what is said is not absorbed consciously, but rather subconsciously. This is a good method for those who are still digesting material received from previous lectures. Another practice that makes for a very good mental indigestion pill is that of opening a spiritual book and allowing your eye to fall upon a random sentence on the page. Often you will find it will accent ideas that you are currently concerned with.

Just as you would participate in a seminar, gaining from the interpersonal relationships, so can you learn from the intrapersonal relationship established between your perceptive state of mind and the conscious and subconscious states of mind. When you awaken to the point where your inner mind teaches your personality, you are involving yourself in the “innerversity” of your own being. But this will not occur until you have balanced your physical and emotional bodies to the point where they are functioning at a slightly higher rate of vibration.

Add to your contemplative lifestyle a hobby or craft. Working creatively with your hands, taking physical substance and turning it into something different, new and beautiful is important in remolding the subconscious mind. It is also symbolic. You are remolding something on the physical plane and by doing so educating yourself in the process of changing the appearance of a physical structure, thus making it easier to change the more subtle mental and emotional structures within your own subconscious mind. Energy, willpower and concentrated awareness are needed for both types of accomplishments—hard work, concentration and concerted effort to produce an effective and useful change in either the physical substance or the mental substance.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 73: LIVING IN TRADITIONAL SURROUNDINGS
Śiva’s devotees, in their homes, endeavor to surround themselves with Śaiva images, music and song. In the world they may enjoy the arts of other cultures but strictly avoid lower-world artistic expressions. Aum.

Lesson 73 – Merging with Śiva

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

Drawing on the Higher Energies

An affirmation can alter your life by creating mentally the patterns and moods of each day through which you will subsequently move. Here is one that can be used to dynamically begin each day. “I am now open to a flow of spiritual energy in which I perceive the most worthy course of action for this day. My service, being selfless, opens new doors of supply, making available all of the tools required so that my work will be beautiful, energetic and influential to the highest degree.” The subconscious mind is like a piece of clay that can be impressed. These impressions go into the subconscious from the conscious mind and remain there vibrating until changed. The intuitive mind, which we call the super­con­scious, works through the subconscious when the channels of the subconscious are open. Hence, in impressing the subconscious mind, we must be very careful to create positive channels, and not to create a negative block. You can also write your own affirmation, but it must always be positive and carefully worded.

The power of thought is very strong, but only strong for a short time. It is the power of feeling that awakens the knowing consciousness. For example, suppose we repeat an affirmation such as this: “All my needs will always be met.” And we repeat it again, “All my needs will always be met.” In the initial stating of this affirmation, we understand something about it. However, unless we gain a conscious mental picture of what the words mean, they mean little more than nothing, for they do not reach deep enough to make contact with the limitless powers of your inner self.

Get into the rhythm of the affirmation. This causes strong feelings and impressions deep in the inner mind. Each word has a certain rate of vibration. Feeling is greater than visualization.

Lesson 72 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Duties of the Husband?

ŚLOKA 72
It is the husband’s duty, his purusha dharma, to protect and provide for his wife and children. He, as head of the family, gṛiheśvara, is responsible for its spiritual, economic, physical, mental and emotional security. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
By their physical, mental and emotional differences, the man is suited to work in the world and the woman to bear and raise their children in the home. The husband is, first, an equal participant in the procreation and upbringing of the future generation. Second, he is the generator of economic resources necessary for society and the immediate family. The husband must be caring, understanding, masculine, loving, affectionate, and an unselfish provider, to the best of his ability and through honest means. He is well equipped physically and mentally for the stress and demands placed upon him. When he performs his dharma well, the family is materially and emotionally secure. Still, he is not restricted from participation in household chores, remembering that the home is the wife’s domain and she is its mistress. The Vedas implore, “Through this oblation, which invokes prosperity, may this bridegroom flourish anew; may he, with his manly energies, flourish the wife they have brought to him. May he excel in strength, excel in royalty! May this couple be inexhaustible in wealth that bestows luster a thousand fold!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.