Lesson 102 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

How Are Temples Founded and Built?

ŚLOKA 102
Śiva temples are founded by God Himself, often designated in a vision or dream of a devout Śaivite, then erected by temple craftsmen usually following Āgamic law. In such a holy place, holiness itself can reside. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Because of its holiness, a Śiva temple is most often and properly established by God Śiva through His devotees and not founded by men. Once the site is known, hereditary temple architects, known as sthapatis, are commissioned to design and construct the temple. By tradition, every stone is set in place according to the sacred architecture found in the Āgamic scriptures. When properly consecrated, the temple becomes a place upon the Earth in which the three worlds can communicate for the upliftment of mankind and the fulfillment of Śiva’s dharmic law. Śiva has deliberately established many temples to communicate His love to His children throughout the world, who live in every country of the world and long for their Lord’s ever-present love. They build temples in His name and install His image, chant His praises and thus invoke His presence. Lord Śiva accepts all these temples as His own and sends a divine ray to vivify and vitalize them. Śiva’s Vedas annunciate, “Brahman is the priest, Brahman the sacrifice; by Brahman the posts are erected. From Brahman the officiating priest was born; in Brahman is concealed the oblation.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 102 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Conflicts with Other People

Good interpersonal relationships help the meditator a great deal, and meditation helps keep those relations harmonious. When we get along nicely with others, meditation becomes easy. If we have problems with other people, if we argue or disagree mentally and verbally, we must work exceedingly diligently in order to regain the subtlety of meditation. Poor interpersonal relationships are one of the biggest barriers, for they antagonize awareness, causing it to flow through the instinctive and intellectual forces. This puts stress and strain on the nerve system and closes inner doors to superconsciousness.

If we cannot get along with our fellow man whom we watch closely, observing the expressions on his face and the inflections of his voice, how will we ever get along with the forces of the subconscious, which we cannot see, or the refined superconscious areas of the inner mind when we face them in meditation? Obviously, we must conquer and harmonize all our relationships—not by working to change the other person, but by working with that other person within ourself, for we are only seeing in him what is in us. He becomes a mirror. We cannot allow the unraveling of the relationship by attempted outer manipulation, discussion or analysis to become a barrier to deeper meditation. Instead, we must internalize everything that needs change, work within ourselves and leave other people out of it. This helps to smooth interpersonal relationships, and as these relationships improve, so does our ability to meditate.

Our nerve system is just like a harp. It can be played by other people. They can cause many tones to be heard in our nerve system. All styles of music can be played on a harp, but no matter what kind of music is played, the harp remains the same. People can do all sorts of things to our nervous system, and make patterns of tone and color appear. This does not hurt the nervous system. It, like the harp, remains the same. The same nervous system can be played by our superconscious or by our passions. We can experience beautiful knowledge from within, which is the outgrowth of good meditation abilities, or experience a mental argument with another person. All tones are played at different times through the same nervous system. We want our nervous system to be played from the inside out through the beautiful rhythm of superconsciousness. This is bliss. We do not want to allow other people to affect our nerve system in a negative way, only in a positive way. That is why it is imperative for those on the path to be in good company.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 102: PURSUING THE PATH OF SĀDHANA
Śiva’s widowed devotees who choose not to remarry practice strict continence. They dedicate their lives to God and transmute sexual forces into the higher chakras through sādhana, worship and brahmacharya. Aum.

Lesson 102 – Merging with Śiva

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

On the Edge of The Mountain

Knowing the law puts you at a psychological disadvantage, in a way. It is not quite as bad when you act for the first time out of ignorance, in any situation. Suppose you are riding with a friend in a car and he passes through a red light and gets a ticket and a scolding from the officer, and you say to your friend, “Oh, that’s all right, you didn’t know. You haven’t been driving long and your lesson may cost you some money.” You are forgiving of your friend’s error. Two months later, in riding with him again, he passes through another red light. And, what do you know, he gets another ticket and a scolding, and you sit back and say, “There is no excuse for that; you knew better. You saw that red light, didn’t you?” This time you are not lenient with your friend, because you know he is aware of the law.

You will behave with your own mind in the same way subconsciously if you depart from the spiritual law once you recognize its intrinsic value. Through concentration on life’s basic principles, you will become subconsciously aware of these laws, and then it will be easy for you to maintain them without effort, and the example of your life will be a light to shine for the benefit of many others.

Have you ever stood right at the edge of a mountain cliff? You were very careful about falling over the edge, weren’t you? But have you ever experienced that tendency in your nature that makes you a little shaky at the edge of the mountain, that makes you wonder what it might be like to be falling over the cliff, even if the first ledge, shall we say, is not too much of a drop? What is it that makes you want to experience falling over the edge? Some people say they experience this feeling. Others may not have. But let anyone stand on the edge of a mountain precipice and then say that there is not something occurring within them that makes them be quite careful.

If you deliberately fall, even a short distance, you could not climb back to the top without having some kind of scar or bruise on your physical form—maybe only a blow to your pride. But you would carry back with you the results of the fall. It is the same with the spiritual law. Once you are aware of its operation and you deliberately allow yourself to fall, you can return to the path with effort, scarred by the memory and strengthened with the influx of renewed energy as you again search for enlightenment, remembering that we only fail when we stop trying.

Concentrate each night upon the events of the day and see how close you have come, either consciously or subconsciously, to deviating from your newly established yoga principles. Your span of life here is only a short time, and it benefits you to live it the best way that you can.

Lesson 101 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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

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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

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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

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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.