December 10, 2013 - Lesson 242
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Sloka 87 from Dancing with Siva
What Are the Hindu's Daily Yoga Practices?
Devout Hindus perform daily vigil, called sandhya upasana, usually before dawn. This sacred period of puja, japa, chanting, singing, hatha yoga, meditation and scriptural study is the foundation of personal life. Aum.
Bhashya
Each day hundreds of millions of Hindus awaken for the last fifth of the night, bathe, don fresh clothing, apply sectarian marks, called tilaka, and sit in a clean, quiet place for religious disciplines. Facing east or north, the devotional puja rites of bhakti yoga are performed. Hatha yoga, hymn singing, japa and chanting are often included. Then follows scriptural study and meditation, listening to the sound current and contemplating the moonlike inner light during brahma muhurta, the auspicious hour-and-a-half period before dawn. The duly initiated practice advanced yogas, such as those revealed in Merging with Siva--but only as directed by their guru, knowing that unless firmly harnessed, the kundalini can manifest uncontrollable desires. Through the day, karma yoga, selfless religious service, is performed at every opportunity. Besides these yogas of doing, Hindus practice the central yoga of being--living a joyful, positive, harmonious life. The Vedas declare, "The mind, indeed, is this fleeting world. Therefore, it should be purified with great effort. One becomes like that which is in one's mind--this is the everlasting secret." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 242 from Living with Siva
Life in the Inner Worlds
The world is quite blissful from the perspective of someone who has reached a high stage of maturity, and life on the inner planes for him is even more blissful. This is because all of the lower chakras, the instinctive and lower natures, are totally inoperable. So, it is a wonderful, self-perpetuating time, a time of rest and healing, of meeting others known on the Earth who have experienced the same level of bliss. For some it may be a time of communicating with those on the Earth, learning how to channel messages to them. This sojourn in the in-between is similar to sleep, which is an earned time of rest for the physical body. After death is a cosmic sleep for all the inner bodies.
Even someone who has committed the most heinous sins and played the part of the destructive element of Siva's great dance would, after death, experience the Narakaloka only for a limited period, until he again enters flesh and continues his mischief or repents, performs sadhanas and lifts himself up into the Devaloka. However, by no means should death necessarily be taken as a form of liberation from rebirth. It is for the vast majority an in-between period of preparation for the next life, a time to gain faith and strength to face the impact of the already-developed good, bad and mixed karmas of previous lives.
Within the inner worlds, there are realms far more subtle than the astral plane. Advanced souls residing on the astral plane are able to access those higher worlds at will, there to learn from and receive blessings from rishis and great devas. For most, in order to do this, the astral body would not "die," but simply be left behind temporarily. Similarly, here on the physical plane, you can go into meditation and get "beamed up" into the higher world in your purusha body. Your physical body and astral body are temporarily left behind. However, there are beings in the inner world who reside fully in these higher planes in their mental body, having dropped off their lower astral body long ago. But the law is that after death you won't be able to go any higher in the inner worlds than the level you had attained in a physical birth, because it is only in physical birth that all twenty-one chakras are available. In physical birth, the lowest ones become attainable, and the highest become attainable as well. Whatever your attainment on Earth is, you carry that with you into the astral worlds unchanged. Whatever your accomplishments are of living in the gamut of the chakras, lower or higher, you can't go lower and you can't go higher in the inner planes. That is why you need a physical birth.
I was once asked about atura sannyasa, renouncing the world at the moment of death? Personally, I think that is like icing a stale cake. People do it, it is possible, and it may quiet a person's mind if he wanted to do that, but it does not mean a lot. Perhaps he will be a sannyasin in his next life, but maybe he will not. If you are going to be a sannyasin, you have to try to live the life.
Occasionally a great soul will know before his grand departure, his death, that he will not be reincarnating again. In this case the astral body has to be totally absorbed by the causal body while he is alive in his physical body. That means all the lower chakras have to be closed off. When this has occurred, the soul body takes over the physical body and there is very little astral body present, just a shell. Eliminating the astral body and the chakras it is attached to is accomplished through yoga and tapas in a physical birth. This is a process that goes on in the First World. To fulfill these various laws relating to the chakras and the soul's unfoldment, it is very important that we have a physical planet at a certain distance from a sun, with edible vegetation, fertile soil, breathable atmosphere, a benign climate and gravity, all suitable for human life. You have seven chakras below the muladhara in the world of darkness. Through dharma and following the principles of Saivism, they are to be slowly closed off and systematically put to rest. The nature of the chakras is what makes one individual different from another, other than the personal vibratory rate.
Sutra 242 of the Nandinatha Sutras
The Satguru And Siva Are One
Siva's devotees look upon their satguru as the embodiment of Siva, offering service and reverence equally to both, making no distinction between the two. So live His truest devotees. This is pure Saiva tradition. Aum.
Lesson 242 from Merging with Siva
Shielding Your Emotional Nature
Some dreams come from the person's nature, vata, pitta, kapha, and others from the emotional nature, some from subconscious fears, and some from just playing back experiences in daily life. But certain dreams are brought by the Gods. We might not call these dreams, by our way of defining them. And there are prophetic dreams. Prophetic dreams come from the superconscious mind, beyond the subconscious. It is a state of mind that sees into the future and into the past simultaneously, is able to read the akashic records. During intense periods of one's life that will manifest in the future, be they good, bad or mixed, it is this state of mind within every human soul that is tapped, or that of its own volition infiltrates its wisdom in coming events upon the physical brain through what is called a prophetic dream. There is no mystery here. Sincere souls should be warned of impending dangers or good fortune that might disrupt their current mundane lifestyle. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Like visions of the Gods and astral-physical interfaces, prophetic dreams, which are more like visions, are also remembered and cannot be forgotten. They are remembered day after day even more vividly than when they occurred. Let's not be unaware that our own superconsciousness, our third eye, our durdarshana, our far-seeingness, can warn us of events.
If you dream that you are dying, in Hindu thought it means you are going to live. But if you dream your teeth are falling out, you are going to die. And we must know that this has been tried and tested and proved worthy over thousands of years of experience. I myself, being of a kapha dosha, dream of water. When the water is calm, I know that there will be no mental disturbances in the foreseeable future. But when there are dashing ocean waves, I know that within 72 hours, three days, there will be a mental disturbance with an aggression of mental force. This has been proven to my external, conscious mind time and time again. The ancient texts speak of giant floods that consume the world, as in typical dreams. The single most talked about dream in Indian lore is of flying.
If you remember a dream a month later, it is not an ordinary dream. It has meaning. Therefore, if you are prone to go to a dream analyst, and you want to get the right knowledge from his perception, present to him an astral-physical interface, a dream or a vision, at least thirty-one days after it has happened and which is still important to you and a part of your life. This is the best advice we can give for an honest appraisal. This is very good satguru advice.
The most prophetic dreams come in the early hours just before sunrise. The more subconscious-cleansing type dreams come before that time. But in my own experience, the really impressive dreams come just before waking up at three or four o'clock in the morning. It's always a couple of hours before sunrise. Eleven or twelve o'clock? No! These are kind of witchy times, subconscious times, and dreams experienced then just fade away.
When you wake up during the night, discipline should be applied lest you just roll over in a semi-conscious state and return to the dream world, going back into a subconscious or lower astral area--which might be negative, might be positive, you don't know. To avoid this, you should become fully awake. The ideal practice for seekers is to sit up when you wake up during the night. Sit and listen for a minute or two to the nada-nadi shakti or go into the light within your head if you are able. Then, if you wish, consciously lay down and go back to sleep, just like you did when you went to bed in the first place.
If you then have difficulty returning to sleep, you can assume you have had sufficient rest for your physical body. In such a case, don't force yourself to return to sleep, waiting for the alarm to ring, which is a kind of indulgence. Instead, get up. That means fully get out of bed, get dressed and do something useful. If you just roll over and go into the semi-conscious dream world, you can go into subconscious areas, into the Pretaloka, and even have astral attacks from astral entities, and even into the talas below the muladhara. This drains the physical and astral energies of their life and vigor. In my early training, both ways were tested, so the knowledge from actual experience is evident. Follow the formula: "Wake up, get up." One of my sadhanas practiced in Sri Lanka in the late '40s was to sleep for only two hours, wake up with the help of a small alarm clock, sit in the lotus posture and meditate as long as possible, reset the alarm for another two hours, and repeat until just before sunrise.
When people begin to meditate and are on the spiritual path, working with themselves--and this means that they do accomplish making a difference in their behavior, their beliefs, attitudes and daily actions--their dream life will reflect these results as well. For them, the dream karmas can be worked out. Karma is often qualified as a force that is sent out from us and returns to us, generally through other people. Nearly always, karma is related to the waking state. However, we do experience emotions in dreams. The world within is as solid as is the body in which we find ourself in the awakened state. We do experience in the inner worlds, while the physical body is asleep, forces going out from our thoughts, feelings and what we say and think, and these obviously are dream karmas, real karmas that will eventually manifest on the physical plane unless reexperienced and dissolved within the dream world itself. The reason why dream karmas can only be worked out by those who are performing sadhana and making actual changes in their lives is because they have effected a certain soul control over their mind, physical body and emotions, and this naturally carries over into the dream reality.