Lesson 187 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Is There Good Karma and Bad Karma?

ŚLOKA 32
In the highest sense, there is no good or bad karma. All experience offers opportunities for spiritual growth. Selfless acts yield positive, uplifting conditions. Selfish acts yield conditions of negativity and confusion. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Karma itself is neither good nor bad but a neutral principle that governs energy and motion of thought, word and deed. All experience helps us grow. Good, loving ac­tions bring to us lovingness through others. Mean, selfish acts bring back to us pain and suffering. Kindness pro­­duces sweet fruits, called puṇ­ya. Unkindness yields spoiled fruits, called pāpa. As we mature, life after life, we go through much pain and joy. Actions that are in tune with dharma help us along the path, while adhar­mic actions impede our progress. The di­vine law is: whatever karma we are experiencing in our life is just what we need at the moment, and nothing can happen but that we have the strength to meet it. Even harsh karma, when faced in wisdom, can be the greatest catalyst for spiritual un­fold­ment. Performing daily sādhana, keeping good company, pilgrimaging to holy places, seeing to others’ needs—these evoke the higher en­ergies, direct the mind to useful thoughts and avoid the cre­ation of trou­ble­some new karmas. The Vedas explain, “According as one acts, so does he be­come. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 187 – Living with Śiva

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

Penance and Reconciliation

Those who have been physically abused are as much in need of penance to mitigate the experience as are those who abused them. The penance, or prāyaśchitta, for abusees is called the flower penance, or pūshpa prāyaśchitta. It has been successfully performed by many children and adults to mitigate the hate, fear, resentment and dislike toward the parents, teachers or other adults who beat them, by hitting, pinching, slapping, caning, spanking or other methods of corporal punishment. This penance is very simple to perform, but often very difficult to carry out. Each person—child or adult—who has been beaten at any time, no matter how long ago, is enjoined to put up in the shrine room a picture of the person or persons by whom they were beaten, be it a father, mother or teacher. Then, every day for thirty-one consecutive days, without missing a single day, he or she must place a flower in front of each picture, and sincerely forgive the person in heart and mind. If no picture is available, then some symbol or possession can be substituted, or even a paper with his or her name written on it.

When it becomes difficult to offer the flower of forgiveness, because hurtful memories come up from the subconscious mind, the abused individual must perform the vāsanā daha tantra, writing down the hurtful memories and burning the paper in a trash can. This tantra releases the deep emotions within the individual who finds that he or she does not like or deeply resents the parent or other relative, school teacher or principal. After writing about these experiences, expressing in words the emotions felt on many pieces of paper, the area of the subconscious mind holding the suppressed anger and resentment gradually disappears as the papers are seen burning to ashes in a garbage can.

Upon recognizing and admitting their fear or hatred of their abuser, they must deal with the pangs of pain that arise each day by mystically turning the slap, beating or spanking into a beautiful flow of prāṇa by placing a flower before the picture with a heart full of love. Each day while performing the “flowers of forgiveness prāyaśchitta,” the individual should mentally approach the tormentor—the person or persons who beat him or her—and say, “I forgive you. I don’t hold anything against you, for I know that you gave back to me the karma that I set in motion by committing similar misdeeds at a prior time.” If possible, this act of verbal forgiveness should be done in person at least once during the thirty-one days, ideally face to face, but at least by phone, if the person is still on this Earth plane.

Of course, for most it’s much easier to pass on the slap or beating to someone else. Parents often hit their own child, or abuse another person in order to “get it out of their system.” That slap has to go someplace, and turning it into a flower is very, very difficult. This prāyaśchitta brings up all those awful memories. This discipline brings up all the pain. It brings all the injustice to the surface of the mind. Nevertheless, this tantra, or method, has been a great help to many. It is difficult to forgive, and some had to work very diligently within themselves to face up to being able to place that little flower lovingly before the picture of a parent or a teacher. Many have tried and failed again and again when deep-seated resentment emerged, but finally succeeded in true forgiveness, whose byproduct is forgetfulness. They all feel so much better today. Now they are responsive, creative and happy inside. Yes, hitting people is wrong—and children are people, too.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 187: MEALTIME TRADITIONS
Śiva’s devotees eat with their fingers to energize food. They chew well and include the six tastes daily (sweet, salty, sour, pungent, bitter and astringent) and a balance of protein and carbohydrates at all meals. Aum.

Lesson 187 – Merging with Śiva

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

Not Analyzing Your Dreams

When the ego functions in subconscious or subsubconscious dream states, situations are created. These situations, remembered while in a conscious state termed “awake,” will create on the conscious plane similar happenings. Here again we have a manifestation of the subsubconscious mind in the dream. It is apparent that we dream things that we could not have possibly thought up. Such dreams are a conglomeration of seemingly unrelated happenings that pass through the mind. The unrelated happenings do, however, reimpress the subconscious and conscious mind if remembered, and in turn impress the subconscious again, and similar happenings are created in our everyday life. This, perhaps, is hard to believe, but as each of us thinks back over our life, we can pick instances where this rings true.

To change this picture, use the power of the subconscious mind to clear its sub and release within you the full abundance you were born to live. When using the subconscious mind in manifesting control over this situation, take into consideration that it is not able to eradicate the vibration. But during sleep your subconscious will make it possible for you to continue working out the rate of vibration created while in the dream state and remembered while awake. Simply tell your subconscious mind, when you are in the process of remembering a dream, to work out the remaining particles of that experience during sleep rather than recreating it on the physical plane.

When awakening after having had some bad dreams, say to yourself, “Great! I must have really started reprogramming the sub of the subconscious mind last night. I certainly should be feeling more positive with a stronger will in a day or two.” The key is to forget about your dreams as soon as you awaken if you are practicing attention, concentration and meditation.

When the ego wakes up from sleep, the physical body should immediately be put into action. To go back into the state of sleep immediately after naturally becoming conscious causes the five positive currents to be unconventionally depolarized; the ego passes into the subsubconscious regions.

Lesson 186 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Do Hindus Understand Karma?

ŚLOKA 31
Karma literally means “deed” or “act” and more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction which governs all life. Karma is a natural law of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determines our future. It is the interplay between our experience and how we res­pond to it that makes karma devastating or helpfully invigorating. The conquest of karma lies in in­telli­gent ac­tion and dispassionate reaction. Not all karmas rebound immediately. Some ac­cum­u­­­late and return unexpectedly in this or other births. The several kinds of karma are: personal, family, commun­ity, national, global and universal. An­cient ṛi­shis perceived personal karma’s three-fold edict. The first is sañ­chita, the sum total of past karmas yet to be re­solved. The second is prār­abdha, that portion of sañ­chita to be ex­per­ienced in this life. Kriyamāna, the third type, is kar­ma we are currently creating. The Vedas propound, “Here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will. As is his will, so is his deed. What­ever deed he does, that he will reap.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 186 – Living with Śiva

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

Laws Against Child-Beating

In England, in 1996, a twelve-year-old boy who had been caned by his stepfather made headlines in a human rights court by challenging British laws that permit parents to “use corporal punishment, but only to the extent of reasonable chastisement.” Hundreds of children marched through central London on April 15, 2000, to demand an end to smacking. They ended their protest at 10 Downing Street, the residence of the Prime Minister, where they handed in a letter urging him to ban all physical punishment of children.

Smacking children under any circumstance has been banned in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Finland, Croatia, Latvia, Italy, Israel, Cyprus and Germany. Progress toward legal reforms are underway elsewhere: in the UK, Switzerland, Poland, Spain, Scotland, Canada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Mexico, Namibia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, the Republic of Ireland and Belgium. In India battering is widely considered perfectly acceptable and is encouraged in homes, as well as in schools, āśramas and gurukulas, among all castes and classes. However, the Supreme Court of Delhi has recently banned physical punishment of children in the state. In the US, all states except Minnesota permit parents to use “reasonable” corporal punishment on children, and the law for schools, institutions, foster care and day care facilities varies from state to state, with even caning still allowed in some.

In schools, happily, the trend is away from corporal punishment. Almost every industrialized country in the world, and many pre-industrial countries as well, now prohibits it in school. See www.endcorporalpunishment.org for an up-to-date list. In the US, twenty-seven states plus the District of Columbia have bans, with legislation underway in many more. The national newspaper USA Today wrote in 1990, “As millions of children across the USA prepare to go back to school, teachers are laying down their weapons—the paddles they use to dole out corporal punishment. A teacher does best armed only with knowledge. Corporal punishment is a cruel and obsolete weapon.” In Canada, only the provinces of British Columbia, New Brunswick and the Territory of Yukon have banned corporal punishment in schools.

In London, in response to a move to reinstitute beating, public school teachers said they would not cane even if lobbying by conservative members of parliament was successful, while Christian bishops and priests are trying very hard to reinstitute beating in their schools. Abolition of corporal punishment in African schools is also quickly spreading. A high-level Zambian court declared corporal punishment in schools to be unconstitutional, and the Kenyan Minister of Education, in March, 2001, discarded sections of the law that permitted corporal punishment. Laws, however, are no guarantee of protection. Consider the nation of Mauritius, where laws have prohibited battering of children since 1957 but have never been enforced, and children are mercilessly abused in schools to this very day.

I’ve had Hindus tell me, “Slapping or caning children to make them obey is just part of our culture.” I don’t think so. Hindu culture is a culture of kindness. Hindu culture teaches ahiṁsā, noninjury, physically, mentally and emotionally. It preaches against hiṁsā, hurtfulness. It may be British Christian culture—which for 150 years taught Hindus in India the Biblical adage “To spare the rod is to spoil the child”—but it’s not Hindu culture to beat the light out of the eyes of children, to beat the trust out of them, to beat the intelligence out of them and force them to go along with everything in a mindless way and wind up doing a routine, uncreative job the rest of their life, then take their built-up anger out on their children and beat that generation down to nothingness. This is certainly not the culture of an intelligent future.

Nor is an overly permissive approach. A senior sādhu from the Swaminarayan Fellowship’s 654-member order of sādhus, who visited us recently echoed our thoughts on child-beating and emphasized the need for firm, even stern, correction and teaching right from wrong. “Parents these days fail to impart what is good and what is not good,” he said. “As a result, a very crude society is being developed.”

I advise parents: if you are guilty of beating your children, apologize to them, show remorse and perform the child-beating penance, bāla tāḍayati prāyaśchitta, to atone. Gain their friendship back, open their heart and never hit them again. Open channels of communication, show affection. Even if you never beat your children, be alert in your community to those who do and bring them to your understanding that a happy, secure family is free from violence.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 186: THE ĀYURVEDIC VEGETARIAN DIET
Śiva’s devotees cook and eat in the balanced, varied, vegetarian, Indian āyurvedic manner, enjoying healthy, unprocessed, freshly cooked foods. Occasionally, they may partake of cuisine from other world cultures. Aum.

Lesson 186 – Merging with Śiva

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

Resolution In Dreams

Through the powers of meditation, one can straighten out a few of the subsubconscious mind’s predominant misprogrammings that cause tendencies that make us act in certain ways. The subsubconscious mind can be understood consciously when the thoughts which created this “sub” are traced. These will usually be found when the conscious mind is at its lowest ebb. When resting it is possible to study the sub of the subconscious mind with ease. The body is relaxed and the conscious mind has loosened its hold on external objects. When study has commenced, trace through the thought pictures consciously, without disturbing the overall picture. Take into consideration the fact that all thought stems from a series of influences within the ego. These influences take form and shape in thought. When you manifest pictures before you, trace them to their conception by holding the consciousness lightly over the mind, blotting out all distractions that may creep into the mind in an effort to disturb your consciousness. Take your findings, whatever they may be, and consciously think them through until all doubts have been dispelled. You will then find that through your conscious effort the sub of the subconscious mind has been understood consciously as well as subconsciously.

Generally this process occurs automatically. We resolve the obstacle in the dream state. When we meditate deeply before sleep, we pass through the dream world and enter superconsciousness. From here, the work is done on the subsubconscious mind. Should we try to remember these dreams or analyze them and meditate at the same time, we would reimpress them again in the subconscious and strengthen these same patterns and tendencies. When we have had a long series of peculiar dreams, often this is the subsubconscious mind working out these habit patterns and tendencies and throwing them back into the subconscious to be programmed beautifully and correctly. To clear the subsubconscious of uncomfortable happenings, especially if you are living a good, religious life and performing regular sādhana, you can simply command it to clear itself. It will do so during the in-between dream state that you have experienced just before awakening. Therefore, the advice is, when you are going through your first stages of unfoldment, clarifying and reprogramming the sub of the subconscious mind, do not analyze your dreams.

Lesson 185 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Do Hindus Understand Moksha?

ŚLOKA 30
The destiny of all souls is moksha, liberation from rebirth on the physical plane. Our soul then continues evolving in the Antarloka and Śivaloka, and finally merges with Śiva like water returning to the sea. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Moksha comes when earthly kar­­ma has been resolved, dhar­ma well per­formed and God fully realized. Each soul must have performed well through many lives the varṇa dharmas, or four castes, and lived through life’s varied experiences in ­order to not be pulled back to physical birth by a deed left un­done. All souls are destined to achieve moksha, but not necessarily in this life. Hindus know this and do not delude themselves that this life is the last. While seeking and attaining profound re­aliz­ations, they know there is much to be done in fulfilling life’s other goals (purush­ār­thas): dharma, righteousness; artha, wealth; and kāma, pleasure. Old souls re­nounce worldly ambitions and take up sannyāsa in quest of Par­aśiva, even at a young age. Toward life’s end, all Hin­dus strive for Self Re­al­iz­ation, the gateway to liberation. After moksha, subtle kar­mas are made in in­ner realms and swiftly resolved, like writing on water. At the end of each soul’s evolution comes viś­vagrāsa, total ab­sorp­tion in Śiva. The Vedas say, “If here one is able to re­­alize Him before the death of the body, he will be lib­er­at­­­ed from the bondage of the world.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 185 – Living with Śiva

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

Instilling No Fear

There is no greater good than a child. Children are entrusted to their parents to be loved, guided and protected, for they are the future of the future. However, children can be a challenge to raise up into good citizenship. There are many positive ways to guide them, such as hugging, kindness, time spent explaining, giving wise direction and setting the example of what you want them to become. Most children were adults not so many years ago, in previous births. The mind they worked to develop through the great school of experience is still there, as are the results of their accomplishments and failures. They have been reborn to continue to know, to understand and to improve themselves and the community they are born into. Parents can help or inhibit this process of evolution. They have a choice.

There are six chakras, or centers of consciousness, above the mūlādhāra chakra, which is the center of memory, at the base of the spine. Above the mūlādhāra lies the chakra of reason. Above that is willpower. There are seven chakras below the mūlādhāra, the first being fear, below it anger and below that jealousy. The choice of each individual parent is to discipline the child to advance him or her upward into reason, willpower, profound understanding and divine love, or downward into fear, anger, distrust, jealousy and selfishness—personal preservation without regard for the welfare of others.

Children have an abundance of energy, and sometimes it can make them rather wild, and this can be extreme if they are consuming too much sugar. How should this be controlled by the parents? When children run around excitedly, refer to their energy as Śiva’s prāṇa within them. Congratulate them each time they exercise control over it, but don’t punish them when they don’t. Instead, explain that it is important that they learn to control and use their energies in positive ways. Have them sit with you and breathe deeply. Teach them to feel energy. Go into the shrine room and sit with them until their prāṇas become quiet, and then help them observe the difference. To hit them or to yell at them when they are rowdy is only sending more aggravated prāṇa into them from you. Another technique is to withdraw your prāṇa from them and tell them you are retiring to another room until they calm down.

Beating, spanking, pinching, slapping children and inflicting upon their astral bodies the vibration of angry words are all sinfully destructive to their spiritual unfoldment and their future. Parents who thus force their child to fear and hate them have lost their chance to make him or her a better person by talking, because they have closed the child’s ears. Those who beat or pinch or hurt or slap or whip their children are the enemies to religion, because they are pushing the next generation into lower consciousness. Is that religious society? No! Such behavior is not even common in the animal kingdom. It’s below the animal kingdom. But that is what we face in the world today. That helps explain why there are so many problems in this modern age.

Sadly, in this day and age, beating the kids is just a way of life in many families. Nearly everyone was beaten as a child, so they beat their kids, and their kids will beat their kids, and those kids will beat their kids. Older brothers will beat younger brothers. Brothers will beat sisters. You can see what families are creating in this endless cycle of violence: little warriors. One day a war will come up, and it will be easy for a young person who has been beaten without mercy to pick up a gun and kill somebody without conscience, and even take pleasure in doing so. What kind of society do we have? In the US today, a murder is committed every thirty-three minutes, an assault every five seconds, a rape every ninety seconds. A man beats his wife every fifty-one seconds. A woman beats her husband every five and a half minutes. A 12- to 15-year-old child is assaulted every thirty-one seconds, and one is raped every eight minutes. Will the violence ever stop? No. It can’t, unless a radical change is made. We must stop the war in the home. It is as simple as that.

I recently attended a ceremony in which criminals being released from the Kauai jail gave testimony before leaders of the community that they would not repeat their crime. With tears in their eyes, all said they had been beaten by their family in early life, driven out of the home, into drugs, excessive alcohol and into crime and finally jail. Each one had the same sad story to tell.

I instruct the lay missionaries of my international Hindu church: “Talk to the children. Ask if their parents beat them, and then talk to the parents. At first they will say, ‘Oh, once or twice,’ but if you persist, you may find it’s much worse than that.” Think about it, even if a child is only hit once a month, that adds up to nearly two hundred beatings over fifteen years. I challenge child-beaters, “Would you beat somebody your same weight and your same height with the same readiness?” They would say no, because that’s against the law. It’s called assault. But hitting a little kid, is that also not against the law? More and more, it is.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 185: PROTECTING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists must resist the urge to share everything they discover. Certain knowledge has proven dangerous and hurtful to mankind, especially in the hands of the unscrupulous. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 185 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Mind’s Potent Alchemy

It is only when the emotionally charged experiences that go into the subconscious are of a strictly instinctive nature that the subsubconscious is uncomely or not beneficial and becomes a strong hindrance to well-being. On the other hand, experiences of a positive, intellectual or spiritual nature merging in the subconscious can create a subsubconscious that is quite dynamic and helpful, giving courage and competence in worldly affairs. Feelings of security, love and compassion can come up from the subsubconscious during psychological moments in one’s life to counteract and eliminate or subdue feelings of jealousy, hatred and anger, which are natural to the instinctive mind.

For example, a man’s business flourishes during the summer. The next winter he experiences great exhilaration and satisfaction at winning a skiing competition. The summer success and the winter accomplishment merging in the subconscious create a third, different impression which builds an abiding confidence and impulsion toward future victory. The next year, he goes into a second business and again prospers. His competitors wonder how he has avoided the seasonal ebbs and flows of this particular business. “How has he been so lucky?” they wonder. The strong impression of being successful planted in the subsubconscious has created a positive habit pattern for the forces of the subsuperconscious to flow through.

The subsubconscious can also be formed by the blending of strong, intuitive, religious or mystical impressions. For instance, a devotee has an elevating vision of a Deity in an early morning dream or a conscious vision during meditation. A year later, while meditating, he has the experience of flying through the ākāśa in his astral body. These two impressions merge in the subconscious and create a deep-seated faith and unwavering certainty in the inner realities. Such vāsanās bring up courage and eliminate the fear of death, replacing it with the assurance that life is eternal, the soul is real and the physical body is but a shell in which we live. Now we have seen that the subsubconscious state of mind can be beneficial, or it can hold impressions that are actual obstacles in our path that must eventually be dealt with and overcome. Both positive and negative impressions can lie vibrating within it at the same time without interfering one with another.

Lesson 184 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Why Are We Not Omniscient Like Śiva?

ŚLOKA 29
The three bonds of āṇava, karma and māyā veil our sight. This is Śiva’s purposeful limiting of awareness which allows us to evolve. In the superconscious depths of our soul, we share God Śiva’s all-knowingness. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Just as children are kept from knowing all about adult life until they have matured into understanding, so too is the soul’s knowledge limited. We learn what we need to know, and we understand what we have experienced. Only this narrowing of our awareness, coupled with a sense of individualized ego, allows us to look upon the world and our part in it from a practical, human point of view. Pāśa is the soul’s triple bondage: māyā, karma and āṇava. Without the world of māyā, the soul could not evolve through experience. Karma is the law of cause and effect, action and reaction governing māyā. Āṇava is the individuating veil of duality, source of ignorance and finitude. Māyā is the classroom, karma the teacher, and āṇava the student’s ignorance. The three bonds, or malas, are given by Lord Śiva to help and protect us as we unfold. Yet, God Śiva’s all-knowingness may be experienced for brief periods by the meditator who turns within to his own essence. The Tirumantiram explains, “When the soul attains Self-knowledge, then it becomes one with Śiva. The malas perish, birth’s cycle ends and the lustrous light of wisdom dawns.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.