Lesson 204 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Can a Benevolent God Permit Evil?

ŚLOKA 49
Ultimately, there is no good or bad. God did not create evil as a force distinct from good. He granted to souls the loving edicts of dharma and experiential choices from very subtle to most crude, thus to learn and evolve. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
From the pinnacle of consciousness, one sees the harmony of life. Similarly, from a mountaintop, we see the natural role of a raging ocean and the steep cliffs be­low—they are beautiful. From the bottom of the moun­­tain, the ocean can appear ominous and the cliffs treacherous. When through meditation we view the universe from the inside out, we see that there is not one thing out of place or wrong. This releases the human concepts of right and wrong, good and bad. Our benevolent Lord created everything in perfect balance. Good or evil, kind­ness or hurtfulness re­turn to us as the result, the fruit, of our own actions of the past. The four dharmas are God’s wisdom lighting our path. That which is known as evil arises from the instinctive-intellectual nature, which the Lord created as dimensions of experience to streng­then our soul and further its spiritual evolution. Let us be compassionate, for truly there is no intrinsic evil. The Vedas admonish, “Being overcome by the fruits of his ac­­­tion, he enters a good or an evil womb, so that his course is downward or upward, and he wanders around, overcome by the pairs of opposites.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 204 – Living with Śiva

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

Good Money, Bad Money

My satguru, the venerable Sage Yogaswami, discriminated between good money and bad money and taught us all this lesson. Money coming from dharma’s honest labor was precious to him to receive, and he used it wisely in promoting the mission of the mission of his lineage. Money coming from adharmic activities was distasteful to him. He warned that such gifts would, when spent, bring the demons from the Narakaloka into the sanctum sanctorum of our shrines to create havoc in the minds of devotees. This has been the unsought reward for receiving bad money—funds gained through ill-gotten means—for many āśramas this last century. One day a rich merchant came to Yogaswami’s hut with a big silver tray piled with gold coins and other wealth. Yogaswami, knowing the man made his money in wrongful ways, kicked the tray on the ground and sent him away without accepting it.

Yes, there is such a thing as good and bad money, because after all, money is energy. Why is money energy? Money gives energy. Money is power. Money is a form of prāṇa, captured in paper, in silver and most importantly in gold. Actually, gold is the real money, the basis of all paper money, coinage, checks and bank drafts. All the money in the world once fluctuated in value according to the price of gold. Mystically, if you have gold in your home or your corporation—I mean real gold—your real wealth will increase according to the quantity of gold that you have.

Good money is righteous money, funds derived from a righteous source, earned by helping people, not hurting people, serving people, not cheating them, making people happy, fulfilling their needs. This is righteous money. Righteous money does good things. When spent or invested, it yields right results that are long lasting and will always give fruit and many seeds to grow with its interest and dividends from the capital gains. On the contrary, bad money does bad things—money earned through selling arms or drugs, taking bribes, manipulating divorces, performing abortions, fraud, theft, riches gained through a hundred dark and devious ways. Bad money issues from a bad intent which precedes a wrongdoing for greed or profit. That is bad money. When spent or invested, it can be expected to bring unexpected negative consequences. Good money is suitable for building temples and other institutions that do good for people.

Bad money is sometimes gifted to build temples or other social institutions, but often only to ease the conscience of the person who committed sins to gain the money. Nothing good will come of it. The institution will fail. The temple will be a museum, its darśana nil. Its śakti, though expected to be present, will be nonexistent. Bad money provokes bad acts which are long lasting, and it sours good acts within a short span of time in the lives of the people who receive it. In 1991 I composed an aphorism to guide those who have sought my opinion on this matter. It says, “Śiva’s devotees, knowing that bad money is cursed and can never do good deeds, refuse funds gained by fraud, bribery, theft, dealing arms or drugs, profiting from abortion or divorce, and all dark, devious means.”

Some postulate that using bad money for good purposes purifies it. That is a very unknowledgeable and improper concept, because prāṇa, which is money, cannot be transformed so frivolously. Many among this group of misguided or naive individuals have lived to witness their own destruction through the use of tainted wealth. Also, this brings them into the illegality of laundering money. Money cannot be laundered by religious institutions. Money cannot be legally laundered by banks. Money cannot be laundered by individuals. Further, we know that those who give ill-gotten money to a religious institution will subtly but aggressively seek to infiltrate, dilute and eventually control the entire facility, including the swāmī, his monastic staff, members and students. If bad money is routinely accepted in abundance and depended upon, it will bring an avalanche of adharma leading to the dissolution of the fellowships that have succumbed, after which a new cycle would have to begin, of building back their fundamental policies to dharma once again.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 204: WOMEN DO NOT DRINK IN PUBLIC
All Hindu women, respecting customs of decorum and demureness, refrain from drinking alcohol in public. During pregnancy, they abstain completely to protect the health and well-being of their unborn child. Aum.

Lesson 204 – Merging with Śiva

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

Thought and Awareness

The mystic, while in the beginning stages, tries diligently through his sādhana to extract his awareness from the thinking area of the mind while simultaneously trying to perceive without thinking about what he has perceived. It is the overview of what has been perceived that the mystic endeavors to superconsciously grasp in a series of flashes. He well knows that thinking is the more externalized strata. The mystic constantly, through every waking moment and even during sleep, endeavors to strengthen his acute observation through perceiving the overview of thought strata rather than thinking through them. My guru often said, “There is a chair at the top. Sit in it and look at the world from that perspective.” The mystic constantly sits in this chair, looking at mind from the threshold of the Absolute.

It is the baser emotions, when stimulated, that bring awareness from inner depths into the thought strata of the mind, thus strengthening human emotions and feelings with powers of reason and memory. Therefore, for those not too deeply engaged in the external emotional traps, certain sādhanas can be performed to regulate and control these instinctive drives. When they are less impulsive and forceful, one has a sense of being able to control one’s thoughts. Later on, if the sādhana persists, the sense that awareness travels in and among these thoughts is felt, and still later the perceptions occur of hovering above thought, looking out upon the thought stratum of the mind or a portion of it.

To give an example of the thought state, and a deeper state of not thinking but perceiving thoughts, imagine sitting before a television set. The set has not been turned on, and you are thinking about various things that involve you personally and wish to distract awareness from them by watching a television program. When you turn to the program, sitting across the room from the set, you have the sense of perceiving the thoughts, moods and emotions of the program, without necessarily thinking yourself. You perceive. Similarly, the mystic can be called the watcher of the play of life, for he is totally identified with his inner depths, rather than the thought strata and structures he perceives.

The mystic lives in a state similar to that of a child, for a child does not think, but perceives. He, of course, reacts emotionally to some of his perceptions, but it is only when he reaches twelve or fourteen, sometimes younger, that he begins to enter the thought strata of mind. The mystic has deliberately arrived at this state of the child through sādhana and, of course, has awakened the facilities in himself to go into the next succeeding, even more refined, areas of consciousness.

The entire concept of creating a thought, or thoughts of the mind already being in existence, or thoughts and concepts disintegrating or being destroyed because they are no longer used, is totally dependent upon the nature of the sādhana of the mystic. There are four different perspectives in looking at the mind from within oneself. In Shūm, these four perspectives are called shūmīf, mūlīf, simnīf and dīfī. And of course, many more combinations of these perspectives can be utilized and have been, thus creating the various philosophical and metaphysical outlooks that we know today. How thought is seen within one’s mind totally depends on the positioning of one’s individual state of awareness. This, in turn, depends upon prior sādhana he has performed.

Lesson 203 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Source of Good and Evil?

ŚLOKA 48
Instead of seeing good and evil in the world, we understand the nature of the embodied soul in three interrelated parts: instinctive or physical-emotional; intellectual or mental; and superconscious or spiritual. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Evil has no source, unless the source of evil’s seeming be ignorance itself. Still, it is good to fear unrighteousness. The ignorant complain, justify, fear and criticize “sinful deeds,” setting themselves apart as lofty puritans. When the outer, or lower, instinctive na­ture dominates, one is prone to anger, fear, greed, jealousy, hatred and backbiting. When the intellect is prominent, ar­rogance and analytical think­­ing preside. When the superconscious soul comes forth the re­fined qualities are born—com­pas­sion, insight, modesty and the others. The animal in­stincts of the young soul are strong. The intellect, yet to be developed, is nonexistent to control these strong in­stinctive impulses. When the intellect is de­vel­oped, the instinctive nature subsides. When the soul unfolds and overshadows the well-de­veloped intellect, this mental harness is loosened and removed. When we en­coun­ter wickedness in others, let us be compassionate, for truly there is no intrinsic evil. The Vedas say, “Mind is in­deed the source of bondage and also the source of lib­er­ation. To be bound to things of this world: this is bon­dage. To be free from them: this is liberation.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 203 – Living with Śiva

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

Thoughts Have Power

Each thought and each word has a form, an etheric form. That is why when a room is happy and you walk into it, you feel joyous. When a house is sad and you walk into it, you can sense that misery, for every thought you think and every word you speak takes form and shape in the ether.

Prāṇa is mental energy. When you use mental energy, you make mental creations. When you use physical energy, you can create physically. With your hands, you can build a house, you can cook a dinner; you can do many things with your physical energy and your physical body. With your mind, through the use of prāṇa, you can also create for yourself. How many understand the meaning of the words prāṇa and mental energy? You would be surprised at the power that you have in your mind as an individual.

Every positive thought that you have manifests in a subtle world and remains there for the length of time that it took you to generate it. Everything that you make with your physical energy on the physical plane will remain on the physical plane in physical form according to the time and effort that you took to generate it. If you have done a very fine job, it may remain over a hundred years. If you didn’t put much effort into it, it will not remain long on the physical plane.

Let’s think about the mental world for a moment. Suppose you are generating a thought for something good to happen, a positive circumstance you want to come your way. You concentrate upon it, and you generate it and you make the picture just the way you want to see it. Then you are happy and joyous. You feel as if it has already happened. Now suppose you drop into a lower state of consciousness. You begin to gossip. You use foul language and backbite. You lose control of your mind. You don’t put your intuitive mind first. You put the instinctive mind first and begin to think: “Oh, that can’t possibly happen because of this…” or “I can’t possibly do this because of that.…” You are building a negative pattern of fear, worry and doubt that covers up the beautiful picture and snuffs it out. Then, when it does not manifest, you say: “My prayers were not answered. God was too busy helping somebody else. He couldn’t help me.” But you were the creator. You preserved it on the mental plane for as long as you could, and without knowing it you destroyed it before it manifested physically. That is one way you can go on through life, as so many, many Hindus do—blaming others for their own self-created failures.

Do you know what all of that is? Confusion of the mind! So, we have two alternatives: confusion or control. And we have all the spiritual laws to follow that help you control your mind. When the external mind is controlled, then the spirit or inner being, the Reality of you, can shine forth. Shall we say that a confused mind is like a cloud the sun cannot shine through? A controlled mind is like clear ether which the radiance of the sun can shine through.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 203: MONITORING DRINKING AMONG PEERS
Śiva’s devotees gently enforce temperance among peers whenever necessary. They know that those unable to observe moderation may have to abstain entirely and restrict themselves to nonalcoholic beverages. Aum.

Lesson 203 – Merging with Śiva

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

Proceed with Confidence!

There are those who simply follow the pattern of odic force fields of others and never realize their actinic destiny because they have never had the ability to break through the odic force barriers with their actinic power. Actinic destiny is found by those who stand out from the masses and actually do something, who live a creative life for the benefit of others. Actinic power creates through the subconscious, but it is a flowing-through or flowing-out power. Odic power is a holding on to, a sort of sticky type of power.

Move through odic force fields unnoticed. Those who have awakened their subsuperconscious powers often become exuberant and, more than often, a wee bit egotistical. And yet, a deeper subsuperconscious attribute is that of humility. Humility within itself is a power, a power of the fullness of the subsuperconscious mind, giving you the ability to move through the odic force fields unnoticed.

Because of the nature of odic forces—which constitute people in their conscious and subconscious mind, cities, nations and events—the flow of actinic force can or could be disturbing to certain force fields. The consequences have, through history, been disastrous from time to time. Therefore, keep your subsuperconscious knowledge and powers where they are, as an inner mechanism of you, available to your conscious use. Do not advertise your subsuperconscious power, because odic force fields of jealousy or fear could be stimulated against you. Therefore, learn to move inconspicuously in the odic-force world, while contributing to the beauty of the world through your conscious use of your subsuperconscious mind.

All that is beautiful has come from the subsuperconscious powers awakened within man. So, let your life shine by your actions rather than by your advertising subsuperconscious powers. There is no pride so great or hard to be rid of than spiritual pride. Having the availability of actinic force working through the subconscious mind can very easily become distorted into building up even a greater odic subconscious mind.

And now, on the lighter side of thinking, here is another way to use your subsuperconscious powers consciously. When you know the next thing to do, or the right thing to say, this is your subsuperconscious mind. Practice feeling confident, secure in the consciousness of the eternal now. Absorb the feedback from groups of people, or people you are talking with, and when your subconscious mind has collected the feedback, feel dynamically the eternity of the moment, and you will know just the right thing to say, or the next thing to do. This is using your subsuperconscious powers consciously.

The greatest thing that a devotee must learn is that all knowing is within oneself. Therefore, go to your innerversity, your great subsuperconscious school, and bring forth knowledge. In order to do this, be confident within yourself. In order to be confident within yourself, have no fear. In order to have no fear, say to yourself, “I am all right, right now.” This will quickly bring you into the consciousness of the eternity of the moment. You will feel actinic force permeating, or more life permeating, your body, which is subconscious, and your subsuperconscious state of mind will be active. That is, go ahead in full confidence that you are the knower of all that is known.

Lesson 202 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Why Do Some Souls Act in Evil Ways?

ŚLOKA 47
People act in evil ways who have lost touch with their soul nature and live totally in the outer, instinctive mind. What the ignorant see as evil, the enlightened see as the actions of low-minded and immature individuals. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Evil is often looked upon as a force against God. But the Hindu knows that all forces are God’s forces, even the waywardness of adharma. This is sometimes difficult to understand when we see the pains and prob­lems caused by men against men. Looking deeper, we see that what is called evil has its own mysterious purpose in life. Yes, bad things do happen. Still, the wise never blame God, for they know these to be the return of man’s self-created kar­mas, difficult but necessary experiences for his spiritual evolution. Whenever we are injured or hurt, we un­derstand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a kar­ma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured. Those who perform seemingly evil deeds are not yet in touch with the ever-present God consciousness of their immortal soul. The Vedas rightly admonish, “Borne along and defiled by the stream of qualities, unsteady, wavering, bewildered, full of desire, distracted, one goes on into the state of self-conceit. In thinking ‘This is I’ and ‘That is mine’ one binds himself with himself, as does a bird with a snare.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 202 – Living with Śiva

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

Backbiting And Gossip

There are two very great religious laws, and you have heard me talk about them before, and if you follow them and obey them, you will have the spiritual protection of your own intuitive mind. Your intuitive mind will be available to you all of the time.

One of these great laws is the law of daśamāṁśa, tithing, and the other great law is śaucha kriyā, doing good. Now, what is doing good? Doing good is controlling your mind, really, because when the mind is out of control or when you allow it to be out of control, you are really under the control of the instinctive mind of other people. You are more or less like a puppet in their hands. Therefore, we teach, “Think before you speak, and speak only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary.” This is very, very difficult for most people to do. If you carry each thought on the tip of your tongue, quite often it won’t be your thought at all. It may be what is seething in the instinctive mind of people around you. That’s what makes for backbiting and gossip. Like those who swear, those who gossip do not think. They pick up the low, seething vibrations of the instinctive mind of everyone around and, like stovepipes, emanate the smoke of the fire that is burning or smoldering or fuming or raging underneath. Many undeveloped people believe and repeat the last thing they hear spoken by someone they consider higher than themselves. They gossip freely, hurt freely and are often the pawns of strong-minded, unscrupulous individuals who use their ignorance and weakness to further their own selfish ends.

Do you know what gossiping is like? It’s like scratching an itch. Something is antagonizing your mind, so you gossip, and you go on and on and on until somebody changes the subject for you, or until somebody does something else that you can gossip about. Shall we say that backbiting and hurtful gossip are the dissipation of the creative, spiritual force? That’s all they are, dissipation of your great, God-given inner power. Anyone will tell you that to dissipate your energy is bad for you, but you do that when you gossip. By doing that, you are only the chimney, the dirty smokestack, of the seething instinctive mind, the ugly state of mind, of other people. You are not in control of your own mind. Have I painted a picture that is bad enough, hideous enough, gruesome enough, for you all to stop gossiping and control your mind a little bit? Gossip invokes the asuric beings on the lower astral plane and makes new karmas for the gossiper, who will be gossiped about in the future when the karmas return.

Let’s paint another picture. When you defile others, mentally and verbally, through backbiting gossip about the happenings in their lives, you are hurting them. You are actually making it difficult for them to succeed, to even persist where they are. They sense, they feel, the ugliness that you are projecting toward them. Many women gossip about their husbands over the telephone to other women while their husbands are at work. How can the husband be successful with the wife’s mind, in which he presumably trusts, working and plotting against him in such a chaotic condition? Gossip and backbiting, like verbal abuse, hurt another. You know what happens according to spiritual law when you hurt another. You are only hurting yourself in the future. Of course, you don’t meet the hurt right away, but in a few months you will find that it will come to you. You are hurting yourself in the future if you hurt another in the present.

It takes great sincerity in life to control the mind. And the power to be sincere is based on honesty. Honesty, ārjava, gives a great boon to you. It gives you stability. It makes you strong. It makes every atom in your being vibrate with an inner power. It gives you perspective; it gives you the eye to justice. But you must first be honest with yourself. Then the next time you see something happening in the life of another person that you would just love to sit down and gossip about, stop the menacing wheel of your mind and think about the experience and feelings the other person is going through.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 202: NOT DRINKING ALONE OR WHEN UPSET
Even in moderation, Śiva’s devotees do not drink alcohol in solitude, when depressed, angry or under extreme stress. When one is emotionally unstable, alcohol inhibits the ability to confront and solve problems. Aum.

Lesson 202 – Merging with Śiva

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

Bursts of Light And Intuition

Intense desire for spiritual unfoldment eventually manifests itself in a breakthrough of actinic will, which permeates the subconscious mind of the devotee until he completely identifies himself as an actinic being. This happens from within the deeper realms of man’s mind and eventually manifests itself into consciousness, then into thought patterns and then finally into speech and action. Actinic will also appears from the transference of desire from material objects and activity into finding some real solution within oneself for the eventual quest of all men: peace of mind. This actinic force becomes so strong, finally there is a breakthrough or burst of light. This happens quite naturally within many people who have not even availed themselves of classical yoga teachings. This first breakthrough throws into orbit, so to speak, the subsubconscious state of mind, for an infinitesimal flow of actinic force thereafter begins to permeate the subconscious mind, easing darkness or confusion or pressures of the conglomerated, accumulated force fields. After this first breakthrough, the devotee becomes more creative, kinder, a little happier and more metaphysically inclined, for the subsuperconscious mind becomes another building force field.

Occasionally devotees have flashes of intuition, bursts of prophetic knowing. Some devotees also occasionally enter trance states, when messages may come through their voice from the superconscious mind without their conscious-mind knowledge. When the trance subsides, there is usually no memory of what they said or did. Such subsuperconscious states are often brought forth by intense religious emotion, which occasionally becomes so overwhelming that it pierces the worldly subconscious and conscious mind.

Your belief in your subsuperconscious power will also unfold your destiny in this life. “I will be what I will to be. I will do what I will to do.” You can repeat these two affirmations over and over, time and time again, and rearrange, restructure, the forces of your subconscious mind and create a great inner peace within yourself. Turn on to actinic force and bring the forces of superconsciousness through your subconscious. This creates feeling, a feeling that you are what you say you are—positive, direct, full of life and energy and creative power. Your subsuperconscious mind proves this through your conscious mind, not only through feeling, but you will find yourself acting out the part in all kindness and security, exercising the positive will of “I will be what I will to be” and “I will do what I will to do.”

Lesson 201 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Are Souls and World Essentially Good?

ŚLOKA 46
The intrinsic and real nature of all beings is their soul, which is goodness. The world, too, is God’s flawless creation. All is in perfect balance. There are changes, and they may appear evil, but there is no intrinsic evil. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The soul radiates love, is a child of God going through its ev­olutionary process of growing up into the image and likeness of the Lord. Goodness and mercy, com­passion and caring are the intrinsic, inherent or in­dwelling na­ture of the soul. Wis­dom and pure knowledge, happiness and joy are the in­trin­s­ic nature of the soul. Can we be­lieve the soul is anything but goodness itself, purity and all the refined qualities found within superconsciousness? When God is everywhere, how can there be a place for evil? The soul is constantly one with God in its ever-present Satchidānanda state at every point in its evolution. How, then, arises the concept of evil and suffering? Āṇa­va, karma and māyā, the play toys of the soul, are the source of this seeming suffering. Like a child, we play with the toys of āṇava in the playground of māyā, fall and are bruised by karma, then run to our loving Lord for solace and release into spiritual maturity. The Vedas pointedly state, “As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not sullied by the external faults of the eyes, so the one inner soul of all things is not sullied by the sor­row in the world, being external to it.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.