Aum Namah Sivaya

Today we get to see the latest progress on the stairway that leads up to Iraivan Temple. The steps are flanked on either side by garden terraces and will ultimately receive stone cladding and will be accented by thick stone railings. Since our last update the completed concrete steps have doubled in number, the large section around the female stone elephant and her calf has just been finished, and overall we've almost reached the top of the hill. Aum.

Aum Sivaya,

Today our monks end their lunar phase and enter into two days of retreat. They are currently in the middle of observing two weeks of Sadhu Paksha. This is our time between seasonal changes when our monks switch up their morning sadhana routine. Many of them walk the ground and meditate among the natural beauty into our sacred natural spaces which this slideshow depicts. Aum Namah Sivaya.

Earlier this year we began construction on a prototype for a kind of beehive known as a horizontal or "topbar" hive. While it's new for us, this is actually a classic style of hive that has long been common throughout much of Eastern Europe and Serbia. Today, it is becoming more popular throughout the world for its ease of use, especially for the non-commercial beekeeper.

Unlike the common Langstroth hive, where heavy bee boxes are stacked to form space for bees, the horizontal hive is a stationary long box. Here, the bees are encouraged to build their comb across more than up, much like they might do in a horizontal log. The top bars are laid down across the space for the bees to build on. There is a follower board so that one can control exactly how much space the bees have at any given time. Too much space and they have trouble regulating the temperature for the their brood, and aren't as able to defend themselves against other insects (like hive beetles) which have the potential to collapse their whole operation.

On one end is the entrance, which the bees build their brood nest near. As they build down the length of the box, further from the nest, they begin to build the further comb purely for honey storage. So all you have to do to harvest some is open up one end of their hive and remove the furthest bar. Aum.

Click through the slideshow to see the process.

The amazingly gifted and motivated team in Moscow (who also publish Hinduism Today in Russian) has done it again. In the past three years they have put Dancing with Siva and Merging with Siva into their language, and this week they added Living with Siva, thus completing the trilogy. Not only do they translate and publish the works of our Gurudeva, but they do it with the same quality control of the Himalayan Academy English editions, and that is saying something. Scroll through the slideshow and see their accomplishment as we reveal a few of the 1,000+ pages.

Dinanatha Bodhiswami sent photos and this short note from Moscow:
"Namaskar, Vanakkam and Aloha dear, Sadasivanathaswami.

It has happened! Now a Russian-speaking spiritual seeker can also live with Siva. The book "Living with Siva" is published! Glory to Gurudeva! Glory to Siva! All glories to the Kailasa parampara! Glory to Satguru and Kauai Aadheenam! Aum Namasivaya!"
Congratulations, Dinanatha.

This is a story taken from The Guru Chronicles, the official history of our lineage. It is of Gurudeva's days in Sri Lanka prior to his meeting Yogaswami. It is a long story, but worthy of a read when you find a quiet 20 minutes, a story full of holy men and ideas.

Robert Hansen's search for his guru took him across the seas on a merchant vessel to India and by train to South India where he caught a ferry to Ceylon, arriving in Colombo in March of 1947. As arranged by Grace Burroughs, he studied with Dayananda Priyadasi, a Sinhalese Buddhist teacher of meditation and occultism who had visited the US in the mid-1930s and captivated seekers there.

"One day my training was completed. My teacher, Dayananda, few off to attend a religious conference in Switzerland. I was alone in Ceylon. I thought about the cave again. One of my close Muslim friends, Anbakara, who had Hanuman as his mentor, took me to the caves of Jailani, Kuragala, Balangoda, secluded caves naturally carved in solid rock in a mountainous valley deep in the central jungles of the island. There I met my fifth catalyst on the path of enlightenment. His name was Mustan."

The Jailani Caves are 150 kilometers southeast of Colombo, in the remote jungles. It is to this day a holy site, and a gathering place for Su mystics. The journey of several days wended through the nearly uninhabited central hills of Ceylon, with its tiny villages and dusty roads. Robert saw elephants bathing in the rivers and pulling logs on massive chains out of the forests. It must have seemed a wonderland to the American, a Shangri-La. One thing was for certain, it was far from the life he had been so actively immersed in. It was the refuge he had longed for.

Up the hill Robert and Anbakara walked to the mouth of the rock caves overlooking the Kaltota Plains. What they encountered is described by R.H. Bassett in Romantic Ceylon, Its History, Legend and Story, published in 1929:

"The cave itself is a most interesting place. It is entirely natural, bearing no signs of artificial excavations or of ritual adornment. The entrance is situated in the face of a cliff a short climb down from the summit where on entering there is a large "hall" from which two passages lead off on either hand. The right hand passage is seen to extend for at least 50 yards into the depths of the Earth before merging into the general darkness of the shadows.

On the opposite side of the entrance hall, a narrow passage leads out on to the meditation "ledge," a niche in the sheer side of the cliff, some 6 foot by 4 foot with an overhanging roof of rock. Here seated beneath a huge mass that towers fifty feet above on the edge of a 600-foot precipice, a hermit can find solitude indeed and food for contemplation in the unbroken ocean of trees spread out below him. Entering from a small hole in the rock, at the back an atmosphere of complete detachment pervades the occupant of the tiny ledge. Earthly considerations lose their importance before the uncomplicated immensity of the colossal landscape and the fatality of the sheer abyss."

Robert was home. He was here to meditate until he realized the Self. But his mind wandered to his lifelong ambitions for improving conditions in the world by the power of spirit. World War II had just ended, and he had the highest of hopes of a peaceful new age for humanity, as expressed in a letter dated December 28, 1948:

"Remember the day when evil forces held sway and how we did pray to pen the way for Freedom of Nations through World Federation by building this Nation in a cooperative way? Evil forces are gone, we continue, March on and lead all these Nations into the net of Universal Love for the masses irrespective of classes, and release all from bondage, strife into new Life."

Another mystic was living at Jailani, a wonderful Muslim called Mustan. Decades later, in relating the story to his monastics, Gurudeva recounted:

"They say Mustan never took a bath, but he smelled as sweet as a flower. He was so old; he was so pure. We had a wonderful meeting. When he saw me he said, "I had a dream about you." Then Mustan pulled a little notebook out of his pocket. He said, "I wrote it down here where I write down all of my dreams." I said to him, through my friend who translated from Arabic into English, "I had a dream about you, too," which I had just a few nights before. I had written it down also. I had been trained at that time to write down all my dreams. He said, "My dream was during the last full moon." We compared dates. We had both written down the same dream at the same time about our meeting together on the inner planes at night while we slept.

He began giving to me a profound training centered on the conscious use of the third eye. He explained and projected with his mind force the intricate capabilities, development and unfoldment of the faculties of this chakra. Mustan lived in a small cave with a little door on it. One had to walk many steps up the side of a hill to get to it. I lived in a nearby mosque at the foot of the path to his cave.

At night he took me out and meditated with me on wind-swept hills where yogis used to meditate hundreds of years ago. He made me sit perfectly straight for hours at a time. The wind was blowing hard against my body. It was cold. There, in the dead of night, he would say through my translator, "Did you see this? Did you see that? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" He was revealing a form of mysticism taught in the Koran. He shared all of this with me. I learned some extremely intricate workings of the third eye and the psychic unfoldment of it through the faculties of the soul. This knowledge has become an extremely useful tool in my work today. I really appreciate my fifth catalyst on the path, Mustan.

He was an old, old soul, a rare being living a dynamic, spiritual life in that remote jungle. A Muslim saint named Abdul Qadir Jailani lived in the caves of Jailani, meditated and had a school of mysticism, hundreds of years ago. These caves were on top of a mountain about a mile from where we lived in the mosque. When penetrating deep into the cave, one can see light in the crevice deep in the center of the mountain. In the mysticism of Islam, this is thought to be a direct route to the inner planes, to Mecca.

The caves themselves are situated on a cliff that drops six hundred feet to a tropical jungle below, where wild elephants are often seen. I was taken there by my friend for a series of meditations. As I walked up the rugged dirt path, I realized that this was the cave in which I would one day realize the Self. For no particular reason, I felt it could be done here. It would be done here. That's how it is before you realize, you think there is something to do or something to get or become.

We stayed for a few days together, my friend, Anbakara, and I, sleeping on the stones just outside the cave, since they stayed warm during the night. We meditated long hours, silently penetrating deep into the mind. It was so quiet there. He told me one afternoon that as I sat above the valley in the lotus posture I always use, a large python had crawled over my legs, across my lap and back into the rocks.

As the days passed I felt more and more blissful, drawn to the absolute center of myself, as if by a powerful magnet. One morning I awoke and sensed we should leave the caves, that I should return alone to take the final steps. We returned to Colombo, where I completed several tasks for my former teacher, which inwardly freed me. When they were done, I returned by myself to the caves of Jailani. On the way back, I was determined. I vowed not to quit until I had the ultimate unfoldment of this lifetime. I had received outstanding training along the path up to this point. I had learned many things. Always the desire for the realization of the Self, imkaif, was paramount in my mind.
I was told by my teachers along the way that I had to get the foundation and the understanding of the various inner and outer areas of the mind in order to have strength enough to sustain the reaction to the realization of the Self. Each catalyst up to this point had helped me and introduced me in one way or another to my next teacher. This was not planned. I did not look for another teacher. I expected each teacher to be my last one. In fact, I didn't even think about it. Our meetings all happened in an easy, natural sequence of events.

Each teacher had his part in developing the memory faculties, one-pointedness, concentration, stimulating the meditation faculties, the willpower and the cognitive faculties teaching me to see everything from an inner perspective and looking at the world as if one were the center of the universe.

There was just one thing lacking, however and I had to find that myself the ultimate goal, realization of the Self, God. It was with joy and a burning desire that I walked the ten or twelve miles from the nearest road to the caves of Jailani. I had absolutely no possessions with me. I had given all of my clothing away. I had given all of my money to the villagers along the road. I had nothing. I just went there to be alone.
I took no food, again vowing to myself, "I am going to fast until I find this realization that I so want and have wanted for such a long time. Now is the time."

When I arrived late that afternoon, Mustan wasn't there. He had gone away on a pilgrimage. No one was there. There were no pilgrims. I was alone. I walked up and into the cave and began to fast and meditate. I went in and in and in and in and then in and in again, and finally I went in and in until awareness became totally aware of itself, kaif, and into the control of the breath until the breath breathed no more, and then in from kaif to iimkaif the most intense possible kaif experience wherein the brink of the absolute is felt and then into the Self, Parasiva.

I came out again into the mind. Villagers had seen me on the cliffs from six hundred feet below. They thought I was some sort of holy man and brought food and drinks, all sorts of nice things. We had a big feast. I was hungry. They had come all the way up from the valley. They were so kind.

After several weeks, I returned to Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, a hundred miles away, with a Muslim man who also had come on a pilgrimage from a foreign country. He taught me a wonderful Islamic chant along the way. I never saw Mustan again. He taught me everything I needed to know to complete my training for the realization of the Self during my first series of meetings with him. It was intense. It was strong."

As many know, a book is being prepared for next year, being Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami's commentary on Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Today we share a canvas from Kerala, wherein Suresh Muttukulam depicts the siddhis, the powers that arise when yogas are mastered. The text speaks of some 25, but here we depict eight of them.

Here is Sutra 4.1:

anma-oadhi-mantra-tapa-samdhi-j siddhaya
The siddhis are the result of birth, herbs, mantras, austerity or samadhi.

Vyasa Comments:
Supernormal powers arising at the time of changing the bodily frame show themselves with birth. By herbs, as for example with chemicals in an Asura's (demon's) abode, medicinal powers are acquired. By Mantras or incantations, powers like flying or reducing one's size are attained. By practicing Tapas or austerities, power of fulfillment of wishes, e.g. going to any wished-for place etc., is acquired. The powers attainable through concentration have been explained before.

The yogi here has balanced Siva and Shanti, fire and air, Sun and Moon. Around him are arrayed the powers, explained more in the slideshow to follow.

For many years, visitors to Kadavul Temple have been greeted by a fantastically carved wooden Ganesha and Muruga on either side of the temple's main entrance. Over the years of sun and rain, the paint on both carvings had begun to fade. To remedy the situation we recently hired two painters to touch them up, and over the past few weeks we've been watching the progress as a bright base layer was added, followed by a full layer of golden highlights. Aum.

This morning the mathavasis observed their monthly padapuja to Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Satguru and the monks gathered in Kadavul temple and Sannyasin Tillainathaswami and Nirvani Tejadevanatha performed the abhishekam.

"You don't discipline yourself to attain the feeling of love. You attain the feeling of love and then you want to discipline yourself because you love the discipline, because it brings more love." - Gurudeva