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Men and Women Are Not the Same, Part One

Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami

Description: Bringing Hinduism to Hawaii and the west in the early 1970's. The successful Hindu household maintains family harmony and responsibilities while simultaneously observing the contemplative way. The path for the wise, understanding and hopeful Saivite parents is to balance the iḍā-piṅgalā-sushumṇā currents through sādhana daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly worshiping and meditating daily without fail. Their home is sacrosanct. This is truly the path for the family toward merger with Śiva. Related Shum series with the goals of smoothly flowing pranic energy in meditation and harmony with the guru on all planes, innerflow, finding the guru within oneself. "Guru Chronicles" "Merging with Siva" Lessons 274-275.

Transcription:
Good morning everyone. Good morning. And today we're starting a new lesson from "Merging With Siva." It's entitled: “Men and Women Are Not the Same” drawn from the "1970 Master Course". And, as usual when we start a new lesson we draw some history from "Guru Chronicles." It's not precisely from 1970 but it's in the first half of 1970 decade. "Books from the Inner Worlds "Kadavul Hindu Temple became the center of the monks’ lives, and they began years of training in the devotional arts of Sanskrit chanting and puja. The Gods were introduced to them by Gurudeva, and they learned to make them the center of life, their support and their friends. Slowly, methodically, Gurudeva was, in a big way, bringing everything of the tradition to the West, every monastic ideal, every temple protocol, every yogic practice, planting them all in the fertile Hawaiian soil. (That's a nice image.) Each day he drove, with one or two monks, the five miles to the post office, as in those early days there was no mail delivery to the rural areas. Taking the day’s correspondence to a table at the Coco Palms Hotel, he would order a cup of coffee and, opening each letter, dictate his responses, which the monks would type up and mail later that day. "On one such day, something remarkable happened. It had never happened before. It would last for months, and it would never happen again. (What is that?) Here is Gurudeva’s description of that morning: “Soon after we had placed the Nataraja Deity, my inner eye, within the ajna chakra, was opened upon an array of great manuscripts, and the inner library of Lord Subramaniam was seen. Upon each wish and fancy, the librarian a tall, fine, elegantly robed, bearded man would pull forth from one shelf or another great volumes and with firm hands open and turn the pages to the proper place to be read. I read these volumes one after another to the monastics after this siddhi was obtained. They asked questions. The books were placed within the inner ether of my mind, the pages turned and read and enjoyed and understood. Thus, Siva’s great diamond-dust-like darshan flooding out opened the inner door of our Lord Subramaniam’s private library, which contains the records accrued since His arrival on this planet. Lord Subramaniam, the South Indian God also known as Karttikeya, Murugan, Skanda and Sanatkumara, has always been near and dear to us." End of "Guru Chronicles." Lesson 274: "The Ideals of Family Life "If both husband and wife are on the spiritual path, the householder family will progress beautifully and deeply. Their love for one another and their offspring maintains family harmony. However, the nature of their sādhana and unfoldment of the spirit is different from that of the sannyāsin. The family unit itself is an odic-force structure. It is a magnetic-force structure, a material structure, for they are involved in the objects and relationships of the world. It is the family’s effort to be 'in the world but not of it' that gives the impetus for insight and the awakening of the soul. The struggle to maintain the responsibilities of the home and children while simultaneously observing the contemplative way, in itself, provides strength and balance, and slowly matures innate wisdom through the years. "The successful Hindu householder family is stable, an asset to the larger community in which it lives, an example of joyous, contented relationships. Members of the family are more interested in serving than being served. They accept responsibility for one another. They are pliable, flexible, able to flow freely like water. They worship and meditate daily without fail and strictly observe their individual sādhanas. Their insight is respected and their advice sought. Yet, they do not bring the world into the home, but guard and protect the home vibration as the spiritual center of their life. Their commitments are always first to the family, then to the community. Their home remains sacrosanct, apart from the world, a place of reflection, growing and peace. They intuitively know the complex workings of the world, the forces and motivations of people, and often guide others to perceptive action. Yet, they do not display exclusive spiritual knowledge or put themselves above their fellow man. "Problems for them are merely challenges, opportunities for growth. Forgetting themselves in their service to the family and their fellow man, they become the pure channel for love and light. Intuition unfolds naturally. What is unspoken is more tangible than what is said. Their timing is good, and abundance comes. They live simply, guided by real need and not novel desire. (That's a great distinction; real need verses novel desire.) They are creative, acquiring and using skills such as making their own clothing, growing food, building their own house and furniture. The inner knowing awakened by their meditations is brought directly into the busy details of everyday life. They use the forces of procreation wisely to produce the next generation and not as instinctive indulgence. They worship profoundly and seek and find spiritual revelation in the midst of life. "Within each family, the man is predominantly in the piṅgalā force. The woman is predominantly in the iḍā force. When the energies are the other way around, disharmony is the result. When they live together in harmony and have awakened enough innate knowledge of the relation of their forces to balance them, then both are in the sushumṇā force and can soar into the Divinity within. Children born to such harmonious people come through from the deeper chakras and tend to be highly evolved and well balanced." Lesson 275: "Maintaining A Balance "Should the woman become aggressively intellectual and the man become passively physical, then forces in the home are disturbed. The two bicker and argue. Consequently, the children are upset, because they only reflect the vibration of the parents and are guided by their example. Sometimes the parents separate, going their own ways until the conflicting forces quiet down. But when they come back together, if the wife still remains in the piṅgalā channel, and the husband in the iḍā channel, they will generate the same inharmonious conditions. It is always a question of who is the head of the house, he or she? The head is always the one who holds the prāṇas within the piṅgalā. Two piṅgalā spouses in one house, husband and wife, spells conflict. "The balancing of the iḍā and piṅgalā into sushumṇā is, in fact, the pre-ordained spiritual sādhana, a built in sādhana, or birth sādhana, of all family persons. To be on the spiritual path, to stay on the spiritual path, to get back on the spiritual path, to keep the children on the spiritual path, to bring them back to the spiritual path, too—as a family, father, mother, sons and daughters living together as humans were ordained to do without the intrusions of uncontrolled instinctive areas of the mind and emotions—it is imperative, it is a virtual command of the soul of each member of the family, that these two forces, the iḍā and piṅgalā, become and remain balanced, first through understanding and then through the actual accomplishment of this sādhana. There can be no better world, no new age, no golden future, no peace, no harmony, no spiritual progress until this happens and is perpetuated far into the future. This is the sādhana of the father. This is the sādhana of the mother. And together they are compelled by divine law to teach this sādhana to their offspring, first by example, then through explanation of their example, as youths mature into adulthood. Those unfortunate couples who neglect or refuse to perform this sādhana—of balancing the iḍā and piṅgalā, and from time to time bringing both into the sushumṇā—are indeed distressed by their own neglect. At the time of death, as their life ebbs into the great unknown, they will, in looking back, see nothing but turmoil, misunderstanding, hurts—physical hurts, emotional hurts, mental hurts. Their subconscious will still be hurting, and they will know the hurt they gave to others will follow them into the next world, then into the next, to be re-experienced. Their pain knows no cure during their last few hours before transition from the physical body into one of the astral worlds they earned access to, as their good deeds, misdeeds and wrongful deeds are gathered together and totaled. Therefore, it is for the wise, the understanding, the hopeful parents to follow the iḍā-piṅgalā-sushumṇā sādhana daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. This is the path for the family persons toward merger with Śiva. It truly is." Thank you Gurudeva. Then we have some Shum words: disi A practice: while doing kalibasa and bamm'reh, put the tip, just the tip, of the tongue on the soft part of the back of the roof of the mouth; there is a nerve current there that can be felt when the tip of the tongue touches it, causing a slight relaxation of the brain. sidisi The flow of energies from within; harmonious flow of subtle forces, or pranas; the inner flow. (And then the one that relates.) misidisi Observing the harmonious flow of pranas throughout the body and aura. (Then we get another series.) mika Satguru’s formal seat of authority, known as simhasana or pitham in Sanskrit; it represents the presence of the guru, and is used by no one else. simika Happiness. shumsimika (Which is the one that relates.) Happy, secure feeling; joyous, lighthearted; rehsika is the name of entangled pranic energy; shumsimika is its opposite, smoothly flowing pranic energy; (So that's our goal; smoothly flowing pranic energy.) a state of joy or happiness felt when the emotions are high and the mind is fresh; a refined state of bliss or joy that penetrates from the fourth dimension into the third dimension and is felt through the physical nerve system; this is felt when the pranas are all flowing in harmonious directions within individuals and between them and others; a quiet feeling of contentment abides. (And then the last one.) tika Stick for playing the bowls for tyeif music. limtika Loss of body consciousness. amlimtika The subtle nerve force of two or more people blending; feeling the vibrations of another’s body after the loss of body consciousness occurs; feeling the depth of another; the blending of the fourth dimension as both niimf maa travel in the same area; this must occur before the fifth dimension can be experienced by a single individual; one being in harmony of this type with another lifts or brings niimf out of the various third-dimensional areas of the mind so that the fifth dimension can be experienced. Innerflow: harmony with the guru on all planes or innerflow. jaamlimtika Finding the guru within oneself. Thank you very much; have a wonderful day. [End of transcript.]