Tracing the nada-nadi shakti to its source carries the seeker's awareness to the brink of the Absolute. Through Shum meditation we end up in the area of the superconscous mind that's able to hear the inner 'eeeee' sound. "When you hear the nada, endeavor to project it in love's outpouring to all..." We are all imperfect; if anyone was perfect they wouldn't have been born in the first place. Admitting mistakes, repentance and penance are important aspects of life. Move beyond regret to a positive state of mind.

Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva, Lesson 264

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

This is Merging with Siva, Lesson 264.

"Within the quantum level of consciousness there originates a vibration, a steady vibration, that can be heard with the inner ear as a high-pitched 'eeeee', as if a thousand vinas were playing, as if all the nerve currents in the astral body, physical body and the body of the soul were singing in harmony. It is a divine combination of the ida and pingala tones blended together in the sushumna. Each lineage of gurus has embedded within the psyche of tradition a certain combination of sounds, and listening to this mystic sound holds all devotees close to their satguru and all those who preceded him. It is also said that when one is in another birth, the sound is the same, and will eventually lead the aspirant back to his spiritual lineage. Listening to the nada, as it is called in Sanskrit, or nada-nadi shakti, brings the threshold of bliss and shows the balance of all karmas has been attained. Listening to the nada and tracing it into its source carries the seeker's awareness to the brink of the Absolute. There are today mystical orders that do nothing but listen to the nada while looking at and enjoying the darshan of their guru's picture."

A few years ago I created a keynote on meditation, different types of meditation trying to help Gurudeva's devotees understand our meditation tradition better by comparing it to other traditions. What impressed me the most in doing the reasearch was how different different definitions of meditation were. They weren't at all the same thing. What one person called meditation another would definitely not call meditation. One that really struck me and the one I started the presentation with was Blue Mountain Center, Eknath Easwaran, you know a great translator of scripture. He had a good flair for rendering scripture into English.

Blue Mountain Center's definition of meditation is: "Reflecting on verses from the great scriptures of all religions." That's meditation. That's all you do in your meditation. You sit there, half an hour, an hour. You're reflecting on scriptural quotes from any scripture of any religion. And that's being called meditation. Not being called reflecting on scripture.

And then, another approach to meditation is repeating a mantra. And repeating a mantra is a good practice so is reflecting on scripture a good practice. Not criticizing the practice but just showing how the term meditation is so broad. Repeating a mantra is called meditation in many organizations. So you're sitting there and for half an hour, an hour you're focusing on the mantra. Well, of course, in our tradition that's repeating a mantra, that's not meditation either. It's just repeating a mantra is japa, so, not meditation.

Then some organizations have meditating on the deity. So you're meditating on Siva, seeing as Nataraja, or you're visualizing Nataraja as your meditation, which again is a good practice but that's, in our tradition that's more a devotional practice. You wouldn't really call that meditation. But here this is a very good example of our form of meditation which is experiencing something that's happening in the superconscious mind. It's going on in the superconscious mind all the time but we're not necessarily aware of it and we're trying to experience it.

How do we experience it? Well depends what it is. In this case we're trying to experience the inner 'eeeee' sound. So how do we hear it or try it out.

"Within the quantum level of consciousness there originates a vibration, a steady vibration, that can be heard with the inner ear..."

So we have an inner ear as well as an outer ear, that's what that's pointing out and if we're trying to experience something in the superconscious mind that's a sound, we're using our inner ear. Another way of looking at our form of meditation is we're trying to find something and that's when it starts to get into the Shum terminology. The analogy came to me when we were having a retreat. It's called the Jungle Lodge, it's not really a very dense jungle but that's what they call the Jungle Lodge in Malaysia. Very basic retreat center shall we say. And nearby was some hills and waterfalls which you can climb up and go on very interesting walks. But it was fairly dense and to get to the waterfall for example, you needed to look at the map. Otherwise you could get lost, you wouldn't ever find the waterfall. So you looked at the map, and this trail goes here, that trail goes there and you get there you turn this way, you get there, you go that way. So you study the map and then you can get to the waterfall in the jungle. The waterfall's already there but you're not seeing the waterfall because you're not in front of it.

That's our type of meditation. We're trying to go to some place, it's already there, but we're not currently experiencing it. So, the inner 'eeeee' is always resonating, it's just we're not in the area of the mind that's able to hear it. And our form of meditation through Shum gets us from one place to another, to another, like a map and then we end up in the area of the mind that's able to hear the inner 'eeeee' sound.

"Many sincere seekers wonder why they cannot hear "eeeee," the nada, during their meditation, whereas others not only hear it during meditation but during the day when talking, shopping or just meandering through the garden. This is to say, it is there when awareness enters that area of the mind..."

So it's always there, we have to get to the area of the mind that can hear it.

"...The mind has to be made empty. That means resolving all unresolved conflicts within the subconscious. The striving to hear the nada will bring up unresolved issues. They may plague the conscious mind until resolved. At first you might disregard them and feel they will go away as abruptly as they came. But later, when they persist, and the major one is deception--yes, we can even deceive ourselves--we are inwardly forced to face up to, admit our secrets and make amends. When deception goes, the nada comes. When the subconscious is heavy, the nada and the brilliant colors it radiates fade. Failure on the path puts the nada out of range of the inner ear of the soul.

"The mystical nada, it's a medley of sounds, and each sound which is there has a color, but may be covered, as is the light of the mind of the soul, the clear white light. It is covered, but not permanently. Admittance of the mistakes, the experience of repentance and the performance of penance, called prayashchitta, lay the foundation for a reconciliation that will release the force of lower nature into the higher and uncloud the veil that hid the inner light, that hid the nada--that incomprehensible high-pitched 'eee,' sounding within the head, that incomparable source of inner security, contentment and outpouring of love..."

Mistakes, admittance of the mistakes. That's the point that Gurudeva is making here. Repentance, penance is an important aspect of life to work with in a conscious way. Unfortunately some people feel they shouldn't make mistakes. When they make mistakes they feel really disappointed in themselves. "Oh, I made a mistake." That's the idea that we're supposed to be perfect. So I like to say: Well if anyone was perfect they wouldn't have been born in the first place. So, welcome to the world where everyone's imperfect, at least in one way, maybe two.

So we're all imperfect and we're trying to improve, and if we don't, if we can't accept the fact that we made mistakes and that's okay, it's a big challenge to making spiritual progress.

I wrote a 'Publisher's Desk' on this once and it talks about the four responses to a mistake. Perhaps you remember that. So, the first response which is the one we don't want to get stuck in is we feel we shouldn't have made the mistake. We're kind of depressed, discouraged, "Oh I made a mistake." So if we get stuck there that's obviously not good, we'll never hear the inner 'eeeee' if we're stuck in regret about a mistake. That's the subconscious blocking our inner abilities.

So, the second response is to figure out how if that situation came up again you could react in a different way, respond in a different way and avoid the mistake. How can I handle this event differently so that this mistake doesn't happen in the future? We need to think it through. We've moved beyond regret and we're in a positive state of mind figuring out how to improve our behavior.

If the mistake involves another person then we may need to apologize to that person or give that person a gift in some way smooth out the disturbed forces between us and the other person because it will still bother us because of this force with the other person that hasn't harmonized. If we go through all of that and we still feel bad about it, we did something seriously wrong. That's when penance or prayashchitta comes in. We did something seriously wrong and our soul is kind of crying out that we haven't set ourselves right yet. So we do some type of penance like fasting, prostrations, carrying kavadi, different prostrations in our religious tradition to get rid of that sense of guilt.

Hinduism is a religion in which you're not supposed to feel guilt. If you feel guilty it means you haven't done your penance. Whatever mistake we make we're supposed to be able to rid ourselves of the reaction to it. Not that we feel we did the right thing but that we've compensated for it in some way.

"When you hear the nada, endeavor to project it in love's outpouring to all those who are in your orbit of communication. They will feel the blessings when your divine love is projected through your nada into their nada. This is the height of selfless consciousness, universal love, a constant and mystical outpouring in the experience of oneness. The sushumna is nada and more. Nada shakti is. It just is."

Have a wonderful day.

Aum Namah Sivaya