Lesson 119 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Sannyāsin’s Initiation Rite?

ŚLOKA 119
Young, unmarried men of the Hindu religion may qualify for renunciation, called sannyāsa dīkshā, which may be conferred by any legitimate sannyāsin. But the most spiritually potent initiation comes from a satguru. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Traditionally, sannyāsa dīkshā is restricted to unmarried men, though some modern orders have accepted qualified women. As a rule in most orders, if a candidate enters monastic training before age twenty-five and meets other qualifications, he may, generally after a minimum of twelve years of preparation and training, take the sannyāsin’s lifetime vows, called holy orders of sannyāsa. Only a sannyāsin can bring another into the ancient order of sannyāsa. However, since the purpose is God Realization, most candidates seek initiation from a spiritually advanced knower of God who can bring them into Paraśiva. Sannyāsa dīkshā is given in simple or most formal ways. The formal rites include the shaving of the head, conveyance of certain esoteric teachings, abjuration of the worldly life and dharma, administration of monastic vows, conducting of the novitiate’s funeral rites and the giving of the kavi vestments. The Vedas proclaim, “The Self within the body, pure and resplendent, is attained through the cultivation of truth, austerity, right knowledge and chastity. When their impurities dwindle, the ascetics behold Him.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 119 – Living with Śiva

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

How to Face Yourself

Life must become positive. In reactions, man is not his best friend. He is seeking outside for something to quiet his nature. He is carrying his reactions with him, keeping old habit patterns going. For a person to renovate his subconscious mind, he must be willing to move out for awhile, redesign, rebuild, redecorate, then move back in. This is a form of spiritual discipline. Overlapping reactions are dangerous. Living in overlapping reactions and understanding nothing of how to get along without them, because of no discrimination, makes man give up.

Overcoming reaction is easy. You can wipe it out of your life and realize the benefit of having done so. Sit down and think. Look at your life. Look at the tendencies within your nature which created your habit patterns and which formed your subconscious mind and gave it the foundation for many more of the same old situations. The tendencies will be greater in each succeeding situation unless you apply the brakes of understanding. If you sit down and realize the law of cause and effect and live according to the basic laws of life, you will overcome the reactions within you. You will be able to overcome old reactions by understanding them. More realization will burst forth from within you, and you will live a more spiritual life. You can either walk through a city full of fog, or climb above it.

Thinking and believing clearly are only possible when a man knows that he knows. When you realize something, you only know of your realization after you have realized it, not before. Realization is your teacher. Realize something every day, or something will block the subconscious mind. The reactionary nature must subside. Its death gives birth to a greater understanding. If you can live for three weeks without reacting to anything, you will attain a realization.

If you simply remember this without practicing it, you will not be helping yourself or anyone else. But if you take the law and put it into practice, you will be doing something for yourself and your fellow man, because you will realize a greater spiritual power, a greater humility, and be the person you should be. Then don’t react again. Discriminate as to each move you make, each word you say, and decide whether there will be a reaction. If you can see ahead that you will not react, proceed. Dictate to yourself, face yourself, face your mistakes and don’t make them again. Breaking spiritual laws creates reactions in the subconscious, and man loses spiritual power. We can find actual peace of mind in a certain place, right here and now, within ourselves, when we overcome reactions.

Let us look within and see if we are reacting to anything right now, holding any resentment, holding any fear. Let us know that that is just a gauge of experience of the instinctive nature. Loosen it and let it go. Mentally look ahead to the future and know that everything we do and say will have a reaction. Let us give birth to good, positive, controlled reactions, and be sure that if they overlap, they are transparent—that they create a light growing brighter. Overlapping negative reactions bring darkness, depression, and make man nervous.

We have been delving into our consciousness. If you have understood all this about your reactions, your subconscious mind has been impressed. Look into your mirror. Your reflection is your subconscious mind objectified. Find out what is holding you back. Face yourself and find out what is keeping you from expressing the great things which are within you here and now. After all, life is meant to be lived joyously.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 119: ADULTERY AND FIDELITY
Śiva’s followers are forbidden by Sanātana Dharma to commit adultery or even steal the affections of another’s spouse. They treasure fidelity and know that transgressions are rewarded with pain, guilt and remorse. Aum

Lesson 119 – Merging with Śiva

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

Finding the Eternal Now

Before beginning a new project, meditate. Collect up the ramified forces flowing through and around your body and bring them all to one point by regulating the energies through the control of breath, prāṇāyāma. Thus arriving at the now, if only for an instant, begins the auspiciousness of the moment, after which the project should be begun. By thus meditating and through this practice, inner results infiltrate worldly undertakings, and the opposing forces succumb to the clarity of your perceptions derived through initially being aware in the now, if only for a few seconds.

When you are experiencing the totality of the moment, you are not aware of the past, nor are you aware of the future or anything within the externalities of the mind. You are aware of the ākāśa, the primal substance of the superconsciousness of the mind. You are able to have a continuity of intuitive findings within it and gain much knowledge from within yourself. For the beginner on the path, the concept of the eternity of the moment is refreshing, and he does touch into it occasionally when he tries to meditate. This is encouraging to him, and he gains a new impetus to pursue his inner life more courageously than before.

It is impossible to intellectually try to experience the here-and-now state of consciousness, as it is impossible to describe the feeling one would have standing on the top of a tall mountain. Only through experience can these transcendental states be known. Therefore, become perfect in yoga. Your rewards will be great and your future sublime.

As the first attempt in finding the infinite reality of the eternity of the moment, sit quietly, draw all of your faculties into the center of your head and try to see the glowing white light there. When this light is seen, a high-pitched sound might also be heard, and you are then in the eternity of the moment. Bringing oneself to the repetition of this practice successfully and systematically, day after day, month after month, year after year is the yoga to be practiced to merge awareness deeper and deeper into superconsciousness.

Now, you can think and you can feel, and feeling is more convincing. When your mind is disturbed, your feeling is personality-centered. When your mind is quiet, your subtle feeling is superconscious, spiritually aware. Feel that you are the complete master of your body, of your mind and of your emotions. Can you really feel that? Feel the life within you. Feel your will dominating your mind. Your will is your soul in action. You may think about your will as being your soul in action, but you must feel the real you, the real “I am.” Tell your subconscious mind twenty-four hours a day that this is true: that you are the master of body, mind, and emotions. For in one instant of realizing this, knowing this, feeling this to be true, you will find that you are all right, right now, in this instant, and you will find yourself entirely free from fear, worry and doubt. Live completely, regardless of your circumstances, then the circumstances in which you divide yourself will adjust themselves to become as beautiful as the beauty of your soul.

Lesson 118 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Sannyāsin’s Kuṇḍalinī Path?

ŚLOKA 118
The sannyāsin balances within himself both the male and female energies. Complete unto himself, he is whole and independent. Having attained an equilibrium of iḍā and piṇgalā, he becomes a knower of the known. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
There arises within the sannyāsin a pure energy, neither masculine nor feminine. This is the sushumṇā current coming into power through which he gains control of the kuṇḍalinī force and eventually, after years of careful guidance, attains nirvikalpa samādhi. Eventually, in one life or another, all will turn to the renunciate path. However, it would be equally improper for a renunciate-minded soul to enter family life as for a householder to seek to be a sannyāsin. A word of warning. Be cautious of those who promise great kuṇḍalinī awakenings and spiritual rewards from severe practices without preparation, initiation and renunciation. Those entering the serious life of sannyāsa must be prepared to follow the traditional path of unrewarded sādhana through the years, apart from dear family and friends. Such is the way to reach the truth of yoga. It takes many, many years for the soul to thus ripen and mature. The Tirumantiram affirms, “Many are the births and deaths forgotten by souls shrouded in ignorance, enveloped in mala’s darkness. At the moment Great Śiva’s grace is gained, the renunciate attains the splendorous light.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 118 – Living with Śiva

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

Overlapping Reactions

When you die, you are freed from your senses. While you are living, you are caught up in your senses and reacting to memories of things you wish you had or had not done. Many people live in a constant state of overlapping reactions. They try to find peace of mind on the outside, externally. Reactions are caused by what we have placed in the subconscious mind that we have not fully understood. Reactions are packed away in the subconscious mind, influencing our everyday life, attracting our successes and failures to us. We keep meeting blocks because of our reactions in the subconscious mind that we set up in the past. Overcome these reactions, and opportunities will open up and we will begin to succeed. Reaction is a natural thing, either positive or negative. If we are reacting in a negative way, that is because of lack of understanding; if in a positive way, that gives us more understanding, and we become our own teacher or psychologist.

If you do not understand your reaction to something, wait until it subsides emotionally, so you will not be upset, then try to understand it by writing about it in a quiet moment. Then burn the paper in an inauspicious fire, such as in a garbage can. This vāsanā daha tantric process releases or detaches the emotion from the memory. This means that the memory of the experience no longer harbors the emotion that was previously attached to it and vibrating twenty-four hours a day. You will still have the memory, but without a reaction or emotional charge attached to it.

There are many individuals who get their security from their reactions, who make themselves disappointed and keep themselves in a constant state of emotional vibration. Peace of mind is not a blank state. It is not having emotion attached to the memory patterns within the subconscious. These memory patterns, once freed from emotion, remain at peace, and then pure contentment resides through the entire mind. A negative reaction can be likened to a fog over the city. You cannot see clearly because of the fog.

When we react to something, how long does it take before it subsides? How can we guide our lives so as to have only positive reactions? We have to awaken a certain control over our nature. We have to anticipate what is going to happen to us. Whether we admit it or not, we attract everything that happens to us. What we react to, and what we have reacted to in the past, we will create in our future. If we face experience with understanding, we will free ourselves from recreating past unpleasant experiences. Experience is man’s greatest chain. It holds him in a certain pattern. The chains of experience get stronger and stronger until man enters spiritual life through the realms of understanding. Every man must decide whether he wants to be caged in by experience or be freed by understanding the cause of the experience.

A negative reaction may have been set up in the mind many years ago. How long does it take to subside? In a person with some understanding, the initial reaction will subside in a few hours, but it takes five to seven days before it subsides enough for him to get a complete understanding. The average man reacts to something every day. That’s what makes him average. A reaction today, another one tomorrow, another one the day after tomorrow, then those reactions are overlapping. To stop these overlapping reactions, we have to sit down and face everything that we have created for ourselves in the past and control our circumstances until the reaction subsides.

Be on your guard. Control your circumstances and your life. Guard your weak points with understanding, and don’t allow yourself to be put into a position where you will react. Then you can become fully conscious of what is within you and within your fellow man.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 118: TRADITIONS OF CONJUGAL LIFE
Śiva’s followers who are married regulate their sex life according to traditionally accepted standards. They confine their affectionate looks to one another and do not hold hands, embrace, caress or kiss in public. Aum.

Lesson 118 – Merging with Śiva

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

Be a Friend To Yourself

In the process of spiritual unfoldment, which brings you closer and closer to merging into the eternal now, you have to become accustomed to a new you. Become acquainted with yourself, become an old friend to yourself, and you will find living in the moment, in the inspiration of now, becoming second nature to the new you. Remember, it takes time to become an old friend to yourself, the same amount of time it would take to acquire a mature friendship with someone else.

In our beginning meditations on the Śaivite path of enlightenment, we must establish firmly in our intellect the basic truth of “the now.” Now and its seeming counterparts, “then and when,” are only ambiguous to us when the instinctive energies are scattered and unrelated and when there is absolutely no self-discipline of the vital forces which, when accomplished, harnesses man’s individual awareness in such a way that he becomes, over long periods of time, actually aware that he is aware, as well as being aware that his awareness is entangled in the externalities of mind due to an eventful scattering of instinctive forces. Furthermore, his awareness persists in the intuitive know-how and ability to disentangle itself from that external state as it becomes yanked back, deep within its natural state, the eternity of the moment. This ability is acquired through regular and regulated practice of yoga, diaphragmatic breathing and simple, yet profound, inner, mental, intuitive practices performed daily at the same time.

Having preceded the practice of yoga by firmly establishing in the subconscious realm of the mind the inevitability of the permanency of the moment, called now, through all areas of thought, there is one dispelling power, and that is man’s personal ability to withdraw his awareness from past and future and, from that static state, view out upon all areas of thought rather than wallow in them. We transgress our heritage on this planet through spending inordinate amounts of time in past and future and the mixture of the two. The penance is misery, confusion and sorrow, as we stumble over the furniture in a darkened room. Turn on the light, claim your heritage and live in the moment. Center awareness deep within the head. Sit in the center of the room. Enjoy the artifacts, rest in the center of the mind and view the panorama. Only by experiencing and acquiring the ability to reexperience, through the practice of yoga, the eternity of the moment can the aspirant allow deeper and deeper access to the fullness of his being.

Lesson 117 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Goals of Renunciate Life?

ŚLOKA 117
The two fundamental objectives of sannyāsa are to promote the spiritual progress of the individual, bringing him into God Realization, and to protect and perpetuate the religion through his illumined leadership. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Renunciation and asceticism have been an integral component of Vedic culture from the earliest days, the most highly esteemed path of the Hindu Dharma. Monastic life has both an individual and a universal objective. At the individual level, it is a life of selflessness in which the monastic has made the supreme sacrifice of renouncing all personal ambition, all involvement in worldly matters, that he might direct his consciousness and energies fully toward God Śiva. Guided by the satguru along the sādhana mārga, the initiated sannyāsin unfolds through the years into deeper and deeper realizations. Ultimately, if he persists, he comes into direct knowing of Paraśiva, Transcendent Reality. At the universal level, Hindu monasticism fosters the religion by preserving the truths of the Sanātana Dharma. Competent swāmīs are the teachers, the theologians, the exemplars of their faith, the torchbearers lighting the way for all. The ancient Vedas elucidate, “The ascetic who wears discolored robes, whose head is shaved, who does not possess anything, who is pure and free from hatred, who lives on alms, he becomes absorbed in Brahman.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 117 – Living with Śiva

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

To Realize the Spirit Within

When you have nothing in your subconscious that particularly bothers you, it is easy to turn the mind inward. But if you are bothered or disturbed, the subconscious acts as a barrier and makes it difficult to turn within. When you try to do so, up from the subconscious come all the remnants of the experiences which you hold on to through regret. If this is the case, you will have one more experience to go through before your mind does turn within. You will have to experience the understanding of all your experiences—not through analysis, not through reason (although the “whys” may come to you intuitively), but through the higher experience of pure understanding. You will find it is possible to have an understanding of yourself without going through the process of analysis.

A disturbed mind which is not permeated with Śivaness is strong in a negative sense, strong in that it will keep you from the realization of God. When the mind is disturbed, it is outwardly strong. The mind that is not disturbed is inwardly strong. Your inner strength is always more dependable than your outward display of strength. When you have gained your inner strength, you will be able to sit in meditation for at least a half hour every day and practice being the guardian of every thought and the ruler of every feeling within your body. If you do this, you will realize That which is the center of your Being. You will be uplifted, elevated, through the purification that you have brought to your mind.

Hold your consciousness high, keep your mind alive and alert so that your soul is alive and alert. You have heard me say many times, “Observation is the first awakening of the soul.” If your observation is intense and accurate, your mind is not bothered and you are not regretting things that have happened to you in the past. But people who have poor observation often do hold on to their regrets, and they rationalize most of what happens to them, putting the blame for their own experiences on someone else. It is so much easier to close the door on these reactions and live more like on a spring day rather than in the dead of winter. Life is meant to be lived joyously. The awakened soul is a joyous soul with a positive mind. The practice of observation will bring you closer and closer to this state of consciousness.

If you feel that your observation is not keen, begin observing things more closely. Observe the different colors in a store window. Study the shadows and the shades of color in one tree. Listen to the sounds of the city. How many can you distinguish? What do they mean to you? If your observation is already good, you can participate more fully in life and find yourself living above the dreary happenings of the day.

Recognizing that all experience is but a fading dream, you are closer to the permanence within you that never changes. You can sense it. It is God. It is Śiva. It has never changed. It will never change. You have all felt this permanence at one time or another, but then perhaps you find that you lose this feeling, this consciousness, and you drift out into the mind and find yourself thinking again that the mind is real. But then, maybe tomorrow, you will face it again. And as soon as you have found it, you leave it again, for the mind cannot bear the intensity of God, and you forget all about it. But then, a little later, you face that permanence within you yet again. And little by little you find that you are turning inward, opening up the inner channels more and more each day, making a greater and greater contact with God by turning within, drawing yourself ever closer to the pole at the center, the core of your Being. You will go through many different tests to prove your own realization to yourself. Face each test graciously. Welcome each test, and welcome each temptation that shows you the strength of your will over the chaotic senses. You have only to quiet all things of the mind to realize your identity with the eternity of God Śiva, the spirit, the Eternal Self within you.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 117: SUPPORTING RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCES
Śiva’s married followers all encourage their spouses to ardently fulfill sādhana, religious service, meditation, yoga, ritual worship, festivals and pilgrimage. They never discourage such noble expressions of dharma. Aum.

Lesson 117 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Quest For Security

You have at one time or another watched yourself pick up a new idea: “I shall do this and this and this!” Then, because you had a reaction over something, your enthusiasm died; you forgot the idea and bounded off onto something else. This is the way the mind works. You forget when you reach a part of your mind that has no inclination to understand. That is a part of the instinctive mind. If you run up against a habit pattern that is too strong for your will, it is like going along in a straight line and suddenly ricocheting off in another direction. But while this happens for a long time, after a lot of study and constant self-discipline—without which the study does not do too much good—the principles of the spiritual life finally become permeated through your entire being, and you become close to your soul in the eternal now.

This week, when you think about it, you will say to yourself, “I’m all right, right now,” and you will feel uplifted in knowing that this is so. But next week you will forget to do it. It makes you feel too complete, too secure. And being too secure is like being insecure, isn’t that true?

I met a family from the South recently that was having quite a time trying to adjust to the security of success! The husband has been a salesman all of his life, only just meeting the more or less routine needs of his family, three girls and one boy. He and his wife had always nurtured a desire for a lot of money so that the family could live in complete security, and every month for years they had put away just a little savings, with an eye to making the type of investment, at the right time, which would satisfy their dream.

Not long ago they found themselves able to buy into land with “remote possibilities of oil.” By spending the last of their savings to initiate drilling, by remote chance they did strike oil, bringing them almost immediate affluence through a chain of circumstances that has changed the entire pattern of their life. Now they feel more insecure than ever. When their money finally came in abundance, they found they really did not know what to do with it. They were worried because they had no experience in handling it. They felt totally transplanted, totally insecure in their apparent security.

After several conversations, they began to see that they had found their security in the desire for money; feeling that they did not have enough had become an integral part of the family’s subconscious. Because they were not able to live in the eternal now, they could not catch up with their new condition of life. Many people who find security in material desires are not able to become accustomed to something they are not already acquainted with.

Lesson 116 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Hindu Monastic Tradition?

ŚLOKA 116
In the Hindu tradition there have always existed among men a few for whom the world held no attraction and karmas were on the wane. Some are solitary mendicants. Others reside with their brothers in monasteries. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Certain men are by nature inclined toward realization of the Self, and disinclined toward desires of family, wealth and property. Some among them are sādhus dressed in white. They are anchorites living in the seclusion of distant caves and remote forests or wandering as homeless mendicants, itinerant pilgrims to the holy sanctuaries of Hinduism. Others dwell as cenobites assembled with fellow monastics, often in the āśrama, aadheenam or maṭha of their satguru. These monks, both anchorite and cenobite, may live with no formal vows or take certain simple vows. When initiated into the order of sannyāsa, they don the saffron robes and bind themselves to a universal body of Hindu renunciates whose existence has never ceased. Scriptural doctrine states that the two paths, householder and renunciate, are distinct in their dharmas and attainments, affirming that true renunciation may not be achieved by those in the world even by virtue of a genuine attitude of detachment. The holy Vedas declare, “The man who has found Him becomes a silent monk. Desiring Him alone as their world, ascetics leave their homes and wander about.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.