Lesson 7 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Deeply Mystical Śaiva Sect?

ŚLOKA 7
Śaivism is the world’s oldest religion. Worshiping God Śiva, the compassionate One, it stresses potent disciplines, high philosophy, the guru’s centrality and bhakti-rāja-siddha yoga leading to oneness with Śiva within. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Śaivism is ancient, truly ageless, for it has no beginning. It is the precursor of the many-faceted religion now termed Hinduism. Scholars trace the roots of Śiva worship back more than 8,000 years to the advanced Indus Valley civilization. But sa­cred writings tell us there never was a time when Śaivism did not exist. Modern history re­cords six main schools: Śaiva Siddhānta, Pāśupatism, Kashmīr Śaivism, Vīra Śaivism, Siddha Siddhān­ta and Śiva Ad­vaita. Śaivism’s grand­eur and beauty are found in a practical culture, an en­lightened view of man’s place in the universe and a profound system of temple mys­ti­cism and siddha yoga. It provides knowledge of man’s ev­o­lution from God and back to God, of the soul’s un­fold­­­ment and awak­ening guided by en­lightened sages. Like all the sects, its majority are devout families, headed by hundreds of orders of swāmīs and sā­dhus who follow the fiery, world-re­nouncing path to moksha. The Ved­as state, “By knowing Śiva, the Auspicious One who is hidden in all things, exceedingly fine, like film arising from clarified butter, the One embracer of the universe—by realizing God, one is released from all fetters.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 7 – Living with Śiva

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

Every Temple Made of Brick

How strong you must be to find this Truth. You must become very, very strong. How do you become strong? Exercise. You must exercise every muscle and sinew of your nature by obeying the dictates of the law, of the spiritual laws. It will be very difficult. A weak muscle is very difficult to make strong, but if you exercise over a period of time and do what you should do, it will respond. Your nature will respond, too. But you must work at it. You must try. You must try. You must try very, very hard. Very diligently. How often? Ten minutes a day? No. Two hours a day? No. Twenty-four hours a day! Every day! You must try very, very hard.

Preparing you for the realization of the Self is like tuning up a violin, tightening up each string so it harmonizes with every other string. The more sensitive you are to tone, the better you can tune a violin, and the better the violin is tuned, the better the music. The stronger you are in your nature, the more you can bring through your real nature; the more you can enjoy the bliss of your true being. It is well worth working for. It is well worth craving for. It is well worth denying yourself many, many things for—to curb your nature. It is well worth struggling with your mind, to bring your mind under the dominion of your will.

Those of you who have experienced contemplation know the depth from which I am speaking. You have had a taste of your true Self. It has tasted like nothing that you have ever come in contact with before. It has filled and thrilled and permeated your whole being, even if you have only remained in that state of contemplation not longer than sixty seconds. Out of it you have gained a great knowing, a knowing that you could refer back to, a knowing that will bear the fruit of wisdom if you relate future life experiences to that knowing, a knowing greater than you could acquire at any university or institute of higher learning. Can you only try to gain a clear intellectual concept of realizing this Self that you felt permeating through you and through all form in your state of contemplation? That is your next step.

Those of you who are wrestling with the mind in your many endeavors to try to concentrate the mind, to try to meditate, to try to become quiet, to try to relax, keep trying. Every positive effort that you make is not in vain. Every single brick added to a temple made of brick brings that temple closer to completion. So keep trying and one day, all of a sudden, you will pierce the lower realms of your mind and enter into contemplation. Then you will be able to say: “Yes, I know, I have seen. Now I know fully the path that I am on.” Keep trying. You have to start somewhere.

The Self you cannot speak of. You can only try to think about it, if you care to, in one way: feel your mind, body and emotions, and know that you are the Spirit permeating through mind, which is all form; body, which you inhabit; and emotions, which you either control or are controlled by. Think on that, ponder on that, and you will find you are the light within your eyes. You are the feel within your fingers. “You are more radiant than the sun, purer than the snow, more subtle than the ether.” Keep trying. Each time you try you are one step closer to your true Effulgent Being.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 7: ACCEPTING OUR KARMA
Śiva’s devotees accept all experiences, however difficult, as their self-created karma, without cringing or complaining. Theirs is the power of surrender, accepting what is as it is and dealing with it courageously. Aum.

Lesson 7 – Merging with Śiva

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

A Path Of Love

We have been walking through the path of the many Śaiva saints on our garden temple lands. Together we have looked back through history and seen real people living real lives, doing pragmatic things, sometimes foolish things, some even hurtful. There were workers among them, royalty, housewives, yogīs, businessmen, a spiritual community divided by caste but with one thing only in common. They all loved Śiva. That is their heritage. That is their message: that there is hope for all of us on this path to Śiva, hope of attaining His grace. These men and women will be remembered as they were for thousands of years. On this path, you don’t have to be a great ṛishi or a highly trained yogī. You don’t have to be a great philosopher. You don’t have to know Sanskrit. Just love God, which is the Life of the life within everyone. And to realize that God is the Light of the light within everyone, you have to be very simple, very uncomplicated, so that obvious realization can manifest through your conscious mind, through your subconscious mind, through your super­con­scious mind.

It’s very simple: the energy within our body is the same energy that pervades the universe, and it’s all emanating right out of Lord Śiva. It’s very simple: the light that lights our thoughts, that light doesn’t care—it has no preferences—whether it’s a good thought or not a good thought. That light is illuminating every thought. Take away the thoughts, and you realize that you are just light.

The path of Śaiva Siddhānta, as you all know, is a very simple path. It’s the path of love, a path of devotion, which makes you want to be self-disciplined, because to maintain a feeling of love all the time, you have to be self-disciplined. 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.

The path of Śaiva Siddhānta is worshiping God on the outside and realizing God on the inside, and when the two come together—transformation! That means that you’re different than you were. You have different desires. You have different motivations, different goals in life, because you’ve been transformed. You look at your previous life and you say, “That’s another person.” Why? Because you have found something real on the inside of you. Thoughts on the inside of you—they’re not real, they’re always changing. Feelings on the inside of you—they’re not real, they’re always changing. Śiva on the inside of you is right there—never changes. Those of you who hear the nāda, it’s the same inner sound, morning, noon and night, 365 days a year. The light that lights your thoughts, 365 days a year, twenty-four hours a day, is the same. It lights up your dreams also. And the energy of your body—all coming from Śiva.

Śiva is so close to you. The Nayanars, the saints of Tamil Śaivism, teach us a great lesson. They did so much wrong, but they survived with just the love of Śiva and maintained that love without anything getting in the way of it. Of course, if you love Śiva, obviously you have to love everyone else. Love brings forgiveness. Love brings understanding. Love brings feeling.

All Śaivites of the world love Śiva. They love each other, and they love the Vaishṇavites, the Śāktas, the Smārtas, the tribal Hindus and everyone in the world, because Śiva’s energy is working through everyone in the entire world—plants, trees, animals, fish, birds. It’s so simple. The object of the lesson is to make yourself a very simple, uncomplicated person. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 6 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are Hinduism’s Principal Sects?

ŚLOKA 6
The Sanātana Dharma, or “eternal faith,” known today as Hinduism, is a family of religions that accept the authority of the Vedas. Its four principal denominations are Śaivism, Śāktism, Vaishṇavism and Smārtism. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The world’s billion Hindus, one-sixth of the human family, are organized in four main denominations, each distinguish­ed by its Su­preme Deity. For Vaishṇavites, Lord Vishṇu is God. For Śai­vites, God is Śiva. For Śāktas, Goddess Śakti is su­preme. For Smār­tas, liberal Hindus, the choice of Deity is left to the devotee. Each has a multitude of guru lineages, religious leaders, priesthoods, sacred literature, monastic communities, schools, pilgrimage centers and tens of thousands of temples. They possess a wealth of art and architecture, philosophy and scholarship. These four sects hold such divergent be­liefs that each is a complete and independent religion. Yet, they share a vast heritage of culture and belief—karma, dharma, reincarnation, all-pervasive Di­vinity, tem­ple worship, sac­ra­ments, manifold Deities, the guru-śishya tradition and the Vedas as scriptural authority. While India is home to most Hindus, large communities flourish worldwide. The Vedas elaborate, “He is Brahmā. He is Śiva. He is Indra. He is the immutable, the su­preme, the self-luminous. He is Vishṇu. He is life. He is time. He is the fire, and He is the moon.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 6 – Living with Śiva

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

The Self God Within

The Self: you can’t explain it. You can sense its existence through the refined state of your senses, but you cannot explain it. To know it, you have to experience it. And the best you can say about it is that it is the depth of your Being, the very core of you. It is you.

If you visualize above you nothing; below you nothing; to the right of you nothing; to the left of you nothing; in front of you nothing; in back of you nothing; and dissolve yourself into that nothingness, that would be the best way you could explain the realization of the Self. And yet that nothingness would not be the absence of something, like the nothingness inside an empty box, which would be like a void. That nothingness is the fullness of everything: the power, the sustaining power, of the existence of what appears to be everything.

After you realize the Self, you see the mind for what it is—a self-created principle. That is the mind ever creating itself. The mind is form ever creating form, preserving form, creating new forms and destroying old forms. That is the mind, the illusion, the great unreality, the part of you that in your thinking mind you dare to think is real. What gives the mind that power? Does the mind have power if it is unreal? What difference whether it has power or hasn’t power, or the very words that I am saying when the Self exists because of itself? You could live in the dream and become disturbed by it. You can seek and desire with a burning desire to cognize reality and be blissful because of it. Man’s destiny leads him back to himself. Man’s destiny leads him into the cognition of his own Being; leads him further into the realization of his True Being. They say you must step onto the spiritual path to realize the Self. You only step on the spiritual path when you and you alone are ready, when what appears real to you loses its appearance of reality. Then and only then are you able to detach yourself enough to seek to find a new and more permanent reality.

Have you ever noticed that something you think is permanent, you and you alone give permanence to that thing through your protection of it?

Have you ever stopped to even think and get a clear intellectual concept that the Spirit within you is the only permanent thing? That everything else is changing? That everything else has a direct wire connecting it to the realms of joy and sorrow? That is the mind.

As the Self, your Effulgent Being, comes to life in you, joy and sorrow become a study to you. You do not have to think to tell yourself that each in its own place is unreal. You know from the innermost depths of your being that form itself is not real.

The subtlety of the joys that you experience as you come into your Effulgent Being cannot be described. They can only be projected to you if you are refined enough to pick up the subtlety of vibration. If you are in harmony enough, you can sense the great joy, the subtlety of the bliss that you will feel as you come closer and closer to your real Self.

If you strive to find the Self by using your mind, you will strive and strive in vain, because the mind cannot give you Truth; a lie cannot give you the truth. A lie can only entangle you in a web of deceit. But if you sensitize yourself, awaken your true, fine, beautiful qualities that all of you have, then you become a channel, a chalice in which your Effulgent Being will begin to shine. You will first think that a light is shining within you. You will seek to find that light. You will seek to hold it, like you cherish and hold a beautiful gem. You will later find that the light that you found within you is in every pore, every cell of your being. You will later find that that light permeates every atom of the universe. You will later find that you are that light and what it permeates is the unreal illusion created by the mind.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 6: LIVING CONTEMPLATIVELY
Śiva’s devotees cultivate a contemplative nature by meditating daily, seeking the light, drawing the lesson from each experience and identifying with infinite intelligence, not with body, emotion or intellect. Aum.

Lesson 6 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Perspective Of the Knower

Most people have not realized that they are and were Śiva before they search for Śiva. They are confined to their own individual āṇava, their personal ego and ignorance. When we realize that we have come from Śiva, the way back to Śiva is clearly defined. That is half the battle, to realize we came from Śiva, live in Śiva and are returning to Śiva. Knowing only this much makes the path clear and impels us to return to Him, to our Source, to our Self. We only see opposites when our vision is limited, when we have not experienced totally. There is a point of view which resolves all contradictions and answers all questions. Yet to be experienced is yet to be understood. Once experienced and understood, the Quiet comes.

The only change that occurs is the awakening of the saha­srāra cha­kra and the perspective that a mind has which has undone itself, transcended itself in formless Being and Non-Being, and then returned to the experiences of form. The experiences are all still there, but never again are they binding. The fire or life energy, which rises in the normal person high enough to merely digest the food eaten, rises to the top of the enlightened man’s head, burns through a seal there, and his consciousness has gone with it. He is definitely different from an ordinary person. He died. He was reborn. He is able and capable of knowing many things without having to read books or listen to others speak their knowledge at him. His perceptions are correct, unclouded and clear. His thoughts manifest properly in all planes of consciousness—instinctive, intellectual and super­con­scious or spiritual. He lives now, fully present in all he does.

The internal difference that makes a soul a jñānī is that he knows who he is and who you are. He knows Truth, and he knows the lie. Another difference is that he knows his way around within the inner workings of the mind. He can travel here and there with his own 747, without extraneous external conveyances. He knows the goings-on in far-off places. He is consciously conscious of his own karma and dharma and that of others. For him there is no apartness, due to his attainment within the cha­kras previously described. His only gift to others, to the world, would be blessings, an outpouring of energy to all beings from the higher planes where he resides. It is the jñānī, the enlightened being, who sees beyond duality and knows the oneness of all. He is the illumined one, filled with light, filled with love. He sees God everywhere, in all men. He is the one who simply is and who sees no differences. That is his difference.

Lesson 5 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

What Is the Ultimate Goal of Earthly Life?

ŚLOKA 5
The ultimate goal of life on Earth is to realize the Self, the rare attainment of nirvikalpa samādhi. Each soul discovers its Śivaness, Absolute Reality, Paraśiva—the timeless, formless, spaceless Self God. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
The realization of the Self, Paraśiva, is the destiny of each soul, attainable through renunciation, sustained medi­tation and frying the seeds of karmas yet to germinate. It is the gateway to moksha, liberation from re­birth. The Self lies be­yond the thinking mind, beyond the feeling na­ture, beyond action or any movement of even the highest state of consciousness. The Self God is more solid than a neutron star, more elusive than empty space, more intimate than thought and feeling. It is ul­timate reality itself, the innermost Truth all seekers seek. It is well worth striving for. It is well worth struggling to bring the mind under the dominion of the will. After the Self is realized, the mind is seen for the unreality that it truly is. Because Self Realization must be experienced in a physical body, the soul cycles back again and again into flesh to dance with Śiva, live with Śiva and ultimate­ly merge with Śiva in un­dif­ferenti­at­ed oneness. Yea, jīva is actually Śiva. The Vedas explain, “As water poured into water, milk poured into milk, ghee into ghee be­come one without differentiation, even so the individual soul and the Supreme Self become one.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 5 – Living with Śiva

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

Working with Your Karma

Seekers more than often ask, “Why has Śiva given us karma to go through? Could He just have made us perfect from the beginning and avoided all the pain?” My answer is: accept your karma as your own, as a healing medicine and not a poison. As you go through your self-created experiences in daily life and seed karmas awaken, as your actions come back through your emotions, even in this life, not in a future one, resolve each and every experience so that you do not react and create new cycles to be lived through. Whether it is happy karma, sad karma, miserable karma or ecstatic karma, it is your karma. But it is not you, not the real you. It is the experience that you go through in order to evolve, in order to grow and to learn and to attain, eventually, wisdom. This is all Śiva’s mysterious work, His way of bringing along devotees, His way to bring you close and closer to Himself.

The great Vedic ṛishis have explained that Śiva has created the body of the soul, permeated that body with His being, His essence. All souls are evolving back to His holy feet, and there are many lessons to be learned along the way. The lessons learned in the karma classroom are part of the process of evolution, the mechanism of evolution, the tool of evolution. Why did He do all of this? The ṛishis give no reason. They call it His dance. That is why we worship God Śiva as Naṭarāja, the King of Dance. Why does one dance? Because one is full of joy. One is full of life. Śiva is all life, God of life, God of death that brings new life, God of birth that brings through life. He is all life and He is everything. He danced with the ṛishis. He is dancing for you. You are dancing with Śiva. Every single atom in this room is dancing His dance. He is every part of you this very moment. By seeing Him, you see yourself. By drawing near to Him, you are drawing nearer to yourself. Our great satguru, Śiva Yogaswami, made a most perceptive remark. He said, “There is one thing only that God Śiva cannot do. He cannot separate Himself from me.” He cannot separate Himself from you, because He permeates you. He is you. He created the soul, the Vedas and Āgamas tell us. He created your soul, and your soul is evolving, maturing through karma, through life, on its way back to Him. That is the goal of life, to know Śiva, to love Śiva and to find union in Him, to dance with Śiva, live with Śiva and merge with Śiva. This is what the oldest religion on the Earth teaches and believes.

Śiva is the God of love and nothing else but love. He fills this universe with love. He fills you with love. Śiva is fire. Śiva is earth. Śiva is air. Śiva is water. Śiva is ether. Śiva’s cosmic energy permeates everything and gives light and life to your mind. Śiva is everywhere and all things. Śiva is your small, insignificant worry, the concern that you have been holding in your mind for so many years. See God Śiva everywhere and His life energy in all things. First we dance with Śiva. Then we live with Śiva. The end of the path is to merge with Śiva, the Self God within.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 5: SEEKING WHILE STRONG
Śiva’s devotees heed the ancient wisdom: “The physical body does not last forever. Age prowls like a leopard. Before the limbs lose their vitality, one should take to the auspicious path to the Self.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 5 – Merging with Śiva

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

Preparations For True Yoga

We must live in the now to follow the path to enlightenment. In the lower realms of the mind, where time and space seem very real, we are worried about the past or concerned about the future. These two intermingle and limit conscious awareness. Living in the past or the future obstructs us in this way: the past, by reliving old experiences—mainly the negative ones, for they are vividly remembered—clouds our vision of the future. Living in the future overactivates the intellect, the emotion and the desires. The future is little more than another form of mental fantasy. Past and future are equally unreal and a hindrance to spiritual un­fold­ment. A person functioning in the now is in control of his own mind. He is naturally happier, more successful. He is performing every task with his fullest attention, and the rewards are to be seen equally in the quality of his work and the radiance of his face. He cannot be bored with anything he does, however simple or mundane. Everything is interesting, challenging, fulfilling. A person living fully in the now is a content person.

To attain even the permission to perform yoga one must have the grace of Lord Gaṇeśa and the grace of Lord Murugan. Lord Murugan is the God of the kuṇḍa­linī, of the advanced yogic practices. Un­fold­ment all happens within the kuṇḍa­linī and the cha­kras within our subtle bodies. Once a profound relationship is developed with Lord Murugan, then, with the guru’s permission and guidance, true yoga may commence. Otherwise, no matter how long one sits in meditation, no matter how hard one tries, it is just sitting, it is just trying. There is no fire there, no śakti, no power, no change. It is the Gods who control the fire and at this stage help the devotee immensely, bringing him closer and closer to the supreme God, Śiva. Quite often the yogī in his deep internalized state may see in vision the feet or form of God Śiva before he begins to blend into the mind of God Śiva, called Sat­chid­ānanda. It is God and Gods in form that help us to find the formless God. 

Lesson 4 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

How Can We Learn to Dance with Śiva?

ŚLOKA 4
Dance is movement, and the most exquisite dance is the most disciplined dance. Hindu spiritual disciplines lead to oneness with God through self-reflection, surrender, personal transformation and the many yogas. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
To progress on the path, we study theVedas, other scriptures and our guru’s teachings and make every ef­fort to apply these philosophical truths to daily experience. We strive to un­der­stand the mind in its fourfold na­ture: chitta, con­scious­ness; manas, instinctive mind; buddhi, in­tellectual mind; and ahaṁ­­kāra, ego or I-maker. We per­form japa, meditation and yoga each day. Such spiritual discipline is known as sādhana. It is the mystical, mental, physical and devotional exercise that enables us to dance with Śiva by bringing inner advance­ment, changes in perc­eption and improvements in character. Sādhana al­lows us to live in the refined and cultured soul nature, rather than in the outer, in­stinctive or intellectual spheres. For consistent progress, sādhana should be performed regularly, without fail, at the same time each day, preferably in the early hours before dawn. The most im­portant sādhanas are the chal­lenges and practices given by one’s guru. The Vedas caution, “The Self cannot be at­tained by the weak, nor by the careless, nor through aim­­less dis­ciplines. But if one who knows strives by right means, his soul enters the abode of God.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.