Lesson 146 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are Śaiva Siddhānta’s Two Schools?

ŚLOKA 146
There are two Śaiva Siddhānta schools: pluralistic theism, in the lines of Aghorasiva and Meykandar, and Tirumular’s monistic theism. While differing slightly, they share a religious heritage of belief, culture and practice. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Here we compare the monistic Siddhānta of Rishi Tirumular that this catechism embodies and the pluralistic realism expounded by Meykandar and his disciples. They share far more in common than they hold in difference. In South India, their points of agreement are summarized as guru, preceptor; Liṅga, holy image of Śiva; saṅga, fellowship of devotees; and valipadu, ritual worship. Both agree that God Śiva is the efficient cause of creation, and also that His Śakti is the instrumental cause. Their differences arise around the question of material cause, the nature of the original substance, whether it is one with or apart from God. They also differ on the identity of the soul and God, evil and final dissolution. While monistic theists, Advaita Īśvaravādins, view the 2,200-year-old Tirumantiram as Siddhānta’s authority, pluralists, Anekavādins, rely mainly on the 800-year-old Aghoraśiva Paddhatis and Meykandar Śāstras. The Tirumantiram inquires: “Who can know the greatness of our Lord? Who can measure His length and breadth? He is the mighty nameless Flame of whose unknown beginnings I venture to speak.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 146 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Marital Harmony

One might ask about the traditional role of the husband as guru of the wife, whether he should give in equally to her views when difficulties arise or expect most of the compromise to come from her. In the ideal of the husband’s being the guru in the family, the word guru simply means teacher. So, to be a guru in the household means that he is a very religious, knowledgeable, understanding, humble husband who is kind, honest and respected in the community as an exemplar. Otherwise, the ideal of family guru does not apply, and more of a partnership arrangement between spouses is the default in today’s world.

People are held in bondage in many ways—physical bondage, emotional bondage, intellectual bondage. In India’s Hinduism, unfortunately, as in many other societies on the Earth, disproportionate numbers of women are still not educated, while the men more often are. Therefore, the woman is held in intellectual bondage, sometimes not even being able to count to a hundred and only being able to, and expected to, gossip in the marketplace and bargain for food. Naturally she would follow the religion of her husband. Naturally she would also depend on him fully for guidance in all other matters, financial and otherwise.

But times have now changed, and many Hindu women have been educated and can formulate their own opinions through the reasoning processes of their own minds, talk intelligently among themselves and arrive at pragmatic conclusions. The guru-disciple relationship does not exist in marriages of this kind. She does not need to learn anything from her husband. In most cases she has sufficient skills to be financially independent. Therefore, the relationship is not that of a guru and student, but is more like a business partnership, the fourth type of marriage.

Their business is birthing children and raising them to be good citizens, maintaining a harmonious home by reconciling differences before sleep, even if they are reconciled a few hours after dawn, maintaining the family budget, paying all of the bills on time, saving for their children’s higher level of education, seeing to the children’s being settled in a life of their own, paying off the mortgage on the house, preparing for retirement, seeing to the spiritual upliftment of the community by contributing to the local temple society, maintaining a shrine room in their home, and hiring a local priest to perform house ceremonies and certain saṁskāras within the home. To fulfill all of this, a fair, professional attitude toward one another must be maintained.

Professional people in large corporations do not argue endlessly before reconciliation, nor do they undermine each other, lest they soon find themselves looking for another place of employment. Divorce in this modern time is like being dismissed, fired, and then the search is on for another partner with whom the same unresolved karma will finally mature. This is because we are born with certain prārabdha karmas to be lived through, if not with one person, then with a surrogate. The way to avoid creating new kriyamāna karmas is to face up to the karmas with the first spouse rather than with a second, third or fourth, which would create a kukarma, or bad karma, mess along the way to be later cleaned up, if not in this life, then hopefully in the next life.

It is said that the wife should see the husband as Śiva and he should see her as Śakti, which is often misconstrued as putting him in a superior position. The only up-down situation is the educated husband married to an illiterate wife, yet even here the relationship should be one of love and mutual respect. Śiva and Śakti are totally and equally interrelated as far as Śaiva Siddhānta philosophy is concerned, and cannot exist without one another. Therefore, is the husband Śiva, and is she Śakti? It’s a yes and no answer. In Śaiva Siddhānta, Śiva and Śakti are two aspects of a one Being, Śiva being the unmanifest Absolute and Śakti being the manifest Divinity.

If the wife is as capable as the husband in the external world and the intellectual world, emotional world and physical world, there is no up-down relationship between them, and they are Śiva and Śakti, absolutely equal. The old system of male dominance originated in early human societies when physical strength—for war, hunting and heavy muscular effort—was a prime survival factor. It was perpetuated as the way of life in villages of preindustrial India, Europe and early America, where the man received the education and the woman, as a rule, did not. To apply this system in today’s sophisticated technological societies would be to plant the seedlings of the destruction of the marriage.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 146: GROWING UP IN THE FAMILY OCCUPATION
Śiva’s followers abide by the tradition of bringing sons and daughters into the family skills, profession or business by involving them from a young age. This is family dharma, family bonding, family perpetuation. Aum.

Lesson 146 – Merging with Śiva

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

How Bhakti Is Cultivated

Once a person rises in consciousness out of the chakras below the mūlādhāra, and the foundation of bhakti has been laid, then going into refined states of mind through meditation becomes easy. This is because devotion has removed the barriers. Those who love each other can communicate easily. The devotee who has reverence for a temple and devotion for the Gods within it can communicate easily with those Gods. Bhakti yoga is love on all levels of consciousness—physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. Bhakti yoga makes us feel good. When in a state of bhakti yoga—yoked with the Divine through love—meditation is natural, and one can “soar within” with ease. There are no barriers where love is concerned.

The greatest inhibiting factor in practicing bhakti yoga is the doubting, cynical, intellectual mind. Doubt and skepticism harden the heart and narrow the mind. People in this state cannot really become devotees until their heart softens and their tense intellect relaxes. They must fulfill the sādhana of reconciliation, which is to go before each person they know and worship that person as a God. This sādhana is done in meditation. The devotee has to meet each one by bringing up the person’s face before him and sending kind thoughts and blessings of prāṇa. This must be done time and time again until love comes into the heart for each of them. Only after this sādhana has been accomplished will bhakti begin to bloom in the heart. The bloom of bhakti softens the heart and relaxes the intellect.

When you have the energy of bhakti, of love, flowing through your body, meditation is easy. You don’t have to go through the preliminaries. You are already functioning in the higher chakras. The bhakti experience takes the prāṇas into the higher chakras from the lower chakras. But if you are living in the consciousness of personal, communal, national or international antagonism, entering meditation will be difficult. All the preliminaries will have to be carefully gone through—prāṇāyāma, deep concentration, the lifting of the prāṇas into the heart and throat chakras, etc. Then slowly the internal bhakti is complete, and the vibration of love begins to be felt. This is time-consuming.

The Śaiva Siddhāntin finds it much easier to do this preliminary work in the temple through the externalized yoga of bhakti, rather than trying to internalize the bhakti and lift the prāṇas while seated in lotus position, which is time-consuming and not as enjoyable. Whereas, to lift the energies from the lower chakras to the higher chakras through performing bhakti yoga in the temple during worship is easy, natural, and considered by the Siddhāntist as being a pure joy.

The best way to learn bhakti yoga is to choose the finest bhaktar among your religious group and emulate him. You can read about bhakti yoga, understand it intellectually and learn what it is supposed to do for you. That is fine. But to progress on the path up the spine, it is necessary to be a part of a religious group. The group helps the individual, and the individual helps the group. There are nearly always one or two real bhaktars within every religious group. Therefore, to learn bhakti yoga, emulate one of them. This in itself is forgetting yourself, as you copy another person’s actions and attitudes. True, the person you choose may not measure up to your standards in other areas of life. But if in approaching the Deity, he shows true humility, patience and total surrender, be like him. If you join another Hindu group, visit another temple or satsaṅga group, pick out a true bhaktar there and emulate him or her as well. This is the way to learn bhakti yoga. Vegetarianism is an essential for the bhakti yogī, as is proper personal, cultural conduct in all matters of society. Śaivite culture and a consistent lifestyle keep the bhakti yogī always reminded of the Divine within the universe and within himself. Those who have no barriers to love find it is easy to see God in everyone.

Lesson 145 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Is Monistic Theism Found in the Vedas?

ŚLOKA 145
Again and again in the Vedas and from satgurus we hear “Ahaṁ Brahmāsmi,” “I am God,” and that God is both immanent and transcendent. Taken together, these are clear statements of monistic theism. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Monistic theism is the philosophy of the Vedas. Scholars have long noted that the Hindu scriptures are alternately monistic, describing the oneness of the individual soul and God, and theistic, describing the reality of the Personal God. One cannot read the Vedas, Śaiva Āgamas and hymns of the saints without being overwhelmed with theism as well as monism. Monistic theism is the essential teaching of Hinduism, of Śaivism. It is the conclusion of Tirumular, Vasugupta, Gorakshanatha, Bhaskara, Srikantha, Basavanna, Vallabha, Ramakrishna, Yogaswami, Nityananda, Radhakrishnan and thousands of others. It encompasses both Siddhānta and Vedānta. It says, God is and is in all things. It propounds the hopeful, glorious, exultant concept that every soul will finally merge with Śiva in undifferentiated oneness, none left to suffer forever because of human transgression. The Vedas wisely proclaim, “Higher and other than the world-tree, time and forms is He from whom this expanse proceeds—the bringer of dharma, the remover of evil, the lord of prosperity. Know Him as in one’s own Self, as the immortal abode of all.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 145 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Special Types Of Marriage

The fourth type of marriage, like the first, is between those of similar educational backgrounds. Here, though, each is sophisticated, has professional skills and could be a wage-earner in his or her own right. Within these marriages, even though the skills may not be used, they are a potential source of income and security. This fourth rule book, which has been written more recently by the actions and experiences of various couples and the societies in which they live, is most important to elaborate on. Two fairly equally educated people should work in unanimous agreement, in partnership, in all things regarding raising of the children and management of the home.

The first three rule books are fairly well set, and society understands them. They have been functioning for hundreds and thousands of years. In the fourth type of marriage, men and women meet in equality through intelligence developed and cultivated through Western education, Western experience and the equal ability to be wage earners. The intellect, intelligence, has no sex; it is equal. To apply agricultural village traditions to these marriages would be to foster contention, misunderstanding and feelings of rejection, leading to possible separation. Two potential wage earners living together must themselves reach consensus on every issue.

The fifth type of marriage is more religious, more spiritual. Here the couple has blended together for the purpose of fulfilling religious aspirations, for ministry, producing sons for the monastery or future priests and pandits. These lofty marriages have definite guru involvement and swāmī involvement. The couple is intent on practicing yoga and serving their religion selflessly as missionaries, exemplars and teachers. My Saiva Siddhanta Church encourages each couple to write a two-part marriage contract. Part one is the mutual agreement, laying out the overall purpose of the marriage and the aspirations and goals that the union hopes to fulfill. The other part is a statement of the duties and responsibilities of each of the partners. This semi-corporate approach has proven successful in stabilizing many marriages, as each partner clearly understands his or her role.

Any couple following any of the other four types of marriage could move to the fifth at the right time. They would ultimately take the brahmacharya vrata, later in life, after a decision was made to have no more children, and then live together as brother and sister. This is traditional within Śaivite culture and consistent with community expectations.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 145: DISCIPLINING WITH LOVE
Śiva’s followers, knowing that misbehaving children are discouraged, take time for play and encouragement, and ensure that discipline is respectful, reasonable and not based on blame, shame or pain. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 145 – Merging with Śiva

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

Stewards of Mind Realms

The Gods are the controllers of these force centers within man. They live in the innermost areas of form. To enter the mūlādhāra chakra, the aspirant must go through Lord Gaṇeśa. And when the aspirant progresses to the maṇipūra chakra, Gaṇeśa will introduce him to Lord Murugan. Once this is accomplished, the devotee will worship Lord Murugan as the Be-All and End-of-All, just as Gaṇeśa was worshiped when consciousness was in His chakras. Lord Murugan is the controller of the maṇipūra chakra, the chakra of willpower, and the two chakras above it, direct cognition and universal love. Now we can begin to see that the aspirant has to proceed in consciousness through the three chakras that Lord Murugan controls and meet all the tests before this God will introduce him to Lord Śiva. Lord Śiva’s realm is chakras number six, seven and beyond. The aspirant still must go completely through the chakras of Lord Śiva’s realm to become Śivaness—to experience His all-pervasiveness, and on into the essence of all essences, Paraśiva.

The aspirant who dearly loves Lord Śiva must finally go beyond Śiva’s personal aspect to reach the impersonal side, and this is why, when he finally emerges from Paraśiva, he is really a true bhaktar. He is the true monistic theist. In the world of duality, theism is in itself a duality. Theism is very compatible with the mind of man, which is duality itself. Monism, on the other side, is beyond the mind itself. Monism is timeless, formless, and it is spaceless as well. True monism cannot be conceived by the mind. Yet, the mind does know of its existence.

When the devotee has proven himself, the Gods begin to take notice. We meet a God as we go up through the chakras above the mūlādhāra. We meet an asura as we go down through the chakras below the mūlādhāra. A God appears as each higher chakra breaks open. As the mūlādhāra opens and awareness comes through it, we encounter Gaṇeśa. When we experience fear and anger, we meet and are influenced by the asuras of fear and anger. In the chakra that governs confused and selfish thinking, we meet and are influenced by the asura who rules this realm. Descending to the still lower chakras of petty theft, fraud and stealing, grand larceny, murder and violence, we would meet professionals in these areas. There are always inner Gods and outer Gods, for each chakra is a realm of consciousness with its own inner and outer hierarchy.

A chakra is a world, a sphere of consciousness. There are astral helpers and physical-plane helpers connected to each chakra. These spheres of consciousness do interrelate. A mentally healthy individual is functional in about three chakras, or spheres of consciousness, at a time. A person with severe mental problems would be in a single sphere of consciousness and could not deal with things that happened to him outside that area of the mind, or chakra.

When you meet the God or asura of a particular realm, it would always be a conscious meeting, but you may not always see the God or the asura. His presence would certainly be felt. Some symbol would appear, such as an image of Lord Gaṇeśa, or of Lord Śiva. A lot of people are open to Śivaness now and see Him through His images. Terrorists are seeing their asura gods in their guns, explosives and other weapons. At this time in the Kali Yuga, all states of consciousness are out in the open. All of the fourteen chakras are manifest in one way or another on Earth. It is a very intense time on the planet, and likewise a ripe time for spiritual unfoldment.

Lesson 144 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the View of Monistic Theism?

ŚLOKA 144
Monistic theism is the synthesis of monism and dualism. It says God is transcendent and immanent, eternal and temporal, Being and becoming, Creator and created, Absolute and relative, efficient and material cause. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Both strict monism and dualism are fatally flawed, for neither alone encompasses the whole of truth. In other words, it is not a choice between the God-is-man-and-world view of pantheistic monism and the God-is-separate-from-man-and-world view of theistic dualism. It is both. Panentheism, which describes “all in God, and God in all,” and monistic theism are Western terms for Advaita Īśvaravāda. It is the view that embraces the oneness of God and soul, monism, and the reality of the Personal God, theism. As panentheists, we believe in an eternal oneness of God and man at the level of Satchidānanda and Paraśiva. But a difference is acknowledged during the evolution of the soul body. Ultimately, even this difference merges in identity. Thus, there is perfectly beginningless oneness and a temporary difference which resolves itself in perfect identity. In the acceptance of this identity, monistic theists differ from most viśishṭādvaitins. The Vedas declare, “He moves and He moves not; He is far, yet is near. He is within all that is, yet is also outside. The man who sees all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings is free from all fear.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 144 – Living with Śiva

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

The Roles of Man and Wife

Is there anything unique in the Śaivite marriage that helps in dealing with the roles that men and women traditionally play? Are women always to be meek and dependent and men aggressive and in charge? Sometimes an aggressive woman marries a passive man. How does Śaivism deal with this?” This totally depends on the education of both the husband and the wife. This has been my experience. When the modernization of education occurred, which taught people how to live in the world, run a business or work for someone else, family life began to evolve out of the village consciousness and into the technological age. In this change, traditional roles also changed.

Today there are five basic patterns of marriage. In an agricultural community, women take care of the house, and men take care of the farm, the business and industry; or in some other societies where women are stronger, they work side-by-side with the men. There, for a man to have his wife work side-by-side with him in the field is a sign of status, better meals for the family and more attention to himself. Also we must understand that in these marriages both husband and wife share a similar educational level, a similar understanding of how the world works. This is the first and oldest pattern.

However, as society changes because of technology and industrialization, people change and their relationships change. I have found that a Western-educated man who marries an Eastern village-educated girl will always be head of the house, and she will allow this. Basically, she does not understand the ways of urban life. This is the second type of marriage. The educated man marrying an uneducated girl will not expect her to understand what he is thinking about or feeling. And she would probably not understand even if he explained it all to her. She would naturally be submissive; he would be aggressive.

It has been my experience that it works exactly the same the other way around in cases where the woman is more highly educated than the man. The intellectually educated lady marrying an uneducated man would most likely be the principal wage-earner, and he would be submissive. She will naturally make the major decisions about how to spend her money. He will naturally concur. Or, they will fight. This third, more difficult, relationship will demand a leader and a follower, especially if she earns more money than he and has more job security and greater benefits, such as medical insurance and retirement.

The second and third types of marriage share a common factor. A village girl has no way of earning her own living, should her husband die or leave her, and would have no recourse but to return to her family, unless he left her a substantial bequest or alimony. A nonprofessional village man would have no other recourse than to seek his own level of income should his educated wife die or leave him without providing a generous support or inheritance.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 144: POOLING INCOMES FOR FAMILY UNITY
Śiva’s followers require unmarried progeny living with them who have finished school and are employed to submit, after tithing, all earnings to the family fund. Once betrothed, they manage their own earnings. Aum.

Lesson 144 – Merging with Śiva

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

Lower States Of Mind

When someone begins on the path from states of consciousness below the mūlādhāra, in the confused thinking areas of the mind, in the angry chakras, religion will be to him a superstitious, forboding, very unclear area. These chakras are also known as talas, or states of darkness, self-concealment and distortion. They are the “nether poles” of the higher chakras and of the seven corresponding lokas. Confused thinking we can define as “self-preservation thinking.” When a person is within this chakra, the feelings of “me and mine” are strong. It is a state of outward passion and sense indulgence. This is the vibration of the talātala chakra, which could be translated as “under the bottom level,” “place-nonplace” (tala-atala), or “realm of nonbeing.” In this fourth center below the mūlādhāra, the protection of one’s small universe at all costs is the consciousness.

Should such a person ever become uplifted, since his consciousness is deep within the lower chakras, he would first come up in consciousness into jealousy, the sutala chakra, meaning “great lower region,” a “good matter” state of spiritual darkness ruled by desire and passion. The feeling of jealousy is a higher consciousness than that of the chakra below, which confuses the thinking. The next upliftment, after jealousy and confused thinking, is the release into the chakra of anger, the second force center below the mūlādhāra. This is the vitala chakra, translated as “the region of the lost,” “realm of division or confusion.” The upliftment to follow anger is to enter the chakra of fear, a state of spiritual annihilation called the atala chakra, meaning “without bottom,” or “no place.” Fear is a higher consciousness than anger or jealousy. It is people who live in this chakra who make up the masses who fear God rather than love God.

The fifth chakra below the mūlādhāra is called rasātala, literally “state of sense enjoyment.” This is the true home of the animal nature. Here personal selfishness predominates. Persons strongly in the consciousness of this force center care nothing for the problems and suffering of others.

Below this, dare we speak of it, is the mahātala, “the greatest lower region,” where ego rules supreme. This is the realm of unconscionable acts, wherein perpetrators feel absolutely no remorse for the most heinous wrongdoings. The conscience is completely dormant for those locked in this realm. Negativity, depression and other dark states of mind are the order of the day for those in the mahātala chakra. Finally, at the bottom of consciousness is the pātāla chakra, “lower region of wickedness” or “fallen state,” where dark ignorance rules. This is the realm of vicious destruction, of revenge, murder for the sake of murder. Basking in the twisted vibrations of this area of consciousness, depraved transgressors torture others without a thought, express malice without a twinge of conscience, harm others in innumerable ways for sheer enjoyment and take delight in the emotional, mental and physical suffering of fellow humans and all beings that cross their path. Hatred is the ruling force in the pātāla chakra; malice reigns supreme. Far from reason, and farther still from compassion and insight, are those who live in the darkness of this area of mind.

We can see that coming up through the lower chakras is quite an ordeal. But once the individual goes through the fear chakra, he comes to Lord Gaṇeśa’s feet and enters the realms of memory and reason, clarity and understanding. It is at this point in the unfoldment through the chakras, which is a journey of consciousness, that he would begin thinking of others and seek to benefit them more than himself. From here on, the path of spiritual unfoldment is not as ominous as it was before. There are no threatening areas, except that it is possible to fall back into lower consciousness.

Lesson 143 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Are Monism and Dualism Reconcilable?

ŚLOKA 143
Monists, from their mountaintop perspective, perceive a one reality in all things. Dualists, from the foothills, see God, souls and world as eternally separate. Monistic theism is the perfect reconciliation of these two views. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Visualize a mountain and the path leading to its icy summit. As the climber traverses the lower ranges, he sees the meadows, the passes, the giant boulders. This we can liken to dualism, the natural, theistic state where God and man are different. Reaching the summit, the climber sees that the many parts are actually a one mountain. This realization is likened to pure monism. Unfortunately, many monists, reaching the summit, teach a denial of the foothills they themselves climbed on the way to their monistic platform. However, by going a little higher, lifting the kuṇḍalinī into the space above the mountain’s peak, the entire Truth is known. The bottom and the top are viewed as a one whole, just as theism and monism are accepted by the awakened soul. Monistic theism, Advaita Īśvaravāda, reconciles the dichotomy of being and becoming, the apparent contradiction of God’s eternality and temporal activity, the confusion of good and evil, the impasse of one and two. The Vedas affirm, “He who knows this becomes a knower of the One and of duality, he who has attained to the oneness of the One, to the self-same nature.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.