Lesson 150 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are the Views on Mahāpralaya?

ŚLOKA 150
Monistic theists hold that at mahāpralaya, cosmic dissolution, all creation is withdrawn into Śiva, and He alone exists. Pluralistic theists hold that world and souls persist in seed form and will later reemerge. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Pluralistic Siddhāntins contend that after mahāpralaya—the withdrawal of time, form and space into Śiva—souls and world are so close to Śiva that, for all practical purposes, He alone exists. Actually, they say, both world and souls continue to exist, not as things, but as “potentialities.” As if in a deep sleep, souls, now in a bodiless state, rest. Individual karmas lie dormant to germinate later when creation again issues forth and nonliberated souls are re-embodied to continue their spiritual journey. Monistic Siddhāntins believe that souls persist through the lesser pralayas of the cosmic cycle, but hold that only Śiva exists following mahāpralaya. There is no “other,” no separate souls, no separate world. The universe and all souls are absorbed in Śiva. Pāśa—āṇava, karma and māyā—is annihilated. In the intensity of pre-dissolution, when time itself is accelerated, all souls attain complete maturation, losing separateness through fulfilled merger with Śiva. Yea, jīva becomes Śiva. The Vedas boldly decree, “By His divine power He holds dominion over all the worlds. At the periods of creation and dissolution of the universe, He alone exists.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 150 – Living with Śiva

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

What Makes a House a Home?

What is it that makes a house a home? A home is a place of companionship with people in it who love each other, who are harmonious and closer inside with one another than they are outside with associates in the workplace or with classmates at school. A home is a place that’s so magnetic that it’s difficult to leave. In a home there is love, kindness, sharing and appreciation, and the inhabitants help one another. It’s a place of selflessness and togetherness, where everybody has time for everybody else. In a home, the guests are treated like Deities or devas coming to the temple. That is the spirit of hospitality in the Hindu framework. It is the same spirit of sublime energy flowing to the guest that also flows within the household. And a righteous household that worships every morning together as one family is like a temple. That’s a home, and everything else is just a house or a hotel lobby.

If you were to look at a harmonious home with your astral vision, you would see the three primary colors—pale pink, pale blue, pale yellow—and white, all intermingling in a big prāṇic force field. Moving over to another house, you might see a congestion of various colors, with dark and light shades and strange astral forms, and you would know that house was not much different from a hotel lobby.

I was once asked about the desperately poor, homeless families living on the street in America and what can be done for them, when so many other families have large, luxurious homes. I, too, have seen families on the street. But if they live together, if they sleep together, if they talk together, if they eat together, they are a family, even if they are destitute. Such a family is at home wherever they are. You don’t need a roof to make a family. You don’t need a roof to make a home. The truly homeless are some of the rich people who build multi-million-dollar houses and are too busy to really live in them. The truly homeless are those who have turned their home into a hotel lobby. The husband works. The wife works. The children are delinquent. There’s no companionship. They don’t talk together every day. They don’t eat together every day. They rarely see each other. The truly homeless people are those with babysitters, caretakers, gardeners and maids, but who don’t spend quality time with the family in their house. Babysitters often abuse their children. Parents are unaware, too busy making money outside the home that they don’t live in. This is another way of looking at the rich and the homeless. Who is to be pitied?

Control of the computer and the Internet is also important to make a house into a home. If the computer is on all the time, the house turns into an office, even if everyone is at home. Many homes these days are just offices. Human communication has stopped. The computer eats up the time that one should be giving to others within the home. Using the computer moderately gives us time for gentleness, play and communication, not with a screen, but with a human being. And that is the vibration needed in a home.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 150: YOUTH ENTERING MY ŚAIVA CHURCH
My devotees require children to decide before age twenty whether to enter Saiva Siddhanta Church of their own volition or to choose another path. If they go away, they are always welcome back. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 150 – Merging with Śiva

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

Fear, Anger and Opportunism

Those who want to hold a position and those who don’t want to hold a position combined, those who have no time to perform sādhana, who avoid their yearly pilgrimage, whose family cannot gather in the shrine room, who do not read scripture daily and attend a temple infrequently, if at all—they are doing extremely well on the āṇava mārga, in my estimation. Their artha and kāma are coming along just fine. Dharma is ignored, and mukti just may not happen.

Many people on the āṇava mārga perform yoga, japa, disciplines of this kind, and gain great adulation, as well as business contacts, through it. But nothing is gained other than a few minutes of quiet and aloneness. These are the opportunists, the people who make the world go ’round as we see it today.

Swāmīs are most precious to those on the āṇava mārga, giving blessings, amplifying their desires; adulation is sincere but not real. The swāmī is taken into their family as a personal figurehead of it, like a status symbol. They do not enter the swāmī’s āśrama to do sādhana and become a part of his life. And if the swāmī rebels, preaches dharma and holds back blessings, he is generally abused. “Love you, use you and abuse you” is the methodology of those on the āṇava mārga. All swāmīs, gurus and priests know this only too well.

The āṇava mārgī looks at God from a distance. He does not want to get too close and does not want to drift too far away, lives between lower consciousness and higher consciousness, between the maṇipūra, svādhishṭhana and mūlādhāra and the lower three, atala, vitala and sutala, which represent fear, anger and jealousy. He does not get into confused thinking. That is super lower consciousness, in the realm of the talātala chakra. He is guided by reason. That is why he can come into the other mārgas.

Therefore, God is at a distance. He sees himself pluralistically, separate from God, coexistent with God. Those who fear God anger easily. They fear their elders. They fear their government. They fear impending disaster, and they fear disease. God is just one item on the long list of things that they fear. They are not on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Their higher chakras are dreaming benignly, waiting for the consciousness to explore them. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Only then is he a seeker. Only then does his budding love begin to focus on religious icons. Only then is he able to nurture his love into becoming a bhaktar and at the same time a religious person, a giving person. This is the charyā path. We come onto the charyā mārga from the āṇava mārga. We come to Lord Gaṇeśa’s feet from the āṇava mārga. He is now the guide. The personal ego has lost its hold.

The āṇava mārga, and the glue that holds it together, is ignorance of the basic tenets of Hinduism. There is no way one can be on this mārga if he truly accepts the existence of God pervading all form, sustaining all form and rearranging all form. There is no way this mārga could be pursued by one understanding karma, seeing his manifest acts replayed back to him through the lives of others, his secret diabolical thoughts attacking him through the lips of others. The āṇava mārga does not include this knowledge. The dharma of a perfect universe and an orderly life, the consciousness of “the world is my family, all animals are my pets” is an abhorrent idea to someone on the āṇava mārga, especially if he is casted by birth in this life. The āṇava mārgī abhors the idea of reincarnation. To pay the bill of one’s indiscretions in another life is not what āṇava is all about. There is a forgetfulness here. When you renounce your childhood, you forget that you ever were a child. You forget the moods, the emotions, the joys and the fears and all that was important at that time.

Lesson 149 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Differing Views on Evil?

ŚLOKA 149
For monistic theists, the world of māyā is Śiva’s perfect creation, containing each thing and its opposite. For pluralistic theists, the world is tarnished with evil; thus māyā could not be the creation of a perfect God. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Pluralistic Siddhāntins hold that the world of māyā is intrinsically evil and imperfect, for it is clearly full of sorrow, injustice, disease and death. The soul, too, is beginninglessly tainted with āṇava, or limitation. Pluralists contend that if God had created māyā—the material of the world—or the soul, surely He would have made them flawless, and there would be no evil, for imperfection cannot arise out of Perfection. Therefore, they conclude that āṇava, karma and māyā have always existed and the soul has been immersed in darkness and bondage without beginning. Monistic Siddhāntins hold that when viewed from higher consciousness, this world is seen as it truly is—perfect. There is no intrinsic evil. God Śiva has created the principle of opposites, which are the means for the soul’s maturation—beauty and deformity, light and darkness, love and hate, joy and sorrow. All is God Śiva Himself, in Him and of Him. A perfect cosmos has issued forth from a perfect Creator. The Tirumantiram says, “All manifestations of nature are His grace. All animate and inanimate are His pure grace. As darkness, as light, the Lord’s grace pervades.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 149 – Living with Śiva

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

The Magic Of Love

Every experience, no matter how difficult or embarrassing, is a good experience, providing the lesson to be learned is extracted from it. Experiences that are unresolved and repressed can be very burdensome for the individual. Living Śaiva Dharma makes us our own psychologist, psychiatrist, counselor and problem-solver. This is because one slowly becomes the watcher of his mind thinking, the watcher of his emotions feeling, acting and reacting.

Holding the family together can be summed up in one word: love. Love is understanding. Love is acceptance. Love is making somebody feel good about his experience, whether the experience is a good one or not. Love is giving the assurance that there is no need to keep secrets, no matter what has happened. Love is wanting to be with members of the family. A father who is eager to hold his family together rushes home from work. He doesn’t think to himself, “Why should I go home to all their problems when I can continue working at the clinic for awhile longer.” Loving parents, father or mother, want to be with their children, and they let them know this in so many ways. They face up to problems with love, trust and understanding. They know that problems are only problems because of lack of understanding. They also know, through living Śaiva Dharma, that love and trust bring understanding and acceptance of the lessons of the experiences, which are natural manifestations of individual birth karmas and collective family karmas. This approach keeps the family strong and cohesive. In a home where dharma is lived, no one has a private life. No one has a secret life.

When harmony persists in the home, harmony permeates the community, and harmony permeates the country. When love and trust prevail in the family, love and trust extend to the local community, and the country becomes stronger and more secure. Making strong distinctions between good and bad does not help youths understand their desires and temptations. The only path through their lives is one experience after another. They evolve into better people through understanding their experiences.

Children and young adults who have been holding secrets and now feel that it is time to become close to their family again should tell their parents they want to be completely open and disclose what they have been hiding. Then give parents a few days to adjust and prepare to listen. Once reconciliation takes place, hugging and talking will begin again, and the warm, loving feeling of family will take over the home. Something magical happens when secrets are brought out in the open among loved ones. Many youths have told me that when secrets were divulged, their parents were surprisingly understanding. Secrets are psychic burdens, and releasing them, youths tell me, gives a great sense of upliftment, like a balloon dropping its counterweight and soaring skyward. They feel instantly closer to their parents, free of guilt, happier, less stressful, no longer defensive and more interested in helping others.

One of the biggest areas of secrecy is sex. It is important that parents give their children an education in sexual behavior early on. This will also bring and keep the family togetherness. Many parents find it difficult to talk about sex, pornography, drugs and the various other kinds of temptations the world offers today. If this is the case in your home, it is best to seek community or professional help. Not talking leaves children unprepared. Parents force their children into secrecy by showing that these are areas that cannot or will not be faced in the light of day. All begin wishing that conditions will improve, but they never do.

We can now see that the first secret is the crucial issue, for it leads to many, many more, be it on the part of children keeping secrets from their parents, wives from husbands, husbands from wives, students from guru, and on and on. The solution is to follow the yamas and niyamas, the dos and do nots of Hindu Dharma. These are the natural laws of Sanātana Dharma. These are the human ethics that hold families together, marriages together, communities together, countries together. These eternal Vedic precepts are for everyone, no matter who they are.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 149: RESPONSIBLE CHAPERONING
Śiva’s followers accept the serious responsibility of guiding the private and social life of their children. They chaperone and monitor friendships to help ensure that young ones grow up safe and celibate. Aum.

Lesson 149 – Merging with Śiva

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

Self-Concern, Self-Preservation

People who are living totally on the āṇava mārga are not religious, and if attending religious functions, they stand with folded arms, on the outside looking in. Their only emotions are for themselves, their immediate family and friends, but only if the latter prove useful to them. Selfishness and avarice are two descriptive words for their lifestyle. To their immediate family, they are protective, kind and resourceful, provided the spouse, sons and daughters are productive and equally as concerned for the family welfare. The animal instinct prevails of “Let’s preserve the nest, the lair, at all costs.”

The businessman on the āṇava mārga is generous by all appearances, gives enough to gain praise, adulation and to make friends. In proportion to his wealth, he gives a pittance. There is always some attachment to the gift, some favor to be eventually reaped. The gift is a purchase in disguise. The āṇava mārgī in giving charity would always want adulation, credit, name to be mentioned, and if it is a large amount, some control in the use of it. There are strings attached. He may even follow up years later and wreak criticism and havoc if the gift given in cash or kind is not maturing in value.

In contrast, the devotee of God on the kriyā mārga would know that he was only giving to himself through indirection, and place his gift freely in the hands of those he trusts. Trust is always preceded by love. There is no difference between the two, except the method of follow-up. The āṇava mārgī becomes the law. The kriyā mārgī knows that divine law will work for him if he follows the path of righteousness, while the āṇava mārgī is driven to manipulate the law in fulfillment of each of his concerns.

Emotional ups and downs are contingent to the āṇava mārga. Four steps forward, three steps backward, a step to the side, six steps forward, two steps backward, a step to the side, six steps backward, three steps forward, a step to the side—it is an amazing dance. It’s a maze. They all think they are going someplace. This dance of ignorance is not one of Lord Śiva’s favorite dances, though it is definitely one of His dances. He does it with a smile and a sneer, mirth and a tear on His face. He actually has most of the world doing this dance now. Ignorance is equally distributed throughout the planet. The intrinsic ability to ignore, consistently and persistently, the eternal truths of the Sanātana Dharma is one of the great qualifications of the āṇava mārgī.

Television is a window into the āṇava mārga. We see extremely successful professional people who maybe have started on the āṇava mārga and have bypassed it to the artful acting portrayal of people on the āṇava mārga. We can see in their eyes, they have a life that is seeking and searching, understanding and knowing, and their magnetism keeps them before the public year after year after year. These are the professionals. Then we see on TV the āṇava mārgīs by the dozens. They come and go, are hired and not rehired.

Before the āṇava mārga, there is only confusion, unqualified thoughts, desires that are only motivative or directional, not crystallized into any kind of a concept that can be manifested toward a fulfillment. The confusion arises out of the drive for self preservation. All animal instincts are alive in such a human being. He does not hold to promises, does not seek to strive, is a proverbial burden on society. Society is made up of āṇava mārgīs and those who live in the other mārgas. Deception, theft, murder, anger, jealousy and fear are often the occupation and the emotions of those living without a personal identity, a well-defined ego.

A personal identity and well-defined ego is the āṇava, and the pursuit of the development of that is the mārga. Each purusha, human soul, must go through the āṇava mārga, a natural and required path whose bloom is the fulfillment of the senses, of the intellect and all the complexities of doing. It is prior to our entrance upon the āṇava mārga and while we are happily on the āṇava mārga that we create the karmas to be understood and overcome later when we walk the charyā and kriyā mārgas. You have to understand before you can overcome. This is the time that we “do ourselves in” and later understand the all-pervasiveness of Śiva, the laws of karma, dharma, saṁsāra. Yes, of course, this is the time the mischief is done.

Lesson 148 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Views on God and Soul?

ŚLOKA 148
For the monistic theist, the soul is an emanation of God Śiva and will merge back in Him as a river to the sea. For pluralists, God pervades but did not create the soul; thus, God and soul remain separate realities forever. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Pluralistic Siddhāntins teach that Śiva pervades the soul, yet the soul is uncreated and exists eternally. It is amorphous, but has the qualities of willing, thinking and acting. It does not wholly merge in Him at the end of its evolution. Rather, it reaches His realm and enjoys the bliss of divine communion eternally. Like salt dissolved in water, soul and God are not two; neither are they perfectly one. For monistic Siddhāntins the soul emerges from God like a rain cloud drawn from the sea. Like a river, the soul passes through many births. The soul consists of an uncreated divine essence and a beautiful, effulgent, human-like form created by Śiva. While this form—called the ānandamaya kośa or soul body—is maturing, it is distinct from God. Even during this evolution, its essence, Satchidānanda and Paraśiva, is not different from Śiva. Finally, like a river flowing into the sea, the soul returns to its source. Soul and God are perfectly one. The Vedas say, “Just as the flowing rivers disappear in the ocean, casting off name and shape, even so the knower, freed from name and shape, attains to the Primal Soul, higher than the high.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 148 – Living with Śiva

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

What Is a Real Family?

How to strengthen family ties is a very important question these days. It is said that Jawaharlal Nehru was instrumental in breaking up the extended family structure in his attempt to industrialize India. After that, once tightly-knit families really suffered as age-old family ties became loosened. The wealth of extended families dispersed in many directions as nuclear families formed and money was unnecessarily spent to maintain the ever-increasing needs of a multiplicity of households.

Let’s explore what a family actually is. People seem to have forgotten. In America before the First World War there were wonderful, well-established and large joint families, with twenty, thirty or more people all living as one unit, often in one home. Everyone had chores. And they all knew their place within the family structure. They loved and cared for each other, and mother was always in the home. We may be a long time in rebuilding family togetherness to the point where the extended family is back in vogue, but meanwhile we are still faced with maintaining family unity. Hindus around the world are working hard to rediscover their roots and strengthen family values. Our staff of HINDUISM TODAY had many inspiring interviews with bright young Asian Hindus in America who are working in their communities to make a difference and reestablish the old culture of caring for one another. We congratulate them and welcome their efforts, for they are the leaders of tomorrow.

I tell parents who seek my advice that one way to keep a family together is to show all members that you want to be with them, that you need them in your life. Not: “Get out of my life, you are bothering me. I have other things to do. I have goals in life that don’t include you.” This hurtful attitude is based on the belief that when children reach age eighteen they should leave home and support themselves. In the West, this pattern is the result of two world wars, when every able-bodied young man left home to join the armed forces. This callousness on the part of parents leads to alienation from their children, who then begin leading independent lives. That leads to the first step in leaving home: keeping secrets from the parents.

With each secret kept, a small distance is created. A large distance is created when five or ten secrets accumulate and deception becomes a habit. When too many secrets mount up, parents and their children don’t talk to each other much anymore. Why do secrets create a distance? Because every secret must be protected. This requires cleverness, sneaking around to keep the matter hidden, even lying. Secrets give rise to angry outbursts to keep others away, such as, “I’m insulted that you would even suspect me of that!” Arguments erupt that go unresolved, and an impenetrable barrier is established.

Mom and Dad are heard confiding to one another, “They’re so different now. I can’t reach them anymore.” Of course, the children have been taught to be cautious, in a sense forced into keeping secrets, lest unloving parents curse them or physically punish them without mercy for transgressions large and small. Many are afraid of the wrath of mothers and fathers who rule their families by fear. In today’s world it is so easy to leave home. It is so easy for the family to break up. It’s even expected. Husbands’ and wives’ keeping secrets, similarly, creates a distance between them. The final divorce decree started with the first secret.

In an ideal family, children should be able to tell their mother and father anything and everything. The parents should want to understand and realize that if they don’t understand but misunderstand, they participate in the break-up of their own family. Of course, it might be hard for them to deal with certain experiences their children are having, but all they have to do is look back at their own life, actions and private thoughts to know that their children are living out the same fantasies. The children repeat the still-active karmas of their parents. Children are born into families with karmic patterns that are compatible with their own. I can predict what young people are going to do in their future, and the temptations that will come up, if I know the karmic patterns of their parents. With this knowledge, it is easy to guide them through life, helping them avoid temptations and unwholesome experiences that their parents lived through. All of these experiences are set into motion by the individual himself, by his own past actions.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 148: CHERISHING CHASTITY
Śiva’s young followers are taught to protect their chastity as a treasure and to save sexual intimacy for their future spouse. If a premarital affair does occur, a marriage of the young couple is seriously considered. Aum.

Lesson 148 – Merging with Śiva

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

What Is the Āṇava Mārga?

Much has been said of the path toward merger with Śiva, and much remains to be said. But the truth is this: most people on this Earth are following another path for the moment, the path of self-indulgence and self-interest and selfishness. No doubt, it is the most popular path, and it has its own pandits and masters, who teach how to perfect the path of the external ego, how to perfect worldliness, how to perfect the trinity of I, me and mine, how to perfect self-indulgence. But that is not the ultimate path, which is followed by the few, by mature souls. It is important for aspirants to know that the real path leading toward merger with Śiva has many detours, pitfalls and sidetracks that beckon unwary travelers. It is important for him or her to know about these side paths, to be warned, as I am doing now, to be wary of them, to be cautious, to be extremely careful.

One of these I call the āṇava mārga, or the path of egoism. True, it is not a traditional path, but it is a path well worn, well known in all human traditions. In fact, you could say there are three such untraditional paths, three worldly mārgas: āṇava, karma and māyā. The last two bonds, karma and māyā, are the first to begin to diminish their hold on the soul as one proceeds on the path to enlightenment. And when these fetters begin to loosen, the āṇava, the personal ego identity, thoughts of “me,” “my” and “mine,” should also begin to go, but often don’t. When karma and māyā begin to go, āṇava often becomes stronger and stronger and stronger.

The karma mārga is when the soul is totally enmeshed in the actions and reactions of the past and making new karmas so swiftly that little personal identity, or egoism, is experienced, like a small boat bouncing on a vast ocean of ignorance, the ignorance of the māyā mārga. This mārga is not spoken of at all in Hindu scripture, except indirectly, yet all the sages knew of its delightful distractions. It is truly there for the soul who is bound to ignorance of how to know karma, know dharma, or even know anything but the next and the next experience, as each is eagerly thrust upon him. Here the soul is bound by karmas, bound by māyā, giving the abilities to ignore. That is the path that has to be left once on it, the sidetrack to be ignored and passed by. A sharp turn, a firm decision, brings this unhappy soul onto the āṇava mārga, the path of extreme personal identity. Here the realization comes that “Yes! I am a person on this Earth with the rights of all. I am no longer bound and harassed by experience. I can adjust experience, create new experience for myself and for others. I can be the controller. I am I.”

The I becomes the realization and sometimes the end of the path of the karma and māyā mārga. The I, that all-important personal identity, so strong, becomes the realization of the small and limited “self,” which appears to be a big and real “self” to those who have found this path, which is not the spiritual path, but the path of grayness; while the karma and māyā mārgas are the paths of darkness. Yes, the āṇava mārga is a real mārga, a labyrinth. It truly is.

We are concerned to define āṇava because a word can be dispatched too quickly; a concept can be forgotten. Āṇava, the personal ego, finding oneself, with a small “s,” the personal identity, gaining intellectual freedom are all modern clichés. Defining the āṇava mārga appeared in my mind as a necessary thing to do while I was helping devotees to understand the charyā mārga, the kriyā mārga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga and rāja yoga. To offset the negative with the positive better explains the positive. To understand the pure essence of ignorance, where it comes from, its values, beliefs and motivations, better defines the heights of wisdom out of which comes dharma and aspirations for mukti. Sometimes, in fact, we see āṇava mārgīs thinking they are yoga mārgīs.

We cannot advance on the path without a starting place. No race was ever won but that everyone began at the same place. To know where we are on the path of life progressing to mukti—which is one of the four tenets of life, dharma, artha, kāma, and mukti, merger with Śiva—we should not be deluded by the ignorance of what the āṇava actually is, and what artha and kāma are, the strength of their hold on the soul, preventing the dharma and the final attainment of mukti.

Lesson 147 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Are the Two Views on Creation?

ŚLOKA 147
Monistic theists believe that Śiva creates the cosmos as an emanation of Himself. He is His creation. Pluralistic theists hold that Śiva molds eternally existing matter to fashion the cosmos and is thus not His creation. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Pluralistic Siddhāntins hold that God, souls and world—Pati, paśu and pāśa—are three eternally coexistent realities. By creation, this school understands that Śiva fashions existing matter, māyā, into various forms. In other words, God, like a potter, is the efficient cause of the cosmos. But He is not the material cause, the “clay” from which the cosmos is formed. Pluralists hold that any reason for the creation of pāśa—āṇava, karma and māyā—whether it be a divine desire, a demonstration of glory or merely a playful sport, makes the Creator less than perfect. Therefore, pāśa could never have been created. Monistic Siddhāntins totally reject the potter analogy. They teach that God is simultaneously the efficient, instrumental and material cause. Śiva is constantly emanating creation from Himself. His act of manifestation may be likened to heat issuing from a fire, a mountain from the earth or waves from the ocean. The heat is the fire, the mountain is the earth, the waves are not different from the ocean. The Vedas proclaim, “In That all this unites; from That all issues forth. He, omnipresent, is the warp and woof of all created things.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.