Lesson 339 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Why Are We Not Omniscient Like Śiva?

ŚLOKA 29
The three bonds of āṇava, karma and māyā veil our sight. This is Śiva’s purposeful limiting of awareness which allows us to evolve. In the superconscious depths of our soul, we share God Śiva’s all-knowingness. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Just as children are kept from knowing all about adult life until they have matured into understanding, so too is the soul’s knowledge limited. We learn what we need to know, and we understand what we have experienced. Only this narrowing of our awareness, coupled with a sense of individualized ego, allows us to look upon the world and our part in it from a practical, human point of view. Pāśa is the soul’s triple bondage: māyā, karma and āṇava. Without the world of māyā, the soul could not evolve through experience. Karma is the law of cause and effect, action and reaction governing māyā. Āṇava is the individuating veil of duality, source of ignorance and finitude. Māyā is the classroom, karma the teacher, and āṇava the student’s ignorance. The three bonds, or malas, are given by Lord Śiva to help and protect us as we unfold. Yet, God Śiva’s all-knowingness may be experienced for brief periods by the meditator who turns within to his own essence. The Tirumantiram explains, “When the soul attains Self-knowledge, then it becomes one with Śiva. The malas perish, birth’s cycle ends and the lustrous light of wisdom dawns.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 339 – Living with Śiva

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

Contradictory Teachings

We know from modern psychology how important early impressions are. The first impressions that go into the minds of young people mold and influence their entire life. While a child is learning history in a Catholic school, learning geometry, learning mathematics, he is also being taught the teachings of the Catholic Church. The teachings of the Catholic Church are not the Śaiva Dharma. They are drastically different, in some ways even opposite, from the Śaiva Dharma. What has happened? In order to gain an education for their children so they can grow up and earn money, so they can compete with their peers in the West, the parents have sacrificed the soul of the child and prepared him for a poor birth in his next life.

It happens in this way. The child goes to school each day and listens to the teachings of the Catholics about God and Jesus and Mary. He learns from the Catholic Catechism that the soul goes to heaven or to hell after one birth on this Earth, that those who do not accept Jesus as their savior suffer eternally in hell, where the physical body burns forever without being consumed, that one must not worship idols, that other religions are not God’s true path.

Then the child returns home, and his parents try to undo these impressions by telling him that there is no eternal hell and no original sin, that non-Christians do not suffer in hell, that Śiva is a God of love, that karma does exist and souls do incarnate many, many times upon the Earth. This young mind, not having matured into reason as yet, simply becomes confused. At school he hears that his parents just don’t understand, and he should therefore not listen to them about religious matters. At home his parents tell him that in certain matters he should not listen to the nuns, should not believe the good fathers, that Śaivism is his religion, and is a wonderful religion, that it is all right to wear holy ash. Imagine a child who goes to school and is taught all day, six or eight hours a day, that he should believe the Catholic beliefs. He is taught that there is no reincarnation, that there is no karma, that Hinduism is a pagan religion, that the Catholic religion is the only true religion in the world, that his parents are wrong, that his forefathers were wrong, that the ṛishis and satgurus are also wrong. And then, for an hour or so at night, if he is lucky, the parents teach that the Catholic Church is wrong, that he should go there only for the secular education, that he should disregard all the other instruction, not listen to the holy fathers and nuns but ignore them when they talk about their religion.

A true story was related to me by Pundit K.N. Navaratnam, Jyotisha Shastri, a close devotee of my satguru. “As a young boy growing up in Jaffna, I received my primary school education in a Christian school. The teacher impressed upon me in religious classes that the Hindu Gods were all evil devils. We were told when passing the Hindu temples to spit and swear at these evil images. Many times I followed my teacher’s instructions and indeed did these inappropriate deeds—until one day I spat at an image of Lord Gaṇeśa and immediately fell to the ground and suffered a serious head wound. My cousin was studying in a Catholic convent with many other students who were born as Hindus. Every morning they were taken to the church for prayers. On the way the students passed a Hindu temple where they were told to spit and swear in the direction of the temple. This was a cruel and dishonest attempt at conversion to a different faith.”

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 339: THE PROBLEMS OF TODAY END TODAY
All Śiva’s monastics treasure harmony as their way of life. They stop work, attend to and resolve before sleep any inharmonious conditions that may arise, knowing that creativity lies dormant while conflict prevails. Aum.

Lesson 339 – Merging with Śiva

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

Finding the Light’s Center

After his first nirvikalpa samādhi, the renunciate’s concentration and his practice of concentration should be easier. His first step in practicing samādhi would be to concentrate upon one physical object, that is if he cannot see his inner light. And if his mind is confused, he won’t be able to see the inner light, like before he went into his first samādhi. Only after he has gone into samādhi many, many, many times, where his whole body becomes filled with light, will he then see his inner light all the time, twenty-four hours a day. But at first he won’t. He will have his first breakthrough, but he won’t see the light all the time.

If he doesn’t see the inner light, he must concentrate, get his mind quiet, write down his confessions and understand the different experiences he has gone through, in the very same way he has been taught in his beginning study. Then, finally, when his inner light—which he will soon begin to find right at the top of the head—comes into prominence, he must turn his concentration onto that. And, with enough mind power, he should be able to hold that inner light, a very bright white light looking just like a star, right at the top of the head. This will give him figures and conscious-mind forms, about three inches in diameter, and then he would concentrate the light into a three-inch diameter. He may not always know where the center is, especially if he has been involved in his Śaiva seva. If that is so, he should press the top of his head with his finger, and that will indicate to him where the center of that light should be. This will immediately center his awareness in the center of the light. Then he tries to part it, tries to open it up like a camera lens, and comes into brilliant, very brilliant, light. It will just be scintillating, much brighter than a star. It will be like a carbon-arc light. This is very brilliant and very powerful. The renunciate is then schooled in how to hold that to a three-inch diameter, because the tendency will be for that light to fill up his whole head. He will feel very blissful. We don’t want that to happen. We don’t want the emotions or the lower mind to get out of control simply because he found a bright light in his head.

He has seen other seekers, as they were just awakening in the inner light, get so carried away about the inner light that it throws them into an emotional state and they can get fanatical about it. It doesn’t give them any inner wisdom or anything like that. So, remembering this, the wise sannyāsin will not allow himself to get emotional about the inner light, because seeing this light indicates that he is only beginning to come into his superconscious. The light, really, is the friction of the superconscious mind against the conscious and subconscious mind. In my way of looking at it, it is an electrical friction. The odic forces and the actinic forces merging causes light and sound.

So, when he sees this brilliant light right in his head—more brilliant than he has ever seen, intensified brilliance—he tries to find the center of it. When he finds the center of it, again trying to open up that light like a camera lens, he will then come into a state of consciousness called Satchidānanda, a state of pure consciousness, a state of pure bliss, savikalpa samādhi. Here he won’t be in a brilliant light anymore. Above him it will look like he is looking way up in the sky, into outer space, and the color of it will be a whitish blue. That will be the ākāśa he will be in.

Lesson 338 – Dancing with Śiva 

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

How Is Our Soul Identical with Śiva?

ŚLOKA 28
The essence of our soul, which was never created, is immanent love and transcendent reality and is identical and eternally one with God Śiva. At the core of our being, we already are That—perfect at this very moment. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
At the core of the subtle soul body is Parāśakti, or Sat­chid­ānanda, im­manent love; and at the core of that is Paraśiva, transcendent reality. At this depth of our being there exists no separate identity or difference—all are One. Thus, deep with­in our soul we are identical with God now and forever. These two divine perfections are not as­­pects of the evolving soul, but the nucleus of the soul which does not change or evolve. From an absolute perspective, our soul is already in nondual union with God, but to be realized to be known. We are That. We do not become That. Deep within this physical body, with its turbulent emotions and getting-educated mind, is pure perfection identical to Śiva’s own perfections of Parāśakti and Paraśiva. In this sacred mystery we find the paradoxes of oneness and twoness, of being and becoming, of created and uncreated existence subtly delineated. Yea, in the depth of our being, we are as He is. The Vedas explain, “The one control­ler, the inner Self of all things, who makes His one form manifold, to the wise who perceive Him as abiding in the soul, to them is eternal bliss—to no others.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 338 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

The First 24 Years

There are no more mahārājas to defend the Śaiva Dharma for the people, and therefore the people themselves have taken up the scepter. Together they have to work to preserve and publish scriptures. Together they have to found Śaivite schools and universities in which the knowledge of their forefathers will be safeguarded and disseminated. It is not enough to be born into a Śaivite home. Education and training are now more essential than ever before if Śaiva souls being born today are to grow up into the fullness of the Śaiva Samayam.

In our efforts to preserve Śaivism, we have but one paramount duty to perform, and that is to pass Śaivism on to the next generation. How do we do this? By capturing and holding the minds of our youth for their first twenty-four years, holding them close, as was done in the traditional gurukula, exposing them to a broad yet specific knowledge and immersing them in the most wonderful impressions of our great religion. Children during the brahmacharya āśrama, we could say, are on the kuṭumba mārga, the stage of being trained by their parents, of being educated, of developing into useful members of society. After age twenty-four, they can be freely released with the confidence that they will contend well in a demanding world, that they will always have their faith to guide and strengthen them when karmas become intense or alien influences encroach.

We of the older generation are already set in our ways. Our patterns were established years ago when early impressions impregnated and influenced our minds. We can still learn, we can study, but our formative years are largely past. It is now the children who must be thought of, for they will be here when we pass away. We can devise ways to let them benefit from our experience, good and bad. To do this, we must hold them firmly for twenty-four years as they go through two natural twelve-year cycles of life, impressing on them the intricacies of the Śaiva Samayam before they are exposed to any alien faith or belief. Having done that, our duty is complete, and we can rest assured that Śaivism will be perpetuated by our children, by our children’s children and on into the future of the world, on into the new age of space.

However, it must be said, and said boldly, that not all Śaivites are performing this important duty. Rather than becoming the first gurus, as mother and father, as is traditional, they send the youth off to school, away from home, without chaperoning, and make the world his guru. From there he falls naturally into āṇava mārga, the path of being his own person, looking out for “number one.”

If we fail and let a single generation slip by, the entire religion will be threatened. It only takes one generation to let our religion begin a fall into disuse. I gave this message on Śaivite education to over 300,000 devotees during a 1981 tour of Sri Lanka and India. It was an important message at the time, well received, and today is no less relevant. I pointed out in no uncertain terms that for many decades Hindus have been sending their children to Catholic schools. They do this because the Catholics run very fine educational institutions and programs throughout India and Sri Lanka and elsewhere, and each family naturally wants its children to have the best education. The children do get a good discipline and education, but it is a Catholic education, an education ultimately designed to bring young boys and girls into the Catholic religion, designed to persuade them of the Christian view of life, of the Christian view of God and salvation, and of all the Christian beliefs.

Hindu parents should not send their children to Christian missionary schools, nor to schools founded in the name of any other religion who seek to influence them, even in subtle ways, such as through symbols and peer missionaries who chide and taunt Hindu children about their culture, their beliefs, their dress or their symbols. These schools have a detrimental effect on the subconscious minds of the children, steadily turning them away from Hindu beliefs. When they slowly absorb the attitudes of another faith, slowly their belief structure is altered, and gradually their actions at home reflect this change.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 338: THEIR LIKES ARE THEIR DISLIKES
All Śiva’s monastics firmly uphold the spirit of nonownership, never adopting the householder attitudes of claiming their own space, timing, tools, friends, ambitions, likes and dislikes. Yea, they are unattached. Aum.

Lesson 338 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Bringing Others Into Realization

The lesson I want to point out is that once the soul has realized the Self, it is now on the road to realizing it again, and realizing it again and again. It is just as simple as that, and the warning that I would give is: do not become fascinated in the aftermath of any experience of the Self—so that the inner mind is always reaching for the highest samādhi, not being intrigued with the superconscious that is after samādhi. When one is intrigued with the superconsciousness after samādhi, this builds up the forces, not only of the mind but all the psychic forces, and brings the maṭhavāsi into a realm of occultism. This is something to guard against, because when he is intrigued with the aftermath, with the possibilities and the ramifications of the mind, this will eventually lead him around and around in circles, because the mind can offer nothing other than ramifications. In the beginning teachings, all devotees learn that the mind created itself, created itself and created itself. Well, even the superconscious mind does this.

What must be really sought after, in order for one as a Self-Realized person to fulfill his destiny of bringing others into Self Realization, is a pure samādhi which will keep the pure teachings of advaita yoga alive on the Earth through the sannyāsins. Everything on Earth comes through people. Everything of advanced knowledge has come through people. Self Realization is the pure teachings of yoga attained on the Earth through people who talk, breathe, live just like the Self-Realized soul does.

If he goes into nirvikalpa samādhi and becomes ramified in the psychic powers that come after samādhi, after his first samādhi, his second samādhi, his third samādhi, he will become more intense and will realize new possibilities within himself. If he remains on those planes of the phenomena of the occultism of the mind, then he gains new and fascinating powers of the mechanism of the mind, but he loses the power to bring others along the path into samādhi. If the renunciate maintains a clean samādhi and comes back into the mind, he realizes he has had some extrasensory perceptions, and he does not use them. He does not use them at all unless, of course, he uses them quite naturally, just as naturally as he would enjoy a meal, but he does not dwell on supernatural powers as anything special. He is at every point in time just who he is.

What the renunciate is taught to dwell on would be the next time and the next time he would be going into samādhi. Then he awakens a strong current within himself that can bring others into samādhi. By dropping off unessential powers, he gains one great power. That is the one great power that those who have realized the Self want, the power to bring others into Self Realization. You can only do that by having first attained a pure Self Realization yourself and going into samādhi again and again and again. Remember, the sannyāsin’s destiny is this: having realized the Self, bring others into the pure realization of the Self, and teach other sannyāsins to go into samādhi and come out with a well-balanced mind, without deviating one way or another on the psychic planes.

Lesson 337 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How is our soul different from Śiva?

ŚLOKA 27
Our soul body was created in the image and likeness of the Primal Soul, God Śiva, but it differs from the Primal Soul in that it is immature. While Śiva is unevolutionary perfection, we are in the process of evolving. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
To understand the mysteries of the soul, we distinguish be­tween the soul body and its essence. As a soul body, we are indi­vidual and unique, different from all others, a self-effulgent being of light which evolves and matures through an evolutionary pro­cess. This soul body is of the nature of God Śiva, but is different from Śiva in that it is less resplendent than the Primal Soul and still evolving, while God is unevolutionary perfection. We may liken the soul body to an acorn, which contains the mighty oak tree but is a small seed yet to develop. The soul body ma­tures through experience, evolving through many lives in­­­to the splendor of God Śiva, ultimately realizing Śiva totally in nirvikalpa samādhi. Even after Self Realization is at­tained, the soul body continues to evolve in this and other worlds un­til it merges with the Primal Soul, as a drop of water merges with its source, the ocean. Yea, this is the destiny of all souls without exception. The Vedas say, “As oil in sesame seeds, as butter in cream, as wa­ter in river beds, as fire in friction sticks, so is the ātman grasped in one’s own self when one searches for Him with truthfulness and austerity.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 337 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Tools for Education

Education is a major issue in religious communities around the world today, including our own Hindu communities. Those who value their traditions everywhere are worried. They see all too clearly that children are learning another culture, or a nonculture, instead of absorbing the precious things in the various heritages. Elders, mothers and fathers, teachers and spiritual leaders are all wondering the same thing about traditional values: “How are we going to pass them along, assure that they will survive?”

The Swaminarayan Fellowship has one good answer: involvement of youth at all levels. They know the importance of inculturalization. Individual families have another answer: keep kids out of public schools, use home-schooling systems, of which there are many these days. India is seeking answers, too, and is striving for a balance that incorporates Western knowledge and Eastern wisdom—not an easy goal to accomplish, and as yet unaccomplished for India’s 250 million school children. It’s even hard to offer them wholesome Hindu literature, since so many books for children and other educational tools are heavily slanted toward violence. Many will excuse it when a God slays a demon or when an indignant sage destroys some evil person, but to my thinking that is also violence, making such stories unacceptable for the minds of our young ones. Presenting violence as a good thing, even a somehow holy thing, definitely causes problems in today’s society, where hurtfulness is seen as a simple and legitimate solution to many problems. Many parents are at a loss as to how to solve the problems that surround the education of their youth. One solution they turn to is sending them off to boarding school. This is not a great answer. This is not even a good answer.

Śaivites of the world are now uniting in one common cause: to pass on the knowledge of Śaivism to the next generation. They are protecting the minds of their children, saturating the minds of their children, educating the minds of their children, penetrating the minds of their children with the knowledge of our great God Śiva, with the knowledge of Lord Gaṇeśa, Lord Murugan, the devonic worlds, the powerful temples of our religion in which God Śiva in His etheric body comes personally and blesses the devotees.

Where is religion preserved? It is preserved in the minds of children, recorded in the brain cells of our youth, stored there for the future. We must teach the Śaiva Dharma to our children. For this we need more Śaivite courses, more Śaivite schools and more Śaivite parents willing to teach the young ones. We owe it to the next generation, the next, the next and the next. Share your knowledge with them. Have them memorize a consistent and logical approach to Śaivite Hinduism. Then their life experiences are imprinted intelligently as they draw upon those memories to control their karma and dharma.

In the ancient days, the Śaivite kings, the mahārājas, were responsible for the religion. They saw to it that the priests performed their duties, that the pandits added to the store of knowledge, that the temples were built and maintained and that religion flourished throughout the land and remained alive in the minds and hearts of the people. This was the dharma of the kshatriya caste, headed by the kings, their ministers and heads of state. When the Śaivite kings fell from power, the entire caste system was, for all practical purposes, left there on the battlefields. Decades have passed, and now we are in a technological age where computers and machinery replace more burdensome work, where caste is a matter of choice, not birth, where the common man and woman have replaced the royal powers as the protectors of Śaivism.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 337: RESERVE TOWARD WOMEN
All Śiva’s monastics honor all older women as their mother and younger women as their sisters. Intensely renounced, modest and reserved, they avoid extended conversation and exchange of subtle energies. Aum.

Lesson 337 – Merging with Śiva

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

After the First Great Samādhi

Rare are the diligent sannyāsins who, after working for many years within themselves, each in his own time, burst through superconsciousness into nirvikalpa samādhi, the realization of the timeless, causeless, spaceless Self. Many strive to attain Self Realization during many lifetimes and then for many years in their present birth. The many lives have brought certain accomplishment which leads to their first breakthrough into nirvikalpa samādhi. The first breakthrough into samādhi happens quickly, so that the subtle parts of the mind, shall we say, are not consciously aware of what is actually taking place and what has actually happened, because they are not used to being consciously aware in the higher states of consciousness. However, when the renunciate has broken through to the Self, Paraśiva, he has the possibility of the full use of his mind, the higher states of consciousness as well as the full understanding of lower states of consciousness and how his individual awareness travels from one state to another. The mere fact he has broken through to samādhi means that he was able to justify experience enough in his subconscious mind so that his subconscious mind could fall into line, into the habit pattern of pure concentration. When the conscious mind is in concentration upon one single thing, the subconscious mind is in concentration also, following the pattern of the conscious mind, on one particular thing. Then that expands consciousness automatically into the superconscious state of mind. With the understanding of the functioning of the superconscious mind, and not being deluded by any of the ramifications of the superconscious mind, often a renunciate has managed to go right into the very core and actually break through to the Self. This is what has happened to him.

Each soul comes into Self Realization differently, because each has a different mind, a different subconscious mind and a different conscious mind, with a different nature, so naturally his reaction through experience before the experience of Self Realization and his reaction afterwards, being of the conscious and subconscious mind, is going to be different, depending upon his background and understanding and his nationality, etc.

The teachings of yoga are so basically simple and so basically concrete. And the most beautiful thing in the world, on contemplation, is the simplest thing in the world. The most beautiful design is the simplest design. So, simply since one has realized the Self and gone into nirvikalpa samādhi once, then obviously the simplest thing to do is to do it again. This is the practice of samādhi. When one has accomplished this a second time, do it again. Realize the Self again and again and again. Each time the renunciate comes out of samādhi, he will rebound, and it is like popping back into a different aspect of the mind. Or, he will actually have more conscious awareness of the mind and totality of the mind. In other words, he will have a greater capacity of expanded consciousness. Or, in still other words, he will become consciously more superconscious for longer periods of time each time he experiences nirvikalpa samādhi.

When a beginning devotee is going up the path, he is spontaneously superconscious now and again. After his first samādhi, he has realized that he has had longer periods of superconsciousness. After his second samādhi, he will be more and more aware of the superconscious mind, and after the next samādhi, he will be even more and more aware of the superconscious mind. However, each will unfold the superconscious mind and superconscious possibilities, powers, etc., differently than another, due to the fact that all have different backgrounds, personalities and such; for though he realizes the Self, the entirety of the basic nature does not change. However, his understanding of his own control of his tendencies, the overall control that he has, and his ability to mold his own life—that starts a process which transforms him gradually and increasingly as he becomes more and more familiar with the laws of going into and out of nirvikalpa samādhi.

Lesson 336 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

What Is Our Individual Soul Nature?

ŚLOKA 26
Our individual soul is the immortal and spiritual body of light that animates life and reincarnates again and again until all necessary karmas are created and resolved and its essential unity with God is fully realized. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Our soul is God Śiva’s emanational creation, the source of all our higher functions, including knowledge, will and love. Our soul is neither male nor female. It is that which never dies, even when its four outer sheaths—phys­­ical, prāṇic, instinctive and mental—change form and perish as they na­tur­al­ly do. The physical body is the an­namaya kośa. The prāṇic sheath of vitality is the prā­ṇa­maya kośa. The instinctive-intellectual sheath is the mano­maya kośa. The mental, or cognitive, sheath is the vi­jñāna­maya kośa. The in­most soul body is the blissful, ever-giving-wisdom ānanda­maya kośa. Parā­śakti is the soul’s superconscious mind—God Śiva’s mind. Para­śiva is the soul’s in­most core. We are not the physical body, mind or emo­tions. We are the im­mortal soul, ātman. The sum of our true ex­istence is ān­an­da­maya kośa and its essence, Parāśak­ti and Paraśiva. The Vedas expostulate, “The soul is born and unfolds in a body, with dreams and desires and the food of life. And then it is reborn in new bodies, in accordance with its former works. The quality of the soul determines its fu­-­ture body; earthly or airy, heavy or light.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.