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

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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

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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.

Lesson 4 – Living with Śiva

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

Knowing Self by Self

In the earlier stages, before sādhana is undertaken, the mind is agitated by current karmas and perhaps discouraged by its inability to know or to fulfill dharma. In this agitated state the world looks bleak and terrible, and it would be inconceivable to him for God to be any place but in the temple. “Certainly God could not reside within myself,” the unenlightened concludes.

In the second stage, when the mind rests peacefully in the fulfillment of a life’s pattern, dharma, when it has sufficient maturity to control and to dispatch past and current karmas through meditation, prayer and penance, then indeed God is seen as a helping hand within, but most potently felt within His temple.

In the third stage, the helping hand within becomes more than an aid to the troubled mind; it becomes pure consciousness itself. Rather than seeking God outside, God is enjoyed as a vital, integral dimension of the person, the Life of life, the power and radiant energy of the universe. The calm within is greater than the outside disturbance. In this stage of bliss-consciousness, it is clearly seen and exuberantly experienced that God is indeed within us. The experiencer’s perceptions become acute, and in his daily life he becomes a witness, observing that others do not see God within themselves. He has a secret that he has discovered. God within becomes soul-realized as Truth-Knowledge-Bliss, Satchidānanda, the pervasive energy that glues all things together. Mind becomes serene, peace is seen to be everywhere, and the bliss so strong. A deeper inner eye opens at this stage, and it is truly perceived that this same presence of Śiva is in each and every living being, permeates every atom of the universe as the great, sustaining substratum of all that exists. Only when this is experienced can one truly say that God is within man and man is within God.

To know philosophy without experience is like going on a vacation to a distant and wonderful place by simply reading a book about the destination, hearing what others claim is to be enjoyed there. It is not true experience at all. The only spiritual experience is personal experience. My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, made it clear that “You will not attain jñāna, wisdom, even if you read a thousand scriptures. You must know your Self by yourself.”

How can we with our finite mind come to understand Infinity, come to understand God? How can we intellectually encompass something as great as God? Our scriptures tell us that God Himself is Śaṅkara, the author of all knowledge, creator of the intellect. He is the great architect of the universe. Then if God created the intellect, how can the intellect understand Him? Well, it is possible. It has been done. The intellect has to expand, and awareness has to transcend the rational mind and see directly from superconscious knowing. That is why we worship Śiva in His highest form, symbolized by the Śivaliṅga, the simple elliptical stone.

It is good that you are trying to see Śiva everywhere. Keep trying. It will come. Who else can give your Self to you? The unfoldment of the Self within you is but Śiva. He can give you wealth. He can give you health. He can bestow everything that you would ever need or even desire. But to worship Him as formless, as we are doing tonight, carries the mind into infinity. Mind can only encompass what it identifies with. Mind cannot identify Truth in this subtle form which represents Śiva as beyond the mind—formless, timeless and spaceless. Yet, within you this very instant, only shrouded by your ignorance, only shrouded by the ego, which is the sense of personal identity and separation, is Śiva. He is there right now, not at some fictitious future time. Just get rid of the māyā, the āṇava and resolve the karma, and there He will be. The ego is the last thing to go. It is the last bond to break.

Once the bondage of personal ego is broken, it is seen that this mysterious God is all-pervading. He is what He has created. Think about that. It is very deep. Śiva pervades His creation constantly as ever-present Love and Light of the mind of everyone, as Intelligence and Being; and yet God also has a form.

In the subtle worlds, Śiva has the most beautiful form, not unlike a human form, but an absolutely perfect human form. He thinks. He talks. He walks. He makes decisions. We are fortunate to worship such a great God who pervades everything and yet transcends it, who is both form and beyond form, who is the Self within your very self at this very moment. So, all of you seekers of nondual Truth, you have a truly great path that offers God experience in form and beyond form. How fortunate you are!

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 4: ONENESS WITH THE SATGURU
Śiva’s devotees strive to be inwardly one with their satguru, acknowledging the paramount need for a spiritual preceptor to guide them on the upward climb, the straight path that leads to Lord Śiva’s holy feet. Aum.

Lesson 4 – Merging with Śiva

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

Harnessing the Energies

Still other goals must be met: quieting the energies, the prāṇas, through prā­ṇā­yāma, purifying or refining mind and emotion, quelling the ever-constant movement of the restless external mind and its immediate subconscious, where memories are stored, preserved memories which give rise to fear, anger, hatred and jealousy. It is our past that colors and conditions, actually creates, the future. We purge the past in the present, and we fashion the future in the present.

All of these emotions are the powerful force that bursts the seals of the psychic cha­kras, four, five, six and seven. Once harnessed, turned inward and transmuted, this life force drives the spiritual process forward. Ours is the path of not only endeavoring to awaken the higher nature, but at the same time and toward the same end dealing positively and consciously with the remnants of the lower nature, replacing charity for greed and dealing with, rather than merely suppressing, jealousy, hatred and anger.

Most people do not understand that they have a mind, that they have a body and emotions, that what they are is something far more lasting and profound. They think they are a mind, they presume they are a body and they feel they are a given set of emotions, positive and negative. To progress on the spiritual path, they must learn they are not these things but are, in fact, a radiant, conscious soul that never dies, that can control the mind and directs the emotion toward fulfillment of dharma and resolution of karma. While living in a normal agitated state of fears, worries and doubts, seeing the deeper truths is impossible. To such a person, there is no doubt about it: “I am fearful. I am worried. I am confused. I am sick.” He says such things daily, thinking of himself in a very limited way.

This wrong identification of who we are must be unlearned. Before we actually begin serious sā­dha­na, we must understand ourselves better, understand the three phases of the mind: instinctive, intellectual and super­con­scious. This takes time, meditation and study—study that must culminate in actual experience of the instinctive mind, the intellectual mind and the transcendent sub­super­con­scious state of the mind. Seeing the mind in its totality convinces the seeker that he is something else, he is the witness who observes the mind and cannot, therefore, be the mind itself. Then we realize that the mind in its super­con­sciousness is pure. We do not have to purify it, except to carry out its native purity into life, into the intellect by obtaining right knowledge and transmuting the instinctive or animal qualities. This is accomplished from within out. It is not as difficult as it may seem.

Lesson 3 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

What Is Meant by “Dancing with Śiva”?

ŚLOKA 3
All motion begins in God and ends in God. The whole universe is engaged in a whirling flow of change and activity. This is Śiva’s dance. We are all dancing with Śiva, and He with us. Ultimately, we are Śiva dancing. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The world is seen as it truly is—sacred—when we be­hold Śiva’s cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Śiva’s dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Śiva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, criticizing the natural processes and move­ments around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Śiva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to ac­cept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of un­­der­stand­ing. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Śiva. The Vedas state, “The cosmic soul is truly the whole universe, the im­mortal source of all creation, all action, all meditation. Whoever discovers Him, hidden deep within, cuts through the bonds of ig­­no­r­­ance even during his life on Earth.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.