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.

Lesson 147 – Living with Śiva

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

Commitment To Harmony

Traditionally, every Hindu family should have a family kulaguru, a preceptor who knows the flow of karma within all the family connections and the birth dharma of the family itself. To be without a kulaguru is likened to a child being without its parents.

One of the greatest disruptive forces in a marriage is the amateur psychiatrist or psychologist practicing on his or her spouse. This tactic for solving problems is totally unacceptable. Such efforts, however well-intended, to straighten out a spouse through subconscious analysis are antagonizing, disruptive and hurtful emotionally and mentally. All these psychiatric games are based on the principle, “Something is wrong with you, and I’m going to straighten it out. Come to me. I have all the solutions.” Śaivism is different. It is based on the principle that you are perfect. The only problem is that you don’t know it. Let’s talk ourselves into our own perfection through reading scripture, praying, doing Śivathondu together, doing japa together, to lift our consciousness into the perfection that is always there.

If your spouse is trying to hurt you, protect yourself in the Sanātana Dharma as your first line of defense. Recognizing that this is your karma, fulfill your dharma fully, be it strī dharma or purusha dharma, the best you understand it. The Vedas assure us that truth always wins over evil (Muṇḍaka Upanishad 3.1.6). It is the wife’s duty to uplift the husband, the husband’s duty to uplift the wife. A husband bent on hurting his wife could not outlast—his hurtfulness could not survive—the wife’s chanting “Aum, Aum, Aum” all day long and placing spiritual vibrations into his food. In this way, good overcomes evil, ahiṁsā overcomes hiṁsā, dharma overcomes adharma. This is why we are born on this planet, to evolve through such challenges. We are here for no other reason. But should the husband ever become physically violent, the wife should take the children and run to safety. She should stay in a safe place until he has undergone counseling, made amends to her and to the congregation, asked the family guru to prescribe a penance and fully performed that penance.

When families who are trying to meditate and unfold spiritually go through times of internal or external violence they should not practice rāja yoga or other forms of meditation. This will only aggravate and worsen the situation. Yoga practices are not for them. What they should do is Śivathondu, or karma yoga, bhakti yoga and simple japa yoga. That is all. If a disharmonious situation comes up between husband and wife, they must resolve it before they go to bed, even if they must stay up all night into the light of day.

Sleep puts the problem to rest over a period of two or three nights, and it will eventually fade into the memory patterns of forgetfulness over a longer period of time. Having sex does not solve the problem. It puts the problem into seed, into the memory patterns of current forgetfulness, and these will definitely materialize at another time. Sex and sleep are not solutions to marital disputes. One is immediate postponement and the other is a slower postponement. To resolve a conflict between husband and wife, lest it affect the lives of the children by being postponed into forgetfulness, it must be done before sleep. There is no other way. This is the way husbands and wives catalyze their spiritual unfoldment on the path and develop themselves. Another reason sex is not a solution to disharmony is that babies that are conceived in a union that is supposed to settle a squabble are more often than not invoked from the Narakaloka. Such children might harass the family for the rest of their lives.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 147: PROVIDING EARLY SEX EDUCATION
Śiva’s followers teach their sons and daughters, between ages four and ten, about the cycles of life and the principles of virtue, and when puberty arrives, require them to take the sacred vow of celibacy until marriage. Aum

Lesson 147 – Merging with Śiva

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

Unqualified Surrender

What do we mean by internalizing worship? In external worship we are trying to see God and communicate with God with our two eyes and our physical nerve system. We enjoy His darshan and feel His śakti. In deep meditation, the external worship is deliberately internalized, and we are trying to see God with our third eye and feel God’s all-pervasiveness through our psychic nerve system. Externalizing bhakti is really much easier than internalizing it. But once the externalized bhakti is perfected, it will be easy and natural to internalize bhakti right along. When this is accomplished, the most rigorous hurdles and time-consuming practices of yoga, which often lead the person onto āṇava mārga, will have been side-stepped.

To internalize worship, after the pūjā is over sit before the Deity and draw into yourself all the prāṇas you feel around your body. Then draw those energies up the spine into the head. This is done with the mind and with the breath. It is very easy to do. It is especially easy when one is at the end of a major karmic cycle. The bhakti of uncompromising surrender, prapatti, to the God during a temple pūjā awakens the amṛita. The amṛita is the sweet essence from the sahasrāra chakra. It is the binding yoke to the Divine. Bind yourself in the lotus posture after temple worship and simply internalize all the feeling that you had for the God during the worship. That’s all there is to it. The yogī yoked within enjoys the amṛita that flows from the cranium throughout his body. Devotees who want to awaken the higher chakras and sustain that awakening on the safe path will throw themselves into becoming uncompromising bhaktars. Then all the Gods of all three worlds will open their hearts and shower their blessings upon them.

What is my advice for those who find such uncompromising surrender hard to imagine but realize it is their next step on the path? Go on a pilgrimage once a year, read scriptures daily, perform pūjā daily, go to the temple at least once a week, if not more often—fulfill these disciplines, known as the pañcha nitya karmas. This is the basic Śaiva Siddhānta sādhana.

But on another level, one will not be able to fulfill the pañcha nitya karmas if he or she is not fulfilling the yamas and the niyamas, for these are the character-builders. We must possess a good character to be successful in bhakti yoga. Therefore, begin at the beginning. Right thought produces right speech, which produces right action. Right thought is produced through the knowledge of dharma, karma, saṁsāra and the all-pervasiveness of God. This knowledge correctly understood disallows the devotee from having wrong thoughts. He simply has right thought, and of course, right speech and action follow naturally.

Śaiva Siddhānta extols the guru and says that when the student is ready, one will appear. The guru will always restate the dharma to a devotee who is having problems with bhakti yoga practices. He will always direct the mind to the beginning teachings, for it would be obvious that the student does not understand one or more of them. If the devotee is not following the pañcha nitya karmas or the yamas and niyamas, it is obvious that purified knowledge of these four areas—dharma, karma, saṁsāra and Śivaness—needs to be strengthened.

Individual practices to advance spiritual unfoldment include prostrating before God, Gods and guru, full body, face down, arms and hands outstretched, and in that act, total giving up, giving up, giving up, giving up. In Sanskrit it is called prāṇipāta, “falling down in obeisance.” What are these devoted ones giving up? By this act they are giving the lower energies to the higher energies. It is a merger, a blending. When one is performing this traditional devotional act, awakening true prapatti, it is easy to see the lower energies from the base of the spine, the mūlādhāra chakra, rising, rising, rising up the spine through all six chakras above it and out through the top of the head. It is transmuting, changing the form of, the base energies which breed conflict and resistance, “mine and yours” and “you and me,” division, insecurity and separateness, into the spiritual energies of “us and we,” amalgamation, security, togetherness.

Once the giving up of the lower is total—body and face on the ground, hands outstretched before the image of God, Gods or guru—those energies are surrendered into the higher chakras within the devotee, and it is a blissful moment, into the consciousness of “us and ours,” “we and oneness,” and inseparable love, thus claiming their individuality, not as a separate thing, but as a shared oneness with all. Thereafter, these devoted ones, having been transformed, are able to uplift others, to harmonize forces around them that they work with day after day after day, year after year after year. This total surrender, prapatti, is the meaning of Siddhānta. This is the true meaning of Vedānta. The combination of both, and the pure practice of prapatti as just described, brings out from within the deeper meanings of Vedānta, the Vedic philosophy, without having to depend on the path of words, lectures and debates. My satguru was once heard saying, “It’s not in books, you fool.”

Lesson 146 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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.