Lesson 47 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Why Do Some Souls Act in Evil Ways?

ŚLOKA 47
People act in evil ways who have lost touch with their soul nature and live totally in the outer, instinctive mind. What the ignorant see as evil, the enlightened see as the actions of low-minded and immature individuals. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Evil is often looked upon as a force against God. But the Hindu knows that all forces are God’s forces, even the waywardness of adharma. This is sometimes difficult to understand when we see the pains and prob­lems caused by men against men. Looking deeper, we see that what is called evil has its own mysterious purpose in life. Yes, bad things do happen. Still, the wise never blame God, for they know these to be the return of man’s self-created kar­mas, difficult but necessary experiences for his spiritual evolution. Whenever we are injured or hurt, we un­derstand that our suffering is but the fulfillment of a kar­ma we once initiated, for which our injurer is but the instrument who, when his karma cycles around, will be the injured. Those who perform seemingly evil deeds are not yet in touch with the ever-present God consciousness of their immortal soul. The Vedas rightly admonish, “Borne along and defiled by the stream of qualities, unsteady, wavering, bewildered, full of desire, distracted, one goes on into the state of self-conceit. In thinking ‘This is I’ and ‘That is mine’ one binds himself with himself, as does a bird with a snare.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 47 – Living with Śiva

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

Īśvarapūjana: Worship

Worship, Īśvarapūjana, is the fifth niyama. Let us declare, in the last analysis, that human life is either worship or warship, higher nature or lower nature. We need say no more. But we will. The brief explanation for Īśvarapūjana is to cultivate devotion through daily worship and meditation. The soul’s evolution from its conception is based solely on Īśvarapūjana, the return to the source. In the irul pāda, the stage of darkness, its return to the source is more imminent than actual. The burning desire is there, driven by the instinctive feelings and emotions of living within the seven chakras below the mūlādhāra. There is a natural seeking on the way up. People here will worship almost anything to get out of this predicament. Bound in blind faith, with the absence of a coherent intellect guided by reason, and the absence of a matured intellect developed by superconscious experience, they struggle out of their shell of ignorance, through worship, to a better life. The small thread of intuition keeps assuring them it is there, within their reach if they but strive. They call God, they fear God, seek to be close to Him and see Him as oh-so-far away.

When they are matured and stepping into adolescence in the marul pāda, where confusion prevails, worship and the trappings and traditions that go with it seem to be primitive, unreasonable and can all well be dispensed with. It is here that a young lady looks into the mirror and says, “What a fine person! I am more beautiful than all the other girls I know.” A young man may likewise be conceited about his looks or physique. Worship still exists, but is tied closely to narcissism. It is only in the stage of grace, arul, and on its doorstep that true worship arises, which is invoking and opening up to the great beings, God, Gods and devas, in order to commune with them.

Faith, āstikya, creates the attitudes for the action of worship. We can see that from the soul’s conception to its fullness of maturity into the final merger with God Śiva Himself, worship, communication, looking up, blending with, is truly monistic Śaiva Siddhānta, the final conclusions for all mankind. We can conclude that in Sanātana Dharma faith is in What Is, and in the Abrahamic religions faith is in What Is Yet to Be.

Worship could be defined as communication on a very high level: a truly sophisticated form of “channeling,” as New-Age people might say; clairvoyant or clairaudient experience, as mystics would describe it; or heart-felt love interchanged between Deity and devotee, as the ordinary person would describe it. Worship for the Hindu is on many levels and of many kinds. In the home, children worship their father and mother as God and Goddess because they love them. The husband worships his wife as a Goddess. The wife worships her husband as a God. In the shrine room, the entire family together worships images of Gods, Goddesses and saints, beseeching them as their dear friends. The family goes to the temple daily, or at least once a week, attends seasonal festivals and takes a far-off pilgrimage once a year. Worship is the binding force that keeps the Hindu family together. On a deeper level, external worship is internalized, worshiping God within through meditation and contemplation. This form of worship leads into yoga and profound mystical experiences.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 47: NONSTEALING AND SEXUAL PURITY
All devotees of Śiva uphold asteya, never stealing, coveting, cheating or entering into debt. They practice sexual purity, brahmacharya, controlling lust by remaining celibate when single and faithful in marriage. Aum.

Lesson 47 – Merging with Śiva

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

Hold Awareness Firmly

Now, what do you do if during meditation the power becomes very strong and carries you into refined but unanticipated areas of superconsciousness? It is not unusual for a good meditator to go in a different direction when the inner forces or energies become so intense that awareness itself becomes all energy. That’s fine. That’s what you want. That’s also part of your meditation. Go right in and become aware of being aware and enjoy that intensity of inner power. Hold it steady. It won’t sidetrack you or disturb your meditation in the least, but you have to come right back when that power begins to wane to the original meditation that you intended to work with. Work with it in a very positive way. Stay with it and don’t get sidetracked in another area, no matter how interesting it is.

Only in this way are you going to really go on past the point of being able to meditate only adequately well. Only in this way, once you are unfolded spiritually to a certain degree, can you go on with your unfoldment. This is a difficult practice, because you will go in for a very fine meditation and get into profound depths and burst into new and interesting areas. This will happen, and the sidetrack will be fascinating, perhaps much more than your meditation subject. That is the time you must hold awareness firmly and fulfill your original intent.

The potter is a good example. He is going to make a beautiful planter pot, and it turns out to be a milk pot instead, simply because he was sidetracked. Then he says, “Oh, an impulse told me I should make a milk pot, right in the middle of making a planter pot.” This example tells you that you have to fulfill your original intent. Then you get confidence. You build a whole layer of subconscious confidence because you know where you are going to go on the inside.

Think about this and work with it, because it’s very important to get a grip on awareness in all areas of the mind. Start out with a very firm foundation. This principle will carry through everything that you do. You will become more and more precise. Your physical body will become firm and energetic. Your personal habits will become precise. The way you handle your thinking will be precise. You will pay more attention to details. You won’t assume so much, and you will follow intricate lines of thought through to their conclusion.

Someone who meditates well also thinks well. He can flow through that thinking area of the mind and work out things through the thought processes. Someone who meditates has confidence in all departments of life. You can build that confidence. If you sit down to meditate, meditate! Don’t get sidetracked on anything else, no matter how attractive it may be. If the power builds within you, sit for a long time afterwards and let the energy absorb into the cells of your external body. Great energy is released from within. Don’t get up after your meditation and immediately run off to do something. Sit in silent stillness until that power subsides in a gradual and refined way.

Lesson 46 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Are Souls and World Essentially Good?

ŚLOKA 46
The intrinsic and real nature of all beings is their soul, which is goodness. The world, too, is God’s flawless creation. All is in perfect balance. There are changes, and they may appear evil, but there is no intrinsic evil. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The soul radiates love, is a child of God going through its ev­olutionary process of growing up into the image and likeness of the Lord. Goodness and mercy, com­passion and caring are the intrinsic, inherent or in­dwelling na­ture of the soul. Wis­dom and pure knowledge, happiness and joy are the in­trin­s­ic nature of the soul. Can we be­lieve the soul is anything but goodness itself, purity and all the refined qualities found within superconsciousness? When God is everywhere, how can there be a place for evil? The soul is constantly one with God in its ever-present Satchidānanda state at every point in its evolution. How, then, arises the concept of evil and suffering? Āṇa­va, karma and māyā, the play toys of the soul, are the source of this seeming suffering. Like a child, we play with the toys of āṇava in the playground of māyā, fall and are bruised by karma, then run to our loving Lord for solace and release into spiritual maturity. The Vedas pointedly state, “As the sun, the eye of the whole world, is not sullied by the external faults of the eyes, so the one inner soul of all things is not sullied by the sor­row in the world, being external to it.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 46 – Living with Śiva

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

Faith in Tradition

The intellect in its capacity to contain truth is a very limited tool, while faith is a very broad, accommodating and embracing faculty. The mystery of life and beyond life, of Śiva, is really better understood through faith than through intellectual reasoning. The intellect is a memory/reason conglomerate from the lower nāḍī/chakra complex. Its refined ability to juggle information around is uncanny in some instances. Nevertheless, the intellect is built upon what we hear and remember, what we experience and remember, what we explain to others who are refined or gross in reasoning faculties. What we remember of it all and the portions that have been forgotten may be greatly beneficial to those listening, or it may be confusing, but it is certainly not Truth with a capital “T.”

There are two kinds of faith. The first kind is faith in those masters, adepts, yogīs and ṛishis who have had similar experiences and have spoken about them in similar ways, unedited by the ignorant. We, therefore, can have faith that some Truth was revealed from within themselves, from some deep, inner or higher source. The second aspect of faith is in one’s own spiritual, unsought-for, unbidden flashes of intuition, revelations or visions, which one remembers even stronger as the months go by, more vividly than something read from a book, seen on television or heard from a friend or a philosopher. These personal revelations create a new, superconscious intellect when verified by what yogīs and ṛishis and the sādhus have seen and heard and whose explanations centuries have preserved. These are the old souls of the śuddha avasthā, being educated from within out, building a new intellect from superconscious insights. Their faith is unshakable, undaunted, for it is themself. It is just who they are at this stage of the evolution, the maturation, of their soul in the śuddha avasthā.

One of the aspects of faith is the acceptance of tradition rather than the questioning or doubting of traditions. Another is trust in the process of spiritual unfoldment, so that when one is going through an experience, one always believes that the process is happening, instead of thinking that today’s negative experience is outside the process. However, it is not possible for souls in the irul pāda, stage of darkness, to trust in the process of anything except their need for food, a few bodily comforts and their gaining the abilities to adjust transparently into a community without committing too many crimes for which they would be severely punished. They gain their lessons through the action-and-painful-reaction ways.

It is difficult and nearly impossible for those in the marul pāda, stage of confusion, to have faith in the process of spiritual unfoldment and trust in tradition, because they are developing their personal ego, manufacturing karmas, good, bad and mixed, to sustain their physical existence for hundreds of lives. They will listen to sermons with a deaf ear and, after they are over, enjoy the food and the idle chatter the most. They will read books on philosophy and rationalize their teachings as relevant only to the past. The great knowledge of the past tradition, even the wisdom their grandparents might hold, is an encroachment on their proud sovereignty.

It is only when the soul reaches the maturity to enter the arul pāda, the stage of grace, that the ability will come from within to lean on the past and on tradition, perform the present sādhanas, live within dharma and carve a future for themselves and others by bringing the best of the past, which is tradition, forward into the future. This transition is a happy one. Truth now has a capital “T” and is always told. The restraints, the yamas, truly have been perfected and are a vital part of the DNA system of individual living beings. Now, as he enters the arul pāda, the niyamas, spiritual practices, stand out strongly in his mind.

The Sanskrit word āstikya means “that which is,” or “that which exists.” Thus, for Hindus faith means believing in what is. Āstikya refers to one who believes in what is, one who is pious and faithful. We can see that these two words, faith and āstikya, are similar in nature. Faith is the spiritual-intellectual mind, developed through many superconscious insights blended together through cognition, not through reason. The insights do not have to be remembered, because they are firmly impressed as saṁskāras within the inner mind.

There is an old saying favored by practical, experiential intellectuals, “Seeing is believing.” A more profound adage is “Believing is seeing.” The scientists and the educators of today live in the marul pāda. They see with their two eyes and pass judgments based on what they currently believe. The ṛishis of the past and the ṛishis of the now and those yet to come in the future also are seers. There is a thin thread through the history of China, Japan, India, England and all of Europe, Africa, the Americas, Polynesia and all the countries of the world connecting seers and what they have seen. This seeing is not with the two eyes. It is with the third eye, the eye of the soul. One cannot erase through argument or coercion that which has been seen. The seer relates his seeing to the soul of the one who hears. This is sampradāya. This is guru-śishya transference. This is Truth. This is śuddha. This is the end of this upadeśa.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 46: NONINJURY AND TRUTHFULNESS
All devotees of Śiva practice ahiṁsā, not harming others by thought, word or deed, even in their dreams. Adhering to satya, truthfulness, they do not lie, deceive, betray promises or keep secrets from loved ones. Aum.

Lesson 46 – Merging with Śiva

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

Progress Takes Discipline

When you go into a meditation, decide first what you are going to meditate upon and then stick with it. It is not advisable to habitually sit for meditation with no particular goal or direction, for we often end up walking in mental or subconscious circles. We have to avoid going into a meditation and then taking off into random or unintended directions, for this then can lend new vigor and strength to uncomely states of mind. You have to be very firm with yourself in meditation sessions. They are serious, not ponderous, but serious applications of life’s force. They are moments of transformation and discovery, and the same care and earnestness of a mountain climber must be observed constantly if real progress and not mere entertainment is the goal. In the very same way, in the external world, if you begin something, you finish it. If you are working on a project creatively, you maintain your efforts until you bring it to a conclusion. It is such people who become truly successful in meditation.

You can learn to meditate extremely well, but will be unsuccessful if you don’t approach it in an extremely positive way, if you allow yourself to get sidetracked on the inside once the inside opens up and you can really become aware of inner states. Care must be taken not to wander around in inner states of consciousness. You can wander in extraneous, unproductive areas for a long, long time.

So, you have to be very, very firm with yourself when you begin a meditation so that you stay with it the way you originally intended to do and perform each meditation the way you intended to perform it. This brings us into discipline. Undisciplined people are generally people whom nobody can tell what to do. They won’t listen. They can’t tell themselves what to do, and nobody else is going to tell them either! If you sincerely want to make headway in meditation and continue to do so year after year after year, you have to approach it in a very positive, systematic way. By not seeking or responding to discipline, you can learn to meditate fairly well, just as you can learn to play the vīṇā fairly well, but you will never go much farther than that.

For many years I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people come and go, each one firmly determined to go in and realize the Self, firmly determined to meditate and meditate well. Many did, up to a point. Then they lost interest, became involved in the next social fad or just reached the depth equal to their ability to be constant and well disciplined. They are not anyplace today, inside or outside, for they undoubtedly reached the same barriers in their next pursuit and were compelled to seek another and yet another. I want to impress on you: if you start a meditation, stay with it. Attack it positively. Go on and on and in and in and in.

Lesson 45 – Dancing with Śiva

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

Does the Universe Ever End? Is It Real?

ŚLOKA 45
The universe ends at mahāpralaya, when time, form and space dissolve in God Śiva, only to be created again in the next cosmic cycle. We call it relatively real to distinguish it from the unchanging Reality. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
This universe, and indeed all of existence, is māyā, Śiva’s mir­ific energy. While God is absolutely real, His em­anated world is relatively real. Being relatively real does not mean the universe is illusory or nonexistent, but that it is im­permanent and subject to change. It is an error to say that the universe is mere illusion, for it is entirely real when ex­pe­r­ienced in or­din­ary con­sciousness, and its existence is required to lead us to God. The universe is born, evolves and dissolves in cycles much as the seasons come and go through the year. These cycles are in­­conceivably im­mense, ending in mahāpralaya when the un­i­­­verse un­dergoes dissolution. All three worlds, including time and space, dissolve in God Śiva. This is His ultimate grace—the evolution of all souls is per­fect and complete as they lose in­dividuality and re­turn to Him. Then God Śiva exists alone in His three per­fec­tions until He again issues forth creation. The Ved­as state, “Truly, God is One; there can be no second. He alone governs these worlds with His powers. He stands facing beings. He, the herdsman, after bringing forth all worlds, re­absorbs them at the end of time.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 45 – Living with Śiva

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

Stages of Evolution

Faith is the intellect of the soul at its various stages of unfoldment. The soul comes forth from Lord Śiva as an embryo and progresses through three stages (avasthā) of existence: kevala avasthā, sakala avasthā and śuddha avasthā. During kevala avasthā, the soul is likened to a seed hidden in the ground or a spark of the Divine hidden in a cloud of unknowing called āṇava, the primal fetter of individuality, the first aspect of Lord Śiva’s concealing grace, tirodhāna śakti. Sakala avasthā, the next stage in the soul’s journey, is the period of bodily existence, the cyclic evolution through transmigration from body to body, under the additional powers of māyā and karma, the second and third aspects of the Lord’s concealing grace.

The journey through sakala avasthā is also in three stages. The first is called irul pāda, “stage of darkness,” where the soul’s impetus is toward pāśa-jñānam, knowledge and experience of the world. The next period is marul pāda, “stage of confusion,” where the soul begins to take account of its situation and finds itself caught between the world and God, not knowing which way to turn. This is called paśu-jñānam, the soul seeking to know its true nature. The last period is arul pāda, “stage of grace,” when the soul yearns for the grace of God. Now it has begun its true religious evolution with the constant aid of the Lord.

For the soul in darkness, irul, faith is primitive, illogical. In its childlike endeavors it clings to this faith. There is no intellect present in this young soul, only primitive faith and instinctive mind and body. But it is this faith in the unseen, the unknown, the words of the elders and its ability to adjust to community without ruffling everyone’s feathers that matures the soul to the next pāda—marul, wherein faith becomes faith in oneself, close friends and associates, faith in one’s intellectual remembrance of the opinions of others, even if they are wrong.

It is not very quickly that the soul gets out of this syndrome, because it is here that the karmas are made that bind the soul, surround the soul, the karmas of ignorance which must be gone through for the wisdom to emerge. Someone who is wise got that way by facing up to all the increments of ignorance. The marul pāda is very binding and tenacious, tenaciously binding. But as the external shell of āṇava is being built, the soul exercises itself in its own endeavor to break through. Its “still small voice” falls on deaf ears.

Yoga brings the soul into its next experiential pattern. The soul comes to find that if he performs good and virtuous deeds, life always seems to take a positive turn. Whereas in negative, unvirtuous acts he slowly becomes lost in a foreboding abyss of confusion. Thus, in faith, he turns toward the good and holy. A balance emerges in his life, called iruvinaioppu.

Whether he is conscious of it or not, he is bringing the three malas—āṇava, karma and māyā—under control. Māyā is less and less an enchanting temptress. Karma no longer controls his state of mind, tormenting him through battering experiences. And āṇava, his self-centered nature, is easing its hold, allowing him to feel a more universal compassion in life. This grows into a state called malaparipakam, the ripening of the malas.

This will allow, at the right moment in his life, arul to set in. This is known as the descent of grace, śaktinipāta. The internal descent is recognized as a tremendous yearning for Śiva. More and more, he wants to devote himself to all that is spiritual and holy. The outer descent of grace is the appearance of a satguru. There is no question as to who he is, for he sheds the same clear, spiritual vibration as that unknown something the soul feels emanating from his deepest self. It is when the soul has reached malaparipakam that the Lord’s tirodhāna function, His concealing grace, has accomplished its work and gives way to anugraha, revealing grace, and the descent of grace, śaktinipāta, occurs.

At this stage, knowledge comes unbidden. Insights into human affairs are mere readings of past experiences, for those experiences that are being explained to others were actually lived through by the person himself. This is no mystery. It is the threshold of śuddha avasthā. Lord Śiva is at the top, Lord Gaṇeśa is at the bottom, and Lord Murugan is in the heart of it, in the center.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 45: ŚIVA IS IN ALL AND BEYOND ALL
Śiva’s followers hold as their affirmation of faith Anbe Sivamayam Satyame Parasivam, “God Śiva is immanent love and transcendent reality,” a perfect summary of Śaiva Siddhānta’s exquisite truth. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 45 – Merging with Śiva

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

Realization Requires Will

Work with willpower, awareness and energy as three separate items first. Feel awareness and discover what it is. Use willpower and discover what it is. Feel energy and analyze energy and discover what it is. Then separate the three of them in your intellectual mind and experiential pattern. Then, after you’ve gotten that done, you will begin to see inside yourself that the three are one and the same. And it is actually the beautiful, pure intelligence of the immortal soul body, that body of light of you, on its path inward into its last phase of maturity on this planet. This inner body of light has been maturing through many, many different lives.

If you would like to know how it came along, for instance if you had ninety lives on this planet, each life the body of light matured one year. So your body of light would be ninety years old, so to speak. You can look at it that way. That’s not quite the way it actually is, but looking at it that way gives you an idea of the maturing of this body of light. The pure intelligence of it is your awareness—which is energy and which is willpower—that life after life becomes stronger, more steadfast. Finally, in your last incarnation on the Earth, you merge into its final experience, that great samādhi, the Self, beyond the complete, still area of consciousness. You go in not knowing what you are getting into, and you come out wise. Your complete perspective is changed, and you only talk about it to those that are on the path of enlightenment, as they are the only ones steady enough or free enough to understand the depth of this realization.

Here are the ingredients: attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation, samādhi. Willpower is the fuel. It does not take time. Someone asked me, “Do you think I can have this samādhi, realize the Self, in ten years?” I said, “I certainly don’t. I don’t think you have enough willpower to realize it in a hundred years, because it doesn’t take time. It takes will. If you had the will, you wouldn’t add ten years on it. You would simply be telling me, ‘I am going to have this realization.’ And I would believe you because I would feel your will moving out of every atom of your body. But the mere fact that you take an intellectual approach, I have to say no, because whatever I did think wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other. You are not going to get it with an attitude like that, because it’s not something you go out and buy. It’s not another getting, like ‘I have a car. I have clothes. I have a little money. And now, after I get my television paid for, I think I’ll get the Self, because that is the next thing to get. It’s really great. I read about it. I heard about it. I heard a speaker speak about it. I’m all fired up to get this Self, and it’s next in the line of getting, so I’m going to get it!’ It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get that which you have. You can’t get that which you have. It’s there. You have to give up the consciousness of the television, the money, the clothes, the people that you know, the personality that you thought you were, the physical body. You have to go into the elements of the physical body, into the elements of that, and into the energy of that, and into the vast inner space of that, and into the core of that, and into the that of that, and into the that of that, and finally you realize that you have realized the Self. And you’ve lost something. You lost your goal of Self Realization. And you come back into the fullness of everything, and you are no longer looking, and you are no longer asking, and you are no longer wanting. You just are. When you get tired of the external area of the mind that you are flowing through, you simply dive in again.

Lesson 44 – Dancing with Śiva

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

What Is the Nature of the Causal Plane?

ŚLOKA 44
The causal plane, or Śivaloka, pulsates at the core of being, deep within the subtle plane. It is the superconscious world where the Gods and highly evolved souls live and can be accessed through yoga and temple worship. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The causal plane is the world of light and blessedness, the highest of heavenly regions, extolled in the scriptures of all faiths. It is the foundation of existence, the source of visions, the point of conception, the apex of cre­ation. The causal plane is the abode of Lord Śiva and His en­tourage of Ma­hā­devas and other highly evolved souls who exist in their own self-effulgent form—radiant bodies of cen­tillions of quantum light particles. Even for embodied souls, this refined realm is not distant, but exists within man. It is ever-pre­sent, ever-available as the clear white light that illumines the mind, accessed within the throat and cranial chakras—viśuddha, ājñā and sa­has­­­rāra—in the sublime practices of yoga and temple worship. It is in the causal plane that the mature soul, un­­shrouded of the physical body’s strong in­stinc­tive pulls and astral body’s harsh intellectual stranglehold, resides fully conscious in its self-effulgent form. The Śivaloka is the natural re­fuge of all souls. The Vedas intone, “Where men move at will, in the threefold sphere, in the third heaven of heavens, where are realms full of light, in that radiant world make me immortal.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.