Lesson 184 – 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 184 – Living with Śiva

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

The Sad Truth Of Hurtfulness

I have been asked, “Should parents never spank a child?” Of course, one should never spank children, ever. Those who are spanked are taught to later punish their children, and this is a vicious cycle. Have you ever seen an animal in its natural habitat abuse its offspring? Does a lion cause blood to flow from its cub, a bird brutally peck its own chick, a cow trample its calf, a whale beach a disobedient calf? How about a dolphin, a dog, a butterfly, a cat? It is only humans who become angered by and hurtfully, sometimes lethally, aggressive toward their offspring.

The wife-husband relationship is where it all begins. The mother and father are karmically responsible for the tenor of society that follows them. An ahiṁsā couple produces the protectors of the race. Hiṁsā, hurtful, couples produce the destroyers of the race. They are a shame upon humanity. It’s as simple as that. It’s so crucial that it needs to be said more than once. “Hiṁsā, hurtful, couples produce the destroyers of the race. They are a shame upon humanity.”

A five-foot-ten-inch adult beating on a tiny child—what cowardliness. A muscular man slapping a woman who cannot fight back. What cowardliness! Yet another kind of cowardliness belongs to those who stand by, doing nothing to stop known instances of harm and injury in their community. Such crimes, even if the law does not punish, earn a lifetime of imprisonment in the criminal’s karma, because they always know that they watched or knew and said nothing. This sin earns lifetime imprisonment in their own mind. Beating a child destroys his or her faith. It destroys faith in humanity and therefore in religion and in God. If their father and mother beat them, whom are they going to trust throughout their whole life? Child beating is very destructive.

Innocent children who see their father beating their mother or their mother spitefully scratching their father’s body after she emotionally shattered his manhood by provocative insinuations, threats and tongue lashing have at those very moments been given permission to do the same. Of course, we can excuse all of this as being simply karma—the karma of the parents as taught by their parents and the karma of the children born into the family who abuses them. But the divine law of karma cannot be used as permission or an opportunity to be hurtful. Simply speaking, if hurtfulness has been done to you, this does not give you permission to perform the same act upon another. It is dharma that controls karma. It is not the other way around. In Hinduism, the parents are to be the spiritual leaders of their children, not the mental, emotional and physical abusers of their children.

Those sensitive children who see their mother and father working out their differences in mature discussion or in the shrine room through prayer and meditation are at that moment given permission to do the same in their own life when they are older. They become the elite of society, the pillars of strength to the community during times of stress and hardship. These children, when older, will surely uphold the principles of dharma and will not succumb to the temptations of the lower mind.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 184: GUARDIANS OF EARTH AND HER PEOPLE
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists concentrate their energies on bettering the world, conserving its resources and enabling humans to live in harmony with nature and one another. They are noble examples to mankind. Aum.

Lesson 184 – Merging with Śiva

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

Fathoming the Unfathomable

Yes, two different reactionary thoughts of a similar vibration sent into the subconscious at different times under similar psychological conditions create a third, different subconscious happening. This happening registers in the subsubconscious and continues to vibrate there until it is dissolved and reabsorbed within the subconscious itself. If psychological structures build up as problems in the subsubconscious and are not resolved, they can inhibit or hold back the superconscious. One then easily feels depressed and subject to many lower emotions. Then the concept that one is a self-effulgent being seems quite distant, indeed. When the subsubconscious build-up is problem free, superconsciousness is there, bringing success and well-being.

The subsubconscious concerns us primarily as the state of mind which relates to congested subconscious force fields, or vāsanās, caused by two similar intense emotional reactions at psychological moments. The resultant deeply suppressed emotions are puzzling to the seeker because, unless he is able to resolve through periodic review his subsubconscious, he may find them welling up from within him unbidden, and he knows not why. The subsubconscious influences us when we are encountering an experience similar to one that caused one of the two component reactions. This releases highly unexpected emotional responses, inobvious reactions and new behavioral patterns, some positive, some negative. The hybrid formation continues to react within the subsubconscious mind until resolved. Once understood, the mystery is gone. The vāsanā loses its emotional power. To a very great extent, it is the subsubconscious that harbors our subliminal aspirations, self-esteem, impulses toward success, neuroses and overall psychological behavior.

An example of this state of mind is as follows. A young man goes to an office party and accidentally spills coffee on his suit. Being a gentle, shy man, he becomes embarrassed and emotionally upset when everyone turns to look at him. Many months later, he attends his sister’s wedding. In her excitement at the reception, she accidentally spills tea on her beautiful new sārī. She is naturally embarrassed. But it is a psychological moment for him, intensified by his attachment to his sister, and he becomes more embarrassed for her than she is for herself.

A year later he discovers that each time he attends a social gathering, his solar plexus becomes upset, his digestion is affected, he gets a headache and has to leave. The fear mechanism, stimulated by the subsubconscious mind, is protecting him from another upsetting condition among a group of people. This continues for a number of years until the subsubconscious, in a semi-dream state, reveals itself to him and he sees clearly how the two reactionary thought patterns, caused by the dual experiences, met and merged and gave rise to a different conscious experience—the indigestion, the headaches and the dread of being among people. Once the obstacle was resolved in the light of understanding, he would be able to be among people in gatherings without these ill effects.

Lesson 183 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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 183 – Living with Śiva

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

The Bane Of Battering

The whole world is reevaluating how we treat women, children, the aged and infirm. Ways of behaving toward our fellow human beings that were normal and acceptable a hundred years ago are no longer acceptable. We now comprehend, as never before, the tragedy of a battered wife or an abused infant. Shamefully, we do not always live up to the Hindu ideal in these areas.

What is that ideal? It is this: Never injure others. Hindu children are always treated with great respect and awe, for one does not always know who they are. They may be incarnations of a grandmother, grandfather, aunt or uncle, dearly beloved mother, sister, brother, respected father, a yogī or ṛishi returned to flesh to help mankind spiritually. We must ask, “Who are these souls? What is their destiny in this life? How can I help?”

Parents love their children, or at least they should, and the principle of ahiṁsā, nonviolence and nonhurtfulness—physically, mentally or emotionally—does apply in the parent-child relationship, as well as in the husband-wife relationship. Children must be nurtured prenatally without being hurt in the process. Children must be allowed to develop physically, emotionally and mentally without being hurt in the process. We know they are sometimes mischievous and can get on your nerves, but the religious parents who are avowed to ahiṁsā are in truth more mature than their children and are able to handle situations as they come up without recourse to pinching, hitting or verbal abuse. Only in an ahiṁsā home can we bring children from one stage of physical, emotional, mental growth to another and still nurture spiritual qualities.

To hurt a child in any way is to drive that child into fear and cause the development of anger and resentment at an early age. Parents are supposed to lift their offspring into the higher nature, of love, forgiveness, friendliness and security, not to drive them into the lower nature, of hate, mistrust, resentment, offishness and insecurity. Obedience through fear is not a desirable obedience.

Psychologically, parents breed guilt by telling their children they sacrificed everything for them, gave them so much, saying, “Look what we are getting in return. You are worthless and ungrateful.” Guilty people are not creative, often not reasonable and are lacking willpower, for their inspiration has been destroyed. Their self-image is at the bottom of the bottom, like rust on the soul. “I’m nobody, I’m nothing. She is right. I don’t appreciate anything, I’m worthless.” These are the thoughts of those who live in this state of mind. True, this is the Kali Yuga in which mothers give birth and then destroy their young. They do it through beating them when they are young and later through defamation of character through cutting insults to keep them “in their place.”

Conformity through threats does not build a loving family or a strong society. To bribe children into submission with sweets or promises that are never meant to be fulfilled is to engender in them an eventual mistrust of their parents and foster rebelliousness coupled with selfish expectations about life. To anger a child at an early age is to place him on the path of retribution toward others later in life. To strike or pinch a child may seem expedient in the confusion of the moment. It may provide a short-term solution. But never forget the long-term karmic price that must be paid. The “I own you, you owe me” attitude is no longer acceptable, and is being replaced by “I love you, you love me,” in the homes of righteous Hindu families who realize that the hurtful methods do not bring positive results.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 183: NONINJURIOUS SCIENCE
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists or medical researchers refuse to participate in product testing that is harmful to the subject. They are forbidden to take part in any enterprise that promotes death or destruction. Aum.

Lesson 183 – Merging with Śiva

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

Where One Plus One Equals Three

There is one area of the subconscious mind that seems rather devious and extremely hard to program. It is called the sub of the subconscious mind. It often could seem like faulty software in the computer. But when finally programmed correctly, it can become the greatest asset. It brings us good luck and assists with perfect timing through life. At times we feel as if nothing is happening to us anymore. Everything is going along smoothly. We walk up to a closed door and the door opens for us. We walk up to a telephone and it begins to ring. These signs show us that the subsubconscious is going along very nicely. As soon as we do not enjoy this fine timing, it is generally because of the sub of the subconscious area. For when two programs of a similar nature go into the subconscious computer at different times, they mix and mingle and form a third program within the subconscious that is difficult to fathom intellectually. This is recorded in the sub of the subconscious. For this reason, the sub of the subconscious mind seems awesome and foreboding. If both of the programs are good, beneficial, positive and spiritually vibrant, things go smoothly for us. But if they are not, this area of the subconscious can be very disturbing. Remedies are deep introspection and emotional-intellectual honesty. The subsubconscious can become very powerful, creating healthy new tendencies in this life and molding a dynamic personality.

Two thoughts, at different times, sent into the subconscious mind, form in what is called the sub of the subconscious a totally different rate of vibration when intermingled—that is, if the psychological arrangement of the mind was the same at the time each thought entered it. This subconscious formation of thought often turns into feelings of the lower, instinctive nature and causes the external mind to react to situations in a way that it normally would not have done.

The subsubconscious mind not only attracts situations that express its contents, but creates situations by playing upon the subconscious itself. The sub of the subconscious mind, therefore, is the part of the subconscious that stores and manages the unfathomable result of the combinations of intense, emotionally-charged experiences, either positive or negative. These combinations create a third, hybrid reactionary condition quite unlike what either experience alone could have caused.

Color shall be our example. Blue stands alone as a color, and so does yellow. When they merge, they make a third color, green, which creates a mood when you look upon it, different than the mood that arises from looking upon blue or yellow alone. Only in understanding that green is a composite of yellow and blue is the mystery dispelled. Add white to red and you get pink. Add water to soil and you get mud. This is easy to understand and shows the nature of impressions coming together in the subconscious. Add oxygen to hydrogen and you get water. That is a mystery which parallels the nature of the subsubconscious mind, a realm where one plus one equals three, while in the subconscious the sum is two.

Lesson 182 – 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 182 – Living with Śiva

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

Our Young Missionaries

All of the young people here today, each and every one of you, must be proud that you are living the Śaiva Dharma. You must be proud to be Śaivites, proud that you know this great God personally. Now, this is not an egotistical kind of pride which sets you apart from everyone. It is a pride of humility which makes you very compassionate toward all. Stand strong for Śaivism. It is your duty to help spread the Śaiva Dharma throughout the world, to let each one hear about Śiva, about the great Mahādeva Gaṇeśa, about the great Mahādeva Murugan. Let them accept or reject, as they choose, but first they must hear your message. You are all the young missionaries of our religion, the young missionaries of Śaivite Hinduism. You must study this religion most diligently. Study hard so that you can turn the minds of others toward goodness, toward selflessness, toward Godliness. You must study very, very hard, very diligently, committing the Śaiva Dharma to memory so that when you are asked questions about your religion you have a ready and convincing answer and can give forth that answer with confidence. You must be strong, for there are many more temptations in the world today than when your parents and grandparents were raised. Those who are young nowadays face far more temptations than ever before, especially from the Western world.

Proceed with confidence and with courage, and your life will be a strength to others who are waiting and longing for your message. I ask each of you young adults and children here tonight to grow up tall and proud of our Śaivite religion. How do you do this? Through discipline and obedience. Nothing was ever accomplished on this Earth without these two qualities. Be self-disciplined, cultivate self-control. Obey your gurus. Obey your mothers. Obey your fathers. Obey your elders. Obey your Śaivite teachers. Don’t be influenced by Western ways. Western ways are based on a Christian belief structure. If you do all of this, you will become the leaders of the Śaivite Hindu temple tradition.

Religious learning is the greatest learning, the only permanent learning. All else is transitory and changing. Religion is the knowledge of the soul. God Śiva created your soul. Your mother and father created your body, brought you into this world. But you create your own experiences in this life from the sum total of experiences in your past lives. You came to this Earth for one purpose: to learn of your religion. You are on this Earth for the evolution of your soul. You are not here to earn money. You are not here to gratify yourself through excesses. You are not here to fight with each other. You are not here to accumulate material conveniences. You are here to learn of and then to fulfill your religion. It is knowledge of religion in your life that makes the soul evolve. So, learn your religion fully, properly, intelligently, and it will guide you through this life into a better birth or on into moksha, liberation from earthly existence.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 182: HARNESSING SCIENCE WITH RELIGION
Śiva’s devotees who are scientifically and alchemistically inclined naturally approach each investigation in awe, consider themselves servants of the Divine and subjugate themselves to the guidance of their preceptor. Aum

Lesson 182 – Merging with Śiva

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

Seeing Oneself In Others

It is a principle on the path that until we are rather advanced we do not really know whether we have reprogrammed the subconscious mind or not, or if the reprogramming has been done correctly. However, we do know when we create something with our hands whether it is done correctly and carefully. We also know when it is finished, for we can see it on the physical plane. Taking a physical substance into our hands, using it carefully and systematically, and disciplining ourselves to finish that which we have begun is a powerful process. By doing this, we overcome habit patterns of carelessness and of not being able to pay attention to details. We also overcome the habit of becoming distracted. So, choose a hobby or a craft. It should be something that you do with your hands that changes the form of physical objects, such as taking clay and out of it making a beautiful vase or using yarn to weave a lovely tapestry.

As soon as the subconscious mind has been positively reprogrammed, even just a little, the channels of intuition begin to open, and you feel peaceful. Disturbances within your mind subside. At this stage on the path you often wonder if you are making progress anymore. You hold a consciousness like being in an airplane going a thousand miles an hour while holding the feeling of not moving. When you feel as if nothing is happening to you inside anymore, you are living in an intuitive state, the eternity of the moment. Your intuition is now penetrating your external mind all of the time.

When your subconscious has been cleared of past reactionary patterns and reprogrammed thoroughly, you do not take exception to things that happen in the world. In understanding, you love everyone and embrace every event. You intuitively sense just what they are all going through, because you have in your memory banks knowledge of each happening acquired during all the lives you have ever lived. This becomes available to you subsuperconsciously. You begin remembering when you went through the very same thing your friend is going through. It may have been a life or two ago, but you went through it all the same. Therefore you know his next step, because you know how you got out of the same experiential pattern yourself. Then you begin to know that your soul body and your physical body are becoming one. You are slowly beginning to realize that you truly are an effulgent, spiritual being living on the Earth.

The only thing that is not spiritual, seemingly, is the subconscious mind, but that is an illusion because it has been programmed in a haphazard way. You have gone along through your many, many lives, having many, many, many experiences. It has collected up diverse habit patterns and erratic programming. When you attack this programming positively and work with it, the subconscious becomes a tremendous tool and is no longer the unfriendly obstacle that it was. It becomes subsuperconscious and new energies start flowing into the physical body. New understanding begins to come from within. Your perspective in looking at life is steady now.

Man has not always realized that a subconscious area of mind exists. For hundreds of years, humanity in the West believed that the conscious state was the only reality. Humanity has had religious inclinations also, and believed in superconsciousness, but felt that superconsciousness was totally outside and away from the individual self. That is why God is talked of as being way up in the heaven, and the angels high in the sky. These beliefs caused the superstition, religious misunderstandings and contradictions that have come down to us through the ages.

Why was God supposed to be outside the being of man, way up in the sky? It was because the subconscious area of mind was in-between. From this limited perspective, man saw himself as a little, insignificant nothing that has come from someplace, not knowing for sure when or how he got here in this conscious state. He knew he was a kind and hateful, generous and greedy, jealous, intellectual, instinctive being. He knew that. He knows it today. That is how one gets along through life. You have to fight for what you want. You have to argue. You have to be jealous, or else how are you going to get anyplace? You have to be quick-tempered to dominate others. You have to scare people, get your own way and elbow your way through life. That is the way to live when totally in the conscious mind.

Lesson 181 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
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.