Much has been said of the path toward merger with Śiva, and much remains to be said. But the truth is this: most people on this Earth are following another path for the moment, the path of self-indulgence and self-interest and selfishness. No doubt, it is the most popular path, and it has its own pandits and masters, who teach how to perfect the path of the external ego, how to perfect worldliness, how to perfect the trinity of I, me and mine, how to perfect self-indulgence. But that is not the ultimate path, which is followed by the few, by mature souls. It is important for aspirants to know that the real path leading toward merger with Śiva has many detours, pitfalls and sidetracks that beckon unwary travelers. It is important for him or her to know about these side paths, to be warned, as I am doing now, to be wary of them, to be cautious, to be extremely careful. ¶One of these I call the āṇava mārga, or the path of egoism. True, it is not a traditional path, but it is a path well worn, well known in all human traditions. In fact, you could say there are three such untraditional paths, three worldly mārgas: āṇava, karma and māyā. The last two bonds, karma and māyā, are the first to begin to diminish their hold on the soul as one proceeds on the path to enlightenment. And when these fetters begin to loosen, the āṇava, the personal ego identity, thoughts of “me,” “my” and “mine,” should also begin to go, but often don’t. When karma and māyā begin to go, āṇava often becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. ¶The karma mārga is when the soul is totally enmeshed in the actions and reactions of the past and making new karmas so swiftly that little personal identity, or egoism, is experienced, like a small boat bouncing on a vast ocean of ignorance, the ignorance of the māyā mārga. This mārga is not spoken of at all in Hindu scripture, except indirectly, yet all the sages knew of its delightful distractions. It is truly there for the soul who is bound to ignorance of how to know karma, know dharma, or even know anything but the next and the next experience, as each is eagerly thrust upon him. Here the soul is bound by karmas, bound by māyā, giving the abilities to ignore. That is the path that has to be left once on it, the sidetrack to be ignored and passed by. A sharp turn, a firm decision, brings this unhappy soul onto the āṇava mārga, the path of extreme personal identity. Here the realization comes that “Yes! I am a person on this Earth with the rights of all. I am no longer bound and harassed by experience. I can adjust experience, create new experience for myself and for others. I can be the controller. I am I.” ¶The I becomes the realization and sometimes the end of the path of the karma and māyā mārga. The I, that all-important personal identity, so strong, becomes the realization of the small and limited “self,” which appears to be a big and real “self” to those who have found this path, which is not the spiritual path, but the path of grayness; while the karma and māyā mārgas are the paths of darkness. Yes, the āṇava mārga is a real mārga, a labyrinth. It truly is. ¶We are concerned to define āṇava because a word can be dispatched too quickly; a concept can be forgotten. Āṇava, the personal ego, finding oneself, with a small “s,” the personal identity, gaining intellectual freedom are all modern clichés. Defining the āṇava mārga appeared in my mind as a necessary thing to do while I was helping devotees to understand the charyā mārga, the kriyā mārga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga and rāja yoga. To offset the negative with the positive better explains the positive. To understand the pure essence of ignorance, where it comes from, its values, beliefs and motivations, better defines the heights of wisdom out of which comes dharma and aspirations for mukti. Sometimes, in fact, we see āṇava mārgīs thinking they are yoga mārgīs. ¶We cannot advance on the path without a starting place. No race was ever won but that everyone began at the same place. To know where we are on the path of life progressing to mukti—which is one of the four tenets of life, dharma, artha, kāma, and mukti, merger with Śiva—we should not be deluded by the ignorance of what the āṇava actually is, and what artha and kāma are, the strength of their hold on the soul, preventing the dharma and the final attainment of mukti. §
People who are living totally on the āṇava mārga are not religious, and if attending religious functions, they stand with folded arms, on the outside looking in. Their only emotions are for themselves, their immediate family and friends, but only if the latter prove useful to them. Selfishness and avarice are two descriptive words for their lifestyle. To their immediate family, they are protective, kind and resourceful, provided the spouse, sons and daughters are productive and equally as concerned for the family welfare. The animal instinct prevails of “Let’s preserve the nest, the lair, at all costs.” ¶The businessman on the āṇava mārga is generous by all appearances, gives enough to gain praise, adulation and to make friends. In proportion to his wealth, he gives a pittance. There is always some attachment to the gift, some favor to be eventually reaped. The gift is a purchase in disguise. The āṇava mārgī in giving charity would always want adulation, credit, name to be mentioned, and if it is a large amount, some control in the use of it. There are strings attached. He may even follow up years later and wreak criticism and havoc if the gift given in cash or kind is not maturing in value. ¶In contrast, the devotee of God on the kriyā mārga would know that he was only giving to himself through indirection, and place his gift freely in the hands of those he trusts. Trust is always preceded by love. There is no difference between the two, except the method of follow-up. The āṇava mārgī becomes the law. The kriyā mārgī knows that divine law will work for him if he follows the path of righteousness, while the āṇava mārgī is driven to manipulate the law in fulfillment of each of his concerns. ¶Emotional ups and downs are contingent to the āṇava mārga. Four steps forward, three steps backward, a step to the side, six steps forward, two steps backward, a step to the side, six steps backward, three steps forward, a step to the side—it is an amazing dance. It’s a maze. They all think they are going someplace. This dance of ignorance is not one of Lord Śiva’s favorite dances, though it is definitely one of His dances. He does it with a smile and a sneer, mirth and a tear on His face. He actually has most of the world doing this dance now. Ignorance is equally distributed throughout the planet. The intrinsic ability to ignore, consistently and persistently, the eternal truths of the Sanātana Dharma is one of the great qualifications of the āṇava mārgī. ¶Television is a window into the āṇava mārga. We see extremely successful professional people who maybe have started on the āṇava mārga and have bypassed it to the artful acting portrayal of people on the āṇava mārga. We can see in their eyes, they have a life that is seeking and searching, understanding and knowing, and their magnetism keeps them before the public year after year after year. These are the professionals. Then we see on TV the āṇava mārgīs by the dozens. They come and go, are hired and not rehired. ¶Before the āṇava mārga, there is only confusion, unqualified thoughts, desires that are only motivative or directional, not crystallized into any kind of a concept that can be manifested toward a fulfillment. The confusion arises out of the drive for self preservation. All animal instincts are alive in such a human being. He does not hold to promises, does not seek to strive, is a proverbial burden on society. Society is made up of āṇava mārgīs and those who live in the other mārgas. Deception, theft, murder, anger, jealousy and fear are often the occupation and the emotions of those living without a personal identity, a well-defined ego. ¶A personal identity and well-defined ego is the āṇava, and the pursuit of the development of that is the mārga. Each purusha, human soul, must go through the āṇava mārga, a natural and required path whose bloom is the fulfillment of the senses, of the intellect and all the complexities of doing. It is prior to our entrance upon the āṇava mārga and while we are happily on the āṇava mārga that we create the karmas to be understood and overcome later when we walk the charyā and kriyā mārgas. You have to understand before you can overcome. This is the time that we “do ourselves in” and later understand the all-pervasiveness of Śiva, the laws of karma, dharma, saṁsāra. Yes, of course, this is the time the mischief is done.§
Those who want to hold a position and those who don’t want to hold a position combined, those who have no time to perform sādhana, who avoid their yearly pilgrimage, whose family cannot gather in the shrine room, who do not read scripture daily and attend a temple infrequently, if at all—they are doing extremely well on the āṇava mārga, in my estimation. Their artha and kāma are coming along just fine. Dharma is ignored, and mukti just may not happen. ¶Many people on the āṇava mārga perform yoga, japa, disciplines of this kind, and gain great adulation, as well as business contacts, through it. But nothing is gained other than a few minutes of quiet and aloneness. These are the opportunists, the people who make the world go ’round as we see it today. ¶Swāmīs are most precious to those on the āṇava mārga, giving blessings, amplifying their desires; adulation is sincere but not real. The swāmī is taken into their family as a personal figurehead of it, like a status symbol. They do not enter the swāmī’s āśrama to do sādhana and become a part of his life. And if the swāmī rebels, preaches dharma and holds back blessings, he is generally abused. “Love you, use you and abuse you” is the methodology of those on the āṇava mārga. All swāmīs, gurus and priests know this only too well. ¶The āṇava mārgī looks at God from a distance. He does not want to get too close and does not want to drift too far away, lives between lower consciousness and higher consciousness, between the maṇipūra, svādhishṭhana and mūlādhāra and the lower three, atala, vitala and sutala, which represent fear, anger and jealousy. He does not get into confused thinking. That is super lower consciousness, in the realm of the talātala chakra. He is guided by reason. That is why he can come into the other mārgas. ¶Therefore, God is at a distance. He sees himself pluralistically, separate from God, coexistent with God. Those who fear God anger easily. They fear their elders. They fear their government. They fear impending disaster, and they fear disease. God is just one item on the long list of things that they fear. They are not on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Their higher chakras are dreaming benignly, waiting for the consciousness to explore them. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Only then is he a seeker. Only then does his budding love begin to focus on religious icons. Only then is he able to nurture his love into becoming a bhaktar and at the same time a religious person, a giving person. This is the charyā path. We come onto the charyā mārga from the āṇava mārga. We come to Lord Gaṇeśa’s feet from the āṇava mārga. He is now the guide. The personal ego has lost its hold. ¶The āṇava mārga, and the glue that holds it together, is ignorance of the basic tenets of Hinduism. There is no way one can be on this mārga if he truly accepts the existence of God pervading all form, sustaining all form and rearranging all form. There is no way this mārga could be pursued by one understanding karma, seeing his manifest acts replayed back to him through the lives of others, his secret diabolical thoughts attacking him through the lips of others. The āṇava mārga does not include this knowledge. The dharma of a perfect universe and an orderly life, the consciousness of “the world is my family, all animals are my pets” is an abhorrent idea to someone on the āṇava mārga, especially if he is casted by birth in this life. The āṇava mārgī abhors the idea of reincarnation. To pay the bill of one’s indiscretions in another life is not what āṇava is all about. There is a forgetfulness here. When you renounce your childhood, you forget that you ever were a child. You forget the moods, the emotions, the joys and the fears and all that was important at that time. §
The yoga mārga must come naturally out of intense bhakti and internalized worship. The intensity of bhakti is developed on the kriyā mārga. The final remains of the ego are pulverized on the charyā mārga, where Sivathondu, selfless service, is performed unrelentingly with no thought of reward, but a hope that the puṇya, merit, will be beneficial in the long run. The āṇava mārga is easy to leave through total surrender to God, Gods and guru, along with seva, service to religious institutions. Surrender, prapatti, is the key. All the religions’ teachings teach surrender to the divine forces. Great suffering, the psychic surgery kind of suffering, great repentance, is experienced in the overlapping of the charyā mārga with the āṇava mārga. The beginning knowledge of Hindu temple worship, scripture, being dragged into it by some aggressive teacher, later a desire for reconciliation—all this leads to penance, prāyaśchitta, followed by serious sādhana. It is not without a great ordeal and effort, soul-searching and decision-making that one mārga bends into the other or bows before the other before it releases the consciousness to go on. One mārga must really bend before the other before one can be released. Before entering another mārga, it is a matter of giving up, which is painful, most especially for the āṇava mārga people, for whom suffering is no stranger. ¶How can someone on the āṇava mārga be convinced that there is a better way to live, think and act? The word here is pursuit. We are talking about pursuit. Āṇava people are always pursuing something, the fulfillment comes on the āṇava mārga, and there is fulfillment, but in a never-stopping pursuit of fulfillment. As soon as we stop the pursuit of fulfillment, we become unhappy, empty, feel unfulfilled and, I might even say, at times depressed. The āṇava mārga is the I-ness, me-ness, mine-ness; me, my, I. “I want, I give, I get, I collect.” I, me and mine are the key words here. The true āṇava mārgī is the owner, the getter, the consumer, not always the producer, vulnerable to the emotions of fear, who uses jealousy as an asset to obtain. Anger is the motivating power to fulfill desire, by stimulating fear in others. He is a master of deceit. The true āṇava mārgī, perfected in the art, has at his beck and call the eighty-four wiles of the lower emotions. ¶Why would someone begin to feel the need to change to a nicer way of life? The word why is the important word here. They are questioning, they are asking, they are intuiting another way of life. They have observed, obviously, others living a fuller life, fulfilled by the fulfillments of their pursuits, having left the āṇava mārga. Āṇava mārgīs have become aware of the existence of the charyā mārgīs and maybe a kriyā mārgī or two. It is the very force of the desire of pursuit that leads the purusha, the soul, to the charyā mārga into Śaiva Siddhānta. I see the whole thing like a tunnel—the karma mārga, the māyā mārga, the āṇava mārga, the charyā mārga, the kriyā mārga, yoga mārga—which the soul matures through as a child matures from a child to an adult. The problem is that it takes a little doing to define the pursuit. Therefore, the entrance of this tunnel, to be a good āṇava mārgī, is kind of crowded, and this is where the problem lies. To truly get on the āṇava mārga, to define the ego’s identity, one must have the goal of pursuit. ¶There are two mārgas before the āṇava mārga begins, within the realm of deep ignorance. Here reside the masses who live in confusion, the professional consumers who know the generosity of society, who will never in this lifetime manifest a desire, a goal, a thought for the future worthy enough to be accepted on the āṇava mārga. They are the slaves of the āṇava mārgīs, those whom, as slaves, they manipulate without conscience.§
Āṇava is one’s personal ego, his identity and place in the world and position on the planet. If his motives are proper and the position is earned on account of good deeds, it is not āṇava. But if, when praised, he takes credit for himself, it is āṇava. Āṇava is the tricky substance of the mind. It is behind every door, it’s peeking in every window. It is the first thing to come at birth and the last thing to go at death. To break the chain of āṇava, the yoking to the Infinite beyond comprehension in any state of mind must be complete and final. And yet, while a physical body is still maintained, the āṇava elf is still lurking in the shadows, saying “praise is better than blame, name must come into fame, and shame is to be avoided at all cost.” This is the āṇava routine. It keeps people held down on the planet in the instinctive-intellectual mind of remorse and forgiveness and suffering the adjustments to circumstance that occur beyond their power of understanding. A big gun that shoots the bullet of the depth of knowledge of karma, the second bullet, of the deep understanding of the perfect universal energies, and the third bullet, of the dharmic way of a balanced life, kills the āṇava and brings that purusha onto the charyā mārga, onto the path of the Gods, the hospital of the soul at that point. The final conquering of the tenacious āṇava is the final mahāsamādhi, when all three worlds sing, “Mukti has been attained,” the final goal of life that we on this planet know, merger with Śiva. ¶Because ignorance is all-pervasive, equally distributed throughout the world, one must leave the world and get a wise dome, wisdom, a wise head. He must transmute the energies from the solar plexus—nothing must affect him there—to his third eye, see into the past, see into the future, and with that seeing understand the present. ¶If we were to admit that there are really seven mārgas, we would find that charyā, kriyā, yoga and jñāna are progressive states of fullness, and the āṇava mārga, by comparison, is a static state of emptiness. This feeling of emptiness is a motivative, driving force of desire toward the attainment of the feeling of fullness. The feeling of fullness is the awakening of the higher chakras, of course. And the constant feeling of completeness is, of course, the permanent awakening of the sahasrāra chakra. The feeling of emptiness distinguishes the āṇava mārga from the other four mārgas, and this is why it is not included in Śaiva Siddhānta, but is not excluded either, because the āṇava mala is mentioned here and there and everywhere within the scriptures. For the sake of understanding individual ego in its struggles to be whole, we have delineated it as a path leading into charyā, kriyā, yoga and jñāna. ¶The path of the āṇava teaches us what to do and what not to do. It creates the karmas to be lived through and faced in many lives to come. And when dharma is finally accepted and understood and the religious patterns of life are encompassed in one’s own personal daily experience, then and only then do we see the end of this path in view. So, the āṇava mārga is definitely not a never-ending maze or a no-man’s land. Though a state of ignorance, it is still a state of experiential learning. All is leading, in evolution of the soul, to Sanātana Dharma. ¶Everything preceding charyā is āṇava mārga. People try to fill their emptiness with things. They work so hard for their money, thinking, “Oh, when I can buy this object for my home I will feel fulfilled.” They buy it with their hard-earned money. A day or two later, after ownership has taken effect, the initial fulfillment of ownership wanes, and unfulfillment, which has always been there, takes over, with the accompanying desire for the next fulfillment, object, or in the case of the intellectual, the next idea, group of ideas or new sphere of knowledge. There is no fulfillment in the instinctive-intellectual mind. This is the way it is. This is the way it has always been, and always will be, too.§
A powerful businessman, a bum on the street, a highly educated scientist and the uneducated field worker could all be sharing the āṇava mārga. It is a path of gratification of the ego, or the gratification of other persons’ egos. These days egos get gratified by going to heads of corporations, meeting important people and bowing before heads of state. It is on the charyā mārga that we learn that rich and poor, the powerful and lowly are all purushas, pure souls, jīvas encompassed in a physical body. And on this mārga we learn to bow before God and the Gods. We learn that their home, their officiating place, is the temple, the home shrine and under sacred trees. Being in their presence makes the charyā mārgī feel small. The first glimmer of the feeling of smallness is the first footstep on the charyā mārga. ¶Those who are not successful in life yet, and experience the repercussion of karmas of past lives denying them things, experiences, security and wealth, are the ruthless āṇava mārgīs. For those who have fulfilled their dharmas, and desire has waned for more—they don’t need more money, they don’t need more food, they don’t need more houses, they don’t need more respect—the āṇava wanes of its own accord, like an old leaf on a tree turns color and falls to the ground. They enter the charyā mārga and kriyā mārga with matured respect and humility. ¶The one who has little desires the most. He takes issues with the smallest things. The instinctive desire to save face is ever prevalent in his mind, for his face is all he’s got. He doesn’t have anything more. The rich and āṇavically powerful can buy new things, and when something goes wrong in life, change their image by retreating into their money, place, prestige and come out anew. Those full of āṇava who have satisfied, put to rest, the many desires of life, entering the charyā, kriyā and yoga mārgas gain a new spiritual face, a light in the eye and become looked up to even more than they were when they were sought out for donations for worthy causes. ¶Even the jīvanmukta doesn’t like unjust criticisms, but he is bound by his wisdom to nondefensiveness, just, unjust, true or false. “Let them say what they have to say, and if it affects me, it is helping me on the way to my final mukti.” He would bless them for that. The āṇava mārgī is not like people on the other mārgas, who have mixed feelings about these issues. The āṇava mārgī is a prefect in retaliation. That comes as one of the powers or boons of living on this mārga, along with deception and the ability to lie one’s way out of a situation. And to save face, place and position, no matter how lowly they might seem, is the goal of life for the āṇava mārgī. So, one should never drive the yoga mārgīs, kriyā mārgīs back to the āṇava mārga, because they would maintain their higher vision and be masters of the art and win at every turn. They should be left alone to pursue their goals. ¶In the Śaiva Siddhānta system of understanding, the progressive mārgas define the unfoldment of the individual soul, or the awakening of the chakras. When one comes to the temple because he wants to, has to and needs to live near one, he is on the kriyā mārga. This does not mean the āṇava mārga has not gone away or he has lost his personal identity. There is a little of the āṇava always with us right up to the moment of mukti. The āṇava presides through the fourteen chakras, but is most expressive before the awakening of the knowledge of the Gods and their abilities as helpmates to spiritual unfoldment. You don’t get off the āṇava mārga. Individual ego slowly diminishes as the soul unfolds from mārga to mārga. Nandi the bull represents the ego, personal identity, and in a large traditional Hindu temple, we see many images of Nandi, getting progressively smaller as we approach the innermost sanctum. This indicates the soul’s progression toward God or the diminishing ego.§
Āṇava still exists in the other mārgas, but it diminishes. It first starts out as “I’ll do it all myself. I need no one to help me.” Fulfillment comes through fulfilling each individual desire. Self-preservation is a very important part of the personal ego. But then, later, as progressive steps are taken, spiritual identity fulfills the emptiness, as water fills up a container. Only at the moment that mukti occurs does the container vanish. Until then the āṇava is like smoldering coals in a burnt-out fire. New wood can be thrown upon them. They can be fanned up. Detractors to a spiritual movement will often try to reawaken the āṇava of its leader and kill out the rival movement by creating his downfall. ¶Āṇava comes strongly to the Hindu when not living up to Hindu Dharma, when not performing sādhana, when there is no desire for mukti. When he has a fatalistic view of karma, when his Sanātana Dharma does not include pilgrimage once a year, daily reading of scripture, home pūjā, temple worship, when he is overly involved in the acquisition of wealth, ignoring all the other goals of life—we have here the makings of a fine āṇava mārgī. Being overly involved with personal pleasures, kāma, neglecting artha, not understanding karma, we have the makings of a wonderful āṇava mārgī. Being overly involved in dharma or the desire for mukti, we have here the makings of a wonderful karma yogī, bhakti yogī, rāja yogī, jñāna yogī. The normal Hindu needs a normal balance of all the goals. It is no accident that the Hindu sages can understand the āṇava within man. Yes, of course, they passed through it themselves and are just tapping their own memory patterns, seeing the actions of others and knowing the outcome. ¶As the soul leaves the āṇava mārga and enters the charyā path, a budding love begins to unfold. He is now conscious in the mūlādhāra chakra, looking out through the window of memory and reason at the world around him. His personal ego, which had until recently been well placed on the āṇava mārga, is feeling bruised. It now has to deal with some very real challenges—loving one’s country, loving the world, family, friends. The charyā mārga brings him into penance, which eventually brings him into sādhana, which is regulated penance. Without sādhana, penance tends to be spontaneous, erratic; whereas consistent sādhana is the regulation of penance. Now the soul begins dropping off the bonds of karma, māyā and āṇava as it unfolds into bhakti, love. This is true Śaiva Siddhānta. All this is not without being a painful process. Therefore, the protective mechanism of fear, which in itself is an avoidance process, is right there to help—in the chakra just below the mūlādhāra. The presence or absence of spiritual surrender and willingness to serve shows whether a person is on the āṇava mārga or on the charyā mārga. Devotees on the charyā mārga are striving to unfold spiritually and reach the kriyā mārga. People on the āṇava mārga are not striving at all. They are their own self-appointed teachers and proceed at their own pace. When we are on the charyā mārga, we have a lot of help from family, friends and our entire religious community. When we are on the kriyā mārga, the entire Hindu community, the elders and others all get behind us to help us along our way. Then when we are finally on the yoga mārga, we have all the saptha ṛishis helping us. The satgurus are helping, too, and all three million swāmīs and sādhus in the world are helping us along the path at this stage. When we have entered the jñāna mārga, we are bringing forth new knowledge, giving forth blessings and meeting the karmas that unwind until mukti.§