The Self is like a neutron star, one millions times harder than a diamond, not light, not dark, not within, not without, all things and nothing. You can’t smell it, yet you sense its smell. You can’t hear it, yet you feel its noise. You can’t see it, yet you are blinded by the thought of its light. You can’t know it, yet you know it; and knowing it is irresistible. The compact neutron star is heavier than heaviness itself, lighter than a balloon within air, space, nonspace, matter, nonmatter, air, the absence of air, light, the absence of light. How can we compare the neutron star to the Self, which is a trillion times greater, infinitely greater? There is no comparison, only an analogy of its greatness, of the stability-of-hardness, ever-present Self within each and every one of you. Quell the wanderings of the external mind. Bring it in through breathing, regulated breath. Quell the waves of the subconscious mind by bringing it into right belief, right words, right action—dharma—thus acknowledging all wrong actions, wrong words, wrong belief with penance, perseverance and final dissolution. Then there is nothing left but dharma—right action, right thought, right speech—within every experience of life. Dharma is sustained. ¶The neutron star: a trillion times more solid is the Self, which is you this very moment. Feel strong, feel secure, feel invincible, untouchable and yet able to be touched. Claim your heritage. Learn to work with yourself within yourself to accept your inherent identity. Don’t waste your time looking for your religious roots, racial roots, from the past. Once found, they will only give you momentary fulfillment. Accept and learn to deal with the realization of your acceptance of the undisputed fact of the strength of the Source. You are always your Source, emanating, ever emanating, creation, preservation and dissolution, but to create again to preserve the whims and fancies of the emanations of the neutron star. The emanations of the star, of which the Self, Paraśiva, you, is a billion times more compact, is this māyā of a constant, intricately complex series of performing, sustaining and cancelling out to perform again. Let’s all dance with Śiva and unfold within ourselves Śiva consciousness—the all-rightness of whatever happens, of all the happenings in the perfect universe called Śivaness. §
The Self is timeless, causeless and formless. Therefore, being That, it has no relation whatsoever to time, space and form. Form is in a constant state of creation, preservation and destruction within space, thus creating consciousness called time, and has no relationship to timelessness, causelessness or formlessness. The individual soul, when mature, can make the leap from the consciousness of space-time-causation into the timeless, causeless, formless Self. This is the ultimate maturing of the soul on this planet. ¶Form in its cycle of creation, preservation and destruction is always in one form or another, a manifest state or a gaseous state, but is only seeming to one who has realized the Self. Śiva in His manifest state is all form, in all form and permeating through all form, and hence all creation, preservation and destruction of form is Śiva. This is the dance, the movement of form. No form is permanent. Śiva in His unmanifest form is timeless, causeless, spaceless—hence called the Self God. Hence, Śiva has always existed, was never created, as both His manifest and unmanifest states have always existed. This is the divine dance and the mystery revealed to those who have realized the Self. ¶As I explained to a group of devotees in 1959, “The Self: you can’t explain it. You can sense its existence through the refined state of your senses, but you can’t explain it. To know it, you have to experience it. And the best you can say about it is that it is the depth of your Being. It’s the very core of you. It is you. ¶“If you visualize above you nothing; below you nothing; to the right of you nothing; to the left of you nothing; in front of you nothing; in back of you nothing; and dissolve yourself into that nothingness, that would be the best way you could explain the realization of the Self. And yet that nothingness would not be the absence of something, like the nothingness inside an empty box, which would be like a void. That nothingness is the fullness of everything: the power, the sustaining power, of the existence of what appears to be everything. ¶“But after you realize the Self, you see the mind for what it is—a self-created principle. That’s the mind ever creating itself. The mind is form ever creating form, preserving form, creating new forms and destroying old forms. That is the mind, the illusion, the great unreality, the part of you that in your thinking mind you dare to think is real. What gives the mind that power? Does the mind have power if it is unreal? What difference whether it has power or hasn’t power, or the very words that I am saying when the Self exists because of itself? You could live in the dream and become disturbed by it. Or you can seek and desire with a burning desire to cognize reality and be blissful because of it. Man’s destiny leads him back to himself. Man’s destiny leads him into the cognition of his own Being; leads him further into the realization of his True Being. They say you must step onto the spiritual path to realize the Self. You only step on the spiritual path when you and you alone are ready, when what appears real to you loses its appearance of reality. Then and only then are you able to detach yourself enough to seek to find a new and permanent reality.” §
The soul merged out of Śiva as the Self in His timeless, causeless, spaceless, unmanifest state and from Śiva as the Creator, Preserver and Destroyer in His manifest state of all form. The core of the merger between these two states, or the apex, causes a cell which breaks loose another cell, thus spawning souls. Each time the Being of Śiva goes from His manifest to His unmanifest state, it spawns a soul. ¶Where the Śakti unites with the unmanifest and Śiva unites with the manifest, this natural process, which continues even into the sahasrāra of man, is the core from whence creation comes. ¶Each God has a vehicle through which he is represented—Gaṇeśa the mouse, Murugan the peacock, and Śiva rides in man. The origin of man—being spawned from Śiva, the birthless, deathless God—therefore, is as a pure, taintless soul. After thus being spawned, the soul goes through a maturing process. This slow growth is in three basic categories: karma exercises, āṇava clouds, māyā distorts. This classroom of these experiences finally matures an intelligence free enough from the bondage of the classroom of āṇava, karma and māyā to realize its own Divinity and at-one-ment with Śiva as a taintless, pure soul. This, then, is the foundation, after once attained, for final liberation, Self Realization, to be sought for. ¶When the soul is spawned, it is a release of energy. This energy, once released, accumulates more energy around it from the manifest world, which is also Śiva. The impact of the spawning is so strong that finally a body is created around this tiny cell, which looks exactly like the Primal Soul body of the God that spawned the soul into being. The word soul in itself, meaning core, refers to this cell. The body of the soul, the actinic causal body, as it becomes denser, moves into another plane of manifest being and begins on its own to create, preserve and destroy, for it now is form, taking on the same nature, which is its nature, of Śiva in manifest form. The only difference now between this soul and Śiva is that Śiva can be in unmanifest state, but the soul is caught in the activity, the so-called bondage, of the manifest state. It has not yet completed the cycle. Once this soul has completed the cycle of the manifest state, then quite naturally it merges back into itself and realizes, or is, the unmanifest state. ¶After realization of the Self, to attain actual liberation from rebirth requires the willful and deliberate act of the adept at the point of death to direct the course. If he feels and knows that he has yet to perform actions of service on this planet, once the physical body has been parted from, he will find himself on an inner plane in which he can prepare to return at the proper place and proper time to fulfill his desire. However, should he have felt well satisfied with his many lives, as they play before his vision during his transition from his physical body, now ready to go on in this liberated state, he would find himself on an inner plane whence it would be impossible to reenter flesh. Thus, moksha, kaivalya, liberation from earthly birth, has been attained, and the way is open to further evolution on the subtle planes. ¶Embodied souls have attributes that are constantly refining themselves as they traverse the instinctive nature toward the Divine. These qualities are becoming more and more like Lord Śiva’s. His personality, attributes and qualities are described by the 1,008 names given to Him, for no single name is adequate to depict His attributes. Similarly, a person could not be adequately explained by one word. Now you can see the similarity between Lord Śiva and His offspring. §
There is nothing separate from Lord Śiva, who pervades all. The seeming separateness is the forgetting, lack of awareness or inability to be aware at all. Thus, all souls—Gods and men—are inseparable, tied into, a direct extension of Śiva, immanently close. The fearful distance is the state of the soul in the kevala or sakala avasthās, not in the śuddha avasthā, in which the enjoyment of the bliss of the oneness is felt. But the oneness is no less there in the kevala state. Souls, young and old, are directly connected to Lord Śiva—closer than breathing, nearer than hands or feet. He is the eye within the eyes of the beholder of His form, in souls young and old. Therefore, sight is the first experience of darshan. ¶You become everything when you merge in Śiva, but you are no longer you. The final destiny of the soul is to fully mature its soul body, at which time it would be identical to Śiva. This process leads the soul through three states or avasthās: kevala, sakala and śuddha. Once having been spawned, the soul exists in a quiescent condition, not being aware of itself. This is the kevala state. Eventually it hits matter, magnetizes matter around its first etheric body. This etheric body slowly develops into a mental, then emotional and astral body, and finally a physical body. This begins the sakala state—soul being aware of the mental plane, astral plane and finally the physical world. It is in the latter stages of the sakala state that religion begins, when the soul has completed enough of this process to realize its individual identity, apart from the mental matter, the emotional or astral matter and the physical matter. All through this process, the all-pervading Śiva nurtures the soul into its maturity on the onward march of its evolution. Lord Śiva does not create a soul, then, unattached from it, wait for it to return on its own volition. Rather, He creates the soul and energizes it through its entire evolution until, at the end of the śuddha avasthā, the final merger occurs, viśvagrāsa, absorption, by His grace. ¶All souls, Mahādevas, devas, people—and in all states, śuddha, sakala, kevala—have exactly the same relationship with Śiva. None is more favored, more dear or cared for than another. In the śuddha avasthā, the mental body is purified in the soul’s maturity and thus reflects its nature, Śiva’s nature, more than in the kevala or sakala state. Therefore, those older souls are doing the same work as the Lord naturally does. This is the loving caring for other souls. This is the innate nature of the soul and the absolute nature of Śiva. As the light cannot detach itself from its rays, Lord Śiva cannot withdraw Himself from His creations. §
All concepts of time, space, mind, universe, microcosm and macrocosm are what occur when inhabiting a physical body. But they are only concepts, not relating to what actually occurs. The seven chakras of the physical body produce their frameworks, relationships. The Self, the realization of God, Paraśiva, is immanent now within everyone, only realizable according to the soul’s evolution, which can be hastened through the practice of yoga. Therefore, to look for realizations through correlations or to seek correlations as destinations is futile. This is because what you seek after already exists in its fullness within each soul. ¶Those in the kevala avasthā are creating forms around the soul and are not inwardly directed. Those in the sakala avasthā are deciphering their creations and not interested. Those in the śuddha avasthā perceive, little by little, a fullness—that within which has never changed since the first cell broke away containing within it the fullness of Śiva, His samādhi as well as form. ¶Our soul is an immortal, effulgent being of light created by God Śiva in His image and evolving to union with Him. Its uncreated divine essence is Pure Consciousness and Absolute Reality, eternally one with Śiva. The unfoldment of the soul through the avasthās of existence can be understood in the analogy of the fragrant lotus rising above the water, drawn up by the sun, having come from the mud below. The mud is kevala, the lotus and its blossoming is sakala, and the sun is śuddha. ¶One day you will see the being of you, your divine soul body. You will see it inside the physical body. It looks like clean, clear plastic. Around it is a blue light, and the outline of it is whitish yellow. Inside of it is blue-yellowish light, and there are trillions of little nerve currents, or quantums, and light scintillating all through that. This body stands on a lotus flower. Inwardly looking down through your feet, you see you are standing on a big, beautiful lotus flower. This body has a head, it has eyes, and it has infinite intelligence. It is tuned into and feeds from the source of all energy. ¶The soul form, which is another way of naming the “soul body,” evolves as its consciousness evolves, becoming more and more refined until finally it is at the same intensity or refinement as the Primal Soul. The experiences of life, in all the various planes of consciousness, are “food for the soul,” reaping lessons that actually raise the level of intelligence and love. Thus, very refined souls are walking intelligences, beaming with love. The “soul body” is not like any other body, because it is the Being itself, not an encasement for the being. ¶I chose the term soul body many years ago to convey the very real fact that souls do have a human-like form that can be seen in mystic, superconscious vision. It was a way of describing the actual nature of the soul, which is not simply a ball of intelligence, or a point of awareness. But the body of the soul cannot be separated from the soul. They are one and the same. If you take away the form of the soul, all bonds are broken and jīva becomes Śiva.§
When the emotions begin to react in a systematic way, and hate and fear and jealousy and love and passion and all of those emotions begin to function properly, and awareness flows out into the conscious mind, the physical body begins to assume a mature, intelligent appearance. You can look at the person and judge, “By looking at his body, I see that he is an intelligent man.” That means all of his instinctive and intellectual faculties are developed and working simultaneously together. However, he may be yet to turn inward. Perhaps you can ascertain this by looking into his eyes. Perhaps in this life he will turn inward, when he has satisfied some of his desires he is setting into motion. As soon as he begins to turn inward, he begins to nourish his spiritual body. It starts to grow within the emotional body. It grows like a child, fed by all of his good deeds. All of his selflessness and selfless actions toward others feed that body. All of his working with himself, conquering instinctive emotions within himself, is food for that body, as it draws from the central source of energy. All of his selfishness and greed and giving power to the instinctive elements starve this spiritual body. You have heard about the suffering of the soul. As it unfolds, it cries out and wants more attention. This is man’s struggle within himself. ¶Finally, the spiritual body grows up into a mature body and unfolds the subsuperconscious mind, grows up more and becomes aware in the superconscious mind, taking on more spiritual force from the Infinite. Ultimately, it takes over the astral emotional-intellectual body. ¶That is the whole story of the inner awakening that is occurring within each of us. The mere fact that it makes sense to you as you read about it means you are in the process of this experience of superconsciousness moving out into the conscious plane. ¶Ultimately, you begin to go through the harrowing experiences of past karma with your eyes firmly set upon your ultimate goal: Self Realization. As you live your life in service to mankind, reprogramming your subconscious and facing all of the things that you didn’t face fully through your many past lives while working with your emotions and intellect, finally you come to the crucifixion of the ego. This happens when your last experiences have begun to fade and you no longer see yourself as a “Mr. Somebody” who came from some community somewhere, who is of a certain nationality and who, incidentally, distinguishes himself from all other people because he is on the path to enlightenment and he knows a lot of people that are not. ¶This great spiritual pride of the personal ego finally is crucified. It is put on the cross of man’s own spiritual discernment. The death of the ego is a tremendous experience. You go through the dark night of the soul and feel that your family, friends and even the Gods have deserted you. During this time, you do not see light anymore. You see blackness all through the body, as all of the accumulated experiences of the many, many lives come in on you and you are not even aware where your awareness is in the mind. You can’t figure it all out. It happens too rapidly. Then finally: “I am That. I am.” You burst into the Self God. §
The golden body, svarṇaśarīra, is a body made of golden light. After many experiences of Paraśiva, it gradually descends from the seven chakras above the sahasrāra into the ājñā chakra, which then becomes the soul’s mūlādhāra, then down into the viśuddha chakra, which then becomes its mūlādhāra, and then down into the anāhata, which then becomes its mūlādhāra. ¶All seven chakras above the sahasrāra slowly come down and down and down until the entire astral body is psychically seen, by mystics who have this sight, as a golden body. The astral body slowly, slowly, slowly dissolves into the golden body. That is what I have seen happen. That is what our paramparā and our sampradāya know from experience. Experience is the only true knowing—a knowing that can be verified in books, through others who have the same knowing, but a knowing that no others know who have not had the same experience. To them it is only a concept, a nice one maybe, but just a concept or written off as an opinion. ¶When the golden body fully enters the physical, having taken over the astral, the knowing that is known comes unbidden. It is beyond reason but does not conflict with it. It is a living scripture but does not conflict with those written by seers of the past who have seen and their records have become scripture. So great is the Sanātana Dharma that it defies all who doubt it, all who disdain it, all who disregard it, all who degrade it, with personal realization of its Truth. ¶This golden body, which begins to build into a golden body after the experience of nirvikalpa samādhi, is connected to the sahasrāra chakra. In other words, the sahasrāra chakra is the home base in the physical body for the golden body. There are twelve basic unfoldments to this chakra as the golden body grows. When the realized sannyāsin travels in high states of contemplation, he moves freely in his golden body and can help and serve mankind. Over time, he gains a conscious control of the sahasrāra chakra as a force center which propels him into inner space. ¶It is this golden body, as it refines and refines and refines itself within the Śivaloka after moksha, that finally merges with Śiva like a cup of water being poured into the ocean. That same water can never be found and put back into the cup. This truly is svarṇaśarīra viśvagrāsa, the final, final, final merging with Śiva.§