6. Life of Life
Sadhana Practice§
Suggestions for Wandering: Step one is to find a mirror and look into it with the purpose of seeing your soul. This is done by looking into your eyes and seeing the sparkle, the pure life energy within them.§
Step two is to wander the grounds and look at the humans and nature that surrounds you and focus on the life in it—the people, plants, trees, animals, fish birds. §
Step three is to focus so intently on the life in all these forms that you become aware of God as the sense of oneness that pervades them all, the “Life of life.” Follow Yogaswami’s advise and consider yourself as the same as others and not separate. You are in everyone.”§
Quote from Gurudeva§
As our great satguru, Śiva Yogaswami, said, “There is one thing that Lord Śiva cannot do. He can do everything, but there is one thing He cannot do. He cannot separate Himself from me.” That is the only thing that God Śiva cannot do. He cannot take Himself out of you. §
Supplementary Reading§
He who knows God as the Life of life, the Eye of the eye, the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, he indeed comprehends fully the Cause of all causes.§
In this exercise, our sixth and final one, we are taking the concept of the soul and having an individual awareness even deeper by focusing on the underlying unitary consciousness that is found in the essence of the soul. In this perspective, there is only one being, not a group of separate individuals. §
In the monks morning shum meditation, there is a word that is meditated on toward the end which is “ee-leef-tyay.” It names the experience of being the life force in everyone. Gurudeva’s exact definition is: seeing, knowing, feeling, being lawmf, the life force, actinic energy in everyone, especially those closest to the experiencer. This last part of Gurudeva’s definition gives us an important key to achieving this experience of God which is that it is easier to achieve with those we are close to. §
The Hindu idea that God is inside of every person as the essence of our soul, and can be experienced today, is quite different from the concept of Western religions that God is in heaven and therefore not able to be experienced. Gurudeva stated this beautifully when he said: “God Śiva is so close to us. He is closer than our breathing, nearer to us than our hands or feet. Yes, He is the very essence of our soul.”§
Gurudeva gives us another way of experiencing God within all which is focusing on the life energy in everything we see. He states in the first verse of Dancing with Śiva: “We are immortal souls living and growing in the great school of earthly experience in which we have lived many lives. Vedic rishis have given us courage by uttering the simple truth, “God is the Life of our life.” A great sage carried it further by saying there is one thing God cannot do: God cannot separate Himself from us. This is because God is our life. God is the life in the birds. God is the life in the fish. God is the life in the animals. Becoming aware of this Life energy in all that lives is becoming aware of God’s loving presence within us. §
“We are the undying consciousness and energy flowing through all things. Deep inside we are perfect this very moment, and we have only to discover and live up to this perfection to be whole. Our energy and God’s energy are the same, ever coming out of the void. We are all beautiful children of God. Each day we should try to see the life energy in trees, birds, animals and people. When we do, we are seeing God Śiva in action.” §
As we mentioned in one of our talks, in Hindu thought the concept of life and the soul are synonymous and that one of the advantages of this simple explanation of the soul, which equates it with life, is that it makes it easy to experience the soul. We can do this by looking into a mirror and seeing the light and sparkle within our eyes. That life is your soul.§
And that taking this concept of divinity one step further is the concept of God as the Life of life, the Soul of the soul. Another useful phrase that conveys the same meaning is that God is the essence of the soul, meaning if you look deeply enough into the soul you will experience God. In other words, the life we see in someone is the soul, and the essence or Life of that life is God.§
We also mentioned that the way we know if we are experiencing the individual soul or God as the essence of the soul is that when we are experiencing the soul there is a sense that every soul is separate from the others. However, when we perceive God as the Life of life, the sense of separateness is replaced with a sense of oneness. §
Yogaswami’s story which illustrates this is point is: There were four people in the room. Yogaswami asked, “How many are here?” Someone said: ‘Four’. Yogaswami then said, “No. Only one is here, like four people.” Yogaswami would often make the statement to his devotees “I am in you.” He would also say: “I know all your thoughts; not only yours but everybody’s; I am in everybody. You do not know this, because you think of yourself as being separate from others. Learn to consider yourself as the same as others and not separate.”§
Additional Resources§
Merging with Śiva Lesson 315: Yoking the Inner Worlds§
