Introduction
ग्रन्थकारभूमिका
AIVA DHARMA ŚĀSTRAS IS A POTENT EDICT, AN IRREVOCABLE COMMISSION TO MY ĀCHĀRYA SUCCESSORS, DETAILING THEIR FUTURE DUTIES AND RESPONSIBILITIES. FURTHER, IT IS A DOSSIER DESCRIBING FOR CHURCH MEMBERS AND THE public our international headquarters, monasteries, missions and extended families, our Himālayan Academy, ministry and initiations, our family and monastic paths, articles of faith and conduct. It explains our World Outreach Mission: to protect, preserve and promote the Śaivite Hindu religion, to foster the growth of all sects of Hinduism through Hindu solidarity and to teach monistic Śaiva Siddhānta for the spiritual unfoldment of the individual and the family through temple worship and daily sādhana. How members live, conduct themselves, raise their families and perform their dharma is all elucidated here. This śāstra portrays a fellowship that is a one body of belief, worship and allegiance. Each member has studied and upholds the same scriptures and creed. Each worships God Śiva through the traditional ceremonies and sacred observances. Each is well versed in the teachings of our sampradāya, a tradition that values practice above learning. Each finds authority in our religious hierarchical lineage, or paramparā. Each performs the potent sādhanas of the Śaiva Neri, regular disciplines which yield spiritual transformation through self-effort. Each looks to the spiritual preceptor, or satguru, as the supreme guiding force. This is the seventh edition of Śaiva Dharma Śāstras. The first was issued as a manual in 1958. Subsequent editions were released in 1971, 1980, 1981 and 1982 to reflect the needs of a growing, worldwide organization. The sixth edition evolved out of my 1986 pastoral world tour. In 1973—with the advent of the Lemurian, Dravidian and Śaivite Śāstras, known collectively as the Lord Subramaniam Śāstras—the spirit and culture of our international Church was slowly molded into the patterns described in those ancient books read from the ākāśic library of Lord Subramaniam. One of the remarkable things about the śāstra you are about to read is that it is a living expression of these ancient śāstras, with hundreds and thousands of people today living according to its precepts. Śaiva Siddhānta is shining forth in many lands and languages through The Master Course and Dancing with Śiva. Hindu solidarity is being forged through HINDUISM TODAY. Kulapati missionaries and maṭhavāsi ministers are serving tirelessly. §
The Working Together of the Three Worlds§
¶The Śaivite Śāstras, the inner-plane prophecy that has guided our Church since it was clairvoyantly read in 1973, predicted in verse 471 what we now see has come to pass: “By the time 1995 arrived, the inner order and the outer order of Śaivism worked in harmony with the band of Mahādevas in the Third World. Lord Skanda and Umāgaṇeśa and Lord Śiva Himself were pleased at this band of great Lemurian souls working together in the Second World and the First World. Constant rays from cosmic galaxies began to penetrate these monasteries deep into the earth, some so strong they penetrated through the earth. This permanent śakti that vibrated all the temple land resounded through the countryside, establishing a peace of mind and abundant consciousness for those who lived within the radiance of this darśana of the monasteries and temples. Looking into the future, we can see this vibration growing in the ground.” §
These Śāstras Shall Guide Our Future§
¶The arrival of 1995 is indeed a great event for all of us, a fulfillment of the magical Śaivite Sāstras so generously composed by divine ṛishis and master adepts in the Antarloka, or astral plane. As this year, 1995, unfolds, the past has met the present, and it is truly a glorious time, because I can now add to the great inner-plane manuscripts first read from the ākāśa in 1973 these Śaiva Dharma Śāstras, the story of our contemporary Church’s ideals, day-to-day customs and procedures. Lemurian Scrolls and these Śaiva Dharma Śāstras are the legacy I leave my āchārya successors, their guidelines and firm laws, their commission to follow and fulfill, along with The master Course trilogy—Dancing, Living and Merging with Śiva, and Shum, the language of meditation. Our pattern has been completed, the prophecy manifested better than any of our expectations. We are eternally grateful for the untiring help the Gods, devasand ṛishis have provided ever since the Lord Subramaniam Śāstras were revealed, a profoundly needed message from the past for the present, now preserved for the future. My āchārya successors will have a momentous task, to be sure. They who have striven so hard to fulfill their holy orders of sannyāsa will have these Śaiva Dharma Śāstras, the Lord Subramaniam Śāstras and the Maṭhavāsi Śāstras as their discipline, their sādhana and, yes, sometimes their tapas. As the future is based upon the past, this recorded past within these Śāstras releases new energy. As predicted in the Śaivite Śāstras, by 1995, the year we are in now, our pattern is set, and constant preservation and perpetuation is commissioned by me and by the inner worlds for its fulfillment generation after generation for over a thousand years into the future of futures, for ever and ever. Yea, much longer than that, much longer than forever, for these śāstras give the explanation of life as it is to be lived and has been lived by a healthy, happy, spiritually productive, small inner group and larger outer group, both ever growing in strength and numbers. Listen now to the great śāstra that guides my successors and their successors and theirs and theirs into the future of futures as a unified, traditional body of servants of Śiva. §
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.§
ŚUKLA YAJUR VEDA, BRIHAD 4.4.18. UPP, 179§
TheLord Subramaniam Śāstras§
¶Within these Śaiva Dharma Śāstras we quote extensively from the Śaivite Śāstras and the Lemurian and Dravidian Śāstras, two texts from our Lord Subramaniam Śāstras, revealed to me clairvoyantly in 1973. The Lemurian and Dravidian Śāstras are being released to dīkshā śishyas under the title Lemurian Scrolls, but the Śaivite Śāstras will continue to be a private text restricted to our monastics under vows. In quoting from these three texts in Śaiva Dharma Śāstras we have brought forth the principles that will be most helpful to students and members of our fellowship who seek to understand the inner workings of this glorious inner and outer universe.§
A Hymn From Sage Yogaswāmī§
¶I conclude this brief introduction to a prodigious work with a profound hymn composed by my preceptor, Satguru Āsān Yogaswāmī, spiritual master for half a century of Sri Lanka’s 2.5 million Śaiva Tamil peoples. In this proclamation, Āsān Yogaswāmī sets the sādhanas for all sincere Śaivites now and in the future. §
Listen, while I tell you the path to liberation:
Truth, patience, calmness and discipline of self;
Discrimination twixt the eternal and the passing;
Devotion to the humble servants of the Lord;
Rising in the early morn and bathing before daybreak;
Repeating in the way prescribed the flawless letters five;
Worshiping the guru’s feet, applying holy ash;
Eating but when hungry, with the whole heart giving praise;
Studying the śāstras, seeing others as oneself;
Severing attachment to all property and wealth;
Speaking with fit courtesy, avoiding argument;
Driving from the mind all thought of family and caste;
Being ever free of the smallest like or dislike;
Living and abiding ’neath the Lord’s eternal feet.§
¶All śāstras are explicit in their laws, rules and regulations beyond what any human could live by, but that is what the Sanskṛit word śāstra means: a law book, a book of discipline to be obeyed, a divine work such as the Sikh Ādigrantha, the Buddhist Dhammapada, the Jewish Torah, the Muslim Koran, or the Christian Bible. We hereby commend to Śaiva devotees everywhere this great work inspired by the Lord of lords, King of kings, the God of Gods, the Guru of gurus, the knower of past, present and future, author of the four Vedas and the Śaiva Āgamas, Lord Śiva Himself. Aum.§
He is the Ancient One. He created the beings of earth and heaven in days of yore in order divine. The six faiths seek the feet but of the One Primal, Peerless God. And in them all, He pervades in measure appropriate.§
Tirumantiram 1557. TM§
They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuṇa, Agni or the heavenly sunbird Garutmat. The seers call in many ways that which is One; they speak of Agni, Yama, Mātariśvan. §
Ṛig Veda 1.164.46. VE, 660§
Him who is without beginning and without end, in the midst of confusion, the Creator of all, of manifold form, the One embracer of the universe—by knowing God, one is released from all fetters.§
Kṛishṇa Yajur Veda, SvetU 5.13. UpH, 407§
Who by His grandeur has emerged sole sovereign of every living thing that breathes and slumbers, He who is Lord of man and four-legged creatures—what God shall we adore with our oblation?§
Ṛig Veda 10.121.3. VE, 71§
The Primordial Vastness is the sky. The Primordial Vastness is the sphere of space. The Primordial Vastness is the mother, the father, the son. The Primordial Vastness is all the Gods, the five sorts of men, all that was born and shall be born.§
Ṛig Veda 1.89.10. HP, 114§
Lord Śiva is the master of all the four-footed and two-footed beings and it is a confirmed truth that their bondage and liberation are under the will of Him.§
Chandrajñāna Āgama, Kriyā Pāda, 1.44.§