Rishis proclaim that we are not our body, mind or emotions. We are divine souls on a wondrous journey. We came from God, live in God and are evolving into oneness with God. We are, in truth, the Truth we seek. 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 Siva in action. The Vedas affirm, “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.” §
The ultimate goal of life on Earth is to realize the Self God, the rare attainment of nirvikalpa samadhi. Each soul discovers its Sivaness, Absolute Reality, Parasiva—the timeless, formless, spaceless Self.§
The realization of the Self, Parasiva, is the destiny of each soul, attainable through renunciation, sustained meditation and frying the seeds of karmas yet to germinate. It is the gateway to moksha, liberation from rebirth. The Self lies beyond the thinking mind, beyond the feeling nature, beyond action or any movement of even the highest state of consciousness. The Self God is more solid than a neutron star, more elusive than empty space, more intimate than thought and feeling. It is ultimate reality itself, the innermost Truth all seekers seek. It is well worth striving for. It is well worth struggling to bring the mind under the dominion of the will. After the Self is realized, the mind is seen for the unreality that it truly is. Because Self Realization must be experienced in a physical body, the soul cycles back again and again into flesh to dance with Siva, live with Siva and ultimately merge with Siva in undifferentiated oneness. Yea, jiva is actually Siva. The Vedas explain, “As water poured into water, milk poured into milk, ghee into ghee become one without differentiation, even so the individual soul and the Supreme Self become one.”§
The Self is like a neutron star, one million 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, Parasiva, you, is a billion times more compact, is this maya of a constant, intricately complex series of performing, sustaining and cancelling out to perform again. Let’s all dance with Siva and unfold within ourselves Siva consciousness—the all-rightness of whatever happens, of all the happenings in the perfect universe called Sivaness.§
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. Siva 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 Siva. This is the dance, the movement of form. No form is permanent. Siva in His unmanifest form is timeless, causeless, spaceless—hence called the Self God. Hence, Siva 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.§
The soul merged out of Siva as the Self in His timeless, causeless, spaceless, unmanifest state and from Siva 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 Siva goes from His manifest to His unmanifest state, it spawns a soul.§
Where the Shakti unites with the unmanifest and Siva unites with the manifest, this natural process, which continues even into the sahasrara of man, is the core from whence creation comes.§
Each God has a vehicle through which he is represented—Ganesha the mouse, Murugan the peacock, and Siva rides in man. The origin of man—being spawned from Siva, 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, anava clouds, maya distorts. This classroom of these experiences finally matures an intelligence free enough from the bondage of the classroom of anava, karma and maya to realize its own Divinity and at-one-ment with Siva 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 Siva. 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 Siva in manifest form. The only difference now between this soul and Siva is that Siva 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 Siva’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 Siva and His offspring.§