Lesson 296 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are the Many Hindu Philosophies?

ŚLOKA 141
From time immemorial, India’s sages and philosophers have pondered the nature of reality. Out of their speculations have blossomed hundreds of schools of thought, all evolving from the rich soil of village Hinduism. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
At one end of Hinduism’s complex spectrum is monism, advaita, which perceives a unity of God, soul and world, as in Sankara’s acosmic pantheism and Kashmīr Śaiva monism. At the other end is dualism, dvaita—exemplified by Madhva and the early Pāśupatas—which teaches two or more separate realities. In between are views describing reality as one and yet not one, dvaita-advaita, such as Ramanuja’s Vaishṇava Vedānta and Srikantha’s Śaiva Viśishṭādvaita. Hindu philosophy consists of many schools of Vedic and Āgamic thought, including the six classical darśanas—Nyāya, Vaiśeshika, Sāṇkhya, Yoga, Mīmāṁsā and Vedānta. Each theology expresses the quest for God and is influenced by the myth, mystery and cultural syncretism of contemporary, tribal, shamanic Hinduism alive in every village in every age. India also produced views, called nāstika, that reject the Vedas and are thus not part of Hinduism, such as Jainism, Sikhism, Buddhism and Chārvāka materialistic atheism. The Vedas state, “Theologians ask: What is the cause? Is it Brahmā? Whence are we born? Whereby do we live? And on what are we established?” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 296 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

The Sādhana Of Resolution

If a disruption is not resolved before sleep, then a kukarmaphala, fruit of wrongdoing, will be created. The hurt feelings and mental arguments continue to fester until the matter is brought up and openly faced to be resolved. If not resolved within 72 hours, the problem germinates, and elders must take action under spiritual guidance to rectify the matter. The fact that all have chosen to avoid facing the difficulty shows that more serious remedies are required.

Resolution in all cases is accomplished through the hṛī prāyaśchitta: apology, the showing of remorse, talking together in small groups and giving gifts as tokens of reconciliation. Humility is the keynote. Sincere apology is offered for participating in argument or confusion, even if one was not necessarily to blame; the karma was there that attracted the situation. Harmony is reinstated by honestly accepting apologies, by forgiving and forgetting with the firm resolve to never bring up the matter again. Zero tolerance is based on the shared understanding that by working together on the firm foundation of love and trust all will progress in religious service and worship. Through these efforts, a sukarmaphala, fruit of right doing, is deliberately created. When two śishyas sit to settle a disharmony, it is sometimes helpful for an uninvolved third party to be present, even silently, to balance the energies.

Sādhana—personal transformation through self-effort—is the magic balm that soothes the nerve system, giving strength for each śishya to have forbearance with people and patience with circumstances. When sādhana is neglected, problems close in. Families find it difficult to see eye to eye. Hard feelings arise in even the simplest and well-intended encounters when the individuals have become too externalized.

There is a natural harmony within our monasteries, which families seek to emulate. Rarely is much discussion required when daily activities are being carried out, for the lines of authority based on seniority are always clear. This is the first boon for maintaining harmony among a group. Ours is a traditional hierarchical system of governance, upheld within our family and monastic communities, established when the Vedas were created. It is a system whereby the elders, in a loving manner, guide those younger than they. So, there is always an atmosphere of respect, loving harmony and meeting of minds. Never is scolding heard or feelings hurt or arguments provoked or sincere questions left unanswered. Here “love is the sum of the law,” and the heartfelt feelings going out from the elders protect and support those who will one day themselves be elders. We create a secure and loving society in which intelligence overrides controversy and the only rigid rule is wisdom. Thus the prāṇic magnetism of the family or monastery is maintained and kept ever building for sustainable success and spirituality.

Yes, I can tell you from experience that zero tolerance for inharmonious conditions is a workable law and sādhana that can and should be adopted by all spiritual groups and individuals. My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, used to say, “It takes a lot of courage to be happy all the time.” Most people, it seems, would rather be miserable. Think about it. They go through life getting their feelings hurt, resenting this or that and hurting the feelings of others in an endless cycle of unresolved emotion, asking a torrent of unanswerable rhetorical questions. Take today’s average family: it’s a composite of troubled individuals.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 296: WEARING THE EMBLEMS OF ŚAIVISM
All Śiva’s devotees, men and women, boys and girls, wear holy ash and the proper forehead mark for religious events and in public when appropriate. They wear a single rudrāksha bead on the neck at all times. Aum.

Lesson 296 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Controlling Odic Force Fields

Occasionally, a devotee will come along in meditation and have sublime inner experiences. He’s experiencing the viśuddha chakra, and he has inner light experiences. He’s just on top of the world. A month later, he meets some karmic boomerang. He doesn’t have the stamina or the discipline to hold awareness within, and he starts flowing through the second chakra, and he’s saying, “I’ve never had any experiences at all. I wonder why? (the second chakra is reason) I wonder why I don’t have some inward experiences,” and why this and why that and why something else. “I wonder why I’m even doing meditation.” He’s wondering why all the way along, and he’s quite argumentative.

I say, “Don’t you remember the beautiful experience that you told me about? You came all wide open.” “Oh, no, no, no.” He doesn’t remember that at all. “What experience?” he asks. “Don’t you remember? You were right here in the temple,” I say, trying to lead him gently back to his experience, “and your head turned into a sea of light. You sat there for an hour and then came and told me all about it.” Then we pretend it only happened a moment ago, and he is back within again. This happens quite regularly. Therefore, to stabilize awareness, so it does not flow through the first chakra, the fifth chakra, the third chakra, the second chakra, to stabilize awareness, what do we do? Attention, concentration, meditation. Attention, concentration, meditation. We work daily within ourselves so we stabilize, and so that willpower and awareness become one and the same great motivating force, so we travel through the areas of the mind that we want to, not propelled by the forces of karma as they boomerang back, not propelled by those forces. We have to work within daily to stabilize the breath and the body so that will and awareness become one and the same great motivating force. Then, when the patterns and stumbling blocks of the past loom before us, we have the strength to stay within and maintain the continuity of one inner unfoldment after another.

These magnetic forces are either passive or aggressive in their manifestation. Business advertising is one example of aggressive odic force in use. Sexual magnetism is one example of passive odic force. Our physical body is composed of a subtle balance between active and passive magnetic forces. When the aggressive odic force becomes too active, the passive forces become disturbed and illness results, generally of a mental or emotional nature. When the passive odic forces become overstimulated, physical ailments of a purely physical nature result.

Odic forces are colorful and are of the conscious and subconscious world. Actinic force is colorless, or very refined in color, and is the vibration of deeper consciousness. When the mind is in a disturbed state, the odic forces are out of balance with each other. The trained yoga adept knows how to open himself to the inflow of actinic force, which then quiets or appeases the odic discharge. The evolution of the adept through meditation depends on the measure of his control and use of the odic forces as he enters into the consciousness of the actinic world. Many people start on the path of Self Realization in an almost involuntary way, simply by asking the fundamental question, “Who, or what, am I?” In so doing, they turn the mind fiber in upon itself and become tuned into the substance of actinic force.

Everyone has his own actinic wave length or actinic ray upon which, or within which, his awareness glides in the realms of expanded consciousness. A satguru’s actinic ray is actually heard as nāda, the “eeee” sound. This mystic sound the guru hears as he tunes into his guru. His guru listens to the same sound to be one with his satguru, and on and on, back in time, which is within the “now.” To become one with, or of a similar vibration with, the actinic vibration of the satguru is synonymous to listening to the sound of the guru’s lineage. This is called the nāda-nāḍī śakti. The devotee endeavors in this meditation to listen to his guru’s nāda, not his own but that of his guru, his guru’s guru and all the others back in time. This is oneness, the oneness of a devotee merging into the satguru’s lineage.

Lesson 295 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

How Is the Affirmation of Faith Used?

ŚLOKA 140
Intoning the affirmation of faith, we positively assert that God is both manifest and unmanifest, both permeating the world and transcending it, both personal Divine Love and impersonal Reality. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
On the lips of Śaivites throughout the world resounds the proclamation “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality.” It is a statement of fact, a summation of truth, even more potent when intoned in one’s native language. “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality,” we repeat prior to sleep. “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality,” we say upon awakening as we recall the transcendent knowledge gained from the ṛishis during sleep. These sacred words we say as we bathe to prepare to face the day, God Śiva’s day, reminding ourselves that His immanent love protects us, guides us, lifting our mind into the arena of useful thoughts and keeping us from harm’s way. Devotees write this affirmation 1,008 times as a sahasra lekhana sādhana. It may be spoken 108 times daily in any language before initiation into Namaḥ Śivāya. Yea, the recitation of this affirmation draws devotees into Śiva consciousness. The Tirumantiram says, “The ignorant prate that love and Śiva are two. They do not know that love alone is Śiva. When men know that love and Śiva are the same, love as Śiva they ever remain.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 295 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Philosophers’ Magic Barge

We are told that hundreds of years ago in the city of Madurai, known as the Athens of India for its cultural pre-eminence, there was constructed at the Meenakshi Somasundareśvara Śivan Koyil, within the vast temple tank, a magic boat called the Philosophers’ Barge. Ṛishis came from the Himalayas, pandits from all corners of India and humble bhakta siddhas from the South to sit together and discuss life, illumination and release from mortality. This boat’s singular magic was its extraordinary ability to expand to accommodate any number of people who conversed with an attitude of respect and harmony. But, miraculously, it grew smaller when discussion turned rancorous, and those who brought about the contention suddenly found themselves in the water, swimming to shore in embarrassment. In Śiva’s temple, it seems, only nonargumentative discussion was allowed.

We have no magic boats today, …or perhaps we do. During a recent pilgrimage to India, I spoke to several large groups of devotees, including hundreds of sādhus of the Swaminarayan Fellowship, about zero tolerance for inharmonious conditions. Everyone found the message pertinent, yet difficult to practice, for there is no group of people on Earth for whom living in harmony is not a challenge at one time or another. But it is true that among my monastics we have zero tolerance for disharmonious conditions of any kind.

Harmony is the first and foremost rule of living in all spheres, but particularly in spiritual work, where it is an absolute must. Striving for harmony begins within the home and radiates out into all dimensions of life, enhancing and making joyous and sublime each relationship for every devotee. Thus, each strives to be considerate and kindly in thought, word and deed, to unfold the beautiful, giving qualities of the soul, to utter only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary. The great Tamil saint, Tiruvalluvar, offers the following sage advice in Tirukural verse 100: “To utter harsh words when sweet ones would serve is like eating unripe fruit when ripe ones are at hand.” Yes, this is the ideal. I was asked by the swāmīs in Gujarat, time after time, “But what if conflict and contention do arise?” My answer was that in our fellowship all work stops and the problem is attended to at once. It is each one’s responsibility to follow this wisdom. Nothing could be more counterproductive and foolish than to continue work, especially religious work, while conflict prevails, for demonic forces have been unleashed that must be dispelled for any effort to be fruitful and long lasting. Any breach in the angelic force field of the home, monastery or workplace must be sealed off quickly.

Our approach is simple. We are all committed to the shared sādhana that all difficult feelings must be resolved before sleep, lest they give rise to mental argument, go to seed and germinate as unwanted, troublesome vāsanās, subconscious impressions, that cannot be totally erased but only softened and neutralized through the mystic processes of atonement. Disharmony is disruption of the harmonious prāṇic flow: anger, argument, back-biting, walking out of meetings, painful words and hurt feelings. The Vedas pray, “May our minds move in accord. May our thinking be in harmony—common the purpose and common the desire. May our prayers and worship be alike, and may our devotional offerings be one and the same” (Ṛig Veda 10.191.3. VE, P. 854). One of the principles of harmony is that the commitment to harmony has to be greater than any commitment to any particular issue or problem. Problems change, but the strength of harmony has to be the ultimate priority. This is a conceptual tool to use whenever differences arise.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 295: VISITING SHRINES TO GODS AND GURUS
My devotees all revere and pilgrimage to Nallur and Murugan’s six South Indian temples, Gaṇeśa’s many temples and shrines, especially Kumbhalavalai, and the samādhi shrines of our lineage. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 295 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Nature’s Two Basic Forces

There are two basic forces in the universe, which you can look up in the dictionary. One is called odic force. The other is actinic force. Odic force is magnetic force. Odic force is the force of collective energies that make things—trees, chairs, tables, houses, the physical body. Odic force is of the material world—dense and heavy. The aura around the physical body and the forces of nature which govern much of man’s life on Earth are odic force.

Actinic force is your pure life force coming from the central source deep within, out through the nerve system. But as soon as this pure life force begins to mingle with the astral atoms and the physical body atoms, it turns to odic force. The study of these two forces can give you a great awakening—two primal forces.

The sahasrāra chakra, the ājñā chakra, the viśuddha chakra—the top three, the head and throat centers—are primarily actinic force centers of rarefied inner consciousness within the superconscious itself. The anāhata chakra, the heart center, which allows us to look out into the external world and within to the internal areas, is primarily a mixture of actinic force and odic force. It’s called actinodic. It’s a mixture of these two forces. However, the lower three chakras—maṇipūra, svādhishṭhāna and mūlādhāra—are primarily odic force chakras. They are the forces that make up what we call the world.

The iḍā and piṅgalā forces are basically odic forces. So, therefore, when the odic force is withdrawn back into the sushumṇā, back into its actinic substance, we completely lose awareness of the external world. That is how we enter meditation, by withdrawing the odic forces. The prāṇa is the in-between. It is the actinodic force that flows in and through odic and actinic forces. It is the binder of these two forces.

But it’s easier to relate to the word odic and the word actinic and compare these two forces, because you can feel them through your physical body. Lift your arm. The movement of the spirit within is actinic force, and all the rest that happens is odic force, including the arm itself, the vibrations around the arm. They’re all odic force. The mixture of what is going on is actinodic force, which is the closest, in looking at it in this way, that we come to prāṇa.

When we are in actinic force and we are aware of it, we have harmony, we have peace in all aspects of our external life. Everything goes right and everyone sees eye to eye and finds points of agreement, one with another. There’s no argument, and there’s no confusion. However, when we become conscious in and awareness is flowing through the odic force realms, awareness actually thinks it is odic force. Then we have inharmonious conditions to live in. No one sees eye to eye, one with another. There’s argument, and there is contention.

Look at these chakras as vast fields of collective related and interrelated thought realms, like vast cities, and look at awareness as the traveler through these chakras. When you are flowing awareness through one of these vast energy fields of actinodic force or actinic force, with these thought or perceptive layers within it, you think a certain way as you hit each of these strata of thought. Think of it in that way. As you travel through, the nerve ganglia within the spinal cord are registering all this and bringing what you are experiencing into your immediate consciousness. You become aware of it through the nerve ganglia within the spine.

Through a mixture of actinic and odic force, willpower and awareness motivate the travels through these layers of the mind. When the nerve force does begin to register when you’re in a certain chakra, it begins to vibrate, and it throws off color and it throws off sound, and then, within you, you do see these disc-like wheels spinning. I have experienced that. I have seen them, and they’re just like they are represented in the picture books, but much more vivid. They have sounds—in fact, they’re quite noisy—because color and sound and energy are all the same thing in the inner realms, and that is how they have produced these images that you see in books on mysticism and occultism. However, they are greater than that. They are great energy fields in the inner man, and they flow. They are what make up people. The physical body has a connection to each one of these seven chakras, though you may not be aware of all of them—you may only be aware in one of them or two of them—and that is the way you think.

Lesson 294 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is Śaivism’s Affirmation of Faith?

ŚLOKA 139
The proclamation “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality” is a potent affirmation of faith. Said in any of Earth’s 3,000 languages, it summarizes the beliefs and doctrines of the Śaivite Hindu religion. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
An affirmation of faith is a terse, concise statement summarizing a complex philosophical tradition. “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality,” is what we have when we take the milk from the sacred cow of Śaivism, separate out the cream, churn that cream to rich butter and boil that butter into a precious few drops of ghee. “God Śiva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality” is the sweet ghee of the Śaivite Hindu religion. In the Sanskrit language it is Premaiva Śivamaya, Satyam eva Paraśivaḥ. In the sweet Tamil language it is even more succinct and beautiful: Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam. In French it is Dieu Śiva est Amour Omniprésent et Réalité Transcendante. We strengthen our mind with positive affirmations that record the impressions of the distilled and ultimate truths of our religion so that these memories fortify us in times of distress, worldliness or anxiety. The Tirumantiram proclaims, “Transcending all, yet immanent in each He stands. For those bound in the world here below, He is the great treasure. Himself the Parapara Supreme, for all worlds He gave the way that His greatness extends.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 294 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Getting Hold Of Your Mind

Those who are not considerate get very hurt when someone does not consider their feelings. Why? Because their feelings, their personality, are sticking out like antennas all over them, ready to be kinked up and twisted up when somebody is not considerate or loving toward them. Yet they don’t show others the same consideration which they expect for themselves.

That is what creates the negative dream—everyone expecting everyone else to be very considerate of their feelings. And that is why we have etiquette books, to teach people to be considerate of other people’s feelings—to teach those who really don’t want to be considerate, but have to learn to be because they are out to build careers and make money, and they know they won’t do so well unless they learn to be considerate, so they have to intellectually know how. But it is all surface. The word insincere describes the person who doesn’t fulfill what he knows he should fulfill, but pretends that he does. We call him insincere.

That insincerity doesn’t hurt anybody but himself, because you can’t send out anything out into the world but that it comes back. When does it come back? It comes back later in life. He may get along fine when his body is young and healthy. He can be just as insincere as he wants to be, but later on in life he won’t get along so fine, because the karmic rebounds start coming back, the reactions start coming back. They start coming back from other people, who become insincere with him. They also start coming back from deep within himself, from his conscience, when he learns that the way he had been was not right. Someday, unless he is fortunate enough to study yoga and clear it all up—perhaps through burning up the emotional memory patterns using the vāsanā daha tantra—he will suffer over it. And he will suffer over it a great deal.

The art of consideration is a real art, because it is a constant study. It really is a constant study. And it is a creative study. It is the art of learning how not to just get by; it is the art of learning how to fulfill your destiny through following the knowing principle inside you.

When you are in for the realization of the Self, you have to stop the cycles of hurt feelings and regrets. Just stop! You have to learn by exercising your knowing power and realize, “If I do this, it is going to have that kind of result. If I do that, which opposes my knowing of what I should do, I also have to know what kind of result that is going to create.” Everything we do does have its consequences. It is up to you to sit down and meditate on such matters. That is what meditation is for. Meditation in the beginning stages is for getting a grip on your lower states of mind, so that the lower states of mind come under your control, so you learn to use your brain and don’t loan it or rent it out.

When somebody causes you to do something that you don’t feel that you want to do, or that you know is not the right way for you to behave, you are loaning out your brain to him. If somebody can make you feel antagonistic all day long because he didn’t treat you right in the morning, he is using your brain, because he put that feeling into motion. He started something in you that you cannot conquer. But if, at the time of the incident, you straighten out the vibration with the person who made you feel antagonistic, by being considerate of his feelings, then you would be using your brain, and that is what you have to do. Maybe he is a young soul who will not learn to be considerate for a long, long time, and we couldn’t expect that of him. That is why you have to meditate; that is why you have to get these things figured out—who’s who on the scale of evolution.

Remember these three principles: 1) Your thinking is going to fight what you know. It is going to fight it all the time. You know you should do certain things, but you may not do them, because you have other reasons, and your other reasons will be good reasons, which you quickly forget because they are only good for the moment; 2) If you allow your knowing to dominate, you will be exercising your spiritual will. You will be alive. You will be dynamic. Spiritual forces will flow through you; 3) If you exercise your spiritual will, you will have a great power of observation and a great power over your own mind. No one will do your thinking for you.

After you have awakened your power of observation, your soul shines forth, and after meditation you will go into contemplation. You may think you are attaining high states of spiritual consciousness, but for real progress, your soul will have to manifest itself in what you do on the Earth all the time. So, these are your steps. Don’t allow the thinking to fight the knowing. Don’t allow the thinking to rule your willpower. Then you will be spiritual.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 294: PILGRIMAGE TO ŚIVA’S SPECIAL ABODES
My devotees hold as most sacred and pilgrimage to each at least once: Śiva’s San Mārga Iraivan Temple on Kauai, His Himālayan and Gangetic abodes, His five elemental temples and the Madurai Meenakshi citadel. Aum.

Lesson 294 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Closing the Door To Lower Realms

When at the moment of death you enter the astral plane, you only are in the consciousness of the chakras that were most active within you during the later part of your lifetime and, accordingly, you function in one of the astral lokas until the impetus of these chakras is expended. It is the chakras that manufacture the bodies. It is not the body that manufactures the chakras. Since you have fourteen chakras, at least three are the most powerful in any one individual—for example, memory, will and cognition. Each chakra is a vast area of the mind, or a vast collective area of many, many different thought strata. Generally, most people who gather together socially, intellectually or spiritually are flowing through the same predominant chakra, or several of them collectively. Therefore, they are thinking alike and share the same perspective in looking at life.

The chakras exist as nerve ganglia that have a direct impact on organs in the physical body, as psychic nerve ganglia in the astral body and as spinning disks of consciousness in the body of the soul, ānandamaya kośa. The power to close off the lower chakras—to seal off the doorway at the lower end of the sushumṇā—exists only when the soul is presently incarnated in a physical body. All fourteen chakras, plus seven more above and within the sahasrāra, are always there. It is up to the individual to lift consciousness from one to another through right thought, right speech, right action, showing remorse for errors committed, performing regular sādhana, worship, pilgrimage and heeding other instructions the satguru or swāmī might offer for personal guidance. All this and more teaches the prāṇas of consciousness, and most importantly, individual awareness, the art of flowing up through the higher centers through the process of closing off the lower ones.

Spiritual unfoldment is not a process of awakening the higher chakras, but of closing the chakras below the mūlādhāra. Once this happens, the aspirant’s consciousness slowly expands into the higher chakras, which are always there. The only thing that keeps the lower chakras closed is regular sādhana, japa, worship and working within oneself. This is demonstrated by the fact that even great yogīs and ṛishis who have awakened into the higher chakras continue to do more and more sādhana. They are constantly working to keep the forces flowing through the higher centers so that the lower ones do not claim their awareness.

Now, all of this perhaps seems very complex and esoteric. But these are aspects of our nature that we use every day. We use our arms and hands every day without thinking. If we study the physiology of the hands, we encounter layer after layer of intricate interrelationships of tissues, cells, plasma. We examine the engineering of the structural system of bones and joints, the energy transmission of the muscular system, the biochemistry of growth and healing, the biophysics of nerve action and reaction. Suddenly a simple and natural part of human life, the function of the hands, seems complex. Similarly, we use the various functions of consciousness, the chakras, every day without even thinking about them. But now we are studying them in their depths to gain a more mature understanding of their nature.

Actually, there are more chakras above and within the sahasrāra. Buddhist literature cites thirty-two chakras above. Āgamic Hindu tradition cites seven levels of the rarefied dimensions of Paranāda, the first tattva, as chanted daily by hundreds of thousands of priests during pūjā in temples all over the world. Their names are: vyāpinī, vyomāṅga, anantā, anāthā, anāśṛitā, samanā and unmanā. I have experienced these higher chakras or nāḍīs, as they are in this subtle region, as conglomerates of nāḍīs. These force centers are not exactly chakras, as they are not connected to any organ or part of the physical body. They are chakras or nāḍīs of the body of the soul, which when developed as a result of many, many, many Paraśiva experiences, slowly descend into the mental and astral bodies. The mental body becomes permanently different in its philosophical outlook, and the astral body begins to absorb and be transformed by the golden body, or svarṇaśarīra.

Lesson 293 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Is Initiation Necessary to Perform Japa?

ŚLOKA 138
The most precious of all Śaivite mantras, Namaḥ Śivāya is freely sung and chanted by one and all. Mantra dīkshā bestows the permission and power for japa yoga. Without this initiation, its repetition bears lesser fruit. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The Pañchākshara Mantra is the word of God, the name and total essence of Śiva. But to chant Namaḥ Śivāya and to be empowered to chant Namaḥ Śivāya is likened to the difference between writing a check without money in the bank and writing a check with money in the bank. Namaḥ Śivāya is the gateway to yoga. Initiation from an orthodox guru is given after preparation, training and attaining a certain level of purity and dedication. The guru bestows the authority to chant Namaḥ Śivāya. After initiation, the devotee is obligated to intone it regularly as instructed. This forges the śishya’s permanent bond with the guru and his spiritual lineage, sampradāya, and fires the process of inner unfoldment. From the lips of my Satgurunātha I learned Namaḥ Śivāya, and it has been the central core of my life, strength and fulfillment of destiny. The secret of Namaḥ Śivāya is to hear it from the right lips at the right time. Then, and only then, is it the most powerful mantra for you. The Śiva Saṁhitā affirms, “Only the knowledge imparted by a guru, through his lips, is powerful and useful; otherwise it becomes fruitless, weak and very painful.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.