Lesson 277 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is a Saint, a Sage and a Satguru?

ŚLOKA 122
Saints, devoid of ego, reflect the peace, humility and purity of a devout life. Sages, though perfectly liberated, may outwardly appear detached and ordinary. Satgurus, also fully enlightened, guide others on the path. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The saints, or sants, of Hinduism are honored as exemplars of our faith. Often living the householder dharma, they teach us how to act and how to serve the Gods. The purity of the saint’s heart is evident in his or her words and deportment. There are others in our religion who are inwardly pure and awakened, but who do not outwardly display their attainment. These are known as sages and often live as secluded munis or wander as homeless mendicants, remaining aloof from the world. Satgurus are the masterful guides and mystical awakeners who bring us into the fullness of spiritual life. They are initiated swāmīs of recognized spiritual lineages. Sages and satgurus are the most honored among holy men, beings of the highest attainment. Both are unmarried renunciates. Sages are generally nirvāṇīs, reposing within their realization; satgurus are upadeśīs, actively guiding others to Truth. The Vedas offer this praise, “We celebrate with dedicated acts the greatness of the illustrious supermen amidst enlightened persons, who are pure, most wise, thought-inspirers, and who enjoy both kinds of our oblations—physical and spiritual.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 277 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

No Sanction For Terrorism

In every country there is the army, the navy, air force, police, the protectors of the country, the collective force of citizens that keep a country a country. This is dharma. In protection of family and nation, in armies and police forces which give security, it is indeed dharmic for kshatriyas to do their lawful duty, to use necessary force, even lethal force. But for this collective force of protectors, of peacemakers, of peacekeepers—which includes the law courts and the central administrative authorities who oversee the courts, the armies, the navies, the air force—would the priests be able to function? Would the businessmen be able to acquire and sell their goods? Would the farmers be able to plant their crops and harvest them? Could the children play fearlessly in the streets and countryside? No. The answer is obvious.

Those who take law into their own hands in the name of dharma, citing their case upon the Mahābhārata, are none but the lawbreakers, anarchists, the arsonists, the terrorists. The Mahābhārata gives no permission for anarchy. The Mahābhārata gives no permission for terrorism. The Mahābhārata gives no permission for looting and diluting the morals of society through prostitution, running drugs and the selling and buying of illegal arms. The Pāṇḍavas, the heroes of this ancient epic, were not rabble rousers. They were not inciting riots. Nor were they participating in extortion to run their war. Nor were they participating in the sale of drugs to finance their war. Nor were they participating in prostitution to win their war. Nor were they participating in enlisting women to help them fight their war. Nor were they having children learn to snare their victims.

Yes, dharma does extend to protecting one’s country. But does it extend to taking a country from another, or to stealing lands? Were the Pāṇḍavas trying to do this? No, of course not. They were only protecting the status quo to remain sovereign over their kingdom. Let us not presume to take the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa as permission to do whatever one wants to do, for any cause whatsoever. Simply because it is said in certain Hindu texts that Kṛishṇa lied, stole some butter and dallied with the maidens does not give permission to the ordinary person to lie anytime he wants to, steal anytime he wants to or be promiscuous anytime he wants to and perhaps make all this a way of life. This definitely is not dharma. It is lawlessness, blatant lawlessness. In the modern age, to create a nation or even a business enterprise upon the death of another, upon lands confiscated, stolen, illegally acquired, usurped from another’s realm, is definitely not Hindu dharma, and this is not Mahābhārata.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 277: THE MEANING OF SHUNNING
My devotees realize that shunning means tactful avoidance, exclusion, ignoring and ostracizing. Thus a firm, protective wall of silence is built between our lineage and its detractors, whether individuals or groups. Aum.

Lesson 277 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Wife and Mother

When the wife has problems in fulfilling her womanly duties, strī dharma, it is often because the husband has not upheld his duty, nor allowed her to fulfill hers. When he does not allow her to or fails to insist that she perform her strī dharma and give her the space and time to do so, she creates kukarmas which are equally shared by him. This is because the purusha karmic duty and obligation of running a proper home naturally falls upon him, as well as upon her. So, there are great penalties to be paid by the man, husband and father for failure to uphold his purusha dharma.

Of course, when the children “go wrong” and are corrected by the society at large, both husband and wife suffer and equally share in the kukarmas created by their offspring. In summary, the husband took the wife into his home and is therefore responsible for her well-being. Together they bring the children into their home and are responsible for them, spiritually, socially, culturally, economically, as well as for their education.

What does it mean to be the spiritual head of the house? He is responsible for stabilizing the prāṇic forces, both positive, negative and mixed. When the magnetic, materialistic forces become too strong in the home, or out of proper balance with the others, he has to work within himself in early morning sādhana and deep meditation to bring through the spiritual forces of happiness, contentment, love and trust. By going deep within himself, into his soul nature, by living with Śiva, he uplifts the spiritual awareness of the entire family into one of the higher chakras. How does he accomplish this? Simply by moving his own awareness into a chakra higher than theirs. The awareness of his family follows his living example.

The family woman has to be a good mother. To achieve this, she has to learn to flow her awareness with the awareness of the children. She has been through the same series of experiences the children are going through. She intuits what to do next. As a mother, she fails only if she neglects the children, takes her awareness completely away, leaving the children to flounder. But if she stays close, attends to each child’s needs, is there when he or she cries or comes home from school, everything is fine. The child is raised perfectly. This occurs if the wife stays in the home, stabilizing the domestic force field, where she is needed most, allowing the husband to be the breadwinner and stabilizer of the external force field, which is his natural domain.

Lesson 276 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Who Are Hinduism’s Spiritual Leaders?

ŚLOKA 121
The saints, sages and satgurus who commune with God and Gods through devotion and meditation are Hinduism’s holy men and women. We revere them and strive to follow their example and words of wisdom. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
There are and have always been many holy men and women within the Sanātana Dharma. They are considered holy because of their loving surrender to God and the Gods, their dedication to our faith, their accomplishments and profound realizations. Their knowing is more important than their learning, their purity more essential than their position. It is very difficult to be so disciplined and devoted, and so we honor and love those who have attained God’s grace, and worship the Divine within them, not their personality or humanness. Because of Hinduism’s great diversity and decentralized organization, holy ones are not universally canonized, for there is no single ecclesiastical hierarchy to do this. Still, saints, sages and satgurus are sanctified by followers within their own sampradāya. Each within his or her own sphere of devotees is the authority on religious matters, listened to and obeyed as such. The Vedas declare, “Not understanding, and yet desirous to do so, I ask the wise who know, myself not knowing: ‘Who may He be, the One in the form of the Unborn, who props in their place the six universal regions?’” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 276 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Justification For Conflict

One of the most famous of Hindu writings, the Bhagavad Gītā, is often taken as Divine sanction for violence. It basically says that for the kshatriya, or soldier, war is dharma. Lord Kṛishṇa orders Arjuna to fight and do his kshatriya dharma in spite of his doubts and fears that what he is about to do is wrong, despite his dread of killing his own kinsmen. Arjuna says, “If they whose minds are depraved by the lust of power see no sin in the extirpation of their race, no crime in the murder of their friends, is that a reason why we should not resolve to turn away from such a crime—we who abhor the sin of extirpating our own kindred? On the destruction of a tribe the ancient virtue of the tribe and family is lost; with the loss of virtue, vice and impiety overwhelm the whole of a race. …Woe is me! What a great crime are we prepared to commit! Alas that from the desire for sovereignty and pleasure we stand here ready to slay our own kin! I would rather patiently suffer that the sons of Dhritarashṭra, with their weapons in their hands, should come upon me and, unopposed, kill me unresisting in the field.”

Kṛishṇa gradually convinces Arjuna to fight, beginning with the following argument. “Death is certain to all things which are born, and rebirth to all mortals; wherefore it doth not behoove thee to grieve about the inevitable. …This spirit can never be destroyed in the mortal frame which it inhabiteth, hence it is unworthy for thee to be troubled for all these mortals. …Thine enemies will speak of thee in words which are unworthy to be spoken, deprecating thy courage and abilities; what can be more dreadful than this! If thou art slain, thou shalt attain heaven; if victorious, the world shall be thy reward; wherefore, son of Kunti, arise with determination fixed for the battle. Make pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat, the same to thee, and then prepare for battle, for thus and thus alone shalt thou in action still be free from sin” (from Chapter 1, Recension by W. Q. Judge, Theosophical University Press).

Hindus for a long time have taken this text as justification for war and conflicts of all kinds, including street riots and anarchy. It is indeed unfortunate that this particular composition has been championed to represent Hinduism rather than the four Vedas. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Bhagavad Gītā was not yet a popular book in America and Europe, but the Upanishads and Vedas were. When I was growing up in Hinduism, at about fifteen years of age, the Gītā was being slowly introduced in America and became an embarrassment in metaphysical circles throughout the country, as something to explain away. “How could a religion based on ahiṁsā and such high ideals promote as a major scripture a story based on ruthless internecine war and violence?” Arjuna could be considered history’s first conscientious objector.

Mystical seers, both Hindus and Western teachers, at that time, in an attempt to justify the Gītā as scripture, explained that Kṛishṇa represented Arjuna’s higher self, and Arjuna himself was his lower self, or the external ego. Kṛishṇa encouraged Arjuna to kill out attachments to family, friends and foes, to become a yogī and realize Parabrahman. Teachers attempted to satisfy the minds of their followers that, in fact, the Bhagavad Gītā was an allegory of man’s struggle within himself toward the highest realizations. Unconvincingly, contemporary swāmīs and astute commentators tried to justify God Kṛishṇa’s urging his devotee to kill his friends, his relatives and his guru, that all would be well in the end because the soul never dies. I was never satisfied with this and found no alternative but to reject the book altogether, despite its many lofty chapters. I agree fully with those awakened Indian swāmīs who have called it kolai nul, the “book of carnage,” a book that gives divine sanction to violence.

The Bhagavad Gītā was also known at that time as a historical poem, not a divinely revealed scripture at all. It is smṛiti, specifically Itihāsa, meaning a man-made history, a poem excerpted from the Mahābhārata epic. But all that aside, no matter how it is interpreted, whether it is revered by millions of Hindus or not, let us not be mistaken that the Bhagavad Gītā gives permission for violence. The Mahābhārata itself says, “Ahiṁsā is the highest dharma. It is the highest purification. It is also the highest truth from which all dharma proceeds” (18.1125.25). An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is definitely not a part of true Hindu doctrine.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 276: SHUNNING ENEMIES
My devotees abide by the custom of shunning those who oppose, criticize or attack their lineage. By not interacting with detractors, they forestall conflict and thus protect their lineage as well as themselves. Aum

Lesson 276 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Spiritual Leadership

Who is the spiritual leader of the house? The man or the woman? Dancing with Śiva states: “The husband is, first, an equal participant in the procreation and upbringing of the future generation. Second, he is the generator of economic resources necessary for society and the immediate family. The husband must be caring, understanding, masculine, loving, affectionate, and an unselfish provider, to the best of his ability and through honest means. He is well equipped physically and mentally for the stress and demands placed upon him. When he performs his dharma well, the family is materially and emotionally secure. Still, he is not restricted from participation in household chores, remembering that the home is the wife’s domain and she is its mistress.”

If this happens, everything works out naturally in the home in a very harmonious way. If this does not occur, then the prāṇic forces do not flow as well for the family. Why? Because the stabilizing influence of the prāṇas, under control and well balanced, has not come to pass. As a result, there can be no effective invoking of God, Gods and guru. Arguments, rude and harsh words fly back and forth, children are maltreated, and backbiting of the husband, relatives, friends and neighbors is not uncommon. Adultery with prostitutes or casual pickups tempts, distracts and burdens the husband with guilt, especially during his wife’s monthly retreat and during pregnancy. The life of a family going through such karmas is chaos. The children, who modern psychiatrists and ancient seers say, are guided by the example of their parents, are thrown overboard, as from a ship they safely boarded with full confidence. Reality points out that there are no, never have been, nor ever will be, delinquent children. Delinquent parents are the culprits; “the parents are what is wrong with society; children are only guilty of being guided by their example.”

The wise men of ancient times understood how the prāṇic life forces flow within man and woman. They knew that the family man’s being in the sushumṇā current stabilizes the forces of the home. If he is meditating and going within himself, his wife will not have to meditate as much. She and the children will go within to their Divinity automatically on the power of his meditation. If he radiates peace, Divinity and confidence, they will too, without trying, without even being conscious of it.

One thing to remember: the family man is the guru of his household. If he wants to find out how to be a good guru, he just has to observe his own satguru, that is all he has to do. He will learn through observation. Often this is best accomplished by living in the guru’s āśrama periodically to perform sādhana and service. Being head of his home does not mean he is a dominant authority figure, arrogantly commanding unconditional obedience, such as Bollywood and Hollywood portray. No. He must assume full responsibility for his family and guide subtly and wisely, with love always flowing. This means that he must accept the responsibility for the conditions in the home and for the spiritual training and unfoldment of his wife and children. This is his purusha dharma. To not recognize and not follow it is to create much kukarma, bad actions bringing back hurtful results to him in this or another life.

Lesson 275 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are the Holy Orders of Sannyāsa?

ŚLOKA 120
The holy orders of sannyāsa are lifetime vows of poverty, obedience and chastity, never to be relinquished or rescinded. The sannyāsins are the religious leaders, the bedrock of the Sanātana Dharma. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
The sannyāsin’s first sacred vow is renunciation, the surrendering of the limited identity of the ego that the soul may soar to the depths of impersonal Being. It is a repudiation of worldly dharma and involvement, and thus includes poverty and simplicity. The sannyāsin owns nothing, not even the robes he is given to wear. The second vow is obedience—a pledge to follow the traditional ways of the sannyāsa dharma and the specific directions of his satguru. It embraces obedience to his own conscience, to scripture, to God and the Gods and to his illustrious guru paramparā. The third vow is purity—a pledge to remain pure in thought, word and deed, to be continent throughout life, to protect the mind from all lower instincts: deceit, hatred, fear, jealousy, anger, pride, lust, covetousness and so forth. It includes the observance of ahiṁsā, noninjuriousness, and adherence to a vegetarian diet. Some orders also give vows of humility and confidentiality. The Vedas elucidate, “Henceforth being pure, clean, void, tranquil, breathless, selfless, endless, undecaying, steadfast, eternal, unborn, independent, he abides in his own greatness.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 275 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Peace and Righteous War

In Gandhian philosophy ahiṁsā means nonviolent action which leads to passive resistance in order to put a point across. Basically, he taught, don’t hit your opponent over the head. If he tells you to do something, stall and don’t obey and don’t do it and frustrate him into submission. And yet, on the other hand, when a gang of tribals came in and raped the women in a village, Gandhi said there should not have been a man left alive in the village. They should have stood up for the village and protected it with their lives.

So, to me, that means if an intruder breaks into your house to rape the women or steal things, you have the right, even the duty, to defend your own, but you don’t have the right to torture him. Ahiṁsā needs to be properly understood, in moderation. Ahiṁsā in the Jain religion has been taken to extremes. To explain nonviolence, you have to explain what violence is, as opposed to protecting yourself. Is it violent to own a dog who would put his teeth to the throat of a vicious intruder? I don’t think it is. If nonviolence is to be something that the world is going to respect, we have to define it clearly and make it meaningful.

Not all of Earth’s one billion Hindus are living in a perfect state of ahiṁsā all of the time. Sometimes conditions at hand may force a situation, a regrettable exception, where violence or killing seems to be necessary. Hindus, like other human beings, unfortunately do kill people. In self-defense or in order to protect his family or his village, the Hindu may have to hurt an intruder. Even then he would harbor no hatred in his heart. Hindus should never instigate an intrusion or instigate a death; nor seek revenge, nor plot retaliation for injuries received. They have their courts of justice, punishment for crimes and agencies for defending against the aggressor or the intruder. Before any personal use of force, so to speak, all other avenues of persuasion and intelligence would be looked into, as Hindus believe that intelligence is their best weapon. In following dharma, the only rigid rule is wisdom. My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, said, “It is a sin to kill the tiger in the jungle. But if he comes into the village, it may become your duty.” A devout Hindu would give warnings to scare the tiger or would try to capture the tiger without injury. Probably it would be the most unreligious person in the village who would come forward to kill the tiger.

Many groups on the planet today advocate killing and violence and war for a righteous cause. They would not agree with the idea that violence, hiṁsā, is necessarily of the lower nature. But a righteous cause is only a matter of opinion, and going to war affects the lives of a great many innocent people. It’s a big karmic responsibility. Combat through war, righteous or not, is lower consciousness. Religious values are left aside, to be picked up and continued when the war is over, or in the next life or the one after that. It is said that in ancient India meat would be fed to the soldiers during military campaigns, especially before combat, to bring them into lower consciousness so that they would forget their religious values. Most higher consciousness people will not fight even if their lives depend on it. They are conscientious objectors, and there have been many in every country who have been imprisoned or killed because they would not take up arms against their brother and sister humans. This is the strictest expression of Hinduism’s law of ahiṁsā.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 275: THE TRANSFORMATION CALLED CONVERSION
My ardent devotees well know that conversion means a change of one belief structure into another and is never without some degree of fire and pain. Counseling is necessary in this soul-searching time. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya

Lesson 275 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Maintaining A Balance

Should the woman become aggressively intellectual and the man become passively physical, then forces in the home are disturbed. The two bicker and argue. Consequently, the children are upset, because they only reflect the vibration of the parents and are guided by their example. Sometimes the parents separate, going their own ways until the conflicting forces quiet down. But when they come back together, if the wife still remains in the piṅgalā channel, and the husband in the iḍā channel, they will generate the same inharmonious conditions. It is always a question of who is the head of the house, he or she? The head is always the one who holds the prāṇas within the piṅgalā. Two piṅgalā spouses in one house, husband and wife, spells conflict.

The balancing of the iḍā and piṅgalā into sushumṇā is, in fact, the pre-ordained spiritual sādhana, a built in sādhana, or birth sādhana, of all family persons. To be on the spiritual path, to stay on the spiritual path, to get back on the spiritual path, to keep the children on the spiritual path, to bring them back to the spiritual path, too—as a family, father, mother, sons and daughters living together as humans were ordained to do without the intrusions of uncontrolled instinctive areas of the mind and emotions—it is imperative, it is a virtual command of the soul of each member of the family, that these two forces, the iḍā and piṅgalā, become and remain balanced, first through understanding and then through the actual accomplishment of this sādhana. There can be no better world, no new age, no golden future, no peace, no harmony, no spiritual progress until this happens and is perpetuated far into the future. This is the sādhana of the father. This is the sādhana of the mother. And together they are compelled by divine law to teach this sādhana to their offspring, first by example, then through explanation of their example, as youths mature into adulthood. Those unfortunate couples who neglect or refuse to perform this sādhana—of balancing the iḍā and piṅgalā, and from time to time bringing both into the sushumṇā—are indeed distressed by their own neglect. At the time of death, as their life ebbs into the great unknown, they will, in looking back, see nothing but turmoil, misunderstanding, hurts—physical hurts, emotional hurts, mental hurts. Their subconscious will still be hurting, and they will know the hurt they gave to others will follow them into the next world, then into the next, to be reexperienced. Their pain knows no cure during their last few hours before transition from the physical body into one of the astral worlds they earned access to, as their good deeds, misdeeds and wrongful deeds are gathered together and totalled. Therefore, it is for the wise, the understanding, the hopeful parents to follow the iḍā-piṅgalā-sushumṇā sādhana daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. This is the path for the family persons toward merger with Śiva. It truly is.

Lesson 274 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Sannyāsin’s Initiation Rite?

ŚLOKA 119
Young, unmarried men of the Hindu religion may qualify for renunciation, called sannyāsa dīkshā, which may be conferred by any legitimate sannyāsin. But the most spiritually potent initiation comes from a satguru. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Traditionally, sannyāsa dīkshā is restricted to unmarried men, though some modern orders have accepted qualified women. As a rule in most orders, if a candidate enters monastic training before age twenty-five and meets other qualifications, he may, generally after a minimum of twelve years of preparation and training, take the sannyāsin’s lifetime vows, called holy orders of sannyāsa. Only a sannyāsin can bring another into the ancient order of sannyāsa. However, since the purpose is God Realization, most candidates seek initiation from a spiritually advanced knower of God who can bring them into Paraśiva. Sannyāsa dīkshā is given in simple or most formal ways. The formal rites include the shaving of the head, conveyance of certain esoteric teachings, abjuration of the worldly life and dharma, administration of monastic vows, conducting of the novitiate’s funeral rites and the giving of the kavi vestments. The Vedas proclaim, “The Self within the body, pure and resplendent, is attained through the cultivation of truth, austerity, right knowledge and chastity. When their impurities dwindle, the ascetics behold Him.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.