Lesson 13 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

How Does Śaivism Stay Contemporary?

ŚLOKA 13
Inner truths never change, but outer forms of practice and observance do evolve. Śaivism seeks to preserve its mystical teachings while adapting to the cultural, social and technological changes of each recurrent age. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Śaivism is an orthodox religion, conservative in its ways and yet pliant and understanding. It is simultaneously the most de­manding spiritual path and the most forgiving. Śaivites have persisted through many ages through successfully adapt­ing work, service and skills according to the times while in­ter­nal­izing worship and holding firmly to the eternal values. The outer form of service or oc­cupation does not change the spiritual search. Be he a skilled farmer, factory worker, village merchant, com­pu­ter programmer or corporate executive, the Śai­vite is served well by his religion. Śaivism has all of the facilities for the education of hu­mankind back to the Source. Each futuristic age does not reflect a difference in the Śai­vite’s relationship with his family, kula guru, teacher, satguru, Gods or God in his daily religious life. The Śaiva Dhar­ma: it is now as it always was. The Vedas implore: “O self-luminous Divine, re­move the veil of ignorance from before me, that I may behold your light. Reveal to me the spirit of the scriptures. May the truth of the scrip­tures be ever present to me. May I seek day and night to realize what I learn from the sages.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 13 – Living with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Satya: Truthfulness

The second yama is satya, truthfulness. It seems that little children are naturally truthful, open and honest. Their lives are uncomplicated, and they have no secrets. National studies show that children, even at an early age, learn to lie from their parents. They are taught to keep family secrets, whom to like, whom to dislike, whom to hate and whom to love, right within the home itself. Their minds become complicated and their judgments of what to say and what not to say are often influenced by the possibility of a punishment, perhaps a beating. Therefore, to fully encompass satya and incorporate it in one’s life as a teenager or an adult, it is quite necessary to dredge the subconscious mind and in some cases reject much of what mother or father, relatives and elders had placed into it at an early age. Only by rejecting the apparent opposites, likes and dislikes, hates and loves, can true truthfulness, which is a quality of the soul, burst forth again and be there in full force as it is within an innocent child. A child practices truthfulness without wisdom. Wisdom, which is the timely application of knowledge, guides truthfulness for the adult. To attain wisdom, the adult must be conversant with the soul nature.

What is it that keeps us from practicing truthfulness? Fear, mainly. Fear of discovery, fear of punishment or loss of status. This is the most honest untruthfulness. The next layer of untruthfulness would be the mischievous person willing to take a chance of not being caught and deliberately inventing stories about another, deliberately lying when the truth would do just as well. The third and worst layer is calculated deception and breaking of promises.

Satya is a restraint, and as one of the ten restraints it ranks in importance as number two. When we restrain our tendencies to deceive, to lie and break promises, our external life is uncomplicated, as is our subconscious mind. Honesty is the foundation of truth. It is ecologically, psychologically purifying. However, many people are not truthful with themselves, to themselves, let alone to others. And the calculated, subconscious built-in program of these clever, cunning, two-faced individuals keeps them in the inner worlds of darkness. To emerge from those worlds, the practice of truthfulness, satya, is in itself a healing and purifying sādhana.

What is breaking a promise? Breaking a promise is, for example, when someone confides in you, asks you to keep it to yourself and not to tell anyone, and then you tell. You have betrayed your promise. Confidences must be kept at all costs in the practice of satya.

There are certainly times when withholding the truth is permitted. The Tirukural, Weaver’s Wisdom, explains that “Even falsehood is of the nature of truth if it renders good results, free from fault” (292). An astrologer, for instance, while reviewing a chart would refrain from telling of a heartbreak that might come to a person at a certain time in his life. This is wisdom. In fact, astrologers are admonished by their gurus to hold back information that might be harmful or deeply discouraging. A doctor might not tell his patient that he will die in three days when he sees the vital signs weakening. Instead, he may encourage positive thinking, give hope, knowing that life is eternal and that to invoke fear might create depression and hopelessness in the mind of the ill person.

When pure truthfulness would injure or cause harm, then the first yama, ahiṁsā, would come into effect. You would not want to harm that person, even with the truth. But we must not look at this verse from the Tirukural as giving permission for deception. The spirit of the verse is wisdom, good judgment, not the subterfuge of telling someone you are going to Mumbai when your actual destination is Kalikot. That is not truthful. It would be much better to avoid answering the question at all in some way if one wanted to conceal the destination of his journey. This would be wisdom. You would not complicate your own subconscious mind by telling an untruth, nor be labeled deceptive in the mind of the informed person when he eventually discovers the actual truth.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 13: TEACHING THE FIVE PRECEPTS AND PRACTICES
Those who live with Śiva teach children the five precepts: God as All in all, temples, karma, reincarnation/liberation, scripture/preceptor; and five practices: virtue, worship, holy days, sacraments and pilgrimage. Aum.

Lesson 13 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Experience Without Reacting

The next time the same experiential pattern appears, we approach it from a mountaintop consciousness, because we have conquered those instinctive elements. Our intellect has been trained by family and friends, schoolteachers and business acquaintances. We have to build a new intellect, an intellect from the soul out into the intellectual mind, rather than from the instinctive area of the mind into the intellect, to be successful on the path of enlightenment.

If we look at the past and we look at the future as both a series of dreams, and the only thing that we are concerned with is our immediate reactions and what we carry with us now, we see that the past is there to test us and the future is there to challenge us. We cannot change the past, but we can change how we react to what has happened to us in the past, and we can change the future, anytime we want to.

The soul builds a body around us in this life. That’s what’s happened to all of us. This body goes through the same experiences, year after year; the emotions go through the same experiences, year after year, until we build up strong enough within ourself to face the experience without reaction to the experience. Then we go into a new series of experiences.

Give yourself a test to prove this out. Go to a movie, one that will make you laugh and make you cry and make you suffer, right along with the players. And that’s how we live our life. We laugh, we cry, we suffer, we have joy, we have peace, like actors on a great stage. Then go to the same movie the next day, and go through the same emotions again, another cycle in the same life pattern. Then go to the movie the day following that, and go through the same emotions. Then go the next day, and you will find you will go through the same emotions, but not quite as well. Then go the next day. You will find your mind begins to wander into how the film was produced, just where the cameraman was standing when he filmed this emotional shot. You’re becoming mystical. That is how the mystic faces his experiences. “How was this produced? Where was the cameraman?” Go the next day, and you will again be distracted and may wonder about the voltage that runs the carbon arc light that penetrates the film! Then go the next day. You won’t be involved in the picture at all, or the emotion. You could care less. You had that experience, you lived it through, and you lived it out. It was neither good nor bad. It was neither high nor low. But you’re completely involved in the cameraman, the actors, the personalities of the actors. You begin to get perceptive, and you see that a particular actor was saying something and going through something but thinking about something entirely different. You didn’t catch that the first time. You were blinded by emotion.

Lesson 12 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

How Do Śaivites Regard Other Faiths?

ŚLOKA 12
Religious beliefs are manifold and different. Śaivites, understanding the strength of this diversity, wholeheartedly respect and encourage all who believe in God. They honor the fact that Truth is one, paths are many. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Since the inner intent of all religions is to bind man back to God, Śaivite Hindus seek not to interfere with anyone’s faith or practice. We believe that there is no exclusive path, no one way for all. Śaivites profoundly know that God Śiva is the same Supreme Being in whom peoples of all faiths find solace, peace and liberation. None­theless, we realize that all religions are not the same. Each has its unique beliefs, practices, goals and paths of attainment, and the doctrines of one often conflict with those of ano­ther. Even this should never be cause for re­ligious tension or intolerance. Śaivites res­pect all religious traditions and the people within them. They know that good citizens and stable societies are created from groups of religious people. Śaivite leaders sup­port and participate in ecumenical gatherings with all religions. Still, Śai­vites de­fend their faith, proceed contentedly with their practices and avoid the enchantment of other ways, be they ancient or modern. The Vedas ex­plain, “Let us have concord with our own people, and con­cord with people who are strangers to us. Aśvins, create between us and the strangers a unity of hearts.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 12 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Noninjury for Renunciates

Ahiṁsā is the first and foremost virtue, presiding over truthfulness, nonstealing, sexual purity, patience, steadfastness, compassion, honesty and moderate appetite. The brahmachārī and sannyāsin must take ahiṁsā, noninjury, one step further. He has mutated himself, escalated himself, by stopping the abilities of being able to harm another by thought, word or deed, physically, mentally or emotionally. The one step further is that he must not harm his own self with his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own actions toward his own body, toward his own emotions, toward his own mind. This is very important to remember. And here, at this juncture, ahiṁsā has a tie with satya, truthfulness. The sannyāsin must be totally truthful to himself, to his guru, to the Gods and to Lord Śiva, who resides within him every minute of every hour of every day. But for him to truly know this and express it through his life and be a living religious example of the Sanātana Dharma, all tendencies toward hiṁsā, injuriousness, must always be definitely harnessed in chains of steel. The mystical reason is this. Because of the brahmachārī’s or sannyāsin’s spiritual power, he really has more ability to hurt someone than he or that person may know, and therefore his observance of noninjury is even more vital. Yes, this is true. A brahmachārī or sannyāsin who does not live the highest level of ahiṁsā is not a brahmachārī.

Words are expressions of thoughts, thoughts created from prāṇa. Words coupled with thoughts backed up by the transmuted prāṇas, or the accumulated bank account of energies held back within the brahmachārī and the sannyāsin, become powerful thoughts, and when expressed through words go deep into the mind, creating impressions, saṁskāras, that last a long time, maybe forever. It is truly unfortunate if a brahmachārī or sannyāsin loses control of himself and betrays ahiṁsā by becoming hiṁsā, an injurious person—unfortunate for those involved, but more unfortunate for himself. When we hurt another, we scar the inside of ourself; we clone the image. The scar would never leave the sannyāsin until it left the person that he hurt. This is because the prāṇas, the transmuted energies, give so much force to the thought. Thus the words penetrate to the very core of the being. Therefore, angry people should get married and should not practice brahmacharya.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 12: EXCELLENCE AND NONCOMPETITIVENESS
Those who live with Śiva endeavor to be their best in whatever they do, to excel and make a difference. Even so, they remain apart from the demeaning and contentious “winners and losers” spirit of competition. Aum.

Lesson 12 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Inner States, Outer States

When you look out through the eyes of your soul, it’s like a great executive in a large building’s penthouse office. His desk is right in the middle of that office, and he looks out and he sees the people working around him. Then he looks farther out and he sees the vast panes of windows. Then he looks farther out, and he sees the city below, and he sees the sky, he sees the traffic. Then he looks back into himself. He sees his subconscious mind, with thoughts about his home life and other things that do not involve his immediate surroundings in this grand office. He looks deeper into himself, and he has an intuitive flash. Something has come to him, how he can help his enterprise be moved and motivated in a more dynamic way. He looks deeper within himself for the source where that intuitive flash comes from, begins to see light within his head, light within his body. Again he becomes conscious of people working around him. Again he becomes conscious of the panes of the windows. He has to leave this office. He goes down in an elevator. He walks out onto the street. He is the same being. His perspective is an inner perspective. He doesn’t go up and down in consciousness.

The mystic does not go up and down in consciousness. It only seems like that. But that is not actually what happens. It makes it very difficult when we hold the up-and-down and good-and-bad concepts, because they work in time sequences. If we are bad, it takes a certain amount of time before we can become good. And if we are good, there is a great possibility that we might be bad during a certain period of our life. If we are in a high state of consciousness, percentages have it that we may be in a low state of consciousness. It’s going to take a lot of time to climb up high, and we might fall down, so what’s the use? We have all of these semantic connotations with the words good and bad and up and down, and therefore we throw them out of our mystical vocabulary and the connotations that go along with them. We say we go within, deep within. We say we come out into outer consciousness. We say there is no good, there is no bad, there is just experience, and within each experience there is a lesson. Some experiences might make our nervous system react so strongly that it may take hours to pull ourselves together.

But once we pull ourselves together, that exercise evolves the body of the soul that much more. We have transmuted tremendous instinctive and intellectual energies into this body of the soul. We have fed it. We have given it a good meal. And we never face that same experience again, nor react the same way.

Lesson 11 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Nature of Śaivite Theology?

ŚLOKA 11
Śaivism proclaims: God Śiva is Love, both immanent and transcendent, both the creator and the creation. This world is the arena of our evolution, which leads by stages to moksha, liberation from birth and death. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Śaivism is a unique religion in which God is both man­ifest and unmanifest, dual and nondual, within us and outside of us. It is not strictly pantheistic, polytheistic or monotheistic. Its predominant theology is known as mon­istic theism, panentheism, or Advaita Īśvaravāda. Mon­ism, the op­po­site of dualism, is the doctrine that reality is a one whole or existence with­out in­dependent parts. Theism is belief in God and the Gods, both im­ma­nent and transcendent. Śaivism is mon­­­istic in its be­lief in a one reality and in the ad­vaitic, or nondual, identity of man with that reality. Śai­vism is theistic in its belief in the Gods, and in God Śiva as a loving, personal Lord, immanent in the world. Śaivism expresses the one­ness of Pati-paśu-pāśa, God-soul-world, en­com­passing the non­dual and the dual, faith­fully carrying forth both Vedānta and Siddhānta, the pristine Sanātana Dharma of the Vedas and Śaiva Āgamas. The Tirumantiram states, “Śud­­dha Śaivas meditate on these as their religious path: One­self, Absolute Reality and the Primal Soul; the categories three: God, soul and bonds; immaculate liberation and all that fetters the soul.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 11 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Ahiṁsā: Noninjury

The first yama is ahiṁsā, noninjury. To practice ahiṁsā, one has to practice santosha, contentment. The sādhana is to seek joy and serenity in life, remaining content with what one has, knows, is doing and those with whom he associates. Bear your karma cheerfully. Live within your situation contentedly. Hiṁsā, or injury, and the desire to harm, comes from discontent.

The ṛishis who revealed the principles of dharma or divine law in Hindu scripture knew full well the potential for human suffering and the path which could avert it. To them a one spiritual power flowed in and through all things in this universe, animate and inanimate, conferring existence by its presence. To them life was a coherent process leading all souls without exception to enlightenment, and no violence could be carried to the higher reaches of that ascent. These ṛishis were mystics whose revelation disclosed a cosmos in which all beings exist in interlaced dependence. The whole is contained in the part, and the part in the whole. Based on this cognition, they taught a philosophy of nondifference of self and other, asserting that in the final analysis we are not separate from the world and its manifest forms, nor from the Divine which shines forth in all things, all beings, all peoples. From this understanding of oneness arose the philosophical basis for the practice of noninjury and Hinduism’s ancient commitment to it.

We all know that Hindus, who are one-sixth of the human race today, believe in the existence of God everywhere, as an all-pervasive, self-effulgent energy and consciousness. This basic belief creates the attitude of sublime tolerance and acceptance toward others. Even tolerance is insufficient to describe the compassion and reverence the Hindu holds for the intrinsic sacredness within all things. Therefore, the actions of all Hindus are rendered benign, or ahiṁsā. One would not want to hurt something which one revered.

On the other hand, when the fundamentalists of any religion teach an unrelenting duality based on good and evil, man and nature or God and Devil, this creates friends and enemies. This belief is a sacrilege to Hindus, because they know that the attitudes which are the by-product are totally dualistic, and for good to triumph over that which is alien or evil, it must kill out that which is considered to be evil.

The Hindu looks at nothing as intrinsically evil. To him the ground is sacred. The sky is sacred. The sun is sacred. His wife is a Goddess. Her husband is a God. Their children are devas. Their home is a shrine. Life is a pilgrimage to mukti, or liberation from rebirth, which once attained is the end to reincarnation in a physical body. When on a holy pilgrimage, one would not want to hurt anyone along the way, knowing full well the experiences on this path are of one’s own creation, though maybe acted out through others.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 11: THE LION-HEARTED ONES
Those who live with Śiva fulfill life’s purposes by placing heavy demands on themselves from within themselves, never shirking their duty to religion, family, community or planet. Jai, they are the lion-hearted. Aum.

Lesson 11 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

No Good, No Bad

Each experience that we have is a good experience, because it molds us. It shapes us, just like an artist would mold a piece of clay. From an ugly hunk of clay can emerge a divine being, molded by the artist. In that same way, the experiences of life, even those that boomerang back on us and those we think are terrible, mold us. But they only mold us quickly and benefit us tremendously if we hold our perspective as the inner man, the timeless man, the immortal being. Only in this way can this happen. That’s the attitude, the thoughts we must have, as we go along on the path of enlightenment.

The mere fact that you want Self Realization in this life means that you have been through hundreds of thousands of experiences. You have been nearly everything that there is to be on this planet. And now, in your last lifetime, you are finishing up the experiential patterns that you didn’t handle in a life prior.

Life is a series of experiences, one after another. Each experience can be looked at as a classroom in the big university of life if we only approach it that way. Who is going to these classrooms? Who is the member of this university of life? It’s not your instinctive mind. It’s not your intellectual mind. It’s the body of your soul, your super­con­scious self, that wonderful body of light. It’s maturing under the stress and strain, as the intellect gives back its power to the soul, as the instinct gives back its power to the soul, as the physical elements give back their power to the soul, and all merge into a beautiful oneness. In this way, the beings of the New Age are going to walk on Earth. Each one will have light flowing through his whole body and he will inwardly see his body glowing in light, even in the darkest night.

The good-and-bad concept should be thrown out with a lot of other things, including the up-and-down concept. There is no good; there is no bad. You don’t raise your consciousness, nor do you lower it. These are just concepts that have come in by various philosophers who tried to explain these deeper teachings the very best that they could. What is bad is good, and what is good is good. And a higher state of consciousness and a lower state of consciousness, they don’t exist at all. We simply hold a certain perspective of awareness, and we look out, and we go in.

Lesson 10 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Universalistic Smārta Sect?

ŚLOKA 10
Smārtism is an ancient brāhminical tradition reformed by Sankara in the ninth century. Worshiping six forms of God, this liberal Hindu path is monistic, nonsectarian, meditative and philosophical. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Smārta means a follower of classical smṛiti, particularly the Dharma Śāstras, Purāṇas and Itihāsas. Smārtas re­vere the Ve­das and honor the Āgamas. Today this faith is synonymous with the teachings of Adi Sankara, the monk-phil­os­opher known as shaṇmata sthāpanāchārya, “found­­er of the six-sect system.” He campaigned India-wide to con­solidate the Hindu faiths of his time under the banner of Advaita Vedānta. To unify the worship, he popularized the an­cient Smārta five-Deity altar—Ga­ṇa­pati, Sūrya, Vishṇu, Śiva and Śakti—and added Kumāra. From these, devotees may choose their “preferred Deity,” or Ishṭa Devatā. Each God is but a reflection of the one Sa­guṇa Brahman. Sankara organized hundreds of mon­asteries into a ten-order, da­śa­­nā­mī system, which now has five pontifical cen­ters. He wrote profuse commentaries on the Upani­shads, Brah­­­ma Sūtras and Bhagavad Gītā. Sankara proclaimed, “It is the one Reality which ap­pears to our ignorance as a manifold universe of names and forms and changes. Like the gold of which many or­­naments are made, it remains in itself un­chang­ed. Such is Brahman, and That art Thou.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.