Lesson 20 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are God Śiva’s Traditional Forms?

ŚLOKA 20
Our adoration of the one great God Śiva is directed toward diverse images and icons. Primary among them are Śivaliṅga, Naṭarāja, Ardhanārīśvara, Dakshiṇāmūrti, Hari-Hara, Bhairava and the triśūla. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Every form is a form of Śiva. Tradition has given us several of special sacredness. The Śivaliṅga was the first image of Di­vin­ity. After it all other icons evolved from mystic vis­ions. We con­­template God Śiva as Paraśiva when we worship the Śiva­liṅg­a. Its simple elliptical shape speaks si­lently of God’s un­­speakable Absolute Be­ing. We exalt Śiva as Parāśakti or Sat­chid­­ānanda, God’s living omni­presence, when we wor­­ship any form of His never-separate Śakti, especially Ardhanārīśvara, whose right half is mas­cu­line and left half is feminine, and in whom all opposites are reconciled. We adore Him as Par­am­eś­vara, the Primal Soul, when we worship Naṭa­rā­ja, the Divine Danc­er who animates the universe. Thus we worship Śiva’s three perfections in three forms, yet knowing that He is a one Being, fully present in each of them. He is also Dak­shi­ṇā­­mūr­ti, the silent teacher; Hari-Hara—half-Śiva, half-Vish­ṇu—and Bhai­­rava, the fierce wield­­er of tri­śūla, the trident of love, wis­dom and ac­tion. The Tirumantiram declares, “Everywhere is the Holy Form. Everywhere is Śiva-Śakti. Everywhere is Chid­­am­ba­r­am. Everywhere is Divine Dance.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 20 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Kshamā: Patience

The fifth yama, patience, or kshamā, is as essential to the spiritual path as the spiritual path is to itself. Impatience is a sign of desirousness to fulfill unfulfilled desires, having no time for any interruptions or delays from anything that seems irrelevant to what one really wants to accomplish.

We must restrain our desires by regulating our life with daily worship and meditation. Daily worship and meditation are difficult to accomplish without a break in continuity. However, impatience and frustration come automatically in continuity, day after day, often at the same time—being impatient before breakfast because it is not served on time, feeling intolerant and abusive with children because they are not behaving as adults, and on and on. Everything has its timing and its regularity in life. Focusing on living in the eternity of the moment overcomes impatience. It produces the feeling that one has nothing to do, no future to work toward and no past to rely on. This excellent spiritual practice can be performed now and again during the day by anyone.

Patience is having the power of acceptance, accepting people, accepting events as they are happening. One of the great spiritual powers that people can have is to accept things as they are. That forestalls impatience and intolerance. Acceptance is developed in a person by understanding the law of karma and in seeing God Śiva and His work everywhere, accepting the perfection of the timing of the creation, preservation and absorption of the entire universe. Acceptance does not mean being resigned to one’s situation and avoiding challenges. We know that we ourselves created our own situation, our own challenges, in a former time by sending forth our energies, thoughts, words and deeds. As these energies, on their cycle-back, manifest through people, happenings and circumstances, we must patiently deal with the situation, not fight it or try to avoid it or be discouraged because of it. This is kshamā in the raw. This is pure kshamā. Patience cannot be acquired in depth in any other way. This is why meditation upon the truths of the Sanātana Dharma is so important.

It is also extremely important to maintain patience with oneself—especially with oneself. Many people are masters of the façade of being patient with others but take their frustrations out on themselves. This can be corrected and must be corrected for spiritual unfoldment to continue through an unbroken routine of daily worship and meditation and a yearly routine of attending festivals and of pilgrimage, tīrthayatra.

Most people today are intolerant with one another and impatient with their circumstances. This breeds an irreverent attitude. Nothing is sacred to them, nothing holy. But through daily exercising anger, malice and the other lower emotions, they do, without knowing, invoke the demonic forces of the Narakaloka. Then they must suffer the backlash: have nightmares, confusions, separations and even perform heinous acts. Let all people of the world restrain themselves and be patient through the practice of daily worship and meditation, which retroactively invokes the divine forces from the Devaloka. May a great peace pervade the planet as the well-earned result of these practices.

The next time you find yourself becoming impatient, just stop for a moment and remember that you are on the upward path, now facing a rare opportunity to take one more step upward by overcoming these feelings, putting all that you have previously learned into practice. One does not progress on the spiritual path by words, ideas or unused knowledge. Memorized precepts, ślokas, all the shoulds and should-nots, are good, but unless used they will not propel you one inch further than you already are. It is putting what you have learned into practice in these moments of experiencing impatience and controlling it through command of your spiritual will, that moves you forward. These steps forward can never be retracted. When a test comes, prevail.

Sādhakas and sannyāsins must be perfect in kshamā, forbearing with people and patient under all circumstances, as they have harnessed their karmas of this life and the lives before, compressed them to be experienced in this one lifetime. There is no cause for them, if they are to succeed, to harbor intolerance or experience any kind of impatience with people or circumstances. Their instinctive, intellectual nature should be caught up in daily devotion, unreserved worship, meditation and deep self-inquiry. Therefore, the practice, niyama, that mitigates intolerance is devotion, Īśvarapūjana, cultivating devotion through daily worship and meditation.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 20: DIRECTING THE POWER OF DESIRE
Those who live with Śiva know the great power of desire and thought, and choose theirs wisely. They also know the infinitely greater power of those who conquer desire by desiring only to know God. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 20 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Are You Ready To Turn Inward?

Basic principles for a good foundation in our lives can be established through consistency. The consistency in approach to what we are doing—a good habit pattern in living our life, as we approach our inner life, the understanding of our inner life, the study of it and the experience of it—has to be on a day-to-day basis. Developing a contemplative lifestyle that is sensible, that is positively worked out, and programming that into our complete pattern of daily life gives us a foundation strong enough to face decisions and the ensuing experiences and the reaction to those experiences in a way that they enhance our spiritual un­fold­ment. Remember, the lifestyle that we now have was programmed for us by mothers, fathers, religious leaders, teachers, people that we had just met along the way, and good friends. It’s not a particularly good lifestyle in which to hold the perspective that we’re an immortal being. It’s a great lifestyle to hold the perspective that we’re a temporal being, and we’re only here a few years and then we die.

To develop a whole new lifestyle takes thought. Our desire has to be transmuted into doing that. In the ordinary lifestyle of human consciousness, our desires generally are for things, for emotional experiences, for intellectual knowing. And that’s all good, but they’re not organized. We have to organize the tremendous power of desire so that it’s transmuted, and we desire the realization of the Self more than anything else. Then you’ll have enough desire left over to get things, to get happiness and to get all the getting that humans want.

But the tremendous force of desire is transmuted. The perspective is changed. We see ourself as an immortal being, and we work consistently with our lifestyle, day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year. Each decision that we make is an easier decision to make, and each reaction that we face, we face it joyfully. Each meditation that we hold is more profound than the last, and the spiritual being, the soul body, begins to merge with the physical body, as the elements of the instinct and the elements of the intellect that have been supreme life after life after life begin to give up and transmute their energies into the immortal body of the soul.

Lesson 19 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Nature of the Primal Soul?

ŚLOKA 19
Parameśvara is the uncreated, ever-existent Primal Soul, Śiva-Śakti, creator and supreme ruler of Mahādevas and beings of all three worlds. Abiding in His creation, our personal Lord rules from within, not from above. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Parameśvara, “Supreme Lord,” Mother of the universe, is the eternal, sovereign one, worshiped by all the Gods and sentient beings. So loved is Śiva-Śakti that all have an intimate relationship. So vast is His vastness, so over-powering is He that men cringe to trans­gress His will. So talked of is He that His name is on the lips of ev­eryone—for He is the primal sound. Being the first and perfect form, God Śiva in this third perfection of His being—the Primal Soul, the manifest and per­sonal Lord—nat­ur­ally creates souls in His image and likeness. To love God is to know God. To know God is to feel His love for you. Such a compassionate God—a being whose res­plen­dent body may be seen in mystic vision—cares for the min­u­tiae such as we and a uni­verse such as ours. Many are the mystics who have seen the brilliant milk-white form of Śiva’s glowing body with its red-locked hair, graceful arms and legs, large hands, per­fect face, loving eyes and musing smile. The Āgamas say, “Pa­r­­am­eśvara is the cause of the five manifest aspects: emanation, sṛishṭi; preser­vation, sthiti; dissolution, saṁhāra; conceal­­ment, tiro­bhāva; and revelation, anugraha.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 19 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Rules for Serious People

For virtuous individuals who marry, their experiences with their partner are, again, free from lustful fantasies; and emotional involvement is only with their spouse. Yes, a normal sex life should be had between husband and wife, and no one else should be included in either one’s mind or emotions. Never hugging, touching another’s spouse or exciting the emotions; always dressing modestly, not in a sexually arousing way; not viewing sexually oriented or pornographic videos; not telling dirty jokes—all of these simple customs are traditional ways of upholding sexual purity. The yama of brahmacharya works in concert with asteya, nonstealing. Stealing or coveting another’s spouse, even mentally, creates a force that, once generated, is difficult to stop.

In this day and age, when promiscuity is a way of life, there is great strength in married couples’ understanding and applying the principles of sexual purity. If they obey these principles and are on the path of enlightenment, they will again become celibate later in life, as they were when they were young. These principles persist through life, and when their children are raised and the forces naturally become quiet, around age sixty, husband and wife take the brahmacharya vrata, live in separate rooms and prepare themselves for greater spiritual experiences.

Married persons uphold sexual purity by observing the eightfold celibacy toward everyone but their spouse. These are ideals for serious, spiritual people. For those who have nothing to do with spirituality, these laws are meaningless. We are assuming a situation of a couple where everything they do and all that happens in their life is oriented toward spiritual life and spiritual goals and, therefore, these principles do apply. For sexual purity, individuals must believe firmly in the path to enlightenment. They must have faith in higher powers than themselves. Without this, sexual purity is nearly impossible.

One of the fastest ways to destroy the stability of families and societies is through promiscuity, mental and/or physical, and the best way to maintain stability is through self-control. The world today has become increasingly unstable because of the mental, physical, emotional license that people have given to themselves. The generation that follows an era of promiscuity has a dearth of examples to follow and are even more unstable than their parents were when they began their promiscuous living. Stability for human society is based on morality, and morality is based on harnessing and controlling sexuality. The principles of brahmacharya should be learned well before puberty, so that the sexual feelings the young person then begins to experience are free of mental fantasies and emotional involvement. Once established in a young person, this control is expected to be carried out all through life. When a virgin boy and girl marry, they transfer the love they have for their parents to one another. The boy’s attachment to his mother is transferred to his wife, and the girl’s attachment to her father is transferred to her husband. She now becomes the mother. He now becomes the father. This does not mean they love their parents any less. This is why the parents have to be in good shape, to create the next generation of stable families. This is their dharmic duty. If they don’t do it, they create all kinds of uncomely karmas for themselves to be faced at a later time.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 19: GUARDING AGAINST INSTINCTS AND INTELLECT
Those who live with Śiva keep the mountaintop perspective that life on Earth is an opportunity for spiritual progress. They never lose sight of this truth by becoming infatuated with instinctive-intellectual pursuits. Aum.

Lesson 19 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Using the Power Of Observation

There are several ways we can make decisions, and there are guidelines to help us. There are basic principles that we can follow in life that other people have followed which helped guide their decisions along. It worked out fairly well for them, so we can follow those basic principles, too. And we’ll go in after a while to outlining some of these basic principles that help us make good, positive decisions, for we can learn by observing other people, the decisions they have made, the reactions and experiential patterns that followed. We can learn by observing other people.

The first faculty of the expression of the inner being of your immortal soul is the great power of observation, to learn through observation, as your individual awareness detaches itself from that which it is aware of. You have tremendous powers of observation, for you are a free spirit. You’re just here on this planet to observe. And through your powers of observation you can go through the experiential patterns of other people by observing what they’re going through without having to go through them yourself. Some mystics live several lifetimes in one in this way.

Living by basic principles keeps awareness clean-cut, pure, direct and positive, out of the areas of the mind that are confused, unwholesome, unhealthy—areas that react back upon the nerve system of the physical nature. When we are clean-cut, our perceptions are precise. We make our decisions from an up-down point of view, and our path through life is guided by each decision that we make.

When we make a decision, it has its reaction. If we do not make a decision, that has a reaction, too, for then decisions are made for us by circumstance, other people, situations or confusion. The confusion becomes so intense that finally we’re forced into a decision. When we become accustomed to making one decision after another from an up-down point of view, our lives are guided in a systematic, positive, clean-cut, beautiful way. Who does the guiding? You do, with your awakened perceptive faculties.

Lesson 18 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is God Śiva’s Pure Consciousness?

ŚLOKA 18
Parāśakti is pure consciousness, the substratum or primal substance flowing through all form. It is Śiva’s inscrutable presence, the ultimate ground and being of all that exists, without which nothing could endure. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Parāśakti, “Supreme Energy,” is called by many names: si­­­lence, love, being, power and all-knowingness. It is Sat­chidānan­da—existence-consciousness-bliss—that pris­tine force of being which is un­differentiated, totally aware of itself, without an ob­ject of its awareness. It radiates as divine light, energy and knowing. Out of Paraśiva ever comes Parāśakti, the first man­i­fes­tation of mind, superconsciousness or infinite know­ing. God Śiva knows in infinite, all-abiding, loving super­con­scious­ness. Śiva knows from deep within all of His creations to their surface. His Being is within every animate and inanimate form. Should God Śiva remove His all-perva­sive Parā­śakti from any one or all of the three worlds, they would crumble, disintegrate and fade away. Śiva’s Śakti is the sustaining power and presence throughout the universe. This un­bounded force has neither beginning nor end. Verily, it is the Divine Mind of Lord Śiva. The Vedas say, “He is God, hidden in all beings, their inmost soul who is in all. He watches the works of creation, lives in all things, watches all things. He is pure consciousness, be­­yond the three conditions of nature.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 18 – Living with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Brahmacharya In Family Life

The observance of brahmacharya is perhaps the most essential aspect of a sound, spiritual culture. This is why in Śaivism, boys and girls are taught the importance of remaining celibate until they are married. This creates healthy individuals, physically, emotionally and spiritually, generation after generation. There is a mystical reason. In virgin boys and girls, the psychic nāḍīs, the astral nerve currents that extend out into and through their aura, have small hooks at the end. When a boy and girl marry, the hooks straighten out and the nāḍīs are tied one to another, and they actually grow together. If the first sexual experience is premarital and virginity is broken, the hooks at the end of the nāḍīs also straighten out, but there is nothing to grow onto if the partners do not marry. Then, when either partner marries someone else, the relationship is never as close as when a virgin boy and girl marry, because their nāḍīs don’t grow together in the same way. In cases such as this, they feel the need for intellectual stimuli and emotional stimuli to keep the marriage going.

Youth ask, “How should we regard members of the opposite sex?” Do not look at members of the opposite sex with any idea of sex or lust in mind. Do not indulge in admiring those of the opposite sex, or seeing one as more beautiful than another. Boys must foster the inner attitude that all young women are their sisters and all older women are their mother. Girls must foster the inner attitude that all young men are their brothers and all older men are their father. Do not attend movies that depict the base instincts of humans, nor read books or magazines of this nature. Above all, avoid pornography on the Internet, on TV and in any other media.

To be successful in brahmacharya, one naturally wants to avoid arousing the sex instincts. This is done by understanding and avoiding the eight successive phases: fantasy, glorification, flirtation, lustful glances, secret love talk, amorous longing, rendezvous and finally intercourse. Be very careful to mix only with good company—those who think and speak in a cultured way—so that the mind and emotions are not led astray and vital energies needed for study used up. Get plenty of physical exercise. This is very important, because exercise sublimates your instinctive drives and directs excess energy and the flow of blood into all parts of the body.

Brahmacharya means sexual continence, as was observed by Mahatma Gandhi in his later years and by other great souls throughout life. There is another form of sexual purity, though not truly brahmacharya, followed by faithful family people who have a normal sex life while raising a family. They are working toward the stage when they will take their brahmacharya vrata after sixty years of age. Thereafter they would live together as brother and sister, sleeping in separate bedrooms. During their married life, they control the forces of lust and regulate instinctive energies and thus prepare to take that vrata. But if they are unfaithful, flirtatious and loose in their thinking through life, they will not be inclined to take the vrata in later life.

Faithfulness in marriage means fidelity and much more. It includes mental faithfulness, non-flirtatiousness and modesty toward the opposite sex. A married man, for instance, should not hire a secretary who is more magnetic or more beautiful than his wife. Metaphysically, in the perfect family relationship, man and wife are, in a sense, creating a one nervous system for their joint spiritual progress, and all of their nāḍīs are growing together over the years. If they break that faithfulness, they break the psychic, soul connections that are developing for their personal inner achievements. If one or the other of the partners does have an affair, this creates a psychic tug and pull on the nerve system of both spouses that will continue until the affair ends and long afterwards. Therefore, the principle of the containment of the sexual force and mental and emotional impulses is the spirit of brahmacharya, both for the single and married person.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 18: SEEKING INNER LIGHT AND STILLNESS
Those who live with Śiva attend close to His mystery. While others seek “name and fame, sex and money,” they seek the clear white light within, find refuge in the stillness and hold Truth in the palm of their hand. Aum.

Lesson 18 – Merging with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Making Wise Decisions

Life is a series of decisions also. One decision builds into another. To make a good decision, we have to again bring our total awareness to the eternity of the moment. If we project ourselves into the future to try to make a decision, we do not make a decision with wisdom. If we project ourselves into the past and in that way formulate our decisions, again they are not necessarily wise decisions, for they are decisions made through the powers of the intellectual or the instinctive area of the mind. The best decisions come to us when we hold the consciousness of the eternity of the moment and go within ourself for the answer.

The best rule in making a decision is: when in doubt, do nothing. Have the subject matter so clearly in mind, so well thought out, that soon the answer will be self-evident to you. There will be just no other way to go. Good, positive decisions bring good, positive actions and, of course, positive reactions. Decisions that are not well worked out—we jump into experiential patterns haphazardly or emotionally—bring reactions of an emotional nature that again have to be lived through until we cease to be aware of them and experience them emotionally.

Each time we have a decision to make, it’s a marvelous test in this classroom of experience. We can make a good decision if we approach it in the eternity of the moment. And, of course, there are no bad decisions. If we make a decision that is different than what we would make in the eternity of the moment—we make it through the instinctive area of the mind or the intellectual area of the mind—we’re not sure, totally, of ourself. We do not have enough information to make a good, positive decision.

So, when in doubt in making a decision, that’s the time to know we have to collect up more information, think about it more. Each decision is the foundation for the next series of experiences. When you are in a sequential series of experiential patterns, you are not making decisions at that time. Only when one experiential pattern has come to an end, and you’re ready for a new set of experiences in certain areas of your life, those are the times when you make new decisions. Weigh carefully each decision, because that is the rudder that guides your ship through the whole pattern of life.

Think it over carefully. Go in for intuitive guidance. And nobody knows better than yourself, your own super­con­scious being, what is to be the next set of experiential patterns for you to go through in your quest for enlightenment. It’s all based on decisions. Don’t expect someone to make decisions for you. They are second-hand, not the best. Others maybe can give a little bit of advice or supply a different perspective or added information for you to make a better decision. But the decision you make yourself in any matter is the most positive, most powerful one, and should be the right one. Do it from the eternity of the moment. That is the state of awareness to hold.

Lesson 17 – Dancing with Śiva

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Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is God Śiva’s Unmanifest Reality?

ŚLOKA 17
Paraśiva is God Śiva’s Unmanifest Reality or Absolute Being, distinguished from His other two perfections, which are manifest and of the nature of form. Paraśiva is the fullness of everything, the absence of nothing. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Paraśiva, the Self God, must be realized to be known, does not exist, yet seems to exist; yet existence itself and all states of mind, being and experiential patterns could not exist but for this ul­timate reality of God. Such is the great mystery that yogīs, ṛishis, saints and sages have re­a­l­ized through the ages. To discover Paraśiva, the yogī pen­etrates deep into contemplation. As thoughts arise in his mind, mental concepts of the world or of the God he seeks, he silently repeats, “Neti, neti—it is not this; it is not that.” His quieted consciousness ex­pands into Sat­chidānanda. He is ev­ery­where, permeating all form in this blissful state. He re­members his goal, which lies be­yond bliss, and holds firmly to “Neti, neti—this is not that for which I seek.” Through prāṇāyāma, through man­­tra, through tan­tra, wielding an indom­itable will, the last forces of form, time and space subside, as the yogī, deep in nirvikalpa samādhi, merges into Paraśiva. The Vedas explain, “Self-resplendent, form­less, un­­ori­gin­­­ated and pure, that all-pervading being is both with­in and without. He transcends even the transcendent, un­­man­ifest, causal state of the universe.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.