Lesson 185 – Dancing with Śiva

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How Do Hindus Understand Moksha?

ŚLOKA 30
The destiny of all souls is moksha, liberation from rebirth on the physical plane. Our soul then continues evolving in the Antarloka and Śivaloka, and finally merges with Śiva like water returning to the sea. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Moksha comes when earthly kar­­ma has been resolved, dhar­ma well per­formed and God fully realized. Each soul must have performed well through many lives the varṇa dharmas, or four castes, and lived through life’s varied experiences in ­order to not be pulled back to physical birth by a deed left un­done. All souls are destined to achieve moksha, but not necessarily in this life. Hindus know this and do not delude themselves that this life is the last. While seeking and attaining profound re­aliz­ations, they know there is much to be done in fulfilling life’s other goals (purush­ār­thas): dharma, righteousness; artha, wealth; and kāma, pleasure. Old souls re­nounce worldly ambitions and take up sannyāsa in quest of Par­aśiva, even at a young age. Toward life’s end, all Hin­dus strive for Self Re­al­iz­ation, the gateway to liberation. After moksha, subtle kar­mas are made in in­ner realms and swiftly resolved, like writing on water. At the end of each soul’s evolution comes viś­vagrāsa, total ab­sorp­tion in Śiva. The Vedas say, “If here one is able to re­­alize Him before the death of the body, he will be lib­er­at­­­ed from the bondage of the world.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 185 – Living with Śiva

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

Instilling No Fear

There is no greater good than a child. Children are entrusted to their parents to be loved, guided and protected, for they are the future of the future. However, children can be a challenge to raise up into good citizenship. There are many positive ways to guide them, such as hugging, kindness, time spent explaining, giving wise direction and setting the example of what you want them to become. Most children were adults not so many years ago, in previous births. The mind they worked to develop through the great school of experience is still there, as are the results of their accomplishments and failures. They have been reborn to continue to know, to understand and to improve themselves and the community they are born into. Parents can help or inhibit this process of evolution. They have a choice.

There are six chakras, or centers of consciousness, above the mūlādhāra chakra, which is the center of memory, at the base of the spine. Above the mūlādhāra lies the chakra of reason. Above that is willpower. There are seven chakras below the mūlādhāra, the first being fear, below it anger and below that jealousy. The choice of each individual parent is to discipline the child to advance him or her upward into reason, willpower, profound understanding and divine love, or downward into fear, anger, distrust, jealousy and selfishness—personal preservation without regard for the welfare of others.

Children have an abundance of energy, and sometimes it can make them rather wild, and this can be extreme if they are consuming too much sugar. How should this be controlled by the parents? When children run around excitedly, refer to their energy as Śiva’s prāṇa within them. Congratulate them each time they exercise control over it, but don’t punish them when they don’t. Instead, explain that it is important that they learn to control and use their energies in positive ways. Have them sit with you and breathe deeply. Teach them to feel energy. Go into the shrine room and sit with them until their prāṇas become quiet, and then help them observe the difference. To hit them or to yell at them when they are rowdy is only sending more aggravated prāṇa into them from you. Another technique is to withdraw your prāṇa from them and tell them you are retiring to another room until they calm down.

Beating, spanking, pinching, slapping children and inflicting upon their astral bodies the vibration of angry words are all sinfully destructive to their spiritual unfoldment and their future. Parents who thus force their child to fear and hate them have lost their chance to make him or her a better person by talking, because they have closed the child’s ears. Those who beat or pinch or hurt or slap or whip their children are the enemies to religion, because they are pushing the next generation into lower consciousness. Is that religious society? No! Such behavior is not even common in the animal kingdom. It’s below the animal kingdom. But that is what we face in the world today. That helps explain why there are so many problems in this modern age.

Sadly, in this day and age, beating the kids is just a way of life in many families. Nearly everyone was beaten as a child, so they beat their kids, and their kids will beat their kids, and those kids will beat their kids. Older brothers will beat younger brothers. Brothers will beat sisters. You can see what families are creating in this endless cycle of violence: little warriors. One day a war will come up, and it will be easy for a young person who has been beaten without mercy to pick up a gun and kill somebody without conscience, and even take pleasure in doing so. What kind of society do we have? In the US today, a murder is committed every thirty-three minutes, an assault every five seconds, a rape every ninety seconds. A man beats his wife every fifty-one seconds. A woman beats her husband every five and a half minutes. A 12- to 15-year-old child is assaulted every thirty-one seconds, and one is raped every eight minutes. Will the violence ever stop? No. It can’t, unless a radical change is made. We must stop the war in the home. It is as simple as that.

I recently attended a ceremony in which criminals being released from the Kauai jail gave testimony before leaders of the community that they would not repeat their crime. With tears in their eyes, all said they had been beaten by their family in early life, driven out of the home, into drugs, excessive alcohol and into crime and finally jail. Each one had the same sad story to tell.

I instruct the lay missionaries of my international Hindu church: “Talk to the children. Ask if their parents beat them, and then talk to the parents. At first they will say, ‘Oh, once or twice,’ but if you persist, you may find it’s much worse than that.” Think about it, even if a child is only hit once a month, that adds up to nearly two hundred beatings over fifteen years. I challenge child-beaters, “Would you beat somebody your same weight and your same height with the same readiness?” They would say no, because that’s against the law. It’s called assault. But hitting a little kid, is that also not against the law? More and more, it is.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 185: PROTECTING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists must resist the urge to share everything they discover. Certain knowledge has proven dangerous and hurtful to mankind, especially in the hands of the unscrupulous. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 185 – Merging with Śiva

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

The Mind’s Potent Alchemy

It is only when the emotionally charged experiences that go into the subconscious are of a strictly instinctive nature that the subsubconscious is uncomely or not beneficial and becomes a strong hindrance to well-being. On the other hand, experiences of a positive, intellectual or spiritual nature merging in the subconscious can create a subsubconscious that is quite dynamic and helpful, giving courage and competence in worldly affairs. Feelings of security, love and compassion can come up from the subsubconscious during psychological moments in one’s life to counteract and eliminate or subdue feelings of jealousy, hatred and anger, which are natural to the instinctive mind.

For example, a man’s business flourishes during the summer. The next winter he experiences great exhilaration and satisfaction at winning a skiing competition. The summer success and the winter accomplishment merging in the subconscious create a third, different impression which builds an abiding confidence and impulsion toward future victory. The next year, he goes into a second business and again prospers. His competitors wonder how he has avoided the seasonal ebbs and flows of this particular business. “How has he been so lucky?” they wonder. The strong impression of being successful planted in the subsubconscious has created a positive habit pattern for the forces of the subsuperconscious to flow through.

The subsubconscious can also be formed by the blending of strong, intuitive, religious or mystical impressions. For instance, a devotee has an elevating vision of a Deity in an early morning dream or a conscious vision during meditation. A year later, while meditating, he has the experience of flying through the ākāśa in his astral body. These two impressions merge in the subconscious and create a deep-seated faith and unwavering certainty in the inner realities. Such vāsanās bring up courage and eliminate the fear of death, replacing it with the assurance that life is eternal, the soul is real and the physical body is but a shell in which we live. Now we have seen that the subsubconscious state of mind can be beneficial, or it can hold impressions that are actual obstacles in our path that must eventually be dealt with and overcome. Both positive and negative impressions can lie vibrating within it at the same time without interfering one with another.

Lesson 184 – Dancing with Śiva

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Why Are We Not Omniscient Like Śiva?

ŚLOKA 29
The three bonds of āṇava, karma and māyā veil our sight. This is Śiva’s purposeful limiting of awareness which allows us to evolve. In the superconscious depths of our soul, we share God Śiva’s all-knowingness. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Just as children are kept from knowing all about adult life until they have matured into understanding, so too is the soul’s knowledge limited. We learn what we need to know, and we understand what we have experienced. Only this narrowing of our awareness, coupled with a sense of individualized ego, allows us to look upon the world and our part in it from a practical, human point of view. Pāśa is the soul’s triple bondage: māyā, karma and āṇava. Without the world of māyā, the soul could not evolve through experience. Karma is the law of cause and effect, action and reaction governing māyā. Āṇava is the individuating veil of duality, source of ignorance and finitude. Māyā is the classroom, karma the teacher, and āṇava the student’s ignorance. The three bonds, or malas, are given by Lord Śiva to help and protect us as we unfold. Yet, God Śiva’s all-knowingness may be experienced for brief periods by the meditator who turns within to his own essence. The Tirumantiram explains, “When the soul attains Self-knowledge, then it becomes one with Śiva. The malas perish, birth’s cycle ends and the lustrous light of wisdom dawns.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 184 – Living with Śiva

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

The Sad Truth Of Hurtfulness

I have been asked, “Should parents never spank a child?” Of course, one should never spank children, ever. Those who are spanked are taught to later punish their children, and this is a vicious cycle. Have you ever seen an animal in its natural habitat abuse its offspring? Does a lion cause blood to flow from its cub, a bird brutally peck its own chick, a cow trample its calf, a whale beach a disobedient calf? How about a dolphin, a dog, a butterfly, a cat? It is only humans who become angered by and hurtfully, sometimes lethally, aggressive toward their offspring.

The wife-husband relationship is where it all begins. The mother and father are karmically responsible for the tenor of society that follows them. An ahiṁsā couple produces the protectors of the race. Hiṁsā, hurtful, couples produce the destroyers of the race. They are a shame upon humanity. It’s as simple as that. It’s so crucial that it needs to be said more than once. “Hiṁsā, hurtful, couples produce the destroyers of the race. They are a shame upon humanity.”

A five-foot-ten-inch adult beating on a tiny child—what cowardliness. A muscular man slapping a woman who cannot fight back. What cowardliness! Yet another kind of cowardliness belongs to those who stand by, doing nothing to stop known instances of harm and injury in their community. Such crimes, even if the law does not punish, earn a lifetime of imprisonment in the criminal’s karma, because they always know that they watched or knew and said nothing. This sin earns lifetime imprisonment in their own mind. Beating a child destroys his or her faith. It destroys faith in humanity and therefore in religion and in God. If their father and mother beat them, whom are they going to trust throughout their whole life? Child beating is very destructive.

Innocent children who see their father beating their mother or their mother spitefully scratching their father’s body after she emotionally shattered his manhood by provocative insinuations, threats and tongue lashing have at those very moments been given permission to do the same. Of course, we can excuse all of this as being simply karma—the karma of the parents as taught by their parents and the karma of the children born into the family who abuses them. But the divine law of karma cannot be used as permission or an opportunity to be hurtful. Simply speaking, if hurtfulness has been done to you, this does not give you permission to perform the same act upon another. It is dharma that controls karma. It is not the other way around. In Hinduism, the parents are to be the spiritual leaders of their children, not the mental, emotional and physical abusers of their children.

Those sensitive children who see their mother and father working out their differences in mature discussion or in the shrine room through prayer and meditation are at that moment given permission to do the same in their own life when they are older. They become the elite of society, the pillars of strength to the community during times of stress and hardship. These children, when older, will surely uphold the principles of dharma and will not succumb to the temptations of the lower mind.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 184: GUARDIANS OF EARTH AND HER PEOPLE
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists concentrate their energies on bettering the world, conserving its resources and enabling humans to live in harmony with nature and one another. They are noble examples to mankind. Aum.

Lesson 184 – Merging with Śiva

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

Fathoming the Unfathomable

Yes, two different reactionary thoughts of a similar vibration sent into the subconscious at different times under similar psychological conditions create a third, different subconscious happening. This happening registers in the subsubconscious and continues to vibrate there until it is dissolved and reabsorbed within the subconscious itself. If psychological structures build up as problems in the subsubconscious and are not resolved, they can inhibit or hold back the superconscious. One then easily feels depressed and subject to many lower emotions. Then the concept that one is a self-effulgent being seems quite distant, indeed. When the subsubconscious build-up is problem free, superconsciousness is there, bringing success and well-being.

The subsubconscious concerns us primarily as the state of mind which relates to congested subconscious force fields, or vāsanās, caused by two similar intense emotional reactions at psychological moments. The resultant deeply suppressed emotions are puzzling to the seeker because, unless he is able to resolve through periodic review his subsubconscious, he may find them welling up from within him unbidden, and he knows not why. The subsubconscious influences us when we are encountering an experience similar to one that caused one of the two component reactions. This releases highly unexpected emotional responses, inobvious reactions and new behavioral patterns, some positive, some negative. The hybrid formation continues to react within the subsubconscious mind until resolved. Once understood, the mystery is gone. The vāsanā loses its emotional power. To a very great extent, it is the subsubconscious that harbors our subliminal aspirations, self-esteem, impulses toward success, neuroses and overall psychological behavior.

An example of this state of mind is as follows. A young man goes to an office party and accidentally spills coffee on his suit. Being a gentle, shy man, he becomes embarrassed and emotionally upset when everyone turns to look at him. Many months later, he attends his sister’s wedding. In her excitement at the reception, she accidentally spills tea on her beautiful new sārī. She is naturally embarrassed. But it is a psychological moment for him, intensified by his attachment to his sister, and he becomes more embarrassed for her than she is for herself.

A year later he discovers that each time he attends a social gathering, his solar plexus becomes upset, his digestion is affected, he gets a headache and has to leave. The fear mechanism, stimulated by the subsubconscious mind, is protecting him from another upsetting condition among a group of people. This continues for a number of years until the subsubconscious, in a semi-dream state, reveals itself to him and he sees clearly how the two reactionary thought patterns, caused by the dual experiences, met and merged and gave rise to a different conscious experience—the indigestion, the headaches and the dread of being among people. Once the obstacle was resolved in the light of understanding, he would be able to be among people in gatherings without these ill effects.

Lesson 183 – Dancing with Śiva

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How Is Our Soul Identical with Śiva?

ŚLOKA 28
The essence of our soul, which was never created, is immanent love and transcendent reality and is identical and eternally one with God Śiva. At the core of our being, we already are That—perfect at this very moment. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
At the core of the subtle soul body is Parāśakti, or Sat­chid­ānanda, im­manent love; and at the core of that is Paraśiva, transcendent reality. At this depth of our being there exists no separate identity or difference—all are One. Thus, deep with­in our soul we are identical with God now and forever. These two divine perfections are not as­­pects of the evolving soul, but the nucleus of the soul which does not change or evolve. From an absolute perspective, our soul is already in nondual union with God, but to be realized to be known. We are That. We do not become That. Deep within this physical body, with its turbulent emotions and getting-educated mind, is pure perfection identical to Śiva’s own perfections of Parāśakti and Paraśiva. In this sacred mystery we find the paradoxes of oneness and twoness, of being and becoming, of created and uncreated existence subtly delineated. Yea, in the depth of our being, we are as He is. The Vedas explain, “The one control­ler, the inner Self of all things, who makes His one form manifold, to the wise who perceive Him as abiding in the soul, to them is eternal bliss—to no others.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 183 – Living with Śiva

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

The Bane Of Battering

The whole world is reevaluating how we treat women, children, the aged and infirm. Ways of behaving toward our fellow human beings that were normal and acceptable a hundred years ago are no longer acceptable. We now comprehend, as never before, the tragedy of a battered wife or an abused infant. Shamefully, we do not always live up to the Hindu ideal in these areas.

What is that ideal? It is this: Never injure others. Hindu children are always treated with great respect and awe, for one does not always know who they are. They may be incarnations of a grandmother, grandfather, aunt or uncle, dearly beloved mother, sister, brother, respected father, a yogī or ṛishi returned to flesh to help mankind spiritually. We must ask, “Who are these souls? What is their destiny in this life? How can I help?”

Parents love their children, or at least they should, and the principle of ahiṁsā, nonviolence and nonhurtfulness—physically, mentally or emotionally—does apply in the parent-child relationship, as well as in the husband-wife relationship. Children must be nurtured prenatally without being hurt in the process. Children must be allowed to develop physically, emotionally and mentally without being hurt in the process. We know they are sometimes mischievous and can get on your nerves, but the religious parents who are avowed to ahiṁsā are in truth more mature than their children and are able to handle situations as they come up without recourse to pinching, hitting or verbal abuse. Only in an ahiṁsā home can we bring children from one stage of physical, emotional, mental growth to another and still nurture spiritual qualities.

To hurt a child in any way is to drive that child into fear and cause the development of anger and resentment at an early age. Parents are supposed to lift their offspring into the higher nature, of love, forgiveness, friendliness and security, not to drive them into the lower nature, of hate, mistrust, resentment, offishness and insecurity. Obedience through fear is not a desirable obedience.

Psychologically, parents breed guilt by telling their children they sacrificed everything for them, gave them so much, saying, “Look what we are getting in return. You are worthless and ungrateful.” Guilty people are not creative, often not reasonable and are lacking willpower, for their inspiration has been destroyed. Their self-image is at the bottom of the bottom, like rust on the soul. “I’m nobody, I’m nothing. She is right. I don’t appreciate anything, I’m worthless.” These are the thoughts of those who live in this state of mind. True, this is the Kali Yuga in which mothers give birth and then destroy their young. They do it through beating them when they are young and later through defamation of character through cutting insults to keep them “in their place.”

Conformity through threats does not build a loving family or a strong society. To bribe children into submission with sweets or promises that are never meant to be fulfilled is to engender in them an eventual mistrust of their parents and foster rebelliousness coupled with selfish expectations about life. To anger a child at an early age is to place him on the path of retribution toward others later in life. To strike or pinch a child may seem expedient in the confusion of the moment. It may provide a short-term solution. But never forget the long-term karmic price that must be paid. The “I own you, you owe me” attitude is no longer acceptable, and is being replaced by “I love you, you love me,” in the homes of righteous Hindu families who realize that the hurtful methods do not bring positive results.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 183: NONINJURIOUS SCIENCE
Śiva’s devotees who are scientists or medical researchers refuse to participate in product testing that is harmful to the subject. They are forbidden to take part in any enterprise that promotes death or destruction. Aum.

Lesson 183 – Merging with Śiva

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

Where One Plus One Equals Three

There is one area of the subconscious mind that seems rather devious and extremely hard to program. It is called the sub of the subconscious mind. It often could seem like faulty software in the computer. But when finally programmed correctly, it can become the greatest asset. It brings us good luck and assists with perfect timing through life. At times we feel as if nothing is happening to us anymore. Everything is going along smoothly. We walk up to a closed door and the door opens for us. We walk up to a telephone and it begins to ring. These signs show us that the subsubconscious is going along very nicely. As soon as we do not enjoy this fine timing, it is generally because of the sub of the subconscious area. For when two programs of a similar nature go into the subconscious computer at different times, they mix and mingle and form a third program within the subconscious that is difficult to fathom intellectually. This is recorded in the sub of the subconscious. For this reason, the sub of the subconscious mind seems awesome and foreboding. If both of the programs are good, beneficial, positive and spiritually vibrant, things go smoothly for us. But if they are not, this area of the subconscious can be very disturbing. Remedies are deep introspection and emotional-intellectual honesty. The subsubconscious can become very powerful, creating healthy new tendencies in this life and molding a dynamic personality.

Two thoughts, at different times, sent into the subconscious mind, form in what is called the sub of the subconscious a totally different rate of vibration when intermingled—that is, if the psychological arrangement of the mind was the same at the time each thought entered it. This subconscious formation of thought often turns into feelings of the lower, instinctive nature and causes the external mind to react to situations in a way that it normally would not have done.

The subsubconscious mind not only attracts situations that express its contents, but creates situations by playing upon the subconscious itself. The sub of the subconscious mind, therefore, is the part of the subconscious that stores and manages the unfathomable result of the combinations of intense, emotionally-charged experiences, either positive or negative. These combinations create a third, hybrid reactionary condition quite unlike what either experience alone could have caused.

Color shall be our example. Blue stands alone as a color, and so does yellow. When they merge, they make a third color, green, which creates a mood when you look upon it, different than the mood that arises from looking upon blue or yellow alone. Only in understanding that green is a composite of yellow and blue is the mystery dispelled. Add white to red and you get pink. Add water to soil and you get mud. This is easy to understand and shows the nature of impressions coming together in the subconscious. Add oxygen to hydrogen and you get water. That is a mystery which parallels the nature of the subsubconscious mind, a realm where one plus one equals three, while in the subconscious the sum is two.

Lesson 182 – Dancing with Śiva

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How is our soul different from Śiva?

ŚLOKA 27
Our soul body was created in the image and likeness of the Primal Soul, God Śiva, but it differs from the Primal Soul in that it is immature. While Śiva is unevolutionary perfection, we are in the process of evolving. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
To understand the mysteries of the soul, we distinguish be­tween the soul body and its essence. As a soul body, we are indi­vidual and unique, different from all others, a self-effulgent being of light which evolves and matures through an evolutionary pro­cess. This soul body is of the nature of God Śiva, but is different from Śiva in that it is less resplendent than the Primal Soul and still evolving, while God is unevolutionary perfection. We may liken the soul body to an acorn, which contains the mighty oak tree but is a small seed yet to develop. The soul body ma­tures through experience, evolving through many lives in­­­to the splendor of God Śiva, ultimately realizing Śiva totally in nirvikalpa samādhi. Even after Self Realization is at­tained, the soul body continues to evolve in this and other worlds un­til it merges with the Primal Soul, as a drop of water merges with its source, the ocean. Yea, this is the destiny of all souls without exception. The Vedas say, “As oil in sesame seeds, as butter in cream, as wa­ter in river beds, as fire in friction sticks, so is the ātman grasped in one’s own self when one searches for Him with truthfulness and austerity.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.