Unfolding a Clear Pattern
The dharma of a person’s life is set prior to birth according to the accumulated impressions of all previous lives. It is set as the most perfect path toward spiritual perfection in this life. A life spent in creating a new karma through not fulfilling the ordained pattern of dharma temporarily retards the soul’s evolution. This retardation may not appear until future births, seemingly bypassed but not actually bypassed.
To avoid the potential catastrophes of karma, each Hindu must perform his dharma, live according to the natural Godward path. By following this important pattern of spiritual unfoldment, the devotee benefits and, in turn, benefits all others and, most importantly, serves the Gods and earns good merit, earns their grace and then deserves their boons. When spiritually awakened, the Hindu offers his every thought, word and deed in a consciousness of the Divine. All work is done for that high purpose.
To know one’s dharma is a clear path. To be uncertain is a path of confusion. There is one God who knows the patterns of all humankind, whose superconscious mind is so intricate, encompassing and spanning the yugas of time, that each path for each individual is known, memorized and recorded indelibly in the inner ether of the ākāśic matter of His mind. Through the worship of this God, Lord Gaṇeśa, the venerable pope of the Hindu religion, the individual’s dharmic pattern in this life is unfolded from within. It becomes clear. It becomes known. It is difficult for the modern, twenty-first-century Hindu to consciously know the correct dharma, but this can be made known to him through the worship of Lord Gaṇeśa.
If someone is not fortunate enough to have been born into a family that perpetuates the Sanātana Dharma, then he must perform sādhana and offer repeated prayers to this first God, Lord Gaṇeśa, whom all Hindus invoke before the other Gods and before any task is undertaken, this God whose knowledge remains supreme, penetrating most deeply through every avenue of the devotee’s mind. Once the dharma is clear, is known, it must be faithfully performed throughout the life most willingly, thus destroying the seeds of karma through living out the pattern without creating a new karma, through performing good service, accruing good merit in fulfillment of the totalities of all of our multiple life patterns. This then makes the next life and the one after that joyous, brings good births well earned and well lived, through the graces of Mahā Gaṇapati, Lord Gaṇeśa, who sits upon the four-petaled lotus mūlādhāra chakra within the spine of every person.
As the divine being rises within and consciousness expands, a kuṇḍalinī coil is released and a certain power awakens from deep within. At the same time, conscience awakens, and the mind emerges into the mūlādhāra chakra, there to meet Mahā Gaṇapati, Lord Gaṇeśa, through whose eyes and mind the devotee enters into the joys and happinesses within the Hindu religion, the birthright of all humans. This is how the Sanātana Dharma perpetuates itself and progresses from generation to generation, from age to age. Of course, once well settled into dharma, through Lord Gaṇeśa, we will meet the other Gods. They will help maintain and fulfill our life in all avenues of culture and appreciation of that culture. It is only when each individual finds his own particular pattern in life, and clings to this pattern, that good future births are assured.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 254: HONORING THE SATGURU’S PRESENCE
When with the satguru, devotees do not initiate conversation or ask questions unless he gives permission. If he prefers silence, silence is the message, the pure nectar from the deep well of his ineffable attainment. Aum.