Merging into The Self God
When one looks at the Earth and the Sun, one thinks more of the Earth than of the Sun, which is so far away. Traveling through space toward the Sun, the Earth fades into a distant speck and one contemplates the Sun as it looms larger and larger as he draws nearer and nearer. There is no intellect here, you see, for the intellect is connected to the Earth in its exterior ramifications of worldliness. The devotee’s path is to merge into the Sun. The devotee’s path is to merge—in the totality of his awareness, willpower and life force—into the Self, God, Śiva. Śiva is the ancient name of the Self, God. Mystically, Śi is the Absolute state. Va is the All-Pervading Self flowing through the mind. It is only when the devotee, through yoga disciplines under the direction of his satguru, traverses the thought strata of his mind that he begins to experience what he has been learning philosophically. Then the Sun, his Śiva, the Self God, blooms paramount before his vision. Earthiness, worldliness, humanness, instinctiveness fade into a speck within his memory patterns; and like the astronaut hurtling through space toward the Sun, awe-struck as to the impending annihilation of the remnants of his identity, the devotee piercing his inner depths awes at the magnificence of Śiva.
This then brings willpower into its crowned usage. The transmuted force of the divine will of the devotee compellingly guides the last remnants of intellect and passions, and in total surrender, when confronted to respond, he voices, “I know not. Śiva’s will be done.” The will of Śiva—the totality of all force that is active, quiescent force and nonforce as found in Śi and Va—begins to take over the dharma and the karma and floods through the being of the devotee on the threshold of Reality. And so, while in a dual state of assuming some personal identity, he states, “Śiva’s will be done,” as his new and most refined sādhana of giving up the last of personal worldliness to the perfect timing of the infinite conglomerate of force and nonforce within him. This he says as a mantra unto himself when he sees and hears in the external world. But when eyes and ears are closed, through the transmuted power of his will he merges into the samādhi of Va and Śi and Śi and Va, experiencing Reality as himself and himself as Reality.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 109: THE BRAHMACHĀRĪ PATH
Śiva’s men devotees choosing not to marry may take up celibate life, keeping simple vows and wearing white. To be a swāmī candidate, they must begin an 8-to-12-year period of monastic training before the age of 25. Aum.