ŚLOKA 78 Marriage is a union not only of boy and girl, but of their families, too. Not leaving such crucial matters to chance, all family members participate in finding the most suitable spouse for the eligible son or daughter. Aum.
BHĀSHYA In seeking a bride for a son, or a groom for a daughter, the goal is to find a mate compatible in age, physique, education, social status, religion, character and personality. Elders may first seek a partner among families they know and esteem for the kinship bonds the marriage would bring. Astrology is always consulted for compatibility. Of course, mutual attraction and full consent of the couple are crucial. Once a potential spouse is selected, informal inquiries are made by a relative or friend. If the response is encouraging, the father of the girl meets the father of the boy and presents a proposal. Next, the families gather at the girl’s home to get acquainted and to allow the couple to meet and discuss their expectations. If all agree to the match, the boy’s mother adorns the girl with a gold necklace, or gifts are exchanged between families, signifying a firm betrothal. Rejoicing begins with the engagement ceremony and culminates on the wedding day. The Vedas say, “Straight be the paths and thornless on which our friends will travel to present our suit! May Aryaman and Bhaga lead us together! May heaven grant us a stable marriage!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
There is no requirement to die at any established time, even if your doctor tells you that you have only two years to live, even if your astrologer predicts it, even if your enemies hope for your early demise. I was told that in Africa if a powerful medicine man tells a person he is going to die, the fear and belief are so strong that within hours he succumbs. Mind over matter? It’s not much different when everyone around us is chanting the senility mantra—when your wife, kids, friends and boss keep saying, “You’re not getting any younger, you know.”
There are high laws to invoke as age advances, to sustain the prāṇas, to strengthen the force of life within. Those who know wisdom’s ways have overcome the “I’m getting old” syndrome, a mantra no one should ever repeat, even once. They know how the mind works, and by applying the laws, they have lived long, useful, happy and healthy lives. The redundancy system of one part of the body failing and another part taking over, especially within the brain, should be understood by the aging person, to know that all is not lost. If memory loss is experienced, things can often be memorized again and shifted over to another part of the brain. These are simple techniques that are based on the truth that the mind is constantly maturing; so are the emotions, and so is the intelligence and accumulated knowledge. Most importantly, the wisdom of how to use the knowledge and to judge whether it is worthwhile at all—that, too, is maturing from decade to decade and life to life.
The psychological secret is to have a goal, actually many goals, in service to humanity to accomplish. People helping people, people serving people, that is what the Hindu Dharma is and has been proclaiming for some 8,000 years or more. Good goals and a will to live prolong life. It is even more life-giving when the goal of human existence, in helping people to fulfill dharma, is strengthened by daily sādhana. When pre-dawn morning pūjās, scriptural reading, devotionals to the guru and meditation are performed without fail, the deeper side of ourselves is cultivated, and that in itself softens our karmas and prolongs life.
Life is eternal on the inner planes, in the refined bodies of the soul. But a physical body these days is hard to obtain. We have to go through the embarrassment of birth, being slapped on the bottom, talked to in baby talk, and learning to walk, read and write all over again. It takes years and years before we get back to, if we ever do in the new life, the wisdom years that we attained in the previous birth.
So, take care of your physical body. No need to know too much about it, for it knows what it needs. Listen to its messages, respond quickly, find an āyurvedic doctor who can help you through the many changes the body will naturally go through, and face each one positively. This body is impermanent, true, but it is the only one you have, so make the best use of it. You have good work to do, and knowledge born of experience to pass along to the coming generation.
The older you get, the more disciplined you should get, the more sādhana you should perform as you drop off the extraneous things of the world. If your children leave home and cultivate other interests, find new eager children to teach, new ways to serve. Be useful to others. Keep planting the seeds of dharma. Maybe they will be annuals instead of perennials, but keep planting for the future. Others might be saying, “old and gray and in the way,” but we say, “old and gray and here to stay.”
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 233: RESTRAINING INVOLVEMENT WITH OTHER FAITHS Śiva’s devotees avoid the enchantment of other ways, be they ancient or modern. They remain friendly toward but apart from other religions, except when their members sincerely approach Hinduism for its wisdom. Aum.
If resentment and anger are not conquered in this life, all the karmas of the creation of these upsets through life condense and go to seed. In the next life, in condensed form, the colors of the inner aura of the sub of the subconscious mind remain in the mind substance of the baby, waiting for similar situations to occur, to burst out in a full array of color and take over the outer aura emotions and the conscious and subconscious mind. As the baby grows physically, the inner aura grows, too. That’s why parents often sing religious songs and bless the baby with white light, to help in harmonizing the seed karmas so they don’t awaken in all their negative power. They work to lighten the colors with white light, and the karmas are lightened. Thus, the wise Hindu parent attempts to subdue the sub of the subconscious mind reflected in the permanent aura of the child even at an early time in life. Each area of this prāṇic montage of color represents a whole conglomerate of experiences the child had in past lives but did not resolve and therefore must go through again in this life.
Yes! You can bless yourself as well. With little effort at all, go within yourself and become aware of the center of your spine where the white light is and let the light shine out, flooding your entire aura. As it does so, it also will neutralize the more permanent inner aura, lightening the heavier colors, if any, into shades and hues that will inspire and invigorate your future life. When the darker colors are finally gone, they are gone forever. This is indeed a blessing you can give yourself, or which the Deity can give you in the temple with the instant power of His rays.
You might be wondering at this time, what exactly, then, is a curse? A curse is just the opposite of a blessing. When someone becomes angry at you, or you become angry with someone, he is actually cursing you, or you him. This is because powerful vibrations of red and black, grays and muddy, brownish greens are being sent from one person to another. Truly, this hurts, and bad karma is made.
Our holy scriptures tell us that we must purify our intellects. What does this actually mean? It means that we must lighten up the colors that are within our subconscious and sub of the subconscious mind. When the intellect is finally purified, the outer aura shows many pastel colors in and through it. The permanent inner aura will be filled with beautiful patterns of golden yellow, blue and lavender. But once the intellect is purified, good mental maintenance must occur daily so that congested areas are not recreated out of habit. This is the great value of a regulated religious life and daily sādhana.
To keep the colors of our subconscious and subsubconscious refined, our religion tells us to go on a long pilgrimage once a year. This means we take our inner aura that has been building up through the year and place it at the feet of the Deity at some far-off temple. While on the pilgrimage, we are able to collect all its colors, emotions and deep feelings and leave them, along with our offering of fruit and flowers, at the God’s holy feet to be disintegrated by Him. So great are the Gods of our religion.
To keep the colors of our subconscious and subsubconscious refined, our religion tells us to read scripture daily, because their high-minded thoughts and concepts bring purple, lavender, pink and yellow into our aura. To keep the colors of our subconscious and subsubconscious refined, our religion tells us to perform pūjā daily to personally invoke the higher beings in the Devaloka at our own home shrine and obtain their blessings. It may interest you to know that such blessings lighten not only the aura of each one in the household but also the physical building itself.
To keep the colors of our subconscious and subsubconscious refined, our religion tells us to provide the essential sacraments in life for the children, so that the permanent impressions of these special combinations of color and sound are placed into the inner aura of the subsubconscious mind and added to the ones that are already there from previous saṁskāras.
ŚLOKA 77 Tradition requires that the wife adopt the religion and lifestyle of her husband. Thus, Hindu women wanting to continue their family culture and religion will, in wisdom, marry a spouse of the same sect and lineage. Aum.
BHĀSHYA The mutual spiritual unfoldment of man and wife is a central purpose of marriage. When we marry outside our religion, we create disharmony and conflict for ourselves and our children. Such a marriage draws us away from religious involvement instead of deeper into its fulfillment. For marriage to serve its spiritual purpose to the highest, husband and wife should hold the same beliefs and share the same religious practices. Their harmony of minds will be reflected in the children. A man’s choice of spouse is a simple decision, because his wife is bound to follow him. For a woman, it is a far more important decision, because her choice determines the future of her religious and social life. While his lifestyle will not change, hers will. Should a Hindu marry a non-Hindu, traditional wisdom dictates that the wife conform to her husband’s heritage, and that the children be raised in his faith, with no conflicting beliefs or customs. The husband may be invited to convert to her faith before marriage. The Vedas pray, “United your resolve, united your hearts, may your spirits be one, that you may long together dwell in unity and concord!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Growing old. Let’s talk about it. There is a false concept that stops people from living the long, full life described in the Vedas. Old age is as much a state of mind as of body. Today young people are taught that when you become old and gray, you are in the way. Not a nice thought! It is the older folk, the wiser folk, the experienced elders, who have lived longer and therefore can see further, to whom youth should be listening. But in our present times, young people have become the spokesmen, and they are allowed to learn by their own mistakes. What a perverted way to learn! They should be learning, if they ever become open to it, from the mistakes of their elders, that is if elders are willing to admit them. There is no excuse for ignorance. Yet, looking around, we find it to be all pervasive, like the Hindu God, equally distributed all over the world.
We are not getting old. True, the physical body does change. It has done so from birth, but it has a future. It really does. We live in it like we walk in our shoes. My satguru said, “Live in your body as loosely as your wear your sandals.” It is not wise to accept the forebodings that we are headed toward a doomsday, end of the world, end of the physical body, absolute, total oblivion, and that is that. Think no more about it.
Aging is an interesting process. Even though we are told that all the cells in the body change and renew themselves every three or four years, aging can be really scary, especially for those who identify themselves as their body. But not for those of us who know that we are not the body, we only live in it. It is our Earth suit in which to function on this planet. In fact, we don’t live in it twenty-four hours a day. At least eight hours, while we are sleeping, we are living in our astral suit, traveling here and there in the Devaloka.
When we correctly look at aged people, we look at minds that have been developed year after year after year. We look at souls that have matured because of their sojourn on Earth. We see them having gone through many birth karmas, prārabdha karmas—those we bring with us to live through—and prevailed. We look upon their situation as wonderful and enlightening, their wisdom as useful and worthy to make part of our lives. After all, if we hear from them, it is in our prārabdha karmas to have had that knowledge passed on to us. Only the ignorant would object. And they usually do.
The mind never gets old, though the brain may. The mind never deteriorates. Consciousness was never born and never dies. The mental body, which works through the astral body and the Earth suit, does not age, does not get weak, as modern people think of aging, as weakness, disability. It becomes stronger and stronger, more mature and more expansive, as do the emotions if they are understood and controlled from stage to stage. Age is not an obstacle; it is a legacy. The most senior among us should have faith in the future, not be led to think that turning fifty or sixty or eighty is some morbid milestone. It’s not. Take heart. When I met Satguru Yogaswami, spiritual king of Jaffna, he was seventy-seven, still walking twenty miles a day, still meditating hours a day, and he would go on dynamically for another fifteen years. Some die young, of course. Sankara was just thirty-two and Vivekananda thirty-nine. Others die old. Sri Chandrasekharendra passed on in his hundredth year, and we recently read of the passing of a 116-year-old yogī. The US Census Bureau reported that from 1900 to 2000, the number of people in the United States 85 and over grew tenfold, to four million, while the overall population grew less than fourfold. The bureau projects that the 85-and-over population will exceed 13 million by 2040. The number of centenarians is expected to grow to more than 834,000, from just 63,000 in 1900. And many live surprisingly active and healthy lives, even remaining in their careers after age 100.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 232: NOT DEMEANING OTHER SECTS OR RELIGIONS Śiva’s devotees do not speak disrespectfully about other Hindu lineages, their beliefs, Gods, sacred sites, scriptures, or holy men and women. Nor do they disparage other religions. They refuse to listen to such talk. Aum.
You as a devotee have often gone to the temple with your problems and placed them at the feet of the Deity. In the unseen world of the Devaloka what actually happens is that the Deity and His many devas work with your problems by working with your aura, most especially the inner aura, by disintegrating or clearing up any congestion they find. They lighten the darker colors that were created by traveling through troubled states of mind, infusing them with rays of white and violet light from the inner sanctum. We rarely see this happening, but we can certainly feel it, and we depart the temple feeling relieved and freed from congestion and worry. Often we can hardly remember what we were upset about.
You can also flood your aura with rays of white and violet light, just like the Deities and devas do. If you are in a bad mood because of having just become angry with someone because you were jealous of him, there is a remedy that you can perform for yourself. Your aura is now brownish with murky dirty green, possibly accented with black and red sparks. To counteract this heaviness, just add white. Visualize white light flooding out from the center of your spine into and through your aura. Visualize violet rays flooding into your new white aura, invigorating and cutting through the darkness.
When you go, as pure awareness, right into the center of your spine and flood white mind substance out into your aura, the white mixes with the black, and gray appears in your aura. Immediately you experience fear, but this emotion soon passes as more white enters the aura. The gray soon disappears. As still more white enters the aura, the flaming red of anger turns to the pink shades of tolerance and compassion. The dark browns and the murky dark green of jealousy turn to the emerald green of confidence and humility. A feeling of peace and contentment comes as the new colors react back on the emotions. All this and more happens to you from within you because you deliberately moved your individual awareness deep into the center of your spine and flooded white rays of light out through your aura. It takes but a little effort on your part, a little concentration, persistence and faith in your ability to change your own mood by a positive effort of will. You, too, can do as the devas do. Try it today.
You have no doubt experienced difficulty in getting up in the morning. What is the remedy for this? What color would you flood your aura with to invigorate your physical body in the early morning? Flood your aura with red, of course, a nice bright red. It doesn’t take much effort to visualize the color red. You will know that you have succeeded when all of a sudden your physical vitality awakens and you feel invigorated and ready to jump up for a wonderful day.
All of us at one time or another experience mental laziness. What is the remedy? Simply flood your aura with yellow by visualizing yellow light all around you, and soon you will be drawn into the thinking area of the mind and be able to progressively pursue your studies. Visualizing orange strengthens your intellectual aggressiveness because red is added to the yellow. So if you want to become intellectually aggressive, a quality needed to succeed in the business world, after you have succeeded in flooding your aura with yellow light, then flood your aura with orange light and experience the change for yourself.
ŚLOKA 76 A happy marriage is based first and foremost on a mature love, not a romantic ideal of love. It requires selflessness and constant attention. A successful marriage is one which both partners work at making successful. Aum.
BHĀSHYA While not all marriages must be arranged, there is wisdom in arranged marriages, which have always been an important part of Hindu culture. Their success lies in the families’ judgment to base the union on pragmatic matters which will outlast the sweetest infatuation and endure through the years. The ideal age for women is from 18 to 25, men from 21 to 30. Stability is enhanced if the boy has completed his education, established earnings through a profession and is at least five years older than the girl. Mature love includes accepting obligations, duties and even difficulties. The couple should be prepared to work with their marriage, not expecting it to take care of itself. It is good for bride and groom to write out a covenant by hand, each pledging to fulfill certain duties and promises. They should approach the marriage as holy, advancing both partners spiritually. It is important to marry a spouse who is dependable, chaste and serious about raising children in the Hindu way, and then worship and pray together. The Vedas say, “Devoted to sacrifice, gathering wealth, they serve the Immortal and honor the Gods, united in mutual love.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
From our cyberspace congregation through the Internet came a question about the thirty-one-day period of seclusion that a family observes following a death or a birth in the family. The traditional practice is to not go to the temple, to not visit swāmīs and gurus, and to put white cloth over the Deities in the shrine room. An understanding of the esoterics behind traditions is very important in order to fulfill them. When someone is born or dies, a door, to either the higher or lower inner worlds, is opened for all who share a psychic bond, depending on where the soul has come from or has gone. For thirty-one days a psychic passageway of vulnerability persists, which is particularly magnetic in instances of death. “Still,” the devotee asked, “isn’t a birth especially a happy, sacred event? If so, why can’t we go into the shrine room? Why can’t we go into the temple?”
Yes, birth is a very sacred and happy event for the entire family and should be regarded as such. However, it is also a very inner time for the family. Inner worship, meditation, singing songs, doing japa are totally acceptable. A primary reason behind this tradition is to protect the health and well-being of the newborn. Secondly, it is observed so that the baby can become adjusted to the big experience of birth, which is a tremendous experience for the soul, to come into a physical body. During this first month, the astral body of the child is getting accustomed to its tiny new physical body and is experiencing leaving that body and reentering that body. This is an important time of astral, physical adjustment for the newly born. Often when a baby is crying uncontrollably, we can assume that the astral body is out of the physical body, trying to reenter. Also, to bring a newborn child during his first month to a temple would be unwise, as everyone would crowd around, relatives and strangers and friends, breathing into his face, and the baby could contract a disease. Thirty-one days is given to keep the child protected from disease and allow him or her full entrance into the physical body.
The observance of the thirty-one day period immediately after a death in the family is the same traditional practice: closing up the shrine room, putting white cloth over all the Deity pictures and refraining from visiting temples, and from approaching swāmīs or other holy persons. Cases of a birth and a death are mystically very similar, in that the door of the inner world is open. We want to help that door close, not keep it open by worshiping in the shrine or going to the temple. Spiritual practice is curtailed to avoid the pitfalls that could result in inadvertently drawing forth the energies of beings of the lower worlds rather than the higher.
Visiting the shrine room at this time would also open the door for uncontrollable crying by members of the family. Crying upsets the astral body of the departed one, because he or she is still connected to the loved ones, and yet is having happy experiences. So, during this particular time of thirty-one days after a birth or death, slowly the inner doors of the higher world as well as the lower worlds are allowed to close.
This does not restrict relatives and friends from bringing food to the family, which is very helpful, because the natural routine of the home has been disrupted. Especially in the event of the death of a dear family member, there are many, many things to do—funeral arrangements, disposing of clothing and belongings, attending to wills—so it helps if the family is free from its usual chores and religious duties. After the period of retreat, which does not exclude, of course, personal meditation and japa, worshiping within, normalcy may recommence.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 231: INTERACTING WITH OTHER FAITHS Śiva’s devotees properly respect and address virtuous persons of all religious traditions. They may support and participate in interfaith gatherings from time to time with leaders and members of all religions. Aum
With the knowledge of the effect that we have on others through our mental and emotional astral atmosphere, we gain a wonderful siddhi: the ability to develop and improve our own aura and thus our daily mental and emotional state, and at the same time the power to improve the aura and mood of those around us. Your sādhana now is to take pains to develop your aura in the direction of more desirable colors and to gradually eliminate undesirable ones.
Now we shall begin to understand how to perform this new sādhana. It works in two ways: 1) by visualizing one or more bright, positive colors flooding your aura, immediately your awareness leaves the undesirable area of the mind (such as depression, anger or jealousy), and you experience more positive feelings; 2) by consciously moving your awareness into more positive areas through the repetition of positive affirmations or mantras, while at the same time working to bring through the corresponding feelings, such as joy, happiness or contentment. In this way the aura is infused with bright, positive colors. Consciously working to improve one’s own aura becomes doubly important when we remember that its colors, being magnetic, react back on our mind and emotions, thus intensifying and neutralizing the original mental states which called them forth. We have all found this to be true through the lesson that any negative mood or mental state seems to hold one in its clutches of its own accord, and it takes willpower to pull oneself into a more positive frame of mind. But, as you may have found in your previous experience with sādhana, consistent effort does yield results. You can steady and strengthen your mental and emotional faculty just as you can strengthen your physical muscles and steady your nerves through exercise and practice.
By consistently visualizing desirable colors in your aura, especially during moments of trial and emotional turmoil, you can become quite facile and skillful in controlling your individual awareness. Brightening up your aura in this way neutralizes the remnants of negative emotion and charges the aura with actinic energy. Automatically, feelings of depression and despair give way to courage and confidence. Feelings of jealousy and resentment give way to confidence and compassion.
As you continue with this sādhana, you will see how well it can work for you. This practice will also help you to further build and mold your character in accordance with the yamas and niyamas by keeping your awareness out of the darker or more dense states of the mind. You will soon develop a strong and more attractive personality which will naturally uplift others.
You have discovered the five states of mind: conscious, subconscious, sub of the subconscious, subsuperconscious and superconscious. You also understand the three phases of the mind: instinctive, intellectual and superconscious. Now we are learning about our individual awareness, what it is and how it travels through the vast universe of the mind just as a traveler moves from place to place on the Earth. In each place that the traveler visits, he is affected by the vibrations around him. He absorbs the thoughts of others and their moods. He is influenced by the events he participates in. Similarly, when your individual awareness travels through the mind, it is influenced or colored by the vibrations within each area of the mind it becomes aware in. This influences your nerve system and lays the foundation for your thoughts and feelings, thus giving rise to the colors in your aura. These colors are ever changing, because your own awareness is constantly moving through the vast universe of mind substance.
ŚLOKA 75 Wisdom demands that the intimacies of sexual intercourse be confined to marriage. Marriages that are free of prior relationships are the truest and strongest, seldom ending in separation or divorce. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
BHĀSHYA When a virgin man and woman marry and share physical intimacy with each other, their union is very strong and their marriage stable. This is because their psychic nerve currents, or nāḍīs, grow together and they form a one body and a one mind. Conversely, if the man or woman has had intercourse before the marriage, the emotional-psychic closeness of the marriage will suffer, and this in proportion to the extent of promiscuity. For a marriage to succeed, sexual intercourse must be preserved for husband and wife. Each should grow to understand the other’s needs and take care to neither deny intercourse to the married partner nor make excessive demands. A healthy, unrepressed attitude should be kept regarding sexual matters. Boys and girls must be taught to value and protect their chastity as a sacred treasure, and to save the special gift of intimacy for their spouse. They should be taught the importance of loyalty in marriage and to avoid even the thought of adultery. The Vedas intone, “Sweet be the glances we exchange, our faces showing true concord. Enshrine me in your heart and let one spirit dwell with us.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.