ŚLOKA 54 When we do not think, speak and act virtuously, we create negative karmas and bring suffering upon ourselves and others. We suffer when we act instinctively and intellectually without superconscious guidance. Aum.
BHĀSHYA We are happy, serene and stable when we follow good conduct, when we listen to our conscience, the knowing voice of the soul. The superconscious mind, the mind of our soul, knows and inspires good conduct, out of which comes a refined, sustainable culture. Wrongdoing and vice lead us away from God, deep into the darkness of doubt, despair and self-condemnation. This brings the asuras around us. We are out of harmony with ourselves and our family and must seek companionship elsewhere, amongst those who are also crude, unmindful, greedy and lacking in self-control. In this bad company, burdensome new karma is created, as good conduct cannot be followed. This pāpa accumulates, blinding us to the religious life we once lived. Penance and throwing ourselves upon the mercy of God and the Gods are the only release for the unvirtuous, those who conduct themselves poorly. Fortunately, our Gods are compassionate and love their devotees. The ancient Vedas elucidate, “The mind is said to be twofold: the pure and also the impure; impure by union with desire—pure when from desire completely free!” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
The three malas that bind us are: māyā, the ever-perpetuating dance of creation, preservation and dissolution; karma (our prārabdha karma, brought with us to face in this life, along with the karma we are creating now and will create in the future); and āṇava, the ego, ignorance or sense of separateness. Māyā can be understood, seen through and adjusted to through the heart-chakra powers of cognition, contentment and compassion. Karmas can be harnessed through regular forms of disciplinary practices of body, mind and emotions, and the understanding of the law of karma itself as a force that is sent out through thought, feeling and action and most often returns to us through other peoples’ thought, feeling and action. But it is the āṇava mala, the mala of personal ego, that is the binding chain which cannot be so easily dealt with. It is the last to go. It is only at the point of death, before the greatest mahāsamādhi of the greatest ṛishi, that the āṇava mala chain is finally broken.
If we compare this āṇava mala, personal ego, to an actual mālā, a string of rudrāksha beads, the purpose on the path at this stage, of mati, is to begin eliminating the beads, making the chain shorter and shorter. The mālā should be getting shorter and shorter rather than our adding beads to it so that it gets longer and longer. A warning: if the āṇava mala—symbolically a garland of rudrāksha beads—has thirty-six beads and it steadily grows to 1,008 because of practices and the adulation connected with them within the psychic realms of the pseudoscience of parapsychology—such as bending spoons, telepathy, channeling and ectoplasmic manifestations—this 1,008 strand of rudrāksha beads could become so heavy, so dangerous to the wearer, that eventually he would trip and fall on his nose. The wise say, “Pride goes before a fall.” And the still wiser know that “spiritual pride is the most difficult pride to deal with, to eliminate, to rise above in a lifetime.” The spiritually proud never open themselves to a satguru. The mystically humble do.
Mati has also been interpreted as “good intellect, acute intelligence, a mind directed toward right knowledge, or Vedic knowledge.” Good intellect, in the context of a Hindu seer, would be right knowledge based on siddhānta śravaṇa, scriptural study. Acute intelligence, of course, means “see-through” or panoramic intelligence which cognizes the entire picture rather than only being aware of one of its parts. “A mind directed toward right knowledge or Vedic knowledge” refers to the intellect developed through siddhānta śravaṇa. The study of the Vedas and other scriptures purifies the intellect, as belief creates attitude, and attitude creates action. An intellect based on truths of the Sanātana Dharma is intelligent to the divine laws of the universe and harnessed into fulfilling them as a part of it. To this end, all the prārabdha karmas of this life and the action-reaction conglomerates formed in this life are directed. The intellect, like the emotions, is a force, disciplined or undisciplined, propelled by right knowledge or wrong knowledge. It, of itself, processes, logically or illogically, both kinds of knowledge or their mix. What harnesses the intellect is siddhānta śravaṇa, study of the teachings and listening to the wise of an established, traditional lineage that has stood the test of time, ravage and all attempts at conversion.
The intellect is a neutral tool which can be used for bad or for good purposes. But unlike the emotions, which are warm, and also neutral, the intellect is cold. It is the fire of the kuṇḍalinī force—impregnating the intellect, purifying it, burning out the ignorance of wrong concepts, thought forms, beliefs, connected attitudes, causing an aversion to certain actions—that forges the purified intellect and spiritual will of cognition, known as mati. Mati, in summary, is the harnessing of the intellect by the soul to live a spiritual life.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 54: COGNITION AND VOWS All Śiva’s devotees acquire mati, divine cognition and an indomitable will and intellect, under their satguru’s guidance. They observe vratas, religious vows, rules and observances, and never waver in fulfilling them. Aum.
Those among the youth of today who have had some measure of attainment, of which there are many, will be the leaders, businessmen, politicians and educators of tomorrow. As the New Age comes more into fulfillment, they will be able to work effectively in all states of the mind, consciously identified with the overshadowing power of the clearness of perceptive vision of visible white light within the body and through the mind. Still others—disciplined beings of a vaster vision and more profound purpose—will become the mendicant sannyāsin, the sage, the catalyst teacher, the pandit philosopher, all working as individuals together to keep the teaching of the classical yoga path to enlightenment alive and vibrant on planet Earth yet another six thousand years.
Remember, when the seal is broken and clear white light has flooded the mind, there is no more a gap between the inner and the outer. Even uncomplimentary states of consciousness can be dissolved through meditation and seeking again the light. The aspirant can be aware that in having a newfound freedom internally and externally there will be a strong tendency for the mind to reconstruct for itself a new congested subconscious by reacting strongly to happenings during daily experiences. Even though one plays the game, having once seen it as a game, there is a tendency of the instinctive phases of nature to fall prey to the accumulative reactions caused by entering into the game.
Therefore, an experience of inner light is not a solution; one or two bursts of clear white light are only a door-opener to transcendental possibilities. The young aspirant must become the experiencer, not the one who has experienced and basks in the memory patterns it caused. This is where the not-too-sought-after word discipline enters into the life and vocabulary of this blooming flower, accounting for the reason why ashrams house students apart for a time. Under discipline, they become experiencers, fragmenting their entanglements before their vision daily while doing some mundane chore and mastering each test and task their guru sets before them. The chela is taught to dissolve his reactionary habit patterns in the clear white light each evening in contemplative states. Reactionary conditions that inevitably occur during the day he clears with actinic love and understanding so that they do not congest or condense in his subconscious mind, building a new set of confused, congested forces that would propel him into outer states of consciousness, leaving his vision of the clear white light as an experience in memory patterns retreating into the past.
The young aspirant can use this elementary classical yoga technique of going back over the day at the end of the day in an internal concentration period, holding the thought flow on just the current daily experience, not allowing unrelated thoughts from other days to enter. When a reactionary condition appears that was not resolved during the day with love and understanding, in turning to the inner light it will melt away, usually under the power of a perceptive flash of understanding.
ŚLOKA 53 There is no eternal hell, nor is there a Satan. However, there are hellish states of mind and woeful births for those who think and act wrongfully—temporary tormenting conditions that lift the fiery forces within. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Hell, termed Naraka, is the lower astral realm of the seven chakras below the mūlādhāra. It is a place of fire and heat, anguish and dismay, of confusion, despair and depression. Here anger, jealousy, argument, mental conflict and tormenting moods plague the mind. Access to hell is brought about by our own thoughts, words, deeds and emotions—suppressed, antagonistic feelings that court demons and their aggressive forces. Hell is not eternal. Nor is there a Satan who tempts man and opposes God’s power, though there are devilish beings called asuras, immature souls caught in the abyss of deception and hurtfulness. We do not have to die to suffer the Naraka regions, for hellish states of mind are also experienced in the physical world. If we do die in a hellish state of consciousness—burdened by unresolved hatred, remorse, resentment, fear and distorted patterns of thought—we arrive in Naraka fully equipped to join others in this temporary astral purgatory. The Vedas say, “Sunless and demonic, verily, are those worlds, and enveloped in blinding darkness, to which all those people who are enemies of their own souls go after death.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Cognition, mati, is the seventh niyama. Cognition means understanding; but deeper than understanding, it is seeing through to the other side of the results that a thought, a word or an action would have in the future, before the thought, word or action has culminated. Mati is the development of a spiritual will and intellect through the grace of a satguru, an enlightened master. Mati can only come this way. It is a transference of divine energies from the satguru to the śishya, building a purified intellect honed down by the guru for the śishya, and a spiritual will developed by the śishya by following the religious sādhanas the guru has laid down until the desired results are attained to the guru’s satisfaction. Sādhana is always done under a guru’s direction. This is the worthy sādhana that bears fruit.
Mati, cognition, on a higher level is the awakening of the third eye, looking out through the heart chakra, seeing through the māyā, the interacting creation, preservation and dissolution of the molecules of matter. Mati is all this and more, for within each one who is guided by the guru’s presence lies the ability to see not only with the two eyes but with all three simultaneously. The spiritual intellect described herein is none other than wisdom, or a “wise dome,” if you will. Wisdom is the timely application of knowledge, not merely the opinions of others, but knowledge gained through deep observation.
The guru’s guidance is supreme in the life of the dedicated devotee who is open for training. The verbal lineages of the many sampradāyas have withstood the tests of time, turmoil, decay and ravage of external hostility. The sampradāyas that have sustained man and lifted him above the substratum of ignorance are actually great nerve currents within the spine of the awakened satguru himself. To go further on the path of yoga, one will encounter within his own spine—within one of the fourteen nāḍīs within it—a satguru, a guru who preaches Truth. He will meet this guru in a dream or in his physical body, and through the guru’s grace and guidance will be allowed to continue the upward climb. These fourteen currents, at every point in time on the surface of the Earth, have a satguru attached to them, ready and waiting to open the portals of the beyond into the higher chakras, the throat, the third eye and the cranium.
To say, “I have awakened my throat chakra,” “I now live in my third eye” or “I am developing my sahasrāra chakra,” without being able to admit to being under a guru, a satguru who knows and is personally directing the devotee, is foolishness, a matter of imagination. It is in the heart chakra, the chakra of cognition, that seekers see through the veils of ignorance, illusion, māyā’s interacting preservation, creation and destruction, and gain a unity with and love for the universe—all those within it, creatures, peoples and all the various forms—feeling themselves a part of it.
Here, on this threshold of the anāhata chakra, there are two choices. One is following the sampradāya of a satguru for the next upward climb into the viśuddha, ājñā and sahasrāra. The other is remaining guru-less, becoming one’s own guru, and possibly delving into various forms of psychism, astrology, some forms of modern science, psychic crime-detection, tarot cards, pendulums, crystal gazing, psychic healing, past-life reading or fortunetelling. These psychic abilities, when developed, can be an impediment, a deterrent, a barrier, a Berlin Wall to future spiritual development. They develop the āṇava, the ego, and are the first renunciations the satguru would ask a devotee to make prior to being accepted.
Coming under a satguru, one performs according to the guru’s direction with full faith and confidence. This is why scriptures say a guru must be carefully chosen, and when one is found, to follow him with all your heart, to obey and fulfill his every instruction better than he would have expected you to, and most importantly, even better than you would have expected of yourself.
Psychic abilities are not in themselves deterrents on the path. They are permitted to develop later, after Paraśiva, nirvikalpa samādhi, has been attained and fully established within the individual. But this, too, would be under the guru’s grace and guidance, for these abilities are looked at as tools to fulfill certain works assigned by the guru to the devotee to fulfill until the end of the life of the physical body.
It is the personal ego, the āṇava, that is developed through the practice of palmistry, astrology, tarot cards, fortunetelling, past-life reading, crystal gazing, crystal healing, prāṇa transference, etc., etc., etc. This personal ego enhancement is a gift from those who are healed, who are helped, who are encouraged and who are in awe of the psychic power awakened in the heart chakra of this most perfect person of the higher consciousness who doesn’t anger, display fear or exhibit any lower qualities.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 53: WORSHIP AND SCRIPTURAL STUDY All Śiva’s devotees cultivate bhakti and family harmony in daily ritual and reflection, Iśvarapūjana. Upholding siddhānta śravaṇa, they hear the scriptures, study the teachings and listen to the wise of their lineage. Aum.
The young aspirant just becoming acquainted with the path to enlightenment may wonder where he is, how much he has achieved so far. There are a few cardinal signposts he may identify with to know he has touched into the inner realms of his mind. Should he ever have experienced a “here-and-now” consciousness, causing him to fight the “where and when” of the future and the “there and then” of the past afterwards, he can fully impart to himself an award of having achieved some attainment by striving even more diligently than before. The ability to see the external world as transparent, a game, a dream, encourages the aspirant to seek deeper. The moon-like light within the center of his head appears during his tries at meditation, sometimes giving him the perceptive ability to cognize the intricate workings of another’s external and subconscious states of mind, as well as his own, intimately. The ability of the ardent soul to recognize his guru and identify himself in the actinic flow from whence the master infuses knowledge by causing inner doors to open is another signpost that the aspirant has become an experiencer and is touching in on the fringe or perimeter of transcendental states of mind.
Many on the path to enlightenment will be able to identify, through their personal experience, some of these signposts and recall many happenings that occurred during their awakenings. But remember, the recall and the experience are quite different. The experience is “here and now”; the recall is “there and then.” However, by identifying the experience and relating it to a solid intellectual knowledge, the ability will be awakened to utilize and live consciously in inner states of superconsciousness. After acquiring this ability to consciously live superconsciously comes the ability to work accurately and enthusiastically in the material world while holding the intensity of the inner light, giving perceptive awareness of its mechanical structure. There also comes the ability to work out quickly in meditation experiences of the external mind or worldly happenings through finding their “innerversity” aspects rather than being drawn out into the swirl of them. In doing so, the cause-and-effect karmic experiential patterns of the aspirant’s life that tend to lower his consciousness into congested areas of the mind will clear up as, more and more, the actinic flow of superconsciousness is maintained as the bursts of clear white light become frequent.
ŚLOKA 52 Sin is the intentional transgression of divine law. There is no inherent or “original” sin. Neither is there mortal sin by which the soul is forever lost. Through sādhana, worship and austerities, sins can be atoned for. Aum.
BHĀSHYA What men term sin, the wise call ignorance. Man’s true nature is not sullied by sin. Sin is related only to the lower, instinctive intellectual nature as a transgression of dharma. Still, sin is real and to be avoided, for our wrongful actions return to us as sorrow through the law of karma. Sin is terminable, and its effects may be compensated for by penance, or prāyaśchitta, and good deeds which settle the karmic debt. The young soul, less in tune with his soul nature, is inclined toward sin; the old soul seldom transgresses divine law. Sins are the crippling distortions of intellect bound in emotion. When we sin, we take the energy and distort it to our instinctive favor. When we are unjust and mean, hateful and holding resentments year after year and no one but ourselves knows of our intrigue and corruption, we suffer. As the soul evolves, it eventually feels the great burden of faults and misdeeds and wishes to atone. Penance is performed, and the soul seeks absolution from society and beseeches God’s exonerating grace. The Vedas say, “Loose me from my sin as from a bond that binds me. May my life swell the stream of your river of Right.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Life is long; there are apparently many years ahead. But time is short. One never knows when he is going to die. The purpose of sampradāya is to restrict and narrow down, to reach out to an attainable goal. We must not consider our life and expected longevity as giving us the time and permission to do investigative comparisons of one sampradāya to another. This may be done before making up one’s mind to follow a traditional verbal lineage. After that, pursuing other paths, even in passing, would be totally unacceptable.
But it is also totally unacceptable to assume the attitude of denigration of other paths, or to assume the attitude that “our way is the only way.” There are fourteen currents in the spine. Each one is a valid way to escalate consciousness into the chakra at the top of the skull and beyond. And at every point in time, there is a living guru, possessing a physical body, ordained to control one or more of these nāḍīs, currents, within the spine. All are valid paths. One should not present itself as superseding another. Let there be no mistake about this.
The yamas and niyamas are the core of Hindu disciplines and restraints for individuals, groups, communities and nations. In fact, they outline various stages of the path in the development of the soul, leading out of the marul pāda into the arul pāda, from confusion into grace, leading to the feet of the satguru, as the last five practices indicate—siddhānta śravaṇa, mati, vrata, japa and tapas.
Since the sampradāyas are all based on Hinduism, which is based on the Vedas, any teacher of Indian spirituality who rejects the Vedas is therefore not a Hindu and should not be considered as such. Anybody in his right mind will be able to accept the last section of the Vedas, the Upanishads, and see the truth therein. One at least has to accept that as the basis of siddhānta śravaṇa. If even that is rejected, we must consider the teacher a promulgator of a new Indian religion, neo-American religion, neo-European religion, neo-New-Age religion, nonreligion, neo-sannyāsī religion, or some other “neo-ism” or “neo-ology.” This is not sampradāya. This is not siddhānta śravaṇa. This is what we speak against. These are not the eternal paths. Why? Because they have not been tried and tested. They are not based on traditional lineages; nor have they survived the ravages of time, changing societies, wars, famine and the infiltration of ignorance.
For sādhakas, yogīs, swāmīs and mendicants who have freed themselves from the world, permanently or for a period of time according to their vows, these yamas and niyamas are not only restraints and practices, but mandatory controls. They are not only practices, but obligatory disciplines, and once performed with this belief and attitude, they will surely lead the mendicant to his chosen goal, which can only be the height that his prārabdha karmas in this life permit, unless those karmas are burned out under extreme tapas under the guidance of a satguru.
Some might still wonder, why limit oneself to listening to scripture of one particular lineage, especially if it has been practically memorized? The answer is that what has been learned must be experienced personally, and experience comes in many depths. This is the purpose of disregarding or rejecting all other sampradāyas, -ism’s, -ologies and sects, or denominations, and of limiting scriptural listening to just one sampradāya, so that each subtle increment of the divine truths amplified within it is realized through personal experience. This and only this—experience, realization, illumination—can be carried on to the next birth. What one has merely memorized is not transforming and is forgotten perhaps shortly after death. Let there be no mistake that siddhānta śravaṇa, scriptural listening, is the only way; and when the seeker is ready, the guru will appear and enter his life.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 52: CHARITY AND FAITH All Śiva’s devotees practice dāna, tithing and giving generously, creatively, without thought of reward. They sustain an unshakable faith, āstikya, believing in God, Gods, guru and the Vedic path to enlightenment. Aum.
Occasionally, through his newly exercised extrasensory perception, he may hear the seven sounds he previously studied about in occult lore. The sounds of the atomic structure of his nerve system, his cells, register as voices singing, the vīṇā or sitār, tambūra, or as symphonies of music. Instruments to duplicate these sounds for the outer ears were carefully tooled by the ṛishis of classical yoga thousands of years ago, including the mṛidaṅga or tabla, and the flute. He will hear the shrill note, likened to a nightingale singing, as psychic centers in his cranium burst open, and then an inner voice indicating to his external consciousness—like a breath of air—direction, elucidation. This inner voice remains with him as a permanent yoga of the external, with the internal consciousness an ever-ready guide to the unraveling of complexities of daily life.
Occasionally, in a cross-section of the inner mind, when light merges into transcendental form, the young aspirant may view the golden actinic face of a master peering into his, kindly and all-knowing. He is looking at his own great potential. As the clear white light becomes more of a friend to his external mind than an experience or vision and can be basked in during contemplative periods of the day, the nourishment to the entirety of the nerve system, as ambrosia, bursts forth from the crown chakra. This is identified inadequately as “the peace that passeth understanding,” for he who reaches this state can never seem to explain it.
The highly trained classical yoga adept intensifies, through techniques imparted to him from his guru, the clear white light to the brink of God Realization, the void. His entire body is faded into a sea of blue-white light, the ākāśa, where now, past and future are recorded in the linear depths or layers, sometimes seeing himself seated or standing on a lotus flower of shimmering light in an actinodic clear, transparent, neon, plastic-like-body outline as his consciousness touches, in tune with a heart’s beat, into the Self, God Realization.
Keeping this continuity alive and not allowing the external consciousness to reign, the young aspirant lives daily in the clear white light, having occasionally more intense experiences as just described, while meeting daily chores here and now, until he attains the maturity of the nerve fiber essential to burst his consciousness beyond itself into the pure nonconscious state, nirvikalpa samādhi, the Self. Only known and identified by him as an experience experienced, only recognized by others as he maintains his point of reference: that mind is only illusion, ever changing and perpetuating itself by mingling concepts of past and future into the present; that the only reality is the timeless, formless, causeless, spaceless Self beyond the mind. He knows that the mind, which is made from a consciousness of time, creates, maintains and defabricates form, and exists in a relative concept of space. The Self is the only reality and is an intensity far greater than that of any phase of the mind.
ŚLOKA 51 The nature of the world is duality. It contains each thing and its opposite: joy and sorrow, goodness and evil, love and hate. Through experience of these, we learn and evolve, finally seeking Truth beyond all opposites. Aum.
BHĀSHYA There is a divine purpose even in the existence of suffering in the world. Suffering cannot be totally avoided. It is a natural part of human life and the impetus for much spiritual growth for the soul. Knowing this, the wise accept suffering from any source, be it hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, famine, wars, disease or inexplicable tragedies. Just as the intense fire of the furnace purifies gold, so does suffering purify the soul to resplendence. So also does suffering offer us the important realization that true happiness and freedom cannot be found in the world, for earthly joy is inextricably bound to sorrow, and worldly freedom to bondage. Having learned this, devotees seek a satguru who teaches them to understand suffering, and brings them into the intentional hardships of sādhana and tapas leading to liberation from the cycles of experience in the realm of duality. The Āgamas explain, “That which appears as cold or as hot, fresh or spoiled, good fortune and bad, love and hate, effort and laziness, the exalted and the depraved, the rich and the poor, the well-founded and the ill-founded, all this is God Himself; none other than Him can we know.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.