ŚLOKA 152 The Kailāsa Paramparā is a millennia-old guru lineage of the Nandinātha Sampradāya. In this century it was embodied by Sage Yogaswami, who ordained me in Sri Lanka in 1949 to carry on the venerable tradition. Aum.
BHĀSHYA The authenticity of Hindu teachings is perpetuated by lineages, paramparā, passed from gurus to their successors through ordination. The Kailāsa Paramparā extends back to, and far beyond, Maharishi Nandinatha and his eight disciples—Sanatkumara, Sanakar, Sanadanar, Sananthanar, Sivayogamuni, Patanjali, Vyaghrapada and Tirumular. This succession of siddha yoga adepts flourishes today in many streams, most notably in the Śaiva Siddhānta of South India. Our branch of this paramparā is the line of Rishi Tirumular (ca 200 bce), of which the first known satguru in recent history was the Rishi from the Himalayas (ca 1770–1840). From him the power was passed to Siddha Kadaitswami of Bangalore (1804–1891), then to Satguru Chellappaswami (1840–1915), then to Sage Yogaswami (1872–1964) of Sri Lanka, and finally to myself, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927–). The Tirumantiram states, “Thus expounding, I bore His word down Kailāsa’s unchanging path—the word of Him, the eternal, the truth effulgent, the limitless great, Nandinatha, the joyous one, He of the blissful dance that all impurity dispels.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
A spiritual vibration in the home can be initiated or renewed by having a priest come and perform a purification ceremony. That makes the prāṇas flow correctly in the home, which when carried out to the community make you a full person. Another key is to have Monday evenings at home. Monday home evening is practiced by many religions, including the Hindus. On Monday evening, Śiva’s day, the family members get together, prepare a wonderful meal, play games together and verbally appreciate one another’s good qualities. It’s an evening when the television is not turned on. They don’t solve any problems on that day. They just love each other, and everybody has a voice, from the littlest child to the oldest senior. It’s a family togetherness, one day a week when everyone will look forward to having mom and dad at home. That doesn’t mean it will be on Tuesday or any other day if Monday is missed. Family home evening is always on Monday, and everyone’s life has to adjust to that.
Many families find even this is impossible because of their careers. Nowadays people think that they have to have two incomes, three incomes, to be comfortably well off. Money is gained and lost, sometimes rather quickly. As quickly gained, often as quickly lost. But what is wealth? Wealth is a diamond with many facets. One facet of wealth is money, but it is not the only one. A happy family that enjoys each other—that is a great wealth. Doing things together and enjoying doing things together is another great wealth. Rushing home to be with one another—if you can create that in your family, you are wealthy. Wealth is growing your own food, making your own furniture, sewing your own clothing, picking oranges off the tree the family planted together several years ago. Another great wealth is living within your income. Even multi-millionaires are poor if they do not live within their income and always worry about debts, payments and responsibilities. They often are very lonely people, because in all their efforts to gain those millions, they have had to sacrifice their family, their children and their own happiness. Many content themselves with building big multi-million dollar mansions—but to benefit whom? A gardener? Maybe a cook, a maid or two who get to live there all the time while the owners are traveling around the world, coming home late and leaving early. That’s not wealth. That’s also not wisdom. That’s a good way to die young.
To have a maid take care of the children while the parents both work and come home late is not a substitute for a mother; nor are grandparents, though they may be a better choice. A surrogate mother cannot replace a real mother and a real father for children growing up, because children model themselves more than you know upon what they see adults do, what they hear adults say to each other, what they feel adults are feeling. That shapes who they are and what they are going to do in their future. There is no substitute for a real mom and a real dad in a real home with a vibration of a family, the vibration of loving and the vibration of sharing. A mother’s place is in the home
What is a mother? A mother is a person who loves her children, who is calm, serene, doesn’t become angry, doesn’t become frustrated with children, realizing that a child goes through many stages of development. One must not expect a child to behave like an adult or expect too much of a child too early. A mother knows of all this intuitively; but for her intuitive mind to work, she has to be free from the worries of the outside world, of bills and bill collectors, of travel, of TV and various other concerns, so that she can raise up the next generation strong enough to meet the challenges of the impending new age of peace and prosperity for all mankind.
Now, if mothers beat their children, the children will beat other kids, and later on in life they will become warriors and fight all through life, emotionally, mentally, because they’re taught right in the home that solutions are reached through violent means. We don’t want that. That won’t bring in the New Age. That is bringing back the Old Age. Those methods of raising children have to go. A mother must be a real mother. For many, it’s not a popular idea for a mother to stay at home. During the Second World War in the United States, mothers left their homes and never went back, because they were needed in airplane factories and shipyards, as the men were all off to war. But before the Second World War and before the First World War, mothers remained home. Juvenile delinquency was not a phrase in anyone’s vocabulary. If a teenager made some mischief, the family was held responsible by the community. Such things were regulated in those days, but went out of balance when mother left home and never went back.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 152: BRINGING JOY TO THEIR PARENTS Śiva’s young adult followers realize they have a debt to their parents for their birth, early raising and education, which they repay with obedience and affection, giving joy, practical assistance and satisfaction. Aum.
Āṇava is one’s personal ego, his identity and place in the world and position on the planet. If his motives are proper and the position is earned on account of good deeds, it is not āṇava. But if, when praised, he takes credit for himself, it is āṇava. Āṇava is the tricky substance of the mind. It is behind every door, it’s peeking in every window. It is the first thing to come at birth and the last thing to go at death. To break the chain of āṇava, the yoking to the Infinite beyond comprehension in any state of mind must be complete and final. And yet, while a physical body is still maintained, the āṇava elf is still lurking in the shadows, saying “praise is better than blame, name must come into fame, and shame is to be avoided at all cost.” This is the āṇava routine. It keeps people held down on the planet in the instinctive-intellectual mind of remorse and forgiveness and suffering the adjustments to circumstance that occur beyond their power of understanding. A big gun that shoots the bullet of the depth of knowledge of karma, the second bullet, of the deep understanding of the perfect universal energies, and the third bullet, of the dharmic way of a balanced life, kills the āṇava and brings that purusha onto the charyā mārga, onto the path of the Gods, the hospital of the soul at that point. The final conquering of the tenacious āṇava is the final mahāsamādhi, when all three worlds sing, “Mukti has been attained,” the final goal of life that we on this planet know, merger with Śiva.
Because ignorance is all-pervasive, equally distributed throughout the world, one must leave the world and get a wise dome, wisdom, a wise head. He must transmute the energies from the solar plexus—nothing must affect him there—to his third eye, see into the past, see into the future, and with that seeing understand the present.
If we were to admit that there are really seven mārgas, we would find that charyā, kriyā, yoga and jñāna are progressive states of fullness, and the āṇava mārga, by comparison, is a static state of emptiness. This feeling of emptiness is a motivative, driving force of desire toward the attainment of the feeling of fullness. The feeling of fullness is the awakening of the higher chakras, of course. And the constant feeling of completeness is, of course, the permanent awakening of the sahasrāra chakra. The feeling of emptiness distinguishes the āṇava mārga from the other four mārgas, and this is why it is not included in Śaiva Siddhānta, but is not excluded either, because the āṇava mala is mentioned here and there and everywhere within the scriptures. For the sake of understanding individual ego in its struggles to be whole, we have delineated it as a path leading into charyā, kriyā, yoga and jñāna.
The path of the āṇava teaches us what to do and what not to do. It creates the karmas to be lived through and faced in many lives to come. And when dharma is finally accepted and understood and the religious patterns of life are encompassed in one’s own personal daily experience, then and only then do we see the end of this path in view. So, the āṇava mārga is definitely not a never-ending maze or a no-man’s land. Though a state of ignorance, it is still a state of experiential learning. All is leading, in evolution of the soul, to Sanātana Dharma.
Everything preceding charyā is āṇava mārga. People try to fill their emptiness with things. They work so hard for their money, thinking, “Oh, when I can buy this object for my home I will feel fulfilled.” They buy it with their hard-earned money. A day or two later, after ownership has taken effect, the initial fulfillment of ownership wanes, and unfulfillment, which has always been there, takes over, with the accompanying desire for the next fulfillment, object, or in the case of the intellectual, the next idea, group of ideas or new sphere of knowledge. There is no fulfillment in the instinctive-intellectual mind. This is the way it is. This is the way it has always been, and always will be, too.
ŚLOKA 151 The Nātha Sampradāya, “the masters’ way,” is the mystical fountainhead of Śaivism. The divine message of the eternal truths and how to succeed on the path to enlightenment are locked within the Nātha tradition. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Nātha means “lord or adept,” and sampradāya refers to a living theological tradition. The roots of this venerable heritage stretch back beyond recorded history, when awakened Nātha mystics worshiped the Lord of lords, Śiva, and in yogic contemplation experienced their identity in Him. The Nātha Sampradāya has revealed the search for the innermost divine Self, balanced by temple worship, fueled by kuṇḍalinī yoga, charted by monistic theism, illumined by a potent guru-śishya system, guided by soul-stirring scriptures and awakened by sādhana and tapas. Thus has it given mankind the mechanics for moving forward in evolution. Today two main Nātha streams are well known: the Nandinātha Sampradāya, made famous by Maharishi Nandinatha (ca 250BCE), and the Ādinātha Sampradāya, carried forth by Siddha Yogi Gorakshanatha (ca 900). Yea, there is infinitely more to know of the mysterious Nāthas. The Tirumantiram states, “My peerless satguru, Nandinatha, of Śaivam honored high, showed us a holy path for soul’s redemption. It is Śiva’s divine path, San Mārga, for all the world to tread and forever be free.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
There are too many dysfunctional families in the world today. What is a dysfunctional family? A dysfunctional family is a discouraged family, a family that has no home. True, they may have a million-dollar house, but it would take a lot of constant, magnetic love and kinship to turn that house into a home. Many million-dollar homes are just houses, totally impersonal.
The guests are not God in those homes; guests are seen as business potentials and social obligations. The father works late in his profession so he can avoid his wife and family. When he comes home, he sits down in front of the television while eating his dinner. The kids are running here and there; the mother comes home tired from her equally demanding profession and begins yelling at them. Verbal abuse becomes a way of life. The youngsters come and go unchaperoned. Nobody knows what anybody else is doing. Girls are getting pregnant out of wedlock. Boys are swearing, getting involved in gangs and experimenting with drugs. That is the hotel lobby home of a definitely dysfunctional family, a discouraged family.
No wonder that in discouraged families teens want to leave home as quickly as possible—as soon they’re able to get a job and rent an apartment. That is not quality living, is it? Sorry to say, but most dual-professionals’ homes, where husband and wife both have high-paying jobs, are more like a hotel lobby with a snack bar than like a home with a hearth, which is home with a heart. Think about your home. Is the guest God? Is your house a home? What kind of astral vibration does it actually have? Be honest with yourself. Evaluate!
The astral prāṇas or energies radiating out from the hotel lobby kind of home make the occupants frustrated people. They make people around them uncomfortable, because they live in an uncomfortable place. Yes, the prāṇas that emanate from an empty house make one an empty person. All Hindus in the world should reverse this situation for a stable, well-adjusted community for the new and coming generations of Hindus in the West, as well as in the East. This is the next step which those of the diaspora have to heartfully take. It is only intelligence that can reverse a negative situation and turn it into a positive, encouraging situation.
It is important for the mother to be mother, and for the father to allow her to be mother, so that together they can nurture the astral atmosphere within the house and make it vibrate with spiritual energies into a real home. To make the house into a home is the next step. You will know if it is a home when you want to hurry back to it. You won’t want to stay away too long, and you will find it difficult to leave. That’s because you enjoy the vibration that you have created from your soul body. And your focus for whatever you are doing will be exquisite. It won’t get divided.
It is a slow process for a mother and a father to turn a house into a home. They have to be spiritually present in the home. The auras of the mother and father and each of the children have to permeate the walls of the house. The Gods and guardian devas and ancestors have to be worshiped and invoked in the home. That turns a house into a really prāṇically viable home, building up the vibration so that you never want to leave.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 151: BRINGING OTHERS TO THE ŚAIVA PATH Śiva’s followers who are adolescents use their youthful aggressiveness to teach the Śaiva Dharma, inspire and uplift others, bring seekers into their lineage and welcome strayed members back into the Hindu fold. Aum.
The yoga mārga must come naturally out of intense bhakti and internalized worship. The intensity of bhakti is developed on the kriyā mārga. The final remains of the ego are pulverized on the charyā mārga, where Sivathondu, selfless service, is performed unrelentingly with no thought of reward, but a hope that the puṇya, merit, will be beneficial in the long run. The āṇava mārga is easy to leave through total surrender to God, Gods and guru, along with seva, service to religious institutions. Surrender, prapatti, is the key. All the religions’ teachings teach surrender to the divine forces. Great suffering, the psychic surgery kind of suffering, great repentance, is experienced in the overlapping of the charyā mārga with the āṇava mārga. The beginning knowledge of Hindu temple worship, scripture, being dragged into it by some aggressive teacher, later a desire for reconciliation—all this leads to penance, prāyaśchitta, followed by serious sādhana. It is not without a great ordeal and effort, soul-searching and decision-making that one mārga bends into the other or bows before the other before it releases the consciousness to go on. One mārga must really bend before the other before one can be released. Before entering another mārga, it is a matter of giving up, which is painful, most especially for the āṇava mārga people, for whom suffering is no stranger.
How can someone on the āṇava mārga be convinced that there is a better way to live, think and act? The word here is pursuit. We are talking about pursuit. Āṇava people are always pursuing something, the fulfillment comes on the āṇava mārga, and there is fulfillment, but in a never-stopping pursuit of fulfillment. As soon as we stop the pursuit of fulfillment, we become unhappy, empty, feel unfulfilled and, I might even say, at times depressed. The āṇava mārga is the I-ness, me-ness, mine-ness; me, my, I. “I want, I give, I get, I collect.” I, me and mine are the key words here. The true āṇava mārgī is the owner, the getter, the consumer, not always the producer, vulnerable to the emotions of fear, who uses jealousy as an asset to obtain. Anger is the motivating power to fulfill desire, by stimulating fear in others. He is a master of deceit. The true āṇava mārgī, perfected in the art, has at his beck and call the eighty-four wiles of the lower emotions.
Why would someone begin to feel the need to change to a nicer way of life? The word why is the important word here. They are questioning, they are asking, they are intuiting another way of life. They have observed, obviously, others living a fuller life, fulfilled by the fulfillments of their pursuits, having left the āṇava mārga. Āṇava mārgīs have become aware of the existence of the charyā mārgīs and maybe a kriyā mārgī or two. It is the very force of the desire of pursuit that leads the purusha, the soul, to the charyā mārga into Śaiva Siddhānta. I see the whole thing like a tunnel—the karma mārga, the māyā mārga, the āṇava mārga, the charyā mārga, the kriyā mārga, yoga mārga—which the soul matures through as a child matures from a child to an adult. The problem is that it takes a little doing to define the pursuit. Therefore, the entrance of this tunnel, to be a good āṇava mārgī, is kind of crowded, and this is where the problem lies. To truly get on the āṇava mārga, to define the ego’s identity, one must have the goal of pursuit.
There are two mārgas before the āṇava mārga begins, within the realm of deep ignorance. Here reside the masses who live in confusion, the professional consumers who know the generosity of society, who will never in this lifetime manifest a desire, a goal, a thought for the future worthy enough to be accepted on the āṇava mārga. They are the slaves of the āṇava mārgīs, those whom, as slaves, they manipulate without conscience.
ŚLOKA 150 Monistic theists hold that at mahāpralaya, cosmic dissolution, all creation is withdrawn into Śiva, and He alone exists. Pluralistic theists hold that world and souls persist in seed form and will later reemerge. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
BHĀSHYA Pluralistic Siddhāntins contend that after mahāpralaya—the withdrawal of time, form and space into Śiva—souls and world are so close to Śiva that, for all practical purposes, He alone exists. Actually, they say, both world and souls continue to exist, not as things, but as “potentialities.” As if in a deep sleep, souls, now in a bodiless state, rest. Individual karmas lie dormant to germinate later when creation again issues forth and nonliberated souls are re-embodied to continue their spiritual journey. Monistic Siddhāntins believe that souls persist through the lesser pralayas of the cosmic cycle, but hold that only Śiva exists following mahāpralaya. There is no “other,” no separate souls, no separate world. The universe and all souls are absorbed in Śiva. Pāśa—āṇava, karma and māyā—is annihilated. In the intensity of pre-dissolution, when time itself is accelerated, all souls attain complete maturation, losing separateness through fulfilled merger with Śiva. Yea, jīva becomes Śiva. The Vedas boldly decree, “By His divine power He holds dominion over all the worlds. At the periods of creation and dissolution of the universe, He alone exists.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
What is it that makes a house a home? A home is a place of companionship with people in it who love each other, who are harmonious and closer inside with one another than they are outside with associates in the workplace or with classmates at school. A home is a place that’s so magnetic that it’s difficult to leave. In a home there is love, kindness, sharing and appreciation, and the inhabitants help one another. It’s a place of selflessness and togetherness, where everybody has time for everybody else. In a home, the guests are treated like Deities or devas coming to the temple. That is the spirit of hospitality in the Hindu framework. It is the same spirit of sublime energy flowing to the guest that also flows within the household. And a righteous household that worships every morning together as one family is like a temple. That’s a home, and everything else is just a house or a hotel lobby.
If you were to look at a harmonious home with your astral vision, you would see the three primary colors—pale pink, pale blue, pale yellow—and white, all intermingling in a big prāṇic force field. Moving over to another house, you might see a congestion of various colors, with dark and light shades and strange astral forms, and you would know that house was not much different from a hotel lobby.
I was once asked about the desperately poor, homeless families living on the street in America and what can be done for them, when so many other families have large, luxurious homes. I, too, have seen families on the street. But if they live together, if they sleep together, if they talk together, if they eat together, they are a family, even if they are destitute. Such a family is at home wherever they are. You don’t need a roof to make a family. You don’t need a roof to make a home. The truly homeless are some of the rich people who build multi-million-dollar houses and are too busy to really live in them. The truly homeless are those who have turned their home into a hotel lobby. The husband works. The wife works. The children are delinquent. There’s no companionship. They don’t talk together every day. They don’t eat together every day. They rarely see each other. The truly homeless people are those with babysitters, caretakers, gardeners and maids, but who don’t spend quality time with the family in their house. Babysitters often abuse their children. Parents are unaware, too busy making money outside the home that they don’t live in. This is another way of looking at the rich and the homeless. Who is to be pitied?
Control of the computer and the Internet is also important to make a house into a home. If the computer is on all the time, the house turns into an office, even if everyone is at home. Many homes these days are just offices. Human communication has stopped. The computer eats up the time that one should be giving to others within the home. Using the computer moderately gives us time for gentleness, play and communication, not with a screen, but with a human being. And that is the vibration needed in a home.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 150: YOUTH ENTERING MY ŚAIVA CHURCH My devotees require children to decide before age twenty whether to enter Saiva Siddhanta Church of their own volition or to choose another path. If they go away, they are always welcome back. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Those who want to hold a position and those who don’t want to hold a position combined, those who have no time to perform sādhana, who avoid their yearly pilgrimage, whose family cannot gather in the shrine room, who do not read scripture daily and attend a temple infrequently, if at all—they are doing extremely well on the āṇava mārga, in my estimation. Their artha and kāma are coming along just fine. Dharma is ignored, and mukti just may not happen.
Many people on the āṇava mārga perform yoga, japa, disciplines of this kind, and gain great adulation, as well as business contacts, through it. But nothing is gained other than a few minutes of quiet and aloneness. These are the opportunists, the people who make the world go ’round as we see it today.
Swāmīs are most precious to those on the āṇava mārga, giving blessings, amplifying their desires; adulation is sincere but not real. The swāmī is taken into their family as a personal figurehead of it, like a status symbol. They do not enter the swāmī’s āśrama to do sādhana and become a part of his life. And if the swāmī rebels, preaches dharma and holds back blessings, he is generally abused. “Love you, use you and abuse you” is the methodology of those on the āṇava mārga. All swāmīs, gurus and priests know this only too well.
The āṇava mārgī looks at God from a distance. He does not want to get too close and does not want to drift too far away, lives between lower consciousness and higher consciousness, between the maṇipūra, svādhishṭhana and mūlādhāra and the lower three, atala, vitala and sutala, which represent fear, anger and jealousy. He does not get into confused thinking. That is super lower consciousness, in the realm of the talātala chakra. He is guided by reason. That is why he can come into the other mārgas.
Therefore, God is at a distance. He sees himself pluralistically, separate from God, coexistent with God. Those who fear God anger easily. They fear their elders. They fear their government. They fear impending disaster, and they fear disease. God is just one item on the long list of things that they fear. They are not on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Their higher chakras are dreaming benignly, waiting for the consciousness to explore them. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Only then is he a seeker. Only then does his budding love begin to focus on religious icons. Only then is he able to nurture his love into becoming a bhaktar and at the same time a religious person, a giving person. This is the charyā path. We come onto the charyā mārga from the āṇava mārga. We come to Lord Gaṇeśa’s feet from the āṇava mārga. He is now the guide. The personal ego has lost its hold.
The āṇava mārga, and the glue that holds it together, is ignorance of the basic tenets of Hinduism. There is no way one can be on this mārga if he truly accepts the existence of God pervading all form, sustaining all form and rearranging all form. There is no way this mārga could be pursued by one understanding karma, seeing his manifest acts replayed back to him through the lives of others, his secret diabolical thoughts attacking him through the lips of others. The āṇava mārga does not include this knowledge. The dharma of a perfect universe and an orderly life, the consciousness of “the world is my family, all animals are my pets” is an abhorrent idea to someone on the āṇava mārga, especially if he is casted by birth in this life. The āṇava mārgī abhors the idea of reincarnation. To pay the bill of one’s indiscretions in another life is not what āṇava is all about. There is a forgetfulness here. When you renounce your childhood, you forget that you ever were a child. You forget the moods, the emotions, the joys and the fears and all that was important at that time.
ŚLOKA 149 For monistic theists, the world of māyā is Śiva’s perfect creation, containing each thing and its opposite. For pluralistic theists, the world is tarnished with evil; thus māyā could not be the creation of a perfect God. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Pluralistic Siddhāntins hold that the world of māyā is intrinsically evil and imperfect, for it is clearly full of sorrow, injustice, disease and death. The soul, too, is beginninglessly tainted with āṇava, or limitation. Pluralists contend that if God had created māyā—the material of the world—or the soul, surely He would have made them flawless, and there would be no evil, for imperfection cannot arise out of Perfection. Therefore, they conclude that āṇava, karma and māyā have always existed and the soul has been immersed in darkness and bondage without beginning. Monistic Siddhāntins hold that when viewed from higher consciousness, this world is seen as it truly is—perfect. There is no intrinsic evil. God Śiva has created the principle of opposites, which are the means for the soul’s maturation—beauty and deformity, light and darkness, love and hate, joy and sorrow. All is God Śiva Himself, in Him and of Him. A perfect cosmos has issued forth from a perfect Creator. The Tirumantiram says, “All manifestations of nature are His grace. All animate and inanimate are His pure grace. As darkness, as light, the Lord’s grace pervades.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.