ŚLOKA 32 In the highest sense, there is no good or bad karma. All experience offers opportunities for spiritual growth. Selfless acts yield positive, uplifting conditions. Selfish acts yield conditions of negativity and confusion. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Karma itself is neither good nor bad but a neutral principle that governs energy and motion of thought, word and deed. All experience helps us grow. Good, loving actions bring to us lovingness through others. Mean, selfish acts bring back to us pain and suffering. Kindness produces sweet fruits, called puṇya. Unkindness yields spoiled fruits, called pāpa. As we mature, life after life, we go through much pain and joy. Actions that are in tune with dharma help us along the path, while adharmic actions impede our progress. The divine law is: whatever karma we are experiencing in our life is just what we need at the moment, and nothing can happen but that we have the strength to meet it. Even harsh karma, when faced in wisdom, can be the greatest catalyst for spiritual unfoldment. Performing daily sādhana, keeping good company, pilgrimaging to holy places, seeing to others’ needs—these evoke the higher energies, direct the mind to useful thoughts and avoid the creation of troublesome new karmas. The Vedas explain, “According as one acts, so does he become. One becomes virtuous by virtuous action, bad by bad action.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Hrī, the first of the ten niyamas, or practices, is remorse: being modest and showing shame for misdeeds, seeking the guru’s grace to be released from sorrows through the understanding that he gives, based on the ancient sampradāya, doctrinal lineage, he preaches. Remorse could be the most misunderstood and difficult to practice of all of the niyamas, because we don’t have very many role models today for modesty or remorse. In fact, the role for imitation in today’s world is just the opposite. This is reflected in television, on film, in novels, magazines, newspapers and all other kinds of media. In today’s world, brash, presumptuous, prideful—that’s how one must be. That’s the role model we see everywhere. In today’s world, arrogant—that’s how one must be. That’s the role model we see everywhere. Therefore, to be remorseful or even to show modesty would be a sign of weakness to one’s peers, family and friends.
Modesty is portrayed in the media as a trait of people that are gauche, inhibited, undeveloped emotionally or not well educated. And remorse is portrayed in the world media as a characteristic of one who “doesn’t have his act together,” is unable to rationalize away wrongdoings, or who is not clever enough to find a scapegoat to pin the blame on. Though modesty and remorse are the natural qualities of the soul, when the soul does exhibit these qualities, there is a natural tendency to suppress them.
But let’s look on the brighter side. There is an old saying, “Some people teach us what to do, and other people teach us what not to do.” The modern media, at least most of it, is teaching us what not to do. Its behavior is based on other kinds of philosophy—secular humanism, materialism, existentialism, crime and punishment, terrorism—in its effort to report and record the stories of the day. Sometimes we can learn quite a lot by seeing the opposite of what we want to learn. The proud and arrogant people portrayed on TV nearly always have their fall. This is always portrayed extremely well and is very entertaining. In their heart of hearts, people really do not admire the prideful person or his display of arrogance, so they take joy in seeing him get his just due. People, in their heart of hearts, do admire the modest person, the truthful person, the patient person, the steadfast person, the compassionate person who shows contentment and the fullness of well-being on his face and in his behavioral patterns.
We Hindus who understand these things know that hrī, remorse, is to be practiced at every opportunity. One of the most acceptable ways to practice hrī, even in today’s society, is to say in a heartfelt way, “I’m sorry.” Everyone will accept this. Even the most despicable, prideful, arrogant, self-centered person will melt just a little under the two magic words “I’m sorry.”
When apologizing, explain to the person you hurt or wronged how you have realized that there was a better way and ask for his forgiveness. If the person is too proud or arrogant to forgive, you have done your part and can go your way. The burden of the quandary you have put him into now lies solely with him. He will think about it, justify how and why and what he should not forgive until the offense melts from his mind and his heart softens. It takes as much time for a hardened heart to soften as it does for a piece of ice to melt in a refrigerator. Even when it does, his pride may never let him give you the satisfaction of knowing he has forgiven you. But you can tell. Watch for softening in the eyes when you meet, a less rigid mouth and the tendency to suppress a wholesome smile.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 32: LIVING AND PREACHING ŚIVA’S PATH Śiva’s followers of my lineage study, live and preach to the world our peerless theological doctrine, called by various names: monistic theism, Advaita Īśvaravāda, Advaita Siddhānta and Śuddha Śaiva Siddhānta. Aum.
Living two-thirds within oneself and one-third in the external world—how do we do it? As soon as we live within ourselves, we become conscious of all of our various secret thoughts, all of our various emotions, that we would just as soon be without. Therefore, we distract ourselves and endeavor to live two-thirds in the external world and only one-third within ourselves. As aspirants on the path, you have to live your life two-thirds within yourself. When you are conscious of the thoughts that you don’t want to think, the emotions that you don’t want to feel, go deep within where they don’t exist. Take awareness to the central source of energy, right within the spine itself. Feel that energy flowing through the body, moving the muscles, enlivening the cells. Then you are two-thirds within yourself, and the world looks bright and cheery all the time; the sun is always shining. Immediately, when we begin to identify totally with our thoughts as being reality, then we begin to make mistakes. We are living two-thirds in the external world.
How to strike the balance? Regulate the breath throughout the day. Keep the spine always straight. Always sit up straight. As soon as the spine is bent, awareness is externalized. We are living two-thirds in the external area of the mind and only one-third within. As soon as the spine is straight, our awareness is internalized. We are living two-thirds within and only one-third out.
What’s the biggest barrier? Fear. Afraid of our secret thoughts, afraid of our secret feelings. What’s the biggest escape from fear? Go to the center, where energy exists, the energy that moves the life through the body. The simplest way is move your spine back and forth. Feel the power that moves that spine. Feel the power that moves that spine back and forth. Feel that energy going out through the physical body. Open your eyes and look at the world again, and you will see it bright and shiny. You’re two-thirds in and one-third out in awareness. You’re balanced. “Be renewed by a change of your mind.” Be renewed by releasing awareness from one area of the vast universe of the mind, drawing it back into its source and releasing it again, sending it to another of the vast areas of the mind.
ŚLOKA 31 Karma literally means “deed” or “act” and more broadly names the universal principle of cause and effect, action and reaction which governs all life. Karma is a natural law of the mind, just as gravity is a law of matter. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Karma is not fate, for man acts with free will, creating his own destiny. The Vedas tell us, if we sow goodness, we will reap goodness; if we sow evil, we will reap evil. Karma refers to the totality of our actions and their concomitant reactions in this and previous lives, all of which determines our future. It is the interplay between our experience and how we respond to it that makes karma devastating or helpfully invigorating. The conquest of karma lies in intelligent action and dispassionate reaction. Not all karmas rebound immediately. Some accumulate and return unexpectedly in this or other births. The several kinds of karma are: personal, family, community, national, global and universal. Ancient ṛishis perceived personal karma’s three-fold edict. The first is sañchita, the sum total of past karmas yet to be resolved. The second is prārabdha, that portion of sañchita to be experienced in this life. Kriyamāna, the third type, is karma we are currently creating. The Vedas propound, “Here they say that a person consists of desires. And as is his desire, so is his will. As is his will, so is his deed. Whatever deed he does, that he will reap.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
It is unfortunate that at this time in the Kali Yuga there are more people on the Earth in important positions who have risen into physical birth from the Narakaloka, the world of darkness, than have descended from the Devaloka, the world of light. Therefore, they are strong as they band together in anger, corruption, deceit and contempt for the Devaloka people, who live in the chakras above the mūlādhāra. It is important for the Devaloka people to ferret out who is good company and who is not. They should not presume that they can effect any sustainable changes in the Narakaloka people. And they need to know that the asuric people, bound in anger, greed, jealousy, contempt, covetousness and lust, can make and sustain a difference within the devonic people, bringing them down into their world, torturing and tormenting them with their callous, cruel and insensitive feelings. To sustain śaucha, it is important to surround oneself with good, devonic company, to have the discrimination to know one type of person from another. Too many foolish, sensitive souls, thinking their spirituality could lift a soul from the world of darkness, have walked in where even the Mahādevas do not tread and the devas fear to tread, only to find themselves caught in that very world, through the deceit and conniving of the cleverly cunning. Let’s not be foolish. Let’s discriminate between higher consciousness and lower consciousness. Higher-consciousness people should surround themselves with higher-consciousness people to fulfill śaucha.
Changing to a purer life can be so simple. You don’t have to give up anything. Just learn to like things that are better. That is the spirit of purity. When you give up something because you think you should give it up, that creates strain. Instead, search for a better life; search for śaucha. From tamasic eating we go to rajasic eating, and because sattvic food tastes better and makes us feel better, we also leave much of the rajasic food behind. Are not all persons on this planet driven by desire? Yes, indeed. Then let’s redirect desire and let our desires perfect us. Let us learn to desire the more tasty, sattvic foods, the more sublime sounds, the most perfect things we can see, more than the gross, exciting and reprehensible, the desires for which will fade away when we attach ourselves to something better. Let our desires perfect us. The ultra-democratic dream of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness we can use as a New-Age goal and pursue the happiness of something better than what we are doing now that is bad for us. Let’s go forward with the spirit of moving onward.
A devotee told me, “I gave up coffee because coffee is a stimulant and a depressant. I stopped eating meat because meat is a cholesterol-creating killer and forest decimator.” Another approach would be to give up coffee because you have found a beverage that is better. Test all beverages. Some have found that coffee gives you indigestion and green tea helps you digest your food, especially oily foods and foods that remain in your stomach undigested through the night. It also tastes good. Others have found that freshly picked, nutritious vegetables, especially when cooked within minutes of the picking, give more life and energy than eating dead meat that has been refrigerated or preserved. Still others have found that if you kill an animal and eat it fresh, it has more nutritive value than killing it, refrigerating it, preserving it, then cooking it to death again!
Be mature about it when you give something up. The immature spiritual person will want everyone else to give it up, too. The spiritually mature person quietly surrenders it because it is simply his personal choice and then goes on with his life. The spiritually immature person will make a big issue of giving anything up and want everyone to know about it.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 31: A PHILOSOPHY WORTHY OF PRIDE Śiva’s followers take pride in the fact that the philosophical basis of their peerless lineage lies in the unity of Siddhānta and Vedānta. This mysterious dance of dualism and nondualism is called monistic theism. Aum.
Have you ever had people come to you and tell you all of their problems? What did they do? As a pure state of awareness, they came to you as a pure state of awareness. You were not identified in the area of the mind that they are living in. So, they came to you, because they want to get out of the area of the mind that they’re living in. They’ve been living in it so long, they think they are that area of the mind, like somebody that has lived in a house so long and is so attached to it that they would rather die than move from the house. So then, they come to you and start telling all the problems. First they start with the little ones, and then they start with the big ones, and all their complaints, heartaches and everything that that area of the mind involves. Now, you can do one of two things. You can gently talk with them and bring them out of that area of the mind into your area of the mind, or they can move your awareness right into that area of the mind, too. And when they go away, you are feeling terrible. You’re feeling just awful.
You’ve gone to a movie. The movie screen is just a screen. The film is just film. And the light is just light. And yet the combination of the three can move your awareness into areas of the mind that can upset your nerve system, make you cry, make you laugh, make you have bad dreams for a week, change your whole, entire perspective of life—the combination of these three physical elements can do this, if it can attract your attention.
Now, if we are sitting in a movie, and we are realizing that we are going through moods and emotions but we are not the moods and emotions that we are going through—all we are doing is being entertained by our senses—then that’s the mystic. He is enjoying life and what life has to offer. He is even remembering in past lives when he had similar experiences that the players are portraying on the screen, and he has empathy with them. He is living a full and a vibrant life, and yet when he walks out of the movie house, or walks away from the TV, he has forgotten the whole thing. He doesn’t carry it with him. His awareness is immediately right where he is currently. That’s the power of the great eternity of the moment.
ŚLOKA 30 The destiny of all souls is moksha, liberation from rebirth on the physical plane. Our soul then continues evolving in the Antarloka and Śivaloka, and finally merges with Śiva like water returning to the sea. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
BHĀSHYA Moksha comes when earthly karma has been resolved, dharma well performed and God fully realized. Each soul must have performed well through many lives the varṇa dharmas, or four castes, and lived through life’s varied experiences in order to not be pulled back to physical birth by a deed left undone. All souls are destined to achieve moksha, but not necessarily in this life. Hindus know this and do not delude themselves that this life is the last. While seeking and attaining profound realizations, they know there is much to be done in fulfilling life’s other goals (purushārthas): dharma, righteousness; artha, wealth; and kāma, pleasure. Old souls renounce worldly ambitions and take up sannyāsa in quest of Paraśiva, even at a young age. Toward life’s end, all Hindus strive for Self Realization, the gateway to liberation. After moksha, subtle karmas are made in inner realms and swiftly resolved, like writing on water. At the end of each soul’s evolution comes viśvagrāsa, total absorption in Śiva. The Vedas say, “If here one is able to realize Him before the death of the body, he will be liberated from the bondage of the world.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Cleaning the house is an act of purifying one’s immediate environment. Each piece of furniture, as well as the doorways and the walls, catches and holds the emanations of the human aura of each individual in the home, as well as each of its visitors. This residue must be wiped away through dusting and cleaning. This regular attentiveness keeps each room sparkling clean and actinic. Unless this is done, the rooms of the home become overpowering to the consciousness of the individuals who live within them as their auras pick up the old accumulated feelings of days gone by. Small wonder that a dirty room can depress you, and one freshly cleaned can invigorate.
In these years, when both mother and father work in the outside world, the house is often simply where they sleep and eat. But if a home receives all of the daily attentions of cleaning it sparkly bright, both astrally and physically, it becomes a welcoming place and not an empty shell. The devas can live within a home that is clean and well regulated, where the routine of breakfast, lunch and dinner is upheld, where early morning devotionals are performed and respected, a home which the family lives together within, eats together within, talks together within, worships together within. Such a home is the abode of the devas. Other kinds of homes are the abodes of asuric forces and disincarnate entities bound to Earth by lower desires.
It is very important that the saṁskāras are performed properly within a śaucha abode, particularly the antyeshṭi, or funeral, ceremonies so as to restore purity in the home after a death. Birth and death require the family to observe a moratorium of at least thirty-one days during which they do not enter the temple or the shrine room. Such obligatory ritual customs are important to follow for those wishing to restrain their desires and perfect śaucha in body, mind and speech, keeping good company, keeping the mind pure and avoiding impure thoughts.
Purity and impurity can be discerned in the human aura. We see purity in the brilliancy of the aura of one who is restraining and disciplining the lower instinctive nature, as outlined in these yamas and niyamas. His aura is bright with white rays from his soul lightening up the various hues and colors of his moods and emotions. Impure people have black shading in the colors of their aura as they go through their moods and emotions. Black in the aura is from the lower worlds, the worlds of darkness, of the tala chakras below the mūlādhāra.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 30: INSTRUCTIONS FOR SLEEP Lovers of Śiva sleep with the head placed south or east after chanting and meditating to prepare for a great journey to the inner worlds. If awakened, they sit up and meditate before returning to sleep. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami intended to narrate all of his printed books, but only completed small portions of two books. This audio is a digital clone of his voice created from the recordings he made in the late 1990s.
Claim the Being Of Yourself
We say, “I am sick,” and in the English language that means my body is sick, or I am aware of this body not being in a perfect state of health. The mystic knows he is not this body. He can even remember dropping off the body many, many different times, getting new bodies through the process of reincarnation. We are not what we are aware of. We are separate from that which we are aware of. We are only flowing through these areas of the mind. If we live in San Francisco, we are not San Francisco. If we live in unhappiness, we are not unhappiness. That’s only one of the cities of the mind. This is a great meditation. You can grasp this awakening in thirty seconds. You can grasp this awakening in thirty hours, or thirty minutes. You can grasp this awakening and have it come to you vibrantly in thirty weeks, thirty months, or thirty years or thirty lifetimes. It just depends upon your willpower.
As soon as we can understand awareness detached from that which it is aware of, we have a vibrant energy, a tremendous drive. A tremendous willpower is released from within us, and we live with the feeling that we can do anything that we want to do, almost as quickly as we want to do it. We want things to happen now, for we vividly see the area where they already exist within the force fields of the mind itself.
How do we live our life from this point? We begin to apply this philosophy in every department of our life. There are some habit patterns in our subconscious mind that have not caught up with this new perspective as yet, and you’ll be running up against them. As soon as you find awareness totally identified with a subconscious area that has become conscious, immediately turn inward, detach awareness from that which it is aware of and just be pure energy.
You can expect a beautiful life, a beautiful relationship with the being of yourself. Claim the being of yourself as you. You have enough knowledge now. You don’t have to discover the being of yourself and keep looking for it. Just be the being of yourself and travel through the mind as the traveler travels around the globe. The wonderful story of awareness, I could go on and on talking about it, because it is so very basic and so very, very important. This then makes an infinite intelligence and everyone the same. Only, they are living in different areas of the mind, or different houses.
ŚLOKA 29 The three bonds of āṇava, karma and māyā veil our sight. This is Śiva’s purposeful limiting of awareness which allows us to evolve. In the superconscious depths of our soul, we share God Śiva’s all-knowingness. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Just as children are kept from knowing all about adult life until they have matured into understanding, so too is the soul’s knowledge limited. We learn what we need to know, and we understand what we have experienced. Only this narrowing of our awareness, coupled with a sense of individualized ego, allows us to look upon the world and our part in it from a practical, human point of view. Pāśa is the soul’s triple bondage: māyā, karma and āṇava. Without the world of māyā, the soul could not evolve through experience. Karma is the law of cause and effect, action and reaction governing māyā. Āṇava is the individuating veil of duality, source of ignorance and finitude. Māyā is the classroom, karma the teacher, and āṇava the student’s ignorance. The three bonds, or malas, are given by Lord Śiva to help and protect us as we unfold. Yet, God Śiva’s all-knowingness may be experienced for brief periods by the meditator who turns within to his own essence. The Tirumantiram explains, “When the soul attains Self-knowledge, then it becomes one with Śiva. The malas perish, birth’s cycle ends and the lustrous light of wisdom dawns.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.