ŚLOKA 92 The essential religious sacraments of childhood are the nāmakaraṇa, name-giving; chūḍākaraṇa, head-shaving; annaprāśana, first solid food; karṇavedha, ear-piercing; and vidyārambha, commencement of formal study. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Saṁskāras impress upon a child its holiness and innate possibilities for spiritual advancement. The nāmakaraṇa occurs in the temple or home, eleven to forty-one days after birth. The baby’s name, astrologically chosen, is whispered in the right ear by the father, marking the formal entry into Hinduism. The head-shaving, chūḍākaraṇa, is performed at the temple between the thirty-first day and the fourth year. The annaprāśana celebrates the child’s first solid food, when sweet rice is fed to the baby by the father or the family guru. Ear-piercing, karṇavedha, held for both girls and boys during the first, third or fifth year, endows the spirit of health and wealth. Girls are adorned with gold earrings, bangles and anklets; boys with two earrings and other gold jewelry. The vidyārambha begins formal education, when children write their first letter in a tray of rice. The upanayana begins, and the samāvartana ends, a youth’s religious study. The Vedas beseech, “I bend to our cause at this solemn moment, O Gods, your divine and holy attention. May a thousand streams gush forth from this offering, like milk from a bountiful, pasture-fed cow.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Meditation is a long journey, a pilgrimage into the mind itself. Generally we become aware that there is such a thing as meditation after the material world has lost its attraction to us and previous desires no longer bind us to patterns of fear, greed, attachment and ramification. We then seek through philosophy and religion to answer the questions, “Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?” We ask others. We read books. We ponder and wonder. We pray. We even doubt for a while that there is a Truth to be realized, or that we, with all our seeming imperfection, can realize it if it does exist. Oddly enough, this is the beginning of the meditator’s journey on the path, for we must empty ourselves fully before the pure, superconscious energies can flow freely through us. Once this state of emptiness and genuine searching is reached, we soon recognize the futile attempt to find Truth on the outside. We vividly begin to know, from the depth of ourselves, a knowing we could not explain or justify. We simply know that Reality, or the Self God, resides within, and we must go within ourselves to realize it. Of itself, that knowing is not enough. Even great efforts to meditate and vast storehouses of spiritual knowledge are not enough. Many have tried to find the Truth this way. The Truth is deeper and is discovered by the resolute devotee who dedicates his life to the search, who lives a balanced life according to the yamas and niyamas, the Vedic spiritual laws, who willingly undergoes change, who finds and obeys a spiritual teacher, or satguru, and who learns precisely the disciplined art of meditation. This, then, outlines the destination of the meditator’s journey and his means of travel.
One of the first steps is to convince the subconscious mind that meditation is good for us. We may want to meditate consciously, yet maintain fears or doubts about meditation. Somewhere along the way, a long series of events occurred and, upon reaction to them, awareness became externalized. We became geared to the materialistic concepts of the external world. As we begin to feel that urgency to get back within, the old patterns of thought and emotion, cause and effect, naturally repeat themselves. For a while, the contents of the subconscious may conflict with our concepts of what it is like to fully live spiritually. Our habits will be undisciplined, our willpower ineffective. Quite often the subconscious seems almost like another person, because it is always doing something unanticipated.
In these early stages, we must mold the areas that are different into a new lifestyle so that there will be nothing in the subconscious that opposes what is in the conscious or superconscious mind. Only when all three of these areas of consciousness act in harmony can meditation be truly attained and sustained. For us to be afraid of the subconscious is unwise, for it then holds a dominant position in our life. The subconscious is nothing more than the accumulation of vibratory rates of experience encountered by awareness when it was externalized, a storehouse containing the past.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 92: MODESTY WITH MEN Devout Hindu women associate mostly with women. Conversation with males, especially married men, is by custom limited. Intimate exchange of energies is avoided by looking at the hairline, not into the eyes. Aum
At one time or another in life, each of us has had similar experiences of temptation. There were times when we went against what we knew to be the better action, did things we knew we would be sorry for later. We knew because the actual knowing of the consequences of our actions or inactions is resident within us. Even the demons of ancient scripture are actually within us, for that is the lower, instinctive nature to which power is given when we go against what we know to be the best for us. Even the greatest souls have temptations. The souls who are the oldest and the strongest have the strongest temptations and desires. Do you often ask, “Why should this happen to me? What did I do to deserve this?” The experience was created and born of your own strength. Any lesser experience would have meant little more than nothing to you because no lesson would have been derived from it.
When we go to kindergarten, we are taught gently. When we go to the university, we are taught in the language of the university. The teachings only come to us from life in a way that we can best understand them, in a way that we can best call forth our inner strength. I have been in many situations and expected people to meet certain standards, but I have discovered that there are many basic things people just don’t know.
If you check back through the pages recording various periods of your life, you will observe that knowing grew from certain experiences which you held memory of in your subconscious mind. You can also look within yourself and observe all that you do not know that you knew. For example, start with all those things you are not sure about. You must resolve all of these things through understanding before you can clear your subconscious mind. When you have cleared your subconscious mind through understanding the lessons from the experiences you are still reacting to, you will unfold the inner sight of your clear white light and begin to live in your true being.
The yoga student must establish basic principles in his life. He must try very hard to do this. The knowledge of interrelated action and reaction is within the consciousness of man. To understand the deeper experiences of life, we must analyze them. We must ask ourselves, “What does this experience mean? What lesson have I derived from it? Why did it happen?”
We can only find answers to these questions when we have established a foundation of dharmic principles, which are the mental laws governing action and reaction. Below are listed thirty-six contemporary dharmic principles that stabilize external forces so that a contemplative life may be fully lived. When practiced unrelentingly, they bring the understanding of the external and deeper experiences of life.
Simplify life and serve others. Live in spiritual company. Seek fresh air and sunshine. Drink pure water. Eat simple, real foods, not animal flesh. Live in harmony with nature. Consume what you genuinely need rather than desire. Revere the many forms of life. Exercise thirty minutes every day. Make peace, not noise. Make a temple of your home. Develop an art form or craft. Make your own clothing and furniture. Express joy through song and dance. Grow your own food organically. Plant twelve trees a year. Purify your environment. Leave beauty where you pass. Realize God in this life. Be one with your guru. Be nonviolent in thought and action. Love your fellow man. Rely on the independent energy in the spine. Observe the mind thinking. Cultivate a contemplative nature by seeking the light. Draw the lesson from each experience of life. Detach awareness from its objects. Identify with infinite intelligence, not body, mind or intellect. Be aware in the eternal now, not in the past or the future. Do not take advantage of trust or abuse credit. Keep promises and confidences. Restrain and direct desire. Seek understanding through meditation. Work with a spiritual discipline. Think and speak only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary. Create a temple for the next generation by tithing.
ŚLOKA 91 Hindus celebrate life’s crucial junctures by holy sacraments, or rites of passage, called saṁskāras, which impress the subconscious mind, inspire family and community sharing and invoke the Gods’ blessings. Aum.
BHĀSHYA For the Hindu, life is a sacred journey in which each milestone, marking major biological and emotional stages, is consecrated through sacred ceremony. Family and friends draw near, lending support, advice and encouragement. Through Vedic rites and mantras, family members or priests invoke the Gods for blessings and protection during important turning points, praying for the individual’s spiritual and social development. There are many sacraments, from the rite of conception to the funeral ceremony. Each one, properly observed, empowers spiritual life and preserves Hindu culture, as the soul consciously accepts each succeeding discovery and duty in the order of God’s creation. The essential saṁskāras are the rites of conception, the three-month blessing, hair-parting, birth, name-giving, head-shaving, first feeding, ear-piercing, first learning, puberty, marriage, elders’ vows and last rites. The holy Vedas proclaim, “From Him come hymns, songs and sacrificial formulas, initiations, sacrifices, rites and all offerings. From Him come the year, the sacrificer and the worlds in which the Moon shines forth, and the Sun.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
Devotees who are doing sādhana and who are in the gṛihastha āśrama, between age twenty-four and forty-eight, should move the forces of the world rightly, dynamically, intelligently, quickly and make something of their lives. Such devotees should not be stimulated by competition. In today’s world most people have to be stimulated by competition to produce anything worthwhile, even if that means hurting other people. They have to be stimulated by conflict to produce anything worthy of producing in the world, and that hurts other people. They have to be stimulated by their home’s breaking up, and that hurts other people. And they have to be stimulated by all kinds of other lower emotions to be able to get enough energy to move the forces of the world to do something, whether it be good or bad. Those who perform sādhana draw on the forces of the soul to move the forces of the world and make a difference.
It is during the latter stages of life that family devotees have the opportunity to intensify their sādhana and give back to society of their experience, their knowledge and their wisdom gained through the first two āśramas. The vānaprastha āśrama, age forty-eight to seventy-two, is a very important stage of life, because that is the time when you can inspire excellence in the brahmacharya students and in the families, to see that their life goes along as it should, according to the Nandinātha Sūtras, which have the entire ideal life pattern embedded within them. Later, the sannyāsa āśrama, beginning at seventy-two, is the time to enjoy and deepen whatever realizations you have had along the way. We are all human beings, and every one of us—including the sapta ṛishis, seven great sages who help guide the course of mankind from the inner planes—is duty-bound to help everyone else. That is the duty. It must be performed by everyone. If you want to help somebody else, perform regular sādhana.
Traditionally, a Hindu home should be a reflection of the monastery that the family is attached to, with a regular routine for the mother, the father, the sons, the daughters, so that everyone is fulfilling their rigorous duties and sādhanas to the very best of their ability. We had a seventeen-year-old youth here as a guest in our monastery from one of our families in Malaysia that performs sādhana. That sādhana enabled him to come here to perform sādhana. If his parents had not been performing sādhana in their home regularly, he would not have been inclined to come here and perform a more strenuous sādhana with us.
I was asked recently what to do about all the things that you cannot avoid listening to and seeing on the TV and news and reading about—atrocities, crime, murders, poverty, unfairness—which may tend to disturb one’s sādhana. To perform good sādhana, we have to have a good philosophical foundation, which is found in Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva—The Master Course trilogy. A good philosophical foundation allows us to understand why we have the highest and the lowest human expressions here on planet Earth. Philosophers and mystics have for centuries said, “Only on planet Earth in a physical body can you realize the Self, because only here, in this world, do you have all twenty-one chakras functioning.” You need the lowest in order to realize the highest. Some people are born peaceful because of merits attained in past lives. They are born helpful, and they are the uplifters of mankind. Others are born angry, scheming, conniving, resentful, and they are the doubters, the detractors, of mankind. But all have an equal place here on planet Earth. All are going through a similar evolution up the spinal column to the top of the head, through the door of Brahman and finally out.
From the Western religionist’s point of view, God is doing it all. He is punishing mankind. He is helping mankind. And many Hindus who were raised in Christian schools hold that perspective. But from the perspective of Sanātana Dharma, the oldest religion in the world, we do it all. By our karmas we are creating our future this very moment. So, as you proceed in your sādhana, disconnect from the lower and proceed into the higher. As a family person, it is your dharma to serve society, uplift mankind and help relieve human suffering within your sphere of influence. But do not try to fix, or even entertain the desire to fix, that which you cannot fix, which is the karma, the action and reaction, of individuals who are going through the lower phases of life and must experience what they are experiencing and which you read about and hear about daily in newspapers, on TV and on the Internet.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 91: WOMEN’S ATTIRE Śiva’s women devotees wear, whenever appropriate, traditional Hindu attire, always at home and in the temple, adding rich jewelry for cultural events. Ever modest and elegant, they never expose breasts or thighs. Aum.
After the deep samādhi of Self Realization, our perspective couldn’t really be called vast; we simply see things the way they are. And it’s as simple as that. We see things the way they are, and that is the way they are, from the inside out. You look at a tree. You see the energies of the tree all working within the tree. Then, after that, you see the leaves and the bark, and yet you see it all at the same time, all working together. That is Self Realization.
Those are the five steps on the path of enlightenment, five steps that you have to work with. The first one could be the most difficult—attention. It is making a strong, brave soldier that’s going on a great mission out of awareness. By calling awareness to attention, awareness immediately has to detach itself from that which it was previously aware of. For when awareness is attached to that which it is aware of, it thinks it is that thing. It doesn’t think it is that thing, but seemingly so. When we detach awareness from that which it is aware of, we can move freely through the mind, first in a limited area of the mind, then in a more and more vast area of the mind.
Then we learn to concentrate, which awakens the power of observation. If you have attention and concentration, the other stages come automatically. But for Self Realization, you have to really want it more than your life; for that deep samādhi, that’s what it is: more than your life. The realization of the Self, beyond the rarefied areas of pure consciousness, is more than your life. You have to want it more than your life.
Memorize these five steps: attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation, samādhi. Now, there are various stages of samādhi—savikalpa samādhi, nirvikalpa samādhi—but when I use the word samādhi, I refer to Self Realization, the Totality, the Ultimate, which I just described. It is worth seeking for. It is worth striving for. It is worth making a mission of existence on this planet for.
We are not on this planet to become educated, to get things, to make money, to dress up the physical body, to acquire property, to feed ourselves. We are on this planet for the realization of the Self, for that one thing, to go within ourselves. That is why we have come to this planet, and we will keep coming back through the process of reincarnation, time and time and time again, until that awareness grows up into a great big ball, where it is strong enough to move through the rarefied areas of the mind—if we are comparing awareness to a ball, from a ping-pong ball, to a volleyball, to a beach ball—and finally we are just there.
ŚLOKA 90 Generous, selfless giving is among dharma’s central fulfillments. Hospitality, charity and support of God’s work on Earth arises from the belief that the underlying purpose of life is spiritual, not material. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
BHĀSHYA Nowhere is giving better unfolded than in the ancient Tirukural, which says, “Of all duties, benevolence is unequaled in this world, and even in celestial realms. It is to meet the needs of the deserving that the worthy labor arduously to acquire wealth.” Even the poorest Hindu practices charity according to his means. In this unselfish tradition, guests are treated as God. Friends, acquaintances, even strangers, are humbled by the overwhelming hospitality received. We share with the less fortunate. We care for the aged. We honor swāmīs, with gifts of food, money and clothes. We encourage the spirit of helping and giving, called dāna, within the family, between families and their monastic and priestly communities. Many devout Hindus take the daśama bhāga vrata, a vow to pay ten percent of their income each month to an institution of their choice to perpetuate Sanātana Dharma. This centuries-old tithing practice is called daśamāṁśa. The Vedas wisely warn, “The powerful man should give to one in straits; let him consider the road that lies ahead! Riches revolve just like a chariot’s wheels, coming to one man now, then to another.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
A great flow of prāṇa is beginning to occur among the families of our congregation worldwide because each one has decided to discipline himself or herself and the children to perform sādhana. That brings the prāṇa under control. If the prāṇa is not under the control of the individual, it is controlled by other individuals. The negative control of prāṇa is a control, and positive control of prāṇa is a control. That’s why we say, “Seek good company,” because if you can’t control your prāṇa, other people who do control their prāṇas can help you. The group helps the individual and the individual helps the group. If you mix with bad company, then the prāṇas begin to get disturbed. Once that happens, your energies are like a team of horses out of control. It takes a lot of skill and strength on the part of the individual to get those prāṇas back under control.
The control of prāṇa is equally important on the inner planes. When you leave the physical body, you are in your astral body, your subtle body. It is not made of flesh and bones like your physical body—as the Buddhists say, “thirty-two kinds of dirt wrapped up in skin.” The astral body is made of prāṇa. It floats. It can fly. It’s guided by your mind, which is composed of more rarefied prāṇa, actinic energy. Wherever you want to go, you’ll be there immediately. And, of course, you do this in your sleep, in your dreams and after death. Many of you have had astral experiences and can testify how quickly you can move here and there when your astral body is detached from the physical body. However, if you don’t have control of your prāṇa, you don’t have control of your astral body. Then where do you go when you drop off your physical body at death? You are magnetized to desires, uncontrollably magnetized to fulfilling unfulfilled desires. You are magnetized to groups of people who are fulfilling similar unfulfilled desires, and generally your consciousness goes down into lower chakras. Only in controlling your astral body do you have conscious control of your soul body, which is, of course, living within the astral body and resonating to the energy of the higher chakras.
My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, spoke of Śaivism as the sādhana mārga, “the path of striving,” explaining that it is a religion not only to be studied but also to be lived. “See God everywhere. This is practice. First do it intellectually. Then you will know it.” He taught that much knowledge comes through learning to interpret and understand the experiences of life. To avoid the sādhana mārga is to avoid understanding the challenges of life. We must not fail to realize that each challenge is brought to us by our own actions of the past. Yes, our actions in the past have generated our life’s experiences today. All Hindus accept karma and reincarnation intellectually, but the concepts are not active in their lives until they accept the responsibilities of their own actions and the experiences that follow. In doing so, no blame can fall upon another. It is all our own doing. This is the sādhana mārga—the path to perfection.
The sādhana mārga leads us into the yoga pāda quite naturally. But people don’t study yoga. They are not taught yoga. They are taught sādhana, and if they don’t perform it themselves—and no one can do it for them—they will never have a grip strong enough over their instinctive mind and intellectual mind to come onto the yoga mārga, no matter how much they know about yoga. So, we don’t learn yoga. We mature into it. We don’t learn meditation. We awaken into it. You can teach meditation, you can teach yoga, but it’s all just words unless the individual is mature and awake on the inside.
To be awake on the inside means waking up early in the morning. You woke up early this morning. That may have been difficult. But you got the body up, you got the emotions up, you got the mind up, and your instinctive mind did not want to do all that. Did it? No! Spiritual life is a twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil, as all my close devotees are realizing who have taken the vrata of 365 Nandinātha Sūtras. It means going to bed at night early so you can get up in the morning early. It means studying the teachings before you go to bed so that you can go into the inner planes in absolute control. It means in the morning reading from my trilogy, Dancing with Śiva, Living with Śiva and Merging with Śiva, to prepare yourself to face the day, to be a strong person and move the forces of the world.
NANDINATHA SŪTRA 90: FAMILY TOGETHERNESS Each of Śiva’s devotees who is a husband spends time with his wife and children daily. Monday is a family evening at home. One night monthly is devoted to the wife alone in an activity of her choice. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.
The Self is so simple. You have to be so simple to realize the Self, not simple-minded, but so unattached. Awareness has to be able to move so nimbly through the mind, like a graceful deer going through the forest, so deftly through the mind, that none of the sticky substance of the mind, so to speak, sticks onto awareness and holds it steadfast for a period of time. And only with that agility can you move awareness in quickly to the Source, in on itself, until you come out having realized the Self. It is an experience you come out of more than go into.
If you were to explain Self Realization in another way, look at it in this way. Right out here we have a swimming pool. Beneath the surface of the water, we will call that the Self. The surface of the water, just the surface of it, we will call that the depths of contemplation, that pure consciousness, that most super-rarefied area of the mind, the most refined area of the mind of pure consciousness. And we are going to dive through pure consciousness into the Self. We will call the physical body awareness. It’s a body of light, and it’s going to dive into the Self, into the depths of samādhi. But to do that, it has to break the surface, has to break pure consciousness.
So, then, we make a preparation. Attention! We take all our clothes off. We put on a bathing suit and walk around the pool. We are getting ready for this great dive. Concentration! We pull our forces together. We don’t quite know what is going to happen to us. Meditation! We look over the swimming pool. We look over the whole thing. We are studying out the philosophy of just what we are going to do. We even try to measure the depth of the Self. We talk to people about it and ask, “Have you jumped in there?” Some say, “No, but I intend to one day,” and others will answer, “Yes.” “Well, can you tell me something about it?” They say, “Uh-uh, no.” Then you go into contemplation. You just stand. And you are completely aware of just standing there, right on the brink of the Absolute, and you are standing—so, so, so much conscious that you’re there; you are just aware of being aware. And then you laugh, and then you jump in. As your hands and head go into the water, they disappear. As the body breaks the surface, it disappears. As the legs go in, they disappear. And we are all looking at the surface of the swimming pool and don’t see you there anymore. You just disappeared, the whole body.
As you come out of that samādhi, first the hands and head come up and begin to appear again—then the chest, then the entire torso. Then, as you climb out from the pool, the legs reappear, and finally the feet appear again. You are just the same as you were before, but you are all clean on the inside. Awareness has a new center. The center is way down in the bottom of there, someplace that you can’t even talk about. You have realized, when you come out, that you have realized the Self.
Before you went in, you knew all sorts of things about it. You could quote a thousand different things about the Self; you knew so much. And when you come out, you don’t know anything about it at all. You know you have had a tremendous experience. You have had an inner bath. Then you go back into just enjoying the experience—contemplation. Then you begin to meditate, coming out again on the experience. And there is a vastness in you that awareness can no longer penetrate. It’s a tremendous vastness; you just can’t penetrate it anymore. You go in and in and in, and then all of a sudden you realize that you have realized the Self again. And you go in and in and in, and then all of a sudden you realize that you have realized the Self again. And everything is different.
You look at the world from the inside out. You look at people from the inside out. You look at a person, and immediately you see how he came along through life. You look at his face, and you see what his mother looks like. You look into his subconscious mind; you see what his home looked like. You see what he was like when he was ten years old, fourteen, twenty, twenty-five years old; now he is thirty. And at the same time you are seeing what he is going to look like when he is forty years old, and so forth. You see the whole sequence, all now. Then you really know, after that deep samādhi, that the mind, in all phases of manifestation, was all finished long ago. It’s already complete.
Before that, you try to believe in that concept. And it’s a vast concept to believe in, because at certain times, when awareness is flowing in the external areas of the mind, it certainly doesn’t look that way at all. Our perspective is limited.
ŚLOKA 89 Hindus of every sect cherish art and culture as sacred. Music, art, drama and the dance are expressions of spiritual experience established in śāstras by God-inspired ṛishis as an integral flowering of temple worship. Aum.
BHĀSHYA Art and culture, from the Hindu perspective, are the sublime fruits of a profound civilization. Every Hindu strives to perfect an art or craft to manifest creative benefits for family and community. The home is a spiritual extension of the temple. Graced with the sounds of Indian sacred music, it is adorned with religious pictures, symbols and icons. The shrine is the most lavish room. Children are raised to appreciate Hindu art, music and culture, carefully trained in the sixty-four kalās and protected from alien influences. Human relationships are kept harmonious and uplifting through the attitudes, customs and refinements of Asian protocol, as revealed in Living with Śiva. Hindu attire is elegantly modest. Sectarian marks, called tilaka, are worn on the brow as emblems of sectarian identity. Mantra and prayer sanctify even simple daily acts—awakening, bathing, greetings, meals, meetings, outings, daily tasks and sleep. Annual festivals and pilgrimage offer a complete departure from worldly concerns. The Vedas proclaim, “Let the drum sound forth and let the lute resound, let the strings vibrate the exalted prayer to God.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.