Author: Himalayan Academy

Lesson 230 – Living with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Expiring By Fasting

In their love, their wisdom of the meaning and purpose of life, the ṛishis, the divine lawmakers, provided an alternative for extraordinary human suffering. They knew that excruciating suffering with no possible end in view is not conducive to spiritual progress and that it is best to have a fully conscious death in a joyous, religious mood, meditating or listening to scripture and sacred songs to the Gods. So, the Vedic ṛishis gave, in rare circumstances, the anguished embodied soul a way to systematically, nobly and acceptably, even to loved ones, release itself from embodiment through fasting. They knew, too, that life is more than a body, that the soul is immortal, that a proper exit can, in fact, be elevating. Death for Hindus is a most exalted human experience, a grand and important departure, mahāprasthāna.

The person making such a decision declares it publicly, which allows for community regulation and distinguishes the act from suicide committed privately in traumatic emotional states of anguish and despair. Ancient lawgivers cited various stipulations: inability to perform normal bodily purification; death appears imminent or the condition is so bad that life’s pleasures are nil; and such extraordinary action must be done under community regulation.

The gradual nature of prāyopaveśa is a key factor distinguishing it from sudden suicide, svadehaghata, for it allows time for the individual to settle all differences with others, to ponder life and draw close to God, even to change his mind and resume eating, as well as for loved ones to oversee his gradual exit from the physical world. One begins this highly ritualized practice by obtaining forgiveness and giving forgiveness. Next a formal vow, mahāvrata maraṇa, “great vow of death,” is taken before one’s guru, following a full discussion of all karmas of this life, especially confessing one’s wrongdoings fully and openly. Thereafter, attention is focused on scripture and the guru’s noble teachings. Meditation on the innermost, immortal Self becomes the full focus as one gradually abstains from food. At the very end, as the soul releases itself from the body, the sacred mantra is repeated as instructed by the preceptor.

To leave the body in the right frame of mind, in the right consciousness, through the highest possible chakra, is a key to spiritual progress. The seers did not want unrelenting pain and hopelessness to be the only possibilities facing a soul whose body was failing, whose only experience was pain without reprieve. So they prescribed a kindly way, a reasonable way, especially for the pain-riddled, disabled elderly and the terminally diseased, to choose a righteous release. What wonderful wisdom. No killer drugs. No violence. No involvement of another human being, with all the karmic entanglements that inevitably produces. No life-support systems. No loss of the family wealth for prolonged health care or into the hands of unscrupulous doctors. No lapsing into unconscious coma. No loss of dignity. No unbearable anguish. And no sudden or impulsive decision—instead, a quiet, slow, natural exit from the body, coupled with spiritual practices, with mantras and tantras, with scriptural readings, deep meditation, reflection and listening to favorite religious songs, with joyous release, with all affairs settled, with full self-awareness and with recognition and support from friends and relations. But don’t try it unless you meet up to the qualifications and, above all, have community support.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 230: CASTING ASIDE THE CASTE SYSTEM
Śiva’s devotees are forbidden to perpetuate the restrictions and abuses of the Indian caste system. Instead, they base respect and status on attainment, knowledge, behavior and spiritual maturity. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 230 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Chakras And Nāḍīs

There are seven great force centers of psychic nerve ganglia, called chakras, within the physical body, the astral body and the body of the soul. Each chakra is a spinning vortex of mind power, a vast collective area of many, many different thought strata of odic and actinic energy. When awareness flows through any one or more of these areas, certain functions happen, such as the function of memory, the function of reason and the function of willpower. As the chakras spin, releasing energies into the body, these energies permeate the physical cells with life and vitality and radiate out through the force fields that surround the body. The forces are cloud-like or fog-like in consistency and reflect these energies in much the same way as a cloud reflects the rays of the sun. You have watched clouds in the sky at sunset. They appear to change color from white to pink to orange and then to darker shades. Of course, the clouds do not change. The light waves change. The clouds faithfully reflect the color of the light. In a similar way, the human aura is a reflection of the wave length of energies generated in our mind by our emotions and from our body. The basic odic and actinic energy of the aura itself does not change. It is the energies emanating from the chakras that change. The aura simply mirrors those energies as color vibration.

Within the aura are psychic nerve currents called nāḍīs. It is through these nāḍīs that you feel someone standing next to you without turning your head to look at him. Also, by standing next to a person, two or three feet away, you can feel how he is feeling. Feelings are transferable, for feelings are vibrations which can be felt through the subtle nerve system. You feel them with these astral nāḍīs that extend out from the body into and through the aura. Oftentimes you may identify with the feelings that you pick up from others and begin to feel that way yourself, while actually you are just picking up the vibration from someone near you. As we have learned, through the clairvoyant vision these feelings can be seen as colors in the astral atmosphere surrounding your acquaintance. As feelings are transferable, the colors within our aura are transferable, too. We now know that our aura, and the thoughts and feelings which give rise to it, affects and influences those around us. In a sense, we “rub off on one another.” A positive example is the way in which the pure and healthy aura of the faithful and devoted Hindu wife enhances the aura of her husband. His mental state is generally more positive as a result, and his business prospers.

Lesson 229 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Is the Hindu View of Sexuality?

ŚLOKA 74
The purpose of sexual union is to express and foster love’s beautiful intimacy and to draw husband and wife together for procreation. While offering community guidance, Hinduism does not legislate sexual matters. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
Sexual intercourse is a natural reproductive function, a part of the instinctive nature, and its pleasures draw man and woman together that a child may be conceived. It also serves through its intimacy to express and nurture love. It is love which endows sexual intercourse with its higher qualities, transforming it from an animal function to a human fulfillment. Intensely personal matters of sex as they affect the family or individual are not legislated, but left to the judgment of those involved, subject to community laws and customs. Hinduism neither condones nor condemns birth control, sterilization, masturbation, homosexuality, petting, polygamy or pornography. It does not exclude or draw harsh conclusions against any part of human nature, though scripture prohibits adultery and forbids abortion except to save a mother’s life. Advice in such matters should be sought from parents, elders and spiritual leaders. The only rigid rule is wisdom, guided by tradition and virtue. The Vedas beseech, “May all the divine powers together with the waters join our two hearts in one! May the Messenger, the Creator and holy Obedience unite us.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 229 – Living with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Questions On Suicide

Another very serious issue faced today in every society is suicide. The percentages are too high to ignore the problem that exists in far too many Hindu communities. Well, we can advise, as many elders do: “Don’t kill yourself.” After all, they became elders by avoiding such extreme solutions. But do those who are all wrought up with emotion and confusion listen to such advice? No. Many die needlessly at their own hand. How selfish. How sad. But it is happening every day. Suicide does not solve problems. It only magnifies future problems in the Antarloka—the subtle, nonphysical astral world we live in before we incarnate—and in the next life. Suicide only accelerates the intensity of karma, bringing a series of immediate lesser births and requiring several lives for the soul to return to the evolutionary point that existed at the moment of suicide, at which time the still existing karmic entanglement that brought on the death must again be faced and resolved. Thus turns the slow wheel of saṁsāra. To gain a fine birth, one must live according to the natural laws of dharma and live out the karma in this life positively and fully.

Suicide is termed prāṇatyāga in Sanskrit, “abandoning life force.” It is intentionally ending one’s own life through poisoning, drowning, burning, stabbing, jumping, shooting, etc. Suicide has traditionally been prohibited in Hindu scripture because, being an abrupt escape from life, it creates unseemly karma to be faced in the future.

However, in cases of terminal disease or great disability, religious self-willed death through fasting, prāyopaveśa, is sometimes permitted. Hinduism is not absolutely black and white in this matter. Rather, it takes into account the broader picture. How will this affect the soul? How will it affect humanity? How will it affect one’s future incarnations? All that must be taken into account if a wise and compassionate, right decision is to be made on so serious a matter.

There are very few extraordinary situations in which self-willed death is permitted. It is not enough that we are unhappy, disappointed, going through a temporary anguish, such as loss of loved ones, a physical injury, a financial loss or the failure to pass an exam and the fear of an angry thrashing from parents when they find out. That is called life. It is not enough that we are filled with sorrow. None of these reasons is enough to justify suicide, and thus it is in such cases an ignoble act. It is not necessarily even enough we are suffering a serious, terminal illness, one of the thousands that beset human beings on this planet.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 229: FAMILY RETREAT AFTER A BIRTH OR DEATH
Śiva’s devotees observe a thirty-one-day retreat after the birth or death of a family member, not entering temples or home shrines, not attending pūjā or religious events, but continuing their japa, study and meditations. Aum.

Lesson 229 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

Psychic Sight’s Use and Misuse

The mystic learns how to use his already developed sixth sense, his third eye. It is used all the time, constantly, day in and day out, though not consciously. For example, someone may walk into your home. You look at him and say, “You are not feeling very well today. You seem disturbed.” How do you know? Inside yourself you are seeing his aura. If he enters looking bright and shiny, you know how he feels inside because you see his aura.

The spiritual path to realization of the Self, however, is not to see and analyze auras. The quest is to flow awareness through even the core of energy itself, into the vastness of the Self God, where awareness completely aware of itself, dissolves in its own essence, and merges into timelessness, into causelessness, into spacelessness, into Śiva, beyond that still, still area of the mind. Yes, learning to read auras can be a hindrance on the path to enlightenment because one can become the center of attraction, for everybody wants to know what his aura looks like. The aura is constantly changing. To give a reading of a friend’s aura would be like telling him what kind of clothes he is wearing. The next day, he may be wearing something different. Also, when you can see someone’s aura, quite often you do not notice it. Generally if you do have this awakened inner perception of auras, you would only notice someone’s aura if it were peculiarly dull or strongly radiant. A mystic who has control of this faculty does not generally see auras all of the time, just when he wants to. But if a person’s aura were outstanding in a certain way, naturally it would stand out clearly and be seen easily. And so, when we look into such an aura, we are actually looking into the area of the mind in which his individual awareness is traveling, for the mind is always totally in a state of creation, with awareness flowing through the mind just as the traveler roams the world.

The mystic has to caution himself not to become overly involved in the emotions of others. He must protect his inner life by living two-thirds within and only one-third in the external realms of consciousness. And he must be wise enough to know that each one has to walk either over or around all the boulders in his path. In other words, if you are around people who are not good, who have dark auras, who have deep-rooted subconscious areas that represent a lot of black, gray, red, green blobs hidden in the psychic nerve currents of their chest, and you are not quite out of that area yourself, the vibratory rate of those people will draw you back into those areas of the mind. That is why those who live the contemplative life like to be among themselves. They like to be with people of the same lifestyle. It is necessary. It is extremely necessary to surround yourself with a good environment to make progress on the spiritual path past a certain point. You can meditate a little bit to move awareness into a peaceful area of the mind or get a little burst of inner light, or practice breathing and have a healthier body and a sound nerve system. But if you really want to go deep within toward your goal, you have to move awareness, physical body, emotional body, mental body, in with a group of people that are thinking along the same lines and living the same lifestyle. The group helps the individual and the individual helps the group.

The gift of psychic vision should be developed very gradually through the stages of sādhana. The veiling grace of Lord Śiva is for very good reason. Some people are born with psychic sight and maintain it throughout their lifetime. As this faculty was developed in a prior birth, the wisdom and understanding of its proper use comes naturally to them. But more commonly, psychic sight develops slowly, almost imperceptibly, through an unbroken continuity of sādhana. Through the unveiling grace of Lord Śiva we are allowed to see what needs to be seen at the proper time in our life when we can sustain the resultant reactions.

We often observe the facial expressions and body language of friends and strangers and thus learn the contents of their conscious and subconscious mind, and from this deduce how they are thinking and feeling. But much can be concealed if we see no deeper. For example, someone may be smiling when he is really feeling depressed. However, when we see with our astral vision, there is no mystery. When we peer into their subconscious mind, we see the colors of their moods and emotions that perhaps are not reflected in their faces. Yes, colors and auras do relate to the five states of mind, conscious, subconscious, sub of the subconscious, subsuperconscious and superconscious.

Lesson 228 – Dancing with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

What Are Special Duties of the Wife?

ŚLOKA 73
It is the wife’s duty, her strī dharma, to bear, nurse and raise the children. She is the able homemaker, standing beside her husband as the mother and educator of their children and the home’s silent leader, gṛihiṇī. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
The biological differences between man and woman are part of their human dharma. The two together constitute a whole. They are equal partners in joy and sorrow, companions and helpmates, yet their functions differ. The Hindu home and family is the fortress of the Sanātana Dharma, which the wife and mother is duty-bound to maintain and thus to perpetuate the faith and create fine citizens. As long as the husband is capable of supporting the family, a woman should not leave the home to work in the world, though she may earn through home industry. The spiritual and emotional loss suffered by the children and the bad karma accrued from having a wife and mother work outside the home is never offset by the financial gain. The woman’s more intuitive and emotional qualities of femininity, gentleness, modesty, kindness and compassion are needed for the children’s proper care and development. The Vedas encourage, “May happiness await you with your children! Watch over this house as mistress of the home. Unite yourself wholly with your husband. Thus authority in speech till old age will be yours.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 228 – Living with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s cloned voice

Difficult Issues

The Sanātana Dharma states that abortion is sanctioned only if the life of the mother would be lost by the birth of the child. Hindu scripture speaks strongly against the deliberate attempt to kill a embryo/fetus, telling us life starts at conception, when the astral body of the newborn child-to-be in the Antarloka is hovering over the bodies of the mother and father. The Kaushītaki Upanishad (3.1) counts abortion among such heinous sins as killing one’s parents. The Atharva Veda (6.113.2) lists the fetus slayer, brūnaghni, among the greatest of sinners.

Our research among scholars and swāmīs tells us there is nothing within Hinduism that opposes contraceptives or birth-control methods. However, if conception occurs, the man and woman have already taken on the karmic responsibility. It is dharma’s path to then open the doors of their hearts to receive the incarnating soul. A miscarriage is something different—an unintentional action of nature, shall we say. Try again and the same soul may come through.

What about rape, incest, adultery or premarital pregnancies? Mothers are the life-givers of the planet. Even in these most terrible conditions, scripture gives no permission to injure, and certainly not to kill. However, it would be a sin upon the child to be born and kill his mother in the process. This is why abortion to save the life of the mother is the one and only exception which tradition allows. Yet, even that exception must not be resorted to lightly by some clever doctor or a husband falsely saying, “She might die,” or “My wife’s life is in peril,” or by a devious wife herself claiming, “I am going to die if I don’t abort this child.” It must be an honest and competent diagnosis, not for the sake of money, not for the sake of saving face in the community, not for the sake of repudiating an infant girl. It must be an honest diagnosis made by compassionate, dharmic doctors.

The central principles at work here are: ahiṁsā, noninjury; the energy of God everywhere; the action of the law of karma; the strict rules of dharma defined in our holy scriptures; and the belief in reincarnation. These five make a Hindu a Hindu and make not committing abortion an obvious decision.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 228: GUIDELINES FOR GARLANDING OTHERS
Devotees of Śiva do not garland members of the opposite sex, other than their spouse or blood relatives. Women never garland a swāmī, yogī or sādhaka, but may freely and lovingly garland their own satguru. Aum.

Lesson 228 – Merging with Śiva

Posted on by Himalayan Academy
Recording: Gurudeva’s real voice

The Art of Seeing Auras

The big question always arises, “How do we know whether or not we are seeing an aura, or if it is just our imagination?” Actually, there is no such thing as imagination, according to the general use of the word. When we go within ourselves, we find that each thing that is so-called imagination, or “in the world of image,” actually exists within the refined substance of the mind, and we are just becoming aware of it where it is imprinted in the vast internal substance of the mind. Only when we become aware of something that we imagine for a long enough period do we bring it out of the subtle areas of the mind and impress it upon the memory patterns of the physical brain. At that point we do not call it imagination. We begin to call it real. Finally, if we can bring it into physical manifestation, then we really begin to call it real. I suppose that this is the way man’s individual awareness has become externalized, so that he looks at the external world as real and the internal, refined areas of the mind as being unreal or elusive. It was not always so, however, because with the absence of the things to externalize man’s individual awareness, man is naturally within himself.

When awareness is within the very depths of the mind, so that color and light and sound are one and the same to him, he then looks at his fellow man from the inside out. He would first see the spine of someone he was looking at, and the lights within the spine, and then he would see the inner aura, then the outer aura of the individual, and last he would see the physical body. When awareness is externalized to the point where we see physical things as reality, then we see the physical body first, and have to strain to see the aura and the internal layers of consciousness.

Go within yourself and all things will be unfolded to you on the inner planes of consciousness, as well as in the external states of mind. You will begin to see through them all. Seeing an aura is like seeing through someone. Their physical body begins to fade just a little bit, and we see where their awareness is flowing in the wonderful world of the mind.

The colors around the person are first seen within your own mind. You would not clearly see them around their physical body. Later, after becoming adjusted to this new form of sight, you may see colors around an individual’s physical body.

Where do these colors come from? All things in the mind are sound and color. Look around you and observe each vibratory rate of every physical object as having a sound as well as a color. Everything is sound. Everything is color. Everything is shape. Therefore, in the refined areas of the mind, all things are color and all things are sound, recognizable through the sixth sense of the all-seeing eye. This faculty is always awake. You only have to learn how to be aware of and use it, in a similar way an artist must learn to distinguish with his physical eyes between one shade of color and another and between the dimensions in a painting.