Category: Merging With Siva

The Gods Are Living Realities

The Hindu religion brings to us the gift of tolerance that allows for different stages of worship, different and personal expressions of devotion and even different Gods to guide our life on this Earth. Yet, it is a one religion under a single divine hierarchy that sees to the harmonious working together of the three worlds. These intelligent beings have evolved through eons of time and are able to help mankind without themselves having to live in a physical body. These great Mahādevas, with their multitudes of angelic devas, live and work constantly and tirelessly for the people of our religion, protecting and guiding them, opening new doors and closing unused ones. The Gods worshiped by the Hindu abide in the Third World, aided by the devas that inhabit the Second World.

It is in the Hindu temple that the three worlds meet and devotees invoke the Gods of our religion. The temple is built as a palace in which the Gods reside. It is the visible home of the Gods, a sacred place unlike every other place on the Earth. The Hindu must associate himself with these Gods in a very sensitive way when he approaches the temple.

Though the devotee rarely has the psychic vision of the Deity, he is aware of the God’s divine presence. He is aware through feeling, through sensing the divine presence within the temple. As he approaches the sanctum sanctorum, the Hindu is fully aware that an intelligent being, greater and more evolved than himself, is there. This God is intently aware of him, safeguarding him, fully knowing his inmost thought, fully capable of coping with any situation the devotee may mentally lay at His holy feet. It is important that we approach the Deity in this way—conscious and confident that our needs are known in the inner spiritual worlds.

The physical representation of the God, be it a stone or metal image, a yantra or other sacred form, simply marks the place that the God will manifest in or hover above in His etheric body. It can be conceived as an antenna to receive the divine rays of the God or as the material body in or through which the God manifests in this First World. Man takes one body and then another in his progression through the cycles of birth and death and rebirth. Similarly, the Gods in their subtle bodies inhabit, for brief or protracted spans of time, these temple images. When we perform pūjā, a religious ritual, we are attracting the attention of the devas and Mahādevas in the inner worlds. That is the purpose of a pūjā; it is a form of communication. To enhance this communication, we establish an altar in the temple and in the home. This becomes charged or magnetized through our devotional thoughts and feelings, which radiate out and affect the surrounding environment.

The Nature Of Devotion

Devotion in Hinduism is known as bhakti. It is an entire realm of knowledge and practice unto itself, ranging from the child-like wonder of the unknown and the mysterious to the deep reverence which comes with understanding of the esoteric interworkings of the three worlds. Hinduism views existence as composed of three worlds. The First World is the physical universe, the Second World is the subtle astral or mental plane of existence in which the devas, or angels, and spirits live, and the Third World is the spiritual sphere of the Mahādevas, the Deities, the Gods. Hinduism is the harmonious working together of these three worlds. Religion blossoms for the Hindu as he awakens to the existence of the Second and Third Worlds. These inner worlds naturally inspire in man responses of love and devotion and even awe. They are that wonderful.

Devotion in Hinduism occurs on many levels and at different cycles of time in the evolution of the soul. All forms of devotion are equally valid, and none claims itself as the only proper form of worship. There is devotion to the tribal Deities, to the scriptures, to the saints and to the satguru. But the most prevalent expression of worship for the Hindu comes as devotion to God and the Gods. In the Hindu pantheon there are said to be 330 million Gods. Even so, all Hindus believe in one Supreme Being who pervades the entire universe.

The many Gods are perceived as divine creations of that one Being. These Gods, or Mahādevas, are real beings, capable of thought and feeling beyond the limited thought and feeling of embodied man. So, Hinduism has one God, but it has many Gods. There are only a few of these Gods for whom temples are built and pūjās conducted. Gaṇeśa, Śiva, Subramaniam, Vishṇu and Śakti are the most prominent Deities in contemporary Hinduism. Of course, there are many others for whom certain rites or mantras are done in daily ceremony, often in the home shrine. These include Brahmā, Sūrya, Sarasvatī, Lakshmī, Agni, Chandra, Ayyappan, Hanumān, Mariyamman and others.

The Hindu traditionally adopts an Ishṭa Devatā. This is a personal Deity chosen from the many Hindu Gods, often according to the devotee’s family background or the feeling of closeness to one form of divine manifestation. It is the unique and all-encompassing nature of Hinduism that one devotee may be worshiping Gaṇeśa while his friend worships Subramaniam or Vishṇu, and yet both honor the other’s choice and feel no sense of conflict. The profound understanding and universal acceptance that are unique in Hinduism are reflected in this faculty for accommodating different approaches to the Divine, allowing for different names and forms of God to be worshiped side by side within the temple walls. It may even happen that one may adopt a different personal Deity through the years according to one’s spiritual unfoldment and inner needs.

Be a Master Of Giving

Why can’t you spiritually unfold until you learn to give and give and give and give until it hurts? Because that hurt is your block. Many people give, and they give generously, up to the point where they feel, “I have given a lot,” or “I have given too much,” or “I gave as much as I can give,” or “I will give more when I can,” or “I enjoy giving and I used to give a lot, but I can’t give so much right now.” These are the little blocks that come up within man’s nature and undermine man’s nature and bind him down to the depths of the negative areas of the subconscious mind. And then he can’t progress. Why can’t he progress? Because he can’t have devotion unless giving unfolds as his light. Now, the man who has unfolded into giving doesn’t qualify his giving, he doesn’t even think about it. If he doesn’t have a lot of material things to give, if he is going through circumstances which do not permit him, then what does he do? He gives what he can, in devotion, little things to make people happy, little things to progress activity, little things to progress himself. He gives what he can, and he gives more than he can. And when something is given to him, that gives him the power to give again. That is the great law. That is the great unfoldment.

When a seeker has unfolded to the power of giving, he doesn’t think about himself so much, because he is spontaneous. He is always looking for an opportunity to do something good for someone else. When someone has not unfolded into giving, he thinks about himself a great deal, and he calculates his giving, because he has to give in proportion to something else. But by giving in proportion to something else, he is creating his future limitation. He is saying, “I am just this big, and I will always be just this big, because that is as far as my consciousness can go. By limiting your giving, by limiting your consciousness, as time goes by, your consciousness will shrink, even if you don’t know it. Your friends will notice, but you won’t. It will shrink and shrink and shrink. And that is one of the things your friends won’t tell you—that your consciousness has shrunk, and you are not the same as you used to be.

This works in reverse, too. The person who has a heart full of joy, even if he doesn’t have material possessions to speak of, always finds something to give; he gives what he has. He knows that he is not the giver at all, and when something comes his way, he gives of it freely. He is a vehicle for giving, and finally he is so full of abundance in consciousness that he knows he is not the giver, and he fulfills bhakti yoga in his life. If you give and give freely and spontaneously, you feel good about it, and if you do it again, you feel even better about it. But if you give and give selfishly, you feel bad about it, and if you continue to do so, you’ll feel worse. If you give and give spontaneously, you will awaken your inner nature, and spiritual power will flow through you, and you will merge with God within you. But if you give and give selfishly, by hanging on to your gift after you have given it, you close the door to spirituality.

Giving is in many, many forms. Give freely, and your gift will come back to you, often doubled. That is the incomparable law of karma. Then this opens the door for another gift to be given. Your intuitive nature will tell you how you can give, when and where, and soon you will find yourself giving every minute of every day in the most spontaneous ways.

Awaken True Love

Devotion is the keynote to the fulfillment of duty. “What is duty?” “What are my duties?” Take a piece of paper. List all of your duties, all of the promises that you have made. A duty is very important. Devotion and duty lay the foundation for the spiritual unfoldment that everyone is talking about in this age. We do not find the path in books. We find the path in how we handle our individual lives.

Paint a mental picture of yourself as you want to be. Everyone has an ideal. You want to be kind; you want to be helpful at all times; you never want to miss an opportunity to serve or to help your fellow man. You want to be spontaneous, to be gracious, to be pure and direct in word, thought and deed. These are the qualities. The tendencies are there, for you are on the path. This is your new inner wardrobe. Wear it and wear it well.

How do you put on this wardrobe? Sit quietly and breathe deeply, eyes closed, and review the wardrobe, the qualities, the tendencies of the greatness within you. You will begin to feel that love, that softening, that bliss of inner peace which is there.

In the yoga called bhakti, you release an energy through the physical body, through the nerve system, from the central source of all energy. This energy is a constant flow, filling and thrilling every nerve current, muscle and sinew of your physical body. It will be a constant flow as you express the qualities that you have chosen. This constant flow of energy will permeate your physical body as a blessing to the world. This is the life of one who is in the fulfillment of the yoga called bhakti.

Bhakti yoga is the awakening of the love nature through the practice of devotion and giving. Giving begins new life. Giving is an essential for spiritual unfoldment, for until we give and give abundantly, we don’t really realize that we are not the giver; we are just a channel for giving. Abundance, materially and spiritually, comes to you when you cease to be attached to it, when you can take as much joy over a little pebble as you could over a precious ruby. The power of giving is a very great power, a great power that comes to you through yoga. You hear about yoga powers, the power of levitation, the power of suspended animation, but the truly great powers are the power of giving, the power of concentration, the power of the subconscious control over your mind, body and emotions, the power of universal love—practical powers that can be used today.

Bring Forth Good Qualities

Where do you get devotion? Not from the teacher. The teacher is only an awakener. He imparts knowledge to you, a vibration to you. He awakens you to the possibilities of the grandeur within yourself. Can a professor of geometry give you the total knowledge of that subject? No, he cannot. He can only show you the ways you can unfold the totality of the subject matter from within yourself. He gives you certain formulas and laws. You have to take them in and in and in where the solutions are.

How do we unburden awareness from the external areas of the mind through devotion? Our attitude has to be correct. Only in that way can we manifest the qualities that we want to manifest. Everyone has many different qualities and tendencies in his nature. Some are flowing freely. Others are suppressed. Others are repressed. Some are active and others temporarily inactive. Friends bring out the qualities and mirror the inner tendencies of each of us. When a person changes his life, he also changes his group of friends. It happens automatically. One group of qualities becomes inactive, and another group of tendencies begins to manifest itself in him. Our tendencies formulate our attitudes. Our attitudes, once consistently held, stabilize our perspective in looking at life.

The first step in unburdening awareness from the externalized odic-magnetic areas of the mind is to cause a bhakti, a love, a devotion, right within the nerve currents of your body. This is the first step. Get in love with the inner self. Begin to study the qualities of your nature, your tendencies. Write them all down on a piece of paper. Choose the ones that you wish to use and cross out the ones that you do not care for. Choose your qualities and tendencies as carefully as you choose your clothing.

Many people spend much time thinking about what they are going to wear. Hour after hour they are shopping in the stores. If you were to add up over a period of one year’s time the number of hours they stood in front of the mirror dressing the physical form, it would be quite surprising. How about the inside? Do we dress up the inside, too? We can, you know. Choose the qualities and tendencies to wear this spring and in the summer and fall, too. Pick carefully the smile on your face. Let it come from deep within. We can dress up the face in all sorts of ways, but the qualities of our nature are those which really shine through. We can paint over greed and resentment, but the quality of bhakti, devotion and love, will shine through all paint. It is its own decoration. Dress up the inside. Make the qualities and tendencies of your nature match the outside. This is one of the great duties on the path. Bring forth the great qualities of devotion through the yoga called bhakti.

The Power Of Devotion

For eleven years I led a bhakti pilgrimage, a devotional pilgrimage, to the top of Mount Tamalpais in California, the first Sunday of every month. I never missed one. The devotees, in looking over three cities with me, could intuit that within each city there were problems. Each home in each city contained an area of the mind that was problem ridden.

Those who had the devotion went to the top of the mountain. Hence, the opportunity to expand their awareness for an hour or so and look over the external states of the mind. There they set their pattern for meditation for the ensuing month. It takes great dedication, devotion and bhakti to disentangle awareness from that which it is aware of, to flow into and become aware of expanded areas of mind. The rewards are great. We are able to look over and through our expanded vision the totality of the exterior area of our mind and intuitively know the answer to the experiences that we are going through.

This may seem difficult to comprehend, but it is really very simple. When awareness is burdened in the exterior area of the mind, we simply release awareness from that area of the mind that it is aware of. Release the burden—but not by taking on more burdens or trying to find out the whys and wherefores of it all. In other words, we alleviate the pressures that awareness and our nerve system feel because of being involved in the exterior area of the mind and thus become devoted to our own superconsciousness. The power of devotion, love, bhakti, melts the odic-magnetic force fields, releasing awareness to soar into superconsciousness, the mind of light. And then we can focus, superconsciously, from our intuitive state of mind and look at the exterior world from a new perspective, from right within the very core of life itself. It does not take long. It does take one quality though—devotion, found in the yoga called bhakti.

What is devotion? Devotion involves going deep enough to understand the great principle of the fulfillment of one’s duty. Who must be devoted to whom? Members of a family to their temple, a wife to her husband, a husband to his religion, children to their parents, the student to the teacher, the disciple to the guru. No matter what you are studying—mathematics, chemistry, philosophy, cybernetics, sociology, religion, a lifestyle—the professor should represent what you are going to be. That is why you are studying with him. Only through devotion will you be totally aware, open, free, inspired. Only through devotion will you become what you aspire to unfold within yourself.