Category: Merging With Siva

Capturing the Here and Now

The feeling and the realization of the here-and-now intensity of consciousness becomes intriguing to him, and he works daily on yoga techniques to strengthen psychic nerve fibers and perfect his artistry of maintaining this awareness. Many things fall away from him as he expands his consciousness through the classical practices of meditation. He loosens the odic bonds of family and former friends. Magnetic ties to possessions and places fade out until he is alone, involved with the refined realms of mind and in the actinic flow of energies. Occasionally his awareness is brought out into a habit pattern or a concept of himself as he used to be, but viewed with his new stability in his recently found inner security of being whole, this too quickly fades.

Whenever darkness comes into the material world, this centered man is light. He sees light within his head and body as clearly as he did in former states of materialistic consciousness when looking at a glowing light bulb. While involved in innersearching some hidden laws of existence or unraveling the solution to a problem of the outer mind, he sits viewing the inner light, and the light shines through the knitted law of existence, clearly showing it in all its ramifications, as well as shining out upon the snarled problem, burning it back into proportionate component parts.

Thus becoming adept in using his newly found faculties, he begins to study the findings of others and compare them to his own. This educational play-back process elucidates to his still-doubting intellect the “all-rightness” of the happenings that occur within him. He finds that for six thousand years men have, from time to time, walked the classical yoga path and attained enlightenment, and he begins to see that he has yet far to go, as his light often is dimmed by the pulling he experiences of the past, by the exuberance he shares with the future and by the yet fawn-like instability of the “here-and-now eternity” he has most recently experienced.

Now, in the dawn of a new age, when many men are being drawn within, it is eminently easier to attain and maintain clarity of perception through the actinic light within the body. Through the classical yoga techniques, perfecting the conscious use of the actinic willpower, the energies can be drawn inward from the outer mind, and the awareness can bask in the actinic light, coming into the outer mind only at will, and positively.

Occasionally young aspirants burst into inner experience indicating a balance of intense light at a still-higher rate of vibration of here-and-now awareness than their almost daily experience of a moon-glow inner light: the dynamic vision of seeing the head, and at times the body, filled with a brilliant clear white light. When this intensity can be attained at will, more than often man will identify himself as actinic force flowing through the odic externalities of the outer mind and identify it as a force of life more real and infinitely more permanent than the external mind itself.

Beyond Past And Future

Whenever man comes to the point in his evolution where he has sufficient mastery in the mind to produce “things,” he suffers for the lack of peace, for in his activity on the mental spheres in conceiving, planning, gathering the forces together and finally viewing the outcome as a physical manifestation, he has exercised an intricate control over the nerve fibers of his mind. Thus caught in this pattern, he must go on producing to insure his mental security, for should he stop for a moment, the whiplash upon his senses as the generative functions ceased to be active would cause paranoiac depressions, at times almost beyond repair.

The man looking into the “where and when” of the future, blending his energies with those who are also striving to evolve into a more ramified state of mind, can suffer well if he keeps going, producing, acquiring and believing that materiality is reality. Evolution of the species takes its toll, for as man’s mind evolves, he is no longer content projecting into the “where and when” of the material consciousness, and as he seeks some reward of peace for his efforts, he begins to look into the past for solutions, the “there and then” of it all. Thus, finding himself born into a cross-section of awareness between past and future, having experienced both of these tendencies of the mind, causes him to reflect. Philosophy holds few answers for him. Its congested mass of “shoulds” and “don’ts” he knows has proved more to the philosopher who cleared his mind on paper than to the reader who has yet to complement with inner knowing its indicated depths.

Occultism is intriguing to him, for it shows that there are possibilities of expression beyond the senses he has become well accustomed to using. But again, evolution rounding his vision causes him to discard the occult symbolism, laws and practices as another look into the past or future of the mind’s depths.

The idea of yoga, union through perceptive control of the flow of thought, and of the generative processes of a perceptive idea before thought is formed, is most satisfying. The cognition of the actinic process of life currents intrigues him, and he looks further into the practice of yoga techniques and finds that peace is gained through a conscious government first of the life currents through the body and second of the realm of ideas as they flow into thought. And while remaining the observer of it all in the eternity of the here and now, the seeker fully realizes that time, space and causation are only indicated through holding an off-balanced consciousness of past and future.

Gaining Self-Control

Perhaps the biggest battle in the beginning stages of practicing attention and concentration is the control of breath. The beginner will not want to sit long enough, or not be able to become quiet enough to have a deep, controlled flow of breath. After five minutes, the physical elements of the subconscious mind will become restless. He will want to squirm about. He will sit down to concentrate on the flower and begin thinking of many other things that he should be doing instead: “I should have done my washing first.” “I may be staying here for a half an hour. What if I get hungry? Perhaps I should have eaten first.” The telephone may ring, and he will wonder who is calling. “Maybe I should get up and answer it,” he thinks and then mentally says, “Let it ring. I’m here to concentrate on the flower.” If he does not succeed immediately, he will rationalize, “How important can breathing rhythmically be, anyway? I’m breathing all right. This is far too simple to be very important.” He will go through all of this within himself, for this is how he has been accustomed to living in the conscious mind, jumping from one thing to the next.

When you sit at attention, view all of the distractions that come as you endeavor to concentrate on one single object, such as a flower. This will show you exactly how the conscious and subconscious mind operate. All of the same distractions come in everyday life. If you are a disciplined person, you handle them systematically through the day. If you are undisciplined, you are sporadic in your approach and allow your awareness to become distracted by them haphazardly instead of concentrating on one at a time. Such concerns have been there life after life, year after year. The habit of becoming constantly distracted makes it impossible for you to truly concentrate the mind or to realize anything other than distractions and the desires of the conscious mind itself.

Even the poor subconscious has a time keeping up with the new programming flowing into it from the experiences our awareness goes through as it travels quickly through the conscious mind in an undisciplined way. When the subconscious mind becomes overloaded in recording all that goes into it from the conscious mind, we experience frustration, anxiety, nervousness, insecurity and neuroses. These are some of the subconscious ailments that are so widespread in the world today.

There comes a time in man’s life when he has to put an end to it all. He sits down. He begins to breathe, to ponder and be aware of only one pleasant thing. As he does this, he becomes dynamic and his will becomes strong. His concentration continues on that flower. As his breath becomes more and more regulated, his body becomes quiet and the one great faculty of the soul becomes predominant—observation, the first faculty of the unfoldment of the soul.

We as the soul see out through the physical eyes. As we look through the physical eyes at the flower and meditate deeply upon the flower, we tune into the soul’s vast well of knowing and begin to observe previously unknown facts about the flower. We see where it came from. We see how one little flower has enough memory locked up within its tiny seed to come up again and again in the very same way. A rose does not forget and come up as a tulip. Nor does a tulip forget and come up as a lily. Nor does a lily forget and come up as a peach tree. There is enough memory resident in the genes of the seeds of each that they come up as the same species every season. As we observe this single law and pierce into the inner realms of the mind, we see the flower as large as a house, or as small as the point of a pin, because the eyes of the superconscious mind, the spiritual body, can magnify or diminish any object in order to study it and understand it. To know this, to experience this, is to develop willpower to transform oneself into the knower of what is to be known. Yes, willpower is the key, the must, the most needed faculty for spiritual unfoldment on this path. Work hard, strive to accomplish, strengthen the will by using the will. But remember, “With love in the will, the spirit is free.” This means that willpower can be used wrongly without the binding softening of love, simple love. Say in your mind to everyone you meet, “I like you. You like me, I really do like you. I love you. I truly love you.”

Don’t Get Sidetracked

The mystic seeks to gain the conscious control of his own willpower, to awaken knowledge of the primal force through the direct experience of it and to claim conscious control of his own individual awareness. In the beginning stages on the path, you will surely experience your mind wandering—when awareness is totally identified with everything that it is aware of. This gives us the sense, the feeling, that we are the mind or that we are the emotion or the body. And when sitting in meditation, myriad thoughts bounce through the brain and it becomes difficult to even concentrate upon what is supposed to be meditated upon, in some cases even to remember what it was. That is why the sādhana of the practices of yoga given in these lessons must be mastered to some extent in order to gain enough control over the willpower and sense organs to cause the meditation to become introverted rather than extroverted. The grace of the guru can cause this to happen, because he stabilizes the willpower, the awareness, within his devotees as a harmonious father and mother stabilize the home for their offspring. If one has no guru or has one and is only a part-time devotee, then he must struggle in his efforts as an orphan in the institution of external life, for the world is your guru. His name is Śrī Śrī Viśvaguru Mahā Mahārāj, the most august universal teacher, grand master and sovereign.

Even before we sit down to meditate, one of the first steps is to acquire a conscious mastery of awareness in the conscious mind itself. Learn attention and concentration. Apply them in everything that you do. As soon as we bring awareness to attention and train awareness in the art of concentration, the great power of observation comes to us naturally. We find that we are in a state of observation all the time. All awakened souls have keen observation. They do not miss very much that happens around them on the physical plane or on the inner planes. They are constantly in a state of observation.

For instance, we take a flower and begin to think only about the flower. We put it in front of us and look at it. This flower can now represent the conscious mind. Our physical eyes are also of the conscious mind. Examine the flower, become aware of the flower and cease being aware of all other things and thoughts. It is just the flower now and our awareness. The practice now is: each time we forget about the flower and become aware of something else, we use the power of our will to bring awareness right back to that little flower and think about it. Each time we become aware of any other thoughts, we excuse awareness from those thoughts. Gently, on the in-breath, we pull awareness back to the world of the flower. This is an initial step in unraveling awareness from the bondages of the conscious mind.

Hold Awareness Firmly

Now, what do you do if during meditation the power becomes very strong and carries you into refined but unanticipated areas of superconsciousness? It is not unusual for a good meditator to go in a different direction when the inner forces or energies become so intense that awareness itself becomes all energy. That’s fine. That’s what you want. That’s also part of your meditation. Go right in and become aware of being aware and enjoy that intensity of inner power. Hold it steady. It won’t sidetrack you or disturb your meditation in the least, but you have to come right back when that power begins to wane to the original meditation that you intended to work with. Work with it in a very positive way. Stay with it and don’t get sidetracked in another area, no matter how interesting it is.

Only in this way are you going to really go on past the point of being able to meditate only adequately well. Only in this way, once you are unfolded spiritually to a certain degree, can you go on with your unfoldment. This is a difficult practice, because you will go in for a very fine meditation and get into profound depths and burst into new and interesting areas. This will happen, and the sidetrack will be fascinating, perhaps much more than your meditation subject. That is the time you must hold awareness firmly and fulfill your original intent.

The potter is a good example. He is going to make a beautiful planter pot, and it turns out to be a milk pot instead, simply because he was sidetracked. Then he says, “Oh, an impulse told me I should make a milk pot, right in the middle of making a planter pot.” This example tells you that you have to fulfill your original intent. Then you get confidence. You build a whole layer of subconscious confidence because you know where you are going to go on the inside.

Think about this and work with it, because it’s very important to get a grip on awareness in all areas of the mind. Start out with a very firm foundation. This principle will carry through everything that you do. You will become more and more precise. Your physical body will become firm and energetic. Your personal habits will become precise. The way you handle your thinking will be precise. You will pay more attention to details. You won’t assume so much, and you will follow intricate lines of thought through to their conclusion.

Someone who meditates well also thinks well. He can flow through that thinking area of the mind and work out things through the thought processes. Someone who meditates has confidence in all departments of life. You can build that confidence. If you sit down to meditate, meditate! Don’t get sidetracked on anything else, no matter how attractive it may be. If the power builds within you, sit for a long time afterwards and let the energy absorb into the cells of your external body. Great energy is released from within. Don’t get up after your meditation and immediately run off to do something. Sit in silent stillness until that power subsides in a gradual and refined way.

Progress Takes Discipline

When you go into a meditation, decide first what you are going to meditate upon and then stick with it. It is not advisable to habitually sit for meditation with no particular goal or direction, for we often end up walking in mental or subconscious circles. We have to avoid going into a meditation and then taking off into random or unintended directions, for this then can lend new vigor and strength to uncomely states of mind. You have to be very firm with yourself in meditation sessions. They are serious, not ponderous, but serious applications of life’s force. They are moments of transformation and discovery, and the same care and earnestness of a mountain climber must be observed constantly if real progress and not mere entertainment is the goal. In the very same way, in the external world, if you begin something, you finish it. If you are working on a project creatively, you maintain your efforts until you bring it to a conclusion. It is such people who become truly successful in meditation.

You can learn to meditate extremely well, but will be unsuccessful if you don’t approach it in an extremely positive way, if you allow yourself to get sidetracked on the inside once the inside opens up and you can really become aware of inner states. Care must be taken not to wander around in inner states of consciousness. You can wander in extraneous, unproductive areas for a long, long time.

So, you have to be very, very firm with yourself when you begin a meditation so that you stay with it the way you originally intended to do and perform each meditation the way you intended to perform it. This brings us into discipline. Undisciplined people are generally people whom nobody can tell what to do. They won’t listen. They can’t tell themselves what to do, and nobody else is going to tell them either! If you sincerely want to make headway in meditation and continue to do so year after year after year, you have to approach it in a very positive, systematic way. By not seeking or responding to discipline, you can learn to meditate fairly well, just as you can learn to play the vīṇā fairly well, but you will never go much farther than that.

For many years I’ve seen hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people come and go, each one firmly determined to go in and realize the Self, firmly determined to meditate and meditate well. Many did, up to a point. Then they lost interest, became involved in the next social fad or just reached the depth equal to their ability to be constant and well disciplined. They are not anyplace today, inside or outside, for they undoubtedly reached the same barriers in their next pursuit and were compelled to seek another and yet another. I want to impress on you: if you start a meditation, stay with it. Attack it positively. Go on and on and in and in and in.

Realization Requires Will

Work with willpower, awareness and energy as three separate items first. Feel awareness and discover what it is. Use willpower and discover what it is. Feel energy and analyze energy and discover what it is. Then separate the three of them in your intellectual mind and experiential pattern. Then, after you’ve gotten that done, you will begin to see inside yourself that the three are one and the same. And it is actually the beautiful, pure intelligence of the immortal soul body, that body of light of you, on its path inward into its last phase of maturity on this planet. This inner body of light has been maturing through many, many different lives.

If you would like to know how it came along, for instance if you had ninety lives on this planet, each life the body of light matured one year. So your body of light would be ninety years old, so to speak. You can look at it that way. That’s not quite the way it actually is, but looking at it that way gives you an idea of the maturing of this body of light. The pure intelligence of it is your awareness—which is energy and which is willpower—that life after life becomes stronger, more steadfast. Finally, in your last incarnation on the Earth, you merge into its final experience, that great samādhi, the Self, beyond the complete, still area of consciousness. You go in not knowing what you are getting into, and you come out wise. Your complete perspective is changed, and you only talk about it to those that are on the path of enlightenment, as they are the only ones steady enough or free enough to understand the depth of this realization.

Here are the ingredients: attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation, samādhi. Willpower is the fuel. It does not take time. Someone asked me, “Do you think I can have this samādhi, realize the Self, in ten years?” I said, “I certainly don’t. I don’t think you have enough willpower to realize it in a hundred years, because it doesn’t take time. It takes will. If you had the will, you wouldn’t add ten years on it. You would simply be telling me, ‘I am going to have this realization.’ And I would believe you because I would feel your will moving out of every atom of your body. But the mere fact that you take an intellectual approach, I have to say no, because whatever I did think wouldn’t make any difference one way or the other. You are not going to get it with an attitude like that, because it’s not something you go out and buy. It’s not another getting, like ‘I have a car. I have clothes. I have a little money. And now, after I get my television paid for, I think I’ll get the Self, because that is the next thing to get. It’s really great. I read about it. I heard about it. I heard a speaker speak about it. I’m all fired up to get this Self, and it’s next in the line of getting, so I’m going to get it!’ It doesn’t work like that. You don’t get that which you have. You can’t get that which you have. It’s there. You have to give up the consciousness of the television, the money, the clothes, the people that you know, the personality that you thought you were, the physical body. You have to go into the elements of the physical body, into the elements of that, and into the energy of that, and into the vast inner space of that, and into the core of that, and into the that of that, and into the that of that, and finally you realize that you have realized the Self. And you’ve lost something. You lost your goal of Self Realization. And you come back into the fullness of everything, and you are no longer looking, and you are no longer asking, and you are no longer wanting. You just are. When you get tired of the external area of the mind that you are flowing through, you simply dive in again.