Lesson 191 – Living with Śiva

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

Tapas of the The Teen Years

When your adolescents make the decision that you want them to make, never, ever say, “I told you so.” Just bow your head and say, “Darling, you are making a wise decision.” Believe it or not, when they are not listening and you are talking, they are hearing, and what you are saying is going deep into their subconscious state of mind, which never sleeps. So, be tactful in what you say, and say it always with a smile and plenty of healthy āyurvedic sweets (not made with white sugar, but with jaggery or honey, or raw sugar if these are not available). We don’t want tooth decay and diabetic conditions from highly processed white sugar. It is too expensive and time-consuming to treat these home-created ailments. Don’t you agree? Good health—mental and physical—begins or ends in the home.

Teenagers are suffering the pangs of sex, desire and distrust, independence and all sorts of other things. They are as if sick during this time. In Moscow one cold 1990 winter, astrophysicist Carl Sagan once told me they are poisoned by their own hormones. This is nothing new. Over two thousand years ago, the Greek philosopher Plato lamented, “What is happening to our young people? They disrespect their elders. They disobey their parents. They riot in the street, inflamed with wild notions. Their morals are decaying. What is to become of them?” Not much has changed, has it? So, be the mother, father, nurse, and doctor. Talk together and work out a strategy for the seven years from age thirteen to nineteen. It will be over in only seven years. Does this seem like a long haul? Does getting through it seem like an impossible dream? It surely does, but teenage trials are a natural part of the extended family, the joint family, the nuclear family and even of the no-family-at-all. Most of all, realize that you will surely win out if you persist in love and understanding. Before long, they will be raising their children in the very same way and loving you for how you had the patience, willpower, forbearance and love—mainly love—to see them through. Proceed with confidence. Get a strategy, a battle plan, if it’s all that bad. Stand up straight, be willing to take insult, disobedience and be shamed in the very home in which you have raised them. Similarly, a nurse does not pay all that much attention to the ranting and raving of a patient who is delirious. Reason does not rank that high as a quality for the teenager. But to tell them that would be to alienate them, for in their view they are so, so much more intelligent than you are in the ways of the world. And that may well be true, as they, we must never forget, spend more time with their peers than at home. You, the parents, bear the handicap of this and must in all fairness compensate.

When you have successfully performed your seven-year tapas of bearing up under the pain of the teenage trials, truly you will enjoy great satisfaction and be able to sit back and smile. Remember and be assured that it won’t last forever. It truly won’t. Have compassion and give some leniency, for during this time they are all mixed up inside; they are, they surely are. They are facing an uncertain future in an unsure world, becoming adults, keeping in with their peers, keeping in with their parents, facing marriage, job, career and community expectations. No wonder so many kill themselves because their parents just did not understand and were not there for them at a time when they truly, truly needed them. Such a death of a child is on the heads of the parents. Don’t let this happen in your family. Please don’t. Be a mom. Be a dad. Be a nurse. Be a doctor. And, most of all, be a friend—their friend, their closest friend—during this tumultuous, turbulent, troublesome time called teenage.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 191: NOT EATING TOO MUCH
Śiva’s devotees eat in moderation. Meals seldom exceed what two hands cupped together can hold. If hunger persists, another handful may be taken. Eating right extends life and maintains higher consciousness. Aum.

Lesson 191 – Merging with Śiva

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

When Are You Superconscious?

It is easier to know when you are not superconscious than when you are superconscious, because your superconsciousness is such a natural state. It is such a beautiful state. It is such a full, wholesome state to be in, that you are not aware generally that you are superconscious.

When you are not feeling too well within yourself, you are not superconscious. When you are feeling really good and satisfied within yourself, you are superconscious. When your timing is right, when everything is happening just right during the day, you are superconscious. When nothing seems to be happening right, then your awareness is flowing through one of the congested areas of the thought realm. When everything seems to be going wrong, you are flowing through an instinctive area or a congested intellectual area.

When you are arguing with yourself, you are not superconscious. You are flowing through an area of the intellectual mind, taking two points of view and flowing from one to another. When discussing something with someone, you are not superconscious, for superconsciousness is a one-way street. You speak right from the core of existence without really thinking about what you are going to say. You just speak out and hear what you said afterwards.

When you are arguing with someone, you are not superconscious. You have moved into a congested area of the thought strata of the mind and you are verbalizing it, and are congesting the aura, too. Then awareness has to be unwound from that area of the mind and directed back again to superconsciousness. When you are disturbed about yesterday, or even have a consciousness that there was a yesterday, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are afraid, you are not in a superconscious state. When you are peaceful, when you are calm, when you are in the eternity of the moment, when you feel secure on the inside of you, you are in a superconscious state. Superconsciousness is not something you will get, because you have never been without it. You are superconscious this very minute, and functioning in all five states of the mind.

Lesson 190 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Does One Best Prepare for Death?

ŚLOKA 35
Blessed with the knowledge of impending transition, we settle affairs and take refuge in japa, worship, scripture and yoga—seeking the highest realizations as we consciously, joyously release the world. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

BHĀSHYA
Before dying, Hindus diligently fulfill obligations, make amends and resolve differences by forgiving themselves and others, lest unresolved karmas bear fruit in future births. That done, we turn to God through meditation, sur­render and scriptural study. As a conscious death is our ideal, we avoid drugs, arti­­fi­cial life-ex­ten­sion and suicide. Suicide only postpones and in­­ten­­sifies the kar­­ma one seeks escape from, requiring sever­al lives to return to the evolutionary point that existed at the mo­ment of suicide. In cases of terminal illness, under strict com­mun­i­ty reg­ulation, tradition does allow prāyopa­ve­śa, self-willed re­ligious death by fasting. When nearing transition, if hospitalized, we re­turn home to be among loved ones. In the final hours of life, we seek the Self God within and focus on our man­­tra as kindred keep prayerful vigil. At death, we leave the body through the crown chakra, entering the clear white light and beyond in quest of videhamukti. The Vedas affirm, “When a person comes to weakness, be it through old age or dis­ease, he frees himself from these limbs just as a mango, a fig or a berry releases itself from its stalk.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 190 – Living with Śiva

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

Keep Teaching, Keep Loving

The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. Children are perfect devas until puberty, when so many changes come, when prārabdha karmas—the results of past actions they bring with them to live through in this birth—begin to manifest and the growing-up process intensifies. Is there a set way, a rule book, for raising Hindu children in our contemporary society? I think not. But the basic principles of Hinduism have not failed. No, not at all. Teach the young adults to look ahead mentally into the future before making a decision, and to base their decisions for life on the value judgments of Sanātana Dharma as well explained in Dancing with Śiva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism, here in Living with Śiva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Culture and in Merging with Śiva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Metaphysics. This Master Course trilogy is all that’s needed for a fine future for young adults. What are these values? Peace; harmony within the home; tolerance for others; appreciation of the wisdom of those who have gone before us and of those who are older; purity of thought, word and deed; chastity until marriage; and, above all, cooperation and patience in choosing the right partner in life, for marriage is actually the joining of two families.

Marriage is not merely an individual decision between two people who are sexually attracted to each other. No, not at all. A marriage, to be successful, needs the support both of the young man’s family and the young lady’s. The days are going away very fast when, through the dowry system, the girl buys herself a husband or the boy commands a price to take her into his home as a servant girl for his mother.

All this should be explained time and time again to children who are growing up with mixed values. After all, they spend more time with their peers than they do with their parents in today’s world! This means that the parents have to actively teach them as well, and talk and talk and talk on well-rehearsed subjects to keep their children in the home, out of harm’s way and guided into a substantial, happy marriage in which the bride and the groom’s parents get along famously. It is a circle of love when two families marry along with their children.

These matters must be discussed when children are young, before puberty. Give many examples from your life and the successful lives of others they and you know. Later, when they reach the stage of puberty, watch out, for they may reject everything they have heard. But the knowledge is in there, deeply buried in their subconscious mind, just waiting to burst out when the right moment comes. So, even when they are not inclined to listen or discuss, you can know they are hearing. And you can be sure they are listening when you gossip about someone who is experiencing a similar problem they are facing—a high school senior you read of in the paper who is in dire circumstances, or a story with a moral that you have creatively thought up to put across the point that you are trying to make. Yes, they are listening, because who is it on planet Earth that does not just really, really love to hear a good story. Your well-placed parable will lift up the vāsanās you implanted early on.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 190: GOOD FOOD FOR GOOD HEALTH
Śiva’s devotees know that a good diet is the best medicine. They drink two liters of water daily, minimize fried foods and avoid junk foods, white rice, white flour, processed sugar and degraded oils. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 190 – Merging with Śiva

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

Consciously Superconscious

We have to adjust our subconscious to the idea that we are a superconscious being, rather than an instinctive being or an intellectual being driven by the impulses of the five senses. Awareness is the core of us. If we dropped off this physical body today, we would be a superconscious being without a physical body. If we stepped into another physical body tomorrow, we would still be a superconscious being, but with another physical body, different than the one we had yesterday, with an entirely new subconscious and new external environment.

I would like you to visualize dropping off your physical body and going over to, say, Sri Lanka or Bosnia to pick up a brand new body. See yourself stepping into it, adjusting your nerve currents within it, getting up from the battlefield, putting it into the hospital and healing it up and going home to its parents with a medal of valor.

You would have a new physical body, a new subconscious mind and a new external environment to adjust to. In this new body you would soon forget that you are a superconscious being. You would be so involved in being Ananda from Toronto who recently arrived there as a refugee from the war. But the superconscious being of you would know that it was a superconscious being, and finally Ananda would begin to know it, too. New rays of light would be coming through Ananda’s aura. The subconscious would be reprogrammed quickly, and pretty soon Ananda would become a man who meditated, in the very same way you meditated before you dropped off your old body and picked up Ananda’s body on the battlefield. There would not be much of a break in continuity. This gives you a brief look at reincarnation. Your subconscious can readily adjust to this simple concept.

There is one theory of reincarnation that holds we do not have to incarnate as little babies, but that we can incarnate as full-grown people when we know how it is done. More evolved souls can do this because they know the inner laws. Less evolved souls must incarnate through the womb, because this is the process that is most instinctively natural. This is one of the fringe benefits of becoming conscious in the superconscious body. Become consciously superconscious. That is the goal.

Lesson 189 – Dancing with Śiva

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

How Should We View Death and Dying?

ŚLOKA 34
Our soul never dies; only the physical body dies. We neither fear death nor look forward to it, but revere it as a most exalted experience. Life, death and the afterlife are all part of our path to perfect oneness with God. Aum.

BHĀSHYA
For Hindus, death is nobly referred to as mahā­pra­s­thāna, “the great journey.” When the lessons of this life have been learned and karmas reach a point of in­tensity, the soul leaves the physical body, which then re­turns its elements to the earth. The awareness, will, memory and intelligence which we think of as ourselves continue to exist in the soul body. Death is a most natural ex­pe­r­ience, not to be feared. It is a quick transition from the physical world to the astral plane, like walking through a door, leaving one room and en­tering another. Knowing this, we approach death as a sādhana, as a spir­itual op­­portunity, bringing a level of detachment which is difficult to achieve in the tumult of life and an ur­­gency to strive more than ever in our search for the Di­vine Self. To be near a realized soul at the time he or she gives up the body yields blessings surpassing those of a thousand and eight visits to holy persons at other times. The Vedas explain, “As a caterpillar coming to the end of a blade of grass draws itself together in taking the next step, so does the soul in the process of transition strike down this body and dispel its ignorance.” Aum Namaḥ Śivāya.

Lesson 189 – Living with Śiva

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

Time Out And Time In

Is there a covert consciousness that accounts for the fact that for forty-eight years, until early 1996, I didn’t even know that children of my international congregation were being beaten? Perhaps. Hindus know it’s wrong in their heart of hearts, but are blindly obeying the cultural attitude expressed in this hiṁsā, violent, senseless proverb, and thoughtlessly reacting to their own stress and anger. They don’t even look for a better way. Well, there is a better way.

It has been over fifty years since my ministry started, way back in 1949. Now, in its maturity, there are uncounted encounters to rely upon, much experience to guide the fellowship and much energy to march into the future of futures. Among the concerns, one has become crucial to parents, who ask, “Are there better ways to raise our children? We are entirely dedicated to ahiṁsā, noninjury, physically, emotionally and mentally. But how is this lofty ideal possible to follow when troubled by emotions that are too easily released by taking them out, in the fire of the moment, on those we love? How can misdeeds that happen in the home be absolved, and examples set that prevent their repetition generation after generation?”

For parents seeking effective nonviolent alternatives, they are readily available today in excellent books. One strategy educators recommend is called time out, one minute for each year of the child’s age; hence ten minutes for a ten-year-old. This tells the child that if he doesn’t behave in a reasonable way, he will be separated from other people. Time out, sitting quietly in a room, works best in conjunction with its opposite, time in. Time in is quality time spent with the child in an activity he enjoys, and just being together. Time in includes letting children share their feelings, positive or negative, with parents lending a receptive, understanding ear.

There are new methods and new principles, such as in Nandinātha Sūtra 138: “Śiva’s followers never govern youth through fear. They are forbidden to spank or hit them, use harsh or angry words, neglect or abuse them. They know you can’t make children do better by making them feel worse.” This goes along with the innovative approach being taken by psychologists, sociologists and educators, in consideration of the turmoil that engulfs today’s world. The truth is being accepted that methods that rely on what experts call “punishment power”—scolding, taking away privileges, spanking—do not elicit more desirable behavior in children or adults. Rather, they produce hostility, resentment and the desire for retaliation. In communities around the world, our family missionaries are conducting study groups on Dr. Jane Nelsen’s Positive Discipline as a public service to help parents raise their children without violence.

NANDINATHA SŪTRA 189: UNFANATICAL VEGETARIANISM
Śiva’s devotees are forbidden to eat meat, fish, shellfish, fowl or eggs, but they may regard as regrettable exceptions unseen traces of nonfleshy ingredients, such as eggs and gelatin, in packaged or restaurant foods. Aum.

Lesson 189 – Merging with Śiva

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

Uncovering the Light of the Soul

As we study the mystical teachings of our religion, we begin to reprogram the subconscious mind and mold it like we mold clay. We become more conscious of our fears. We tell ourselves, “There is nothing to be afraid of. There is not one thing to be afraid of.” We are able to talk to the subconscious mind in this way. It is called affirmation. “I am a fearless being. I am a fearless being,” we keep saying to ourselves time and time and time again. In affirming this truth we begin reeducating or reprogramming the subconscious mind. Finally, we begin to remove the layers upon layers covering the soul.

In India there is a traditional analogy of a lamp whose light is concealed by a screen of colored pieces of cloth. It is said we can uncover the lamp, representing the light of the soul, by reprogramming the subconscious. First we take off the black piece of cloth. The dark green one is still there, so little light comes through as yet, and we are faced with the instinctive emotion—our great protective power of being jealous. Both fear and jealousy are protective mechanisms of the mind. We work with our jealous nature as we make other affirmations. “I have all that everyone else has. The same power that is within everyone is within me.” In this way we begin reprogramming the subconscious and gain more and more confidence in ourselves. Jealousy is inferiority. We feel we lack that which someone else has, so we try to cut them down a little bit to our size. Jealousy makes people mean. Finally, we work our awareness through this dark green sheath of jealousy, and we remove that sheath from the lamp of the soul. A little more light now shines through, and we begin to feel good about ourself—“I’m not so bad after all. In fact, I’m pretty good.” We become more confident and penetrate even deeper while working on the next instinctive quality, and the next and the next and the next. Finally, as we take off the last sheath, we find that we are That which we were all the time. We are inwardly free. We have removed awareness from the conscious mind and brought it through the subconscious state into pure superconsciousness. Now the physical body seems to us but a shell, a place in which we live in order to express ourselves on the surface of the Earth. The spiritual body seems to us to be our real body, and we wonder why we didn’t realize that before.