{"id":50,"date":"2026-04-03T15:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/?p=50"},"modified":"2025-04-09T17:00:03","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T03:00:03","slug":"lesson-358-merging-with-siva","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-358-merging-with-siva\/","title":{"rendered":"Lesson 358 \u2013 Merging with \u015aiva"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-audio\"><audio controls src=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/MwS-Lesson-358.mp3\"><\/audio><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\"><em>Recording: Gurudeva&#8217;s cloned voice<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Wisdom of The Ages<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Religion as it is known today is an offshoot of various ethnic groups that gathered together in the twilight of human history and forged systems of law, worship, culture and belief. The unique circumstances of geography, language, communications and race isolated one group from another, and differences were born and preserved: differences of belief and custom. As these small communities varied, so did the systems which satisfied each one. From their inception they absorbed the singular thought patterns postulated by their culture and their leaders, and these distinctions were perpetuated from father to son, from guru to disciple, from one generation to the next. The leader was the shaman, the priest, the \u0101ch\u0101rya, the philosopher-king. He was well versed in religious matters among them and naturally became the authority, the tribal priest. Religion in the early days was tribal, for man\u2019s early experience was tribal. Being tribal, religion was political. The political character has been preserved, as we find it today, in the world\u2019s many religions, which are, for the most part, the common beliefs of the various races and\/or nations on the Earth. <br><br>Five, ten thousand years ago in the Himalayas and across to the Indus Valley, ancient \u1e5bishis and sages studied and meditated upon the eternal truths passed down to them and in conclaves jointly concurred as to the results of their personal findings on the inward path. Following an already ancient tradition, they were sent on missions\u2014to Kashmir, China, Greece, Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, South India, Southeast Asia and to every traversable part of the world\u2014with the same message, digested and concise, given out with the power and force of their personal realizations of the final conclusions. <br><br>Today I am going to speak about Hinduism and the conclusions drawn by its early sages and saints as to the orderly evolution of man\u2019s soul and the ultimate spiritual goal of that evolution, the culmination of the countless accumulated passages of the soul on its journey to Truth. The ancient ones, the \u1e5bishis and sages who formulated these final conclusions, recorded them as scriptures which still exist today. They were not interested in preserving a sectarian view of religion. Rather, they laid down their conclusions for all mankind. They had realized God within themselves, and from that inner realization they spoke out with boundless humility and undeniable authority. These teachings were recorded in the early Vedas. They blossomed in the Upanishads. They were detailed in the \u0100gamas. They came to be known as the San\u0101tana Dharma, the Eternal Path. <br><br>According to ancient Hinduism, all is \u015aiva, all is God. God is both immanent and transcendent, both sagu\u1e47a and nirgu\u1e47a, with and without form. There is but one God. He manifests variously as the formless and Absolute Reality, as the rarefied form of Pure Consciousness, Satchid\u0101nanda, Pure Energy or Light flowing through all existence, and as the personal Lord and Creator, the Primal Soul. As the Immanent Lord, \u015aiva created the soul, and the world of form and experience, that it might evolve toward and merge with the Absolute. <br><br>The \u015avet\u0101\u015bvatara Upanishad (2.16; 3.1-2 upp, p. 121) speaks of God as both immanent and transcendent, and I would like to quote for you from it. \u201cHe is the one God, present in the North, the East, the South and the West. He is the Creator. He enters into all wombs. He alone is now born as all beings, and he alone is to be born as all beings in the future. He is within all persons as the Inner Self, facing in all directions. The One Absolute, impersonal Existence, together with His inscrutable m\u0101y\u0101, appears as the Divine Lord, the personal God, endowed with manifold glories. By His Divine power He holds dominion over all the worlds. At the periods of Creation and Dissolution of the universe, He alone exists. Those who realize Him become immortal. The Lord is One without a second. Within man He dwells, and within all other beings. He projects the universe, maintains it, and withdraws it into Himself.\u201d Elsewhere the \u015avet\u0101\u015bvatara Upanishad (3.8-9 ve, p. 734) speaks of God as the Primal Soul, \u201cI have come to know that mighty Person, golden like the sun, beyond all darkness. By knowing Him, a man transcends death; there is no other path for reaching that goal. Higher than Him is nothing whatever; than Him nothing smaller, than Him nothing greater. He stands like a tree rooted in heaven, the One, the Person, filling this whole world.\u201d And the Mu\u1e47\u1e0daka Upanishad (2.1.2 mc, p. 57) speaks of God as the unmanifest, Nirgu\u1e47a Brahman: \u201cSelf-resplendent, formless, unoriginated and pure, that all-pervading Being is both within and without, anterior both to life and mind. He transcends even the transcendent, unmanifest, causal state of the universe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wisdom of The Ages Religion as it is known today is an offshoot of various ethnic groups that gathered together in the twilight of human history and forged systems of law, worship, culture and belief. The unique circumstances of geography, language, communications and race isolated one group from another, and differences were born and preserved: <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/lesson-358-merging-with-siva\/\">READ MORE<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-merging-with-siva"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3788,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50\/revisions\/3788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kauaishindumonastery.com\/mc-daily-lessons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}