Lesson 294
Are you on a different lesson? Enter the number, click "Get My Lesson":
Sloka 139 from Dancing with Siva
What Is Saivism's Affirmation of Faith?
The proclamation "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality" is a potent affirmation of faith. Said in any of Earth's 3,000 languages, it summarizes the beliefs and doctrines of the Saivite Hindu religion. Aum.
Bhashya
An affirmation of faith is a terse, concise statement summarizing a complex philosophical tradition. "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality," is what we have when we take the milk from the sacred cow of Saivism, separate out the cream, churn that cream to rich butter and boil that butter into a precious few drops of ghee. "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality" is the sweet ghee of the Saivite Hindu religion. In the Sanskrit language it is Sivah Sarvagatam Prema, Param Satyam Parah Sivah. In the sweet Tamil language it is even more succinct and beautiful: Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam. In French it is Dieu Siva est Amour omnipr�sent et R�alit� transcendante. We strengthen our mind with positive affirmations that record the impressions of the distilled and ultimate truths of our religion so that these memories fortify us in times of distress, worldliness or anxiety. The Tirumantiram proclaims, "Transcending all, yet immanent in each He stands. For those bound in the world here below, He is the great treasure. Himself the Parapara Supreme, for all worlds He gave the way that His greatness extends." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 294 from Living with Siva
Getting Hold Of Your Mind
Those who are not considerate get very hurt when someone does not consider their feelings. Why? Because their feelings, their personality, are sticking out like antennas all over them, ready to be kinked up and twisted up when somebody is not considerate or loving toward them. Yet they don't show others the same consideration which they expect for themselves.
That is what creates the negative dream--everyone expecting everyone else to be very considerate of their feelings. And that is why we have etiquette books, to teach people to be considerate of other people's feelings--to teach those who really don't want to be considerate, but have to learn to be because they are out to build careers and make money, and they know they won't do so well unless they learn to be considerate, so they have to intellectually know how. But it is all surface. The word insincere describes the person who doesn't fulfill what he knows he should fulfill, but pretends that he does. We call him insincere.
That insincerity doesn't hurt anybody but himself, because you can't send out anything out into the world but that it comes back. When does it come back? It comes back later in life. He may get along fine when his body is young and healthy. He can be just as insincere as he wants to be, but later on in life he won't get along so fine, because the karmic rebounds start coming back, the reactions start coming back. They start coming back from other people, who become insincere with him. They also start coming back from deep within himself, from his conscience, when he learns that the way he had been was not right. Someday, unless he is fortunate enough to study yoga and clear it all up--perhaps through burning up the emotional memory patterns using the vasana daha tantra--he will suffer over it. And he will suffer over it a great deal.
The art of consideration is a real art, because it is a constant study. It really is a constant study. And it is a creative study. It is the art of learning how not to just get by; it is the art of learning how to fulfill your destiny through following the knowing principle inside you.
When you are in for the realization of the Self, you have to stop the cycles of hurt feelings and regrets. Just stop! You have to learn by exercising your knowing power and realize, "If I do this, it is going to have that kind of result. If I do that, which opposes my knowing of what I should do, I also have to know what kind of result that is going to create." Everything we do does have its consequences. It is up to you to sit down and meditate on such matters. That is what meditation is for. Meditation in the beginning stages is for getting a grip on your lower states of mind, so that the lower states of mind come under your control, so you learn to use your brain and don't loan it or rent it out.
When somebody causes you to do something that you don't feel that you want to do, or that you know is not the right way for you to behave, you are loaning out your brain to him. If somebody can make you feel antagonistic all day long because he didn't treat you right in the morning, he is using your brain, because he put that feeling into motion. He started something in you that you cannot conquer. But if, at the time of the incident, you straighten out the vibration with the person who made you feel antagonistic, by being considerate of his feelings, then you would be using your brain, and that is what you have to do. Maybe he is a young soul who will not learn to be considerate for a long, long time, and we couldn't expect that of him. That is why you have to meditate; that is why you have to get these things figured out--who's who on the scale of evolution.
Remember these three principles: 1) Your thinking is going to fight what you know. It is going to fight it all the time. You know you should do certain things, but you may not do them, because you have other reasons, and your other reasons will be good reasons, which you quickly forget because they are only good for the moment; 2) If you allow your knowing to dominate, you will be exercising your spiritual will. You will be alive. You will be dynamic. Spiritual forces will flow through you; 3) If you exercise your spiritual will, you will have a great power of observation and a great power over your own mind. No one will do your thinking for you.
After you have awakened your power of observation, your soul shines forth, and after meditation you will go into contemplation. You may think you are attaining high states of spiritual consciousness, but for real progress, your soul will have to manifest itself in what you do on the Earth all the time. So, these are your steps. Don't allow the thinking to fight the knowing. Don't allow the thinking to rule your willpower. Then you will be spiritual.
Sutra 294 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Pilgrimage To Siva's Special Abodes
My devotees hold as most sacred and pilgrimage to each at least once: Siva's San Marga Iraivan Temple on Kauai, His Himalayan and Gangetic abodes, His five elemental temples and the Madurai Meenakshi citadel. Aum.
Lesson 294 from Merging with Siva
Closing the Door To Lower Realms
When at the moment of death you enter the astral plane, you only are in the consciousness of the chakras that were most active within you during the later part of your lifetime and, accordingly, you function in one of the astral lokas until the impetus of these chakras is expended. It is the chakras that manufacture the bodies. It is not the body that manufactures the chakras. Since you have fourteen chakras, at least three are the most powerful in any one individual--for example, memory, will and cognition. Each chakra is a vast area of the mind, or a vast collective area of many, many different thought strata. Generally, most people who gather together socially, intellectually or spiritually are flowing through the same predominant chakra, or several of them collectively. Therefore, they are thinking alike and share the same perspective in looking at life.
The chakras exist as nerve ganglia that have a direct impact on organs in the physical body, as psychic nerve ganglia in the astral body and as spinning disks of consciousness in the body of the soul, anandamaya kosha. The power to close off the lower chakras--to seal off the doorway at the lower end of the sushumna--exists only when the soul is presently incarnated in a physical body. All fourteen chakras, plus seven more above and within the sahasrara, are always there. It is up to the individual to lift consciousness from one to another through right thought, right speech, right action, showing remorse for errors committed, performing regular sadhana, worship, pilgrimage and heeding other personal instructions the satguru or swami might guide the person through. All this and more teaches the pranas of consciousness, and most importantly, individual awareness, the art of flowing up through the higher centers through the process of closing off the lower ones.
Spiritual unfoldment is not a process of awakening the higher chakras, but of closing the chakras below the muladhara. Once this happens, the aspirant's consciousness slowly expands into the higher chakras, which are always there. The only thing that keeps the lower chakras closed is regular sadhana, japa, worship and working within oneself. This is demonstrated by the fact that even great yogis and rishis who have awakened into the higher chakras continue to do more and more sadhana. They are constantly working to keep the forces flowing through the higher centers so that the lower ones do not claim their awareness.
Now, all of this, perhaps, seems very complex and esoteric. But these are aspects of our nature that we use every day. We use our arms and hands every day without thinking. If we study the physiology of the hands, we encounter layer after layer of intricate interrelationships of tissues, cells, plasma. We examine the engineering of the structural system of bones and joints, the energy transmission of the muscular system, the biochemistry of growth and healing, the biophysics of nerve action and reaction. Suddenly a simple and natural part of human life, the function of the hands, seems complex. Similarly, we use the various functions of consciousness, the chakras, every day without even thinking about them. But now we are studying them in their depths to gain a more mature understanding of their nature.
Actually, there are more chakras above and within the sahasrara. Buddhist literature cites thirty-two chakras above. Agamic Hindu tradition cites seven levels of the rarefied dimensions of paranada, the first tattva, as chanted daily by hundreds of thousands of priests during puja in temples all over the world. Their names are: vyapini, vyomanga, ananta, anatha, anashrita, samana and unmana. I have experienced these higher chakras or nadis as they are, in this subtle region, as conglomerates of nadis. These force centers are not exactly chakras, as they are not connected to any organ or part of the physical body. They are chakras or nadis of the body of the soul, which when developed as a result of many, many, many Parasiva experiences, slowly descend into the mental and astral bodies. The mental body becomes permanently different in its philosophical outlook, and the astral body begins to absorb and be transformed by the golden body, or svarnasharira.