Lesson 227
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Sloka 72 from Dancing with Siva
What Are the Duties of the Husband?
It is the husband's duty, his purusha dharma, to protect and provide for his wife and children. He, as head of the family, griheshvara, is responsible for its spiritual, economic, physical, mental and emotional security. Aum.
Bhashya
By their physical, mental and emotional differences, the man is suited to work in the world and the woman to bear and raise their children in the home. The husband is, first, an equal participant in the procreation and upbringing of the future generation. Second, he is the generator of economic resources necessary for society and the immediate family. The husband must be caring, understanding, masculine, loving, affectionate, and an unselfish provider, to the best of his ability and through honest means. He is well equipped physically and mentally for the stress and demands placed upon him. When he performs his dharma well, the family is materially and emotionally secure. Still, he is not restricted from participation in household chores, remembering that the home is the wife's domain and she is its mistress. The Vedas implore, "Through this oblation, which invokes prosperity, may this bridegroom flourish anew; may he, with his manly energies, flourish the wife they have brought to him. May he excel in strength, excel in royalty! May this couple be inexhaustible in wealth that bestows luster a thousand fold!" Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 227 from Living with Siva
Atonement For Abortion
Built within the great Hindu religion is the process of atonement. What is the prayashchitta, the penance, to be done to atone for abortion? One that works very well in this modern age is to adopt a child, raise it with tender loving care, believing this soul is akin to the aborted soul who sought to take refuge within one's family. This, then, atones. Mahatma Gandhi utilized this principle when one day he counseled a Hindu man who said he had slain a Muslim in revenge for his son's killing at the Muslim's hands. He was deeply troubled about his crime. Gandhi advised him to adopt and raise a Muslim boy as penance for the deed.
One becomes his own psychiatrist by utilizing the psychology that when something has gone wrong, it has to be fixed. Why would it have to be resolved? Because the persons involved don't feel good about the action, or karma. Resolution is not only mending and healing, it is eradicating the memory of the event--not actually a total forgetfulness, but the emotions that come up with the memory are eradicated. This can be done in various ways. Write to the person who was aborted and burn the letter in a fire. Explain how sorry you are, how miserable you are feeling, and attest that you will never do it again. This is a great way to unload a subconscious mind that is filled with guilt.
Accepting reincarnation, punarjanma, we acknowledge souls existing in subtle form in astral bodies waiting to incarnate through a womb. When that womb is disturbed, this is recorded as a sense of eviction for the conscious fetus; and it has similar empty effects on the potential mother's life and all those connected to her in the family. It is a kukarma that affects all, is felt by all and must be paid for by all.
So, we can see the consequences. This does not mean that anyone is cursed or that there is any "mortal sin" involved. Hinduism is a free-flowing religion. It threatens no everlasting hell; it preaches no mortal sin, as a transgression that, if unexpiated in this one and only life, would deprive the soul from closeness to God for eternity. Hinduism accepts life the way it is, even its flaws and frailties. It teaches us the right path but knows we may not always follow that path and thus gives the remedies to correct whatever bothers us at every stage of the great journey to moksha, liberation from rebirth.
Abortion brings with it a karmic force of destruction that will come back on the mother and father who set it in motion. They may be denied a dwelling. They may be denied a noble child. They may beget a child who will persecute them all the days of their life. The parents, the abortionist and the nurses will suffer difficulties in attaining another birth, perhaps by experiencing as many abortions as they participated in while on Earth. The price is high for abortion, much higher and more costly than giving birth, raising and educating the child and establishing him or her in life.
Life must go on. It is said that children often bring great fortune to their parents. They pay their own way. Nevertheless, abortions do happen, have happened and will happen in the future. Men and women who have participated, and their doctors and nurses, are involved in the deep kukarmic consequences. The action's reaction, which is karma, must be resolved in some way for a peace of mind, a quiescent state, to persist. The Hindu religion forbids abortion because of the laws of personal dharma, social dharma and ahimsa--noninjury to any living creature, physically, mentally or emotionally.
Sutra 227 of the Nandinatha Sutras
Modesty Between Genders
All Siva's devotees who are no longer children remain apart from the opposite sex when attending temples and public gatherings. Upon entering, women always sit on the left side, and men occupy the right side. Aum.
Lesson 227 from Merging with Siva
Working With The Inner Aura
As soon as one begins to meditate, to gain enough control of awareness, the colors begin to move a little. When the meditator breaks out of his ordinary daily life habit patterns by beginning to reprogram his subconscious mind, his inner aura begins to change. When after a good meditation a predominant subconscious reactionary pattern comes before his vision as if it happened yesterday, and he begins to react to it all over again, one of these color patterns may move up to the throat area. He will have to swallow. At that point, if you ask the question, "What's on your mind?" he would speak out this reaction. I always recommend it be written down and burned instead of spoken. Then that color leaves, never to reappear, and another one rises from underneath. A green color might leave and a brown one come up in its place. These repressed areas eventually will dissipate, and awareness, once divided in many different ways, will pull in its tentacles from externalized areas of the mind until it can move freely through all areas of the mind.
Each time one of these deep-rooted subconscious reactionary conditions leaves, the inner aura becomes more fluid, brighter and less rigid. The devotee becomes more wholesome. After an entire subconscious cleansing, due to maybe a year of someone working with himself and developing and reprogramming his subconscious mind positively, the chest would turn into a pure sheet of very beautiful yellow, and rays of white light could be seen coming out from within it. This would continue until the devotee stopped working with himself. And if he began dwelling more in subconscious areas or encounters a condition in life which he is not able to face within himself and regresses into resentment, selfishness, self-pity and spite, the chest would cloud again and look exactly like a modern art painting.
The mind is like a vast universe. Man's individual awareness travels through the mind from one planet to another, one area to another. Or, if we compare the mind to the world, man's individual awareness travels through the mind from hate to love, to joy, to sorrow, to all the various ideas and concepts within the mind as he would travel from country to country, city to city. Therefore, the human aura is very consistent. Each time man's individual awareness flows through love, the human aura reflects the pastel colors of love, as it would reflect the colors of hate, fear, jealousy, exuberance, compassion and the various areas of the intellect. One can learn to read the colors of the human aura and know in what area of the mind the awareness of the person is flowing.