SLOKA 44 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE CAUSAL PLANE?
The causal plane, or Sivaloka, pulsates at the core of being, deep within the subtle plane. It is the superconscious world where the Gods and highly evolved souls live and can be accessed through yoga and temple worship. Aum.
BHASHYA
The causal plane is the world of light and blessedness, the highest of heavenly regions, extolled in the scriptures of all faiths. It is the foundation of existence, the source of visions, the point of conception, the apex of creation. The causal plane is the abode of Lord Siva and His entourage of Mahadevas and other highly evolved souls who exist in their own self-effulgent form–radiant bodies of centillions of quantum light particles. Even for embodied souls, this refined realm is not distant, but exists within man. It is ever-present, ever-available as the clear white light that illumines the mind, accessed within the throat and cranial chakras–vishuddha, ajna and sahasrara–in the sublime practices of yoga and temple worship. It is in the causal plane that the mature soul, unshrouded of the physical body’s strong instinctive pulls and astral body’s harsh intellectual stranglehold, resides fully conscious in its self-effulgent form. The Sivaloka is the natural refuge of all souls. The Vedas intone, ”Where men move at will, in the threefold sphere, in the third heaven of heavens, where are realms full of light, in that radiant world make me immortal.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 199 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
VERBAL ABUSE OF CHILDREN
It’s one thing to hurt yourself through swearing, but it’s a double hurt of yourself if you hurt another person. We wrote quite extensively on the widespread problem of corporal punishment and child abuse last year in Hinduism Today. We explained that those who abuse their children, their spouse–even husbands get abused and hit and scratched–are hurting themselves five to ten times worse than if they simply hit themselves once instead of hitting their child. We find that in some homes the advice to stop was taken very seriously. Scaring children by threatening them has also ceased, at least in the homes that I am aware of in the broad Hindu community. But verbal abuse of children has increased, calling children bad names in order to put them down, expressing anger by viciously badgering them: ”You’re stupid!” ”You’re worthless!” There’s a long list that apparently nearly every mother and every father has memorized. It goes on and on and on, this constant downgrading and demeaning, expressed in the name of discipline, starting at five or six years of age and continuing until youths are old enough to leave home on their own.
The verbally abused child’s self-image is terrible, but the pain and humiliation is locked away in his subconscious. He covers it up and forgets it, but it continues festering there, and one day bursts forth. If he is a kind-hearted child, he will protect his own children in the future from verbal abuse. If he is a mean-spirited child, he will release what his parents put upon him and into his mind, all of that hatred, upon his children. So, the verbal abuse continues generation after generation. Its pain and hurt long outlasts that of a slap or a beating.
In some parts of the Hindu community we hear a lot about curses. The more intellectual, Western-educated Hindu doesn’t believe in curses at all. But what is a curse? A curse is negative energy gathered together and pointed at someone you don’t like. Those priests who are able to conjure up a curse–and are often paid for it–take careful precautions to protect themselves from being cursed by their own curse! Sometimes that protection doesn’t work, and they become ill, occasionally even die, or become tremendously confused as long as the curse is working.
To freely hurl mental harassment and abuse at a child who can’t talk back–lest he be slapped down, dragged across the floor and slammed against the wall–is cursing the child as well as oneself. It is also cursing the home, as well as the entire family, because this tremendous force of negative, angry energy that has been suppressed leaches out and fills the room and the entire house. Call a child one bad name and you are calling yourself ten bad names. And that goes into your subconscious mind, because the perpetrator of the crime also hears what he has said.
Many people verbally abuse children in order to motivate them, to make them courageous, to make them stand up straight, to make them do better in school. Any psychiatrist or psychologist will tell you that to tell a child he’s stupid is no motivation to do better in school! To tell him that he’s a pig, he’s a dog–and then there are the four-letter words, the ”f” word and the ”b” word–is no motivation whatsoever. But the children have to take it, because they are dependent for housing, clothing and food. The verbal abuse goes into their subconscious mind. But it goes double, triple, quadruple into the subconscious mind of the mother–and the father also if he hears the mother cursing the kid–and on and on until finally the whole family has cursed itself, become filled with the hatred, the scorn and the filthy meanings of the words they have spoken to one another a thousand times.
Will that family be successful? Never. Will that family enjoy vacations? No way. Will they be totally frustrated on the inside? Yes. Will disease come to that family? Of course! They are creating disease by the disease they are putting into their own subconscious mind, and the harm to the astral body will eventually affect the physical body.
SUTRA 199 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
CHEMICAL CHAOS
Siva’s devotees know that drugs may awaken simultaneously the chakra of divine love and those of fear, confusion and malice, producing vast mood swings and a stunted intellect. They dread this chemical chaos. Aum.
LESSON 199 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
DEFINING THE SUBSUPERCONSCIOUS
The subsuperconscious mind is a quiet subconscious. That is actually what it is. It is the subconscious that has been made to be peaceful by putting into it a contemplative lifestyle. It is a receptacle for the superconscious areas of mind to permeate the physical body from the psyche, so that the body of the soul can look out through the eyes of the physical body, radiate through the cells of the physical body and allow superconscious rays to radiate out through the aura.
Would you like to try to locate the subsuperconscious state of mind? Look at the room around you. That is the conscious mind you are aware in. Next, focus on your feelings and be aware of what you are thinking. You are now aware in the subconscious mind. Next, feel your spiritual identity, feel the power in your spine. Sit up straight. Feel powerful energy on the inside of your spinal cord. At the same time you are identified with being the energy in the spine, and separating the feeling of energy from the physical spine, look at the room around you and become conscious of your personal thoughts and feelings. Doing this brings you into a subsuperconscious state, because you are conscious of your superconsciousness, the power and energy and life and spiritual forces resident right within the body. Simultaneously, you are conscious of your thinking faculty, the room around you and yourself as being pure energy. It is that easy to be in a subsuperconscious state, more difficult to remain in it for long periods of time.
The feeling of the eternity of the moment is experienced upon the first arrival into the subsuperconscious state of mind. This occurs when the subconscious state of mind is in a quiescent state, a state of full receptivity to superconsciousness. It has not been destroyed, but has been purified of all barriers, such as negative attachments. When this occurs, the devotee has the feeling that there is no future, there is no past and the only reality is the eternity of the moment.
The subconscious mind, thus opened to the influx of actinic power, creates a force field called an actinodic force field. That is, the odic forces of the subconscious, having been permeated with enough actinic energy so that the odic forces are quieted, organized and controlled through actinic power, form a new state of mind called the subsuperconscious state of mind.
Great vistas of creativity are opened to those who learn to keep open and receptive to the subsuperconscious mind. Music, art, drama and dance flow most spontaneously, and answers to questions in the subconscious, previously unanswered, come forth in intuitive flashes, without the use of reason, while not conflicting with reason. A feeling of contentment and confidence resides within an individual who has learned to consciously identify and use the subsuperconscious mind.
