SLOKA 84 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
SHOULD ALL YOUTHS BE URGED TO MARRY?
All but the rare few inclined to monastic life should be encouraged to marry and schooled in the skills they will need to fulfill dharma. Young boys destined to be monastics should be raised as their satguru’s progeny. Aum.
BHASHYA
Traditionally, boys with monastic tendencies are encouraged and provided special training under their satguru’s direction. It is considered a great blessing for the family to have a son become a monastic and later a swami. Generally, children should be taught to follow and prepare themselves for the householder path. Most boys will choose married life, and should be schooled in professional, technical skills. Girls are taught the refinements of household culture. Both girls and boys should be trained in the sacred Vedic arts and sciences, including the sixty-four crafts and social skills, called kalas. Boys benefit greatly when taught the profession of their father from a very young age. The mother is the role model for her daughters, whom she raises as the mothers of future families. Sons and daughters who are gay may not benefit from marriage, and should be taught to remain loyal in relationships and be prepared to cope with community challenges. The Vedas pray, ”May you, O love divine, flow for the acquisition of food of wisdom and for the prosperity of the enlightened person who praises you; may you grant him excellent progeny.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 239 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
THE DOORWAY CALLED DEATH
There is a lot to be said about death and reincarnation. Most people are afraid of death because it is the most dramatic experience that has happened to them during a lifetime, as it put a stop to a lot of aggressive prana going out through a physical body. At transition, this prana has to contract immediately and go to seed. What is death? The realization is that nobody dies. You can’t say a human dies because he must now live in his astral body rather than his physical body. We live in our astral body twenty-four hours a day and in our physical body only sixteen hours a day. That means for eight hours each day we are already ”dead.” When the soul departs the physical body at death, one chapter of life has ended and another chapter of life has begun. It is a total continuum, except that after departing the physical body, the being is full time awake, because on the astral plane we don’t have to sleep.
There are helpers in the inner world who assist those who have departed their physical sheath through their new adjustments, as well as assist with preparations for their reentry into flesh–reincarnation. These helpers are well trained, efficient, courteous and kindly. They are similar to those found performing the same services in this physical world, the doctors, nurses, psychologists, religious workers–aiding souls as they enter or exit the earth plane. In the physical world, hospitals now even help you to die. Or accidents may occur or old age simply comes. In any case, the assistance is there through the medical profession, the mortuaries and so forth to care for the dying and take care of the remains. These are all well trained, kindly people doing their jobs. The soul meets them again at birth when reentering the flesh, in the hospital and in the home. It is the loving care of such workers that assists the mother through the many years ahead until the child is fully grown. A doctor or nurse will perform the same professional duties when disembodied, continuing along, doing the same kind of things they did during their last physical life. The process of reincarnation is a revolving cycle.
Those who abide permanently in their astral body are not alone. They are with other people, some who remain on the astral plane permanently, some who are just visiting. It is a fuller life, not lesser. People die on the astral plane, too. When they take a birth, their old astral body has to be disposed of. Those on the astral plane have to ”die” there to come here, and later they have to ”die” here to go there.
The mind does not need a physical body to function properly. Nor do the emotions. Nor does the soul. A disembodied person is totally functional in every respect. Suppose a seamstress dies. On the astral plane, she may keep making dresses, but with a difference: she would now have all the fabric she ever wanted. But she would probably continue this same activity. She would not become a carpenter. However, it is not possible to experience the karmas of this physical world in the inner worlds. For this, a physical body is needed. When the time comes for acquiring and entering a physical body, proper parents must be chosen, an environment and country. This can be time-consuming and is sometimes disappointing on the occasion of miscarriage or abortion. But negatives aside, when the first cry and mother’s gentle hug is experienced, this is reincarnation.
SUTRA 239 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
KEEPING GOOD, RELIGIOUS COMPANY
Siva’s devotees do not mix with dogmatic or militant Hindus, or with anyone who would infiltrate, dilute and destroy their faith. They associate closely with devout people whose beliefs are similar to their own. Aum.
LESSON 239 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
THE WORLD OF DREAMS
Dreams have been a mystery and a puzzle to people of all ages throughout time. The wonderment of dreams has been apparent in history, philosophy and now even in science. This leads us to assume that the dream state is not unlike the waking state, for especially in this technological age of communication, we live more in our mind than in our physical body. Millions are computer-literate and deal in concepts far beyond the normal state anyone would have found himself in one hundred years ago. The mind never sleeps–only the physical body experiences this indulgence–and the physical brain perceives and records what passes through the mind, but the astral brain perceives and records� oh-so-much more! Therefore, keeping this in mind, there is a continuity of consciousness twenty-four hours a day, but not all of it is perceived or recorded by the physical brain, either through the day or through the night. This is why it is difficult to remember all the details of one’s life and experience, even as short a time as forty-eight hours ago. It is only the important things, those which make the strongest impression within the physical brain’s memory patterns, that are remembered.
In the inner worlds, inner universe, there is a life not unlike this one that we experience as a jiva, but far more complete, intricate, logical and much more advanced. Within this world, the Antarloka, there are great schools where students gather to learn of a more productive future that they can participate in creating when they incarnate. Here, they mix and mingle with other souls whose physical bodies are sleeping and whom they will work and cooperate with during their next cycle of birth. It is a well-planned-out universe, both the outer universe and the inner universe. The value of sleep for the person on the path is to gain the ability to bypass the lower dream state and soar deeper within to these inner-plane schools. This is done by the repetition of mantras, japa yoga, just before sleep, after relaxing the body through hatha yoga and diaphragmatic breathing.
It is almost traditional in many cultures to try to remember one’s dreams, and dreamologists will even interpret them for you. This all borders close to the realm of superstition and is far less desirable for spiritual growth than other more pragmatic types of practices. A beginner on the path, or even one in the intermediate phase, should endeavor to forget dreams and strengthen the fibers of the mind and psyche through daily sadhana. There is actually a time, on the yoga marga, after the charya and kriya margas have been well mastered and passed through, that the remembrance of one’s dreams is beneficial and fruitful, but this would only be between the guru and the shishya.
When japa is well performed and the sincere desire is maintained to transcend the forces of the physical body and enter into the astral schools of learning, the aspirant would have dreamless nights. A deep sleep would prevail. There may be a few seconds of dreaming just before awakening, to which one should not pay any attention, as the astral body quickly reenters the physical. But a deep, dreamless sleep is in itself an indicator that the purusha is totally detached from the physical forces and totally intact and functioning in the Devaloka. Himalayan Academy is an academy in the Devaloka in which rishis of the Nandinatha Sampradaya teach, help and guide tens of thousands of devotees of God Siva who have been influenced by the words and teachings of our sampradaya.
We want to forget bad dreams as quickly as possible, lest by remembering them through the conscious mind we impress them in the immediate subconscious and make them manifest in daily life. Thinking about a bad dream is to create. Forgetting it is to avoid creating. Therefore, if you have the slightest worry about dreams and are not directly under a guru’s guidance on a daily basis, it is best to let them slide by and consider them unimportant and not a part of you, as you would consider a television program to be.
Really bad nightmare kinds of dreams are not natural to the sleeper’s mind. Therefore, we must assume that they are produced by outside influences, such as what the neighbors are going through in the next apartment, the apartment above or the apartment below, or what a dear friend or relative may be experiencing in daily life. Subjective as they are, the frustrated, confused, even threatening, dreams of this nature are taken to be one’s creation or one’s own problem. However, this is more than often not true. A child may be tormented by nightmares and wake up screaming, and the solution would be to have it sleep in another room, away from the next-door apartment where the husband and wife are battling, entertaining hateful thoughts. These kinds of quarrels permeate the inner atmosphere one hundred yards around, as far as the loudest voice could be heard if there were no walls. This is why those on the path seek the quiet of a forest, a life away from the city, in order to perform sadhana in their spiritual pursuit. Dreams of capture and chase are not products of one’s own mind. They are definitely outside influences.
