SLOKA 129 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF THE HOLY AGAMAS?
The Agamas, Sanatana Dharma’s second authority, are revelations on sacred living, worship, yoga and philosophy. Saivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism each exalts its own array of Agamas, many over 2,000 years old. Aum.
BHASHYA
In the vast Agamic literature, tradition counts 92 main Saiva Agamas–10 Siva, 18 Rudra and 64 Bhairava–77 Shakta Agamas and 108 Vaishnava Pancharatra Agamas. Most Agamas are of four parts, called padas, and possess thousands of metered Sanskrit verses, usually of two lines. The charya pada details daily religious observance, right conduct, the guru-shishya relationship, community life, house design and town planning. The kriya pada, commonly the longest, extols worship and temples in meticulous detail–from site selection, architectural design and iconography, to rules for priests and the intricacies of daily puja, annual festivals and home-shrine devotionals. The yoga pada discloses the interior way of meditation, of raja yoga, mantra and tantra which stimulates the awakening of the slumbering serpent, kundalini. The jnana pada narrates the nature of God, soul and world, and the means for liberation. The Tirumantiram declares, ”Veda and Agama are Iraivan’s scriptures. Both are truth: one is general, the other specific. While some say these words of God reach two different conclusions, the wise see no difference.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 284 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
WELL-DIRECTED WILLPOWER
Everyone has willpower. It is inherent to the makeup of the physical-astral-mental-emotional body. The center of willpower is the manipura chakra, located at the solar plexus. Unlike other energies, the more willpower we use, the more willpower we have to use. Actually, by exerting our willpower, we store up new energy within the manipura chakra. This happens when we work a little harder than we think we can, do a little more than we think we can do. By putting forth that extra effort, we build up a great willpower that we will always have with us, even in our next life, the next and the next. Willpower is free for the using, actually.
When we relate willpower to actions and compare actions to dharma or adharma, we find that adharmic, or unrighteous, actions bring uncomfortable results, and dharmic actions bring comfortable results. If we act wrongly toward others, people will act wrongly toward us. Then, if we are of a lower nature, we resent it and retaliate. This is a quality of the instinctive mind: ”You strike me once, I’ll strike you back twice. You make a remark to me that I don’t like, and I will put you down behind your back. I will make up stories about you to get even and turn other people’s minds against you.” This is retaliation–a terrible negative force. When we use our willpower to retaliate against others, we do build up a bank account of willpower, to be sure, because we do have to put out extra effort. But we also build up a bank account of negative karma that will come back on us full force when we least expect it. When it does, if we remain locked in ignorance, we will resent that and retaliate against the person who plays our karma back to us, and the cycle will repeat itself again and again and again.
Those living in the higher nature know better. Belief in karma and reincarnation are strong forces in a Hindu. South India’s Saint Tiruvalluvar said it so simply, ”Worthless are those who injure others vengefully, while those who stoically endure are like stored gold. Just as the Earth bears those who dig into her, it is best to bear with those who despise us” (Tirukural 155-151).
Nevertheless, we see society tearing itself apart through retaliation. Respectable organizations retaliate against their leader, against each other. Countries divide and retaliate. Political parties retaliate. Vindictive law cases are professionally handled retaliation. To retaliate means to pay back injury with injury, to return like for like, evil for evil, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. It seems to be a part of humankind, though it is a negative part of humankind. It does not have to prevail. It is not spiritual. We would say it is demonic. We would say it is asuric. We would say it is unnecessary behavior, unacceptable behavior, a wrong use of willpower. People who have a lot of will can, if they wish, retaliate very, very well. They can ruin another person. But remember, the force will come back on them three times stronger than they gave it out, because their strong willpower will bring it back with vigor. This is the law.
SUTRA 284 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
PARENTS OF MONASTICS EXPECT NO PRIVILEGES
My devotees with a monastic son never claim special access or privileges based on blood ties. They dissociate from him and do not involve themselves in his life or seek to influence our Saiva Church through him. Aum.
LESSON 284 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
COGNITION AND DIVINE LOVE
With the spiritual will aroused, awareness flows quite naturally into the anahata chakra, the heart center, governing the faculties of direct cognition or comprehension. Connected to the cardiac plexus, this chakra is often referred to as ”the lotus of the heart.” Its twelve ”petals” imply that the faculty of cognition can be expressed in twelve distinct ways or through as many masks or personae. Its color is a smoky green. Man usually awakens into this region of cognition around age twenty-one to twenty-six. Life for seekers in this chakra is different than for others. It is in anahata, literally ”unstruck sound,” that the aspirant attains his mountaintop consciousness. Instead of viewing life in its partial segments, like seeing just the side of the mountain, he raises his consciousness to a pinnacle from which an objective and comprehensive cognition of the entirety is the natural conclusion. Uninvolved in the seemingly fractured parts, he is able to look through it all and understand–as though he were looking into a box and seeing the inside, the outside, the top and the bottom all at the same time. It looks transparent to him and he is able to encompass the totality in one instantaneous flash of direct cognition. He knows in that split second all there is to know about a subject and yet would find it difficult to verbalize that vast knowing. Various highly endowed psychics are prone to utilize this force center, for such spiritual powers as healing are manifested here.
People with the anahata chakra awakened are generally well-balanced, content and self-contained. More often than not, their intellect is highly developed and their reasoning keen. The subtle refinement of their nature makes them extremely intuitive, and what is left of the base instincts and emotions is easily resolved though their powers of intellect. It is important that the serious aspirant gain enough control of his forces and karmas to remain stabilized at the heart center. This should be home base to him, and he should rarely or never fall below anahata in consciousness. Only after years of sadhana and transmutation of the sexual fluids can this be attained, but it must be attained and awareness must settle here firmly before further unfoldment is sought.
Universal or divine love is the faculty expressed by the next center, called the vishuddha chakra. This center is associated with the pharyngeal plexus in the throat and possesses sixteen ”petals” or attributes. Whereas the first two centers are predominantly odic force in nature and the third and fourth are mixtures of odic force and a little actinic force, vishuddha is almost a purely actinic force structure. On a percentage scale, we could say that the energies here are eighty percent actinic and only twenty percent odic. Whenever people feel filled with inexpressible love and devotion to all mankind, all creatures large and small, they are vibrating within vishuddha. In this state there is no consciousness of a physical body, no consciousness of being a person with emotions, no consciousness of thoughts. They are just being the light or being fully aware of themselves as actinic force flowing through all form. They see light throughout the entirety of their body, even if standing in a darkened room. This light is produced in the ajna chakra above through the friction occurring between the odic and actinic forces and perceived through the divine sight of the third eye. The sense of ”I,” of ego, is dissolved in the intensity of this inner light, and a great bliss permeates the nerve system as the truth of the oneness of the universe is fully and powerfully realized. Vishuddha means ”sheer purity.” This center is associated with blue, the color of divine love.
The jnani who has awakened this center is able for the first time to withdraw awareness totally into the spine, into the sushumna current. Now he begins experiencing the real spiritual being. Even at this point he may hold a concept of himself as an outer being, as distinct from the inner being he seeks. But as he becomes stronger and stronger in his new-found love, he realizes that the inner being is nothing but the reality of himself. And as he watches as the outer being fades, he realizes that it was born in time and memory patterns, put together through the forces of reason and sustained for a limited period through the forces of will. The outer shell dissolves and he lives in the blissful inner consciousness that knows only light, love and immortality.