SLOKA 140 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW IS THE AFFIRMATION OF FAITH USED?
Intoning the affirmation of faith, we positively assert that God is both manifest and unmanifest, both permeating the world and transcending it, both personal Divine Love and impersonal Reality. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
On the lips of Saivites throughout the world resounds the proclamation ”God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality.” It is a statement of fact, a summation of truth, even more potent when intoned in one’s native language. ”God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality,” we repeat prior to sleep. ”God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality,” we say upon awakening as we recall the transcendent knowledge gained from the rishis during sleep. These sacred words we say as we bathe to prepare to face the day, God Siva’s day, reminding ourselves that His immanent love protects us, guides us, lifting our mind into the arena of useful thoughts and keeping us from harm’s way. Devotees write this affirmation 1,008 times as a sahasra lekhana sadhana. It may be spoken 108 times daily in any language before initiation into Namah Sivaya. Yea, the recitation of this affirmation draws devotees into Siva-consciousness. The Tirumantiram says, ”The ignorant prate that love and Siva are two. They do not know that love alone is Siva. When men know that love and Siva are the same, love as Siva they ever remain.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 295 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
PHILOSOPHERS’ MAGIC BARGE
We are told that hundreds of years ago in the city of Madurai, known as the Athens of India for its cultural pre-eminence, there was constructed at the Meenakshi Somasundareshvara Sivan Koyil, within the vast temple tank, a magic boat called the Philosophers’ Barge. Rishis came from the Himalayas, pandits from all corners of India and humble bhakta siddhas from the South to sit together and discuss life, illumination and release from mortality. This boat’s singular magic was its extraordinary ability to expand to accommodate any number of people who conversed with an attitude of respect and harmony. But, miraculously, it grew smaller when discussion turned rancorous, and those who brought about the contention suddenly found themselves in the water, swimming to shore in embarrassment. In Siva’s temple, it seems, only nonargumentative discussion was allowed.
We have no magic boats today, …or perhaps we do. During a recent pilgrimage to India, I spoke to several large groups of devotees, including hundreds of sadhus of the Swaminarayan Fellowship, about zero tolerance for inharmonious conditions. Everyone found the message pertinent, yet difficult to practice, for there is no group of people on Earth for whom living in harmony is not a challenge at one time or another. But it is true that among my monastics we have zero tolerance for disharmonious conditions of any kind.
Harmony is the first and foremost rule of living in all spheres, but particularly in spiritual work, where it is an absolute must. Striving for harmony begins within the home and radiates out into all dimensions of life, enhancing and making joyous and sublime each relationship for every devotee. Thus, each strives to be considerate and kindly in thought, word and deed, to unfold the beautiful, giving qualities of the soul, to utter only that which is true, kind, helpful and necessary. The great Tamil saint, Tiruvalluvar, offers the following sage advice in Tirukural verse 100: ”To utter harsh words when sweet ones would serve is like eating unripe fruit when ripe ones are at hand.” Yes, this is the ideal. I was asked by the swamis in Gujarat, time after time, ”But what if conflict and contention do arise?” My answer was that in our fellowship all work stops and the problem is attended to at once. It is each one’s responsibility to follow this wisdom. Nothing could be more counterproductive and foolish than to continue work, especially religious work, while conflict prevails, for demonic forces have been unleashed that must be dispelled for any effort to be fruitful and long lasting. Any breach in the angelic force field of the home, monastery or workplace must be sealed off quickly.
Our approach is simple. We are all committed to the shared sadhana that all difficult feelings must be resolved before sleep, lest they give rise to mental argument, go to seed and germinate as unwanted, troublesome vasanas, subconscious impressions, that cannot be totally erased but only softened and neutralized through the mystic processes of atonement. Disharmony is disruption of the harmonious pranic flow: anger, argument, back-biting, walking out of meetings, painful words and hurt feelings. The Vedas pray, ”May our minds move in accord. May our thinking be in harmony–common the purpose and common the desire. May our prayers and worship be alike, and may our devotional offerings be one and the same” (Rig Veda 10.191.3. ve, p. 854). One of the principles of harmony is that the commitment to harmony has to be greater than any commitment to any particular issue or problem. Problems change, but the strength of harmony has to be the ultimate priority. This is a conceptual tool to use whenever differences arise.
SUTRA 295 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
VISITING SHRINES TO GODS AND GURUS
My devotees all revere and pilgrimage to Nallur andMurugan’s six South Indian temples, Ganesha’s many temples and shrines, especially Kumbhalavalai, and the samadhi shrines of our lineage. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 295 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
NATURE’S TWO BASIC FORCES
There are two basic forces in the universe, which you can look up in the dictionary. One is called odic force. The other is actinic force. Odic force is magnetic force. Odic force is the force of collective energies that make things–trees, chairs, tables, houses, the physical body. Odic force is of the material world–dense and heavy. The aura around the physical body and the forces of nature which govern much of man’s life on Earth are odic force.
Actinic force is your pure life force coming from the central source deep within out through the nerve system. But as soon as this pure life force begins to mingle with the astral atoms and the physical body atoms, it turns to odic force. The study of these two forces can give you a great awakening–two primal forces.
The sahasrara chakra, the ajna chakra, the vishuddha chakra–the top three, in the head and throat centers–are primarily actinic force centers of rarefied inner consciousness within the superconscious itself. The anahata chakra, the one at the heart center, which allows us to look out into the external world and within to the internal areas, is primarily a mixture of actinic force and odic force. It’s called actinodic. It’s a mixture of these two forces. However, the lower three chakras–manipura, svadhishthana and muladhara–are primarily odic force chakras. They are the forces that make up what we call the world.
The ida and pingala forces are basically odic forces. So, therefore, when the odic force is withdrawn back into the sushumna, back into its actinic substance, we lose complete awareness of the external world. That is how we enter meditation, by withdrawing the odic forces. The prana is the in-between. It is the actinodic force that flows in and through odic and actinic forces. It is the binder of these two forces.
But it’s easier to relate to the word odic and the word actinic and compare these two forces, because you can feel them through your physical body. Lift your arm. The movement of the spirit within is actinic force, and all the rest that happens is odic force, including the arm itself, the vibrations around the arm. They’re all odic force. The mixture of what is going on is actinodic force, which is the closest, in looking at it in this way, that we come to prana.
When we are in actinic force and we are aware of it, we have harmony, we have peace in all of our external life. Everything goes right and everyone sees eye to eye and finds points of agreement, one with another. There’s no argument, and there’s no confusion. However, when we become conscious in and awareness is flowing through the odic force realms, awareness actually thinks it is odic force. Then we have inharmonious conditions to live in. No one sees eye to eye, one with another. There’s argument, and there is contention.
Look at these chakras as vast fields of collective related and interrelated thought realms, like vast cities, and look at awareness as the traveler through these chakras. When you are flowing awareness through one of these vast energy fields of actinodic force or actinic force with these thought or perceptive layers within it, you think a certain way as you hit each of these strata of thought. Think of it in that way. As you travel through, the nerve ganglia within the spinal cord are registering all this and bringing what you are experiencing into your immediate consciousness. You become aware of it through the nerve ganglia within the spine.
Through a mixture of actinic and odic force, willpower and awareness motivate the travels through these layers of the mind. When the nerve force does begin to register, when you’re in a certain chakra, it begins to vibrate, and it throws off color and it throws off sound, and then, within you, you do see these disc-like wheels spinning. I have experienced that. I have seen them, and they’re just like they are represented in the picture books, but much more vivid. They have sounds–in fact, they’re quite noisy–because color and sound and energy are all the same thing in the inner realms, and that is how they have produced these images that you see in books on mysticism and occultism. However, they’re greater than that. They are great energy fields in the inner man, and they flow. They are what make up people. The physical body has a connection to each one of these seven chakras, though you may not be aware of all of them, you may only be aware in one of them or two of them, and that is the way you think.
