SLOKA 55 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
DOES GOD EVER PUNISH WRONGDOERS?
God is perfect goodness, love and truth. He is not wrathful or vengeful. He does not condemn or punish wrongdoers. Jealousy, vengefulness and vanity are qualities of man’s instinctive nature, not of God. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
There is no reason to ever fear God, whose right-hand gesture, abhaya mudra, indicates ”fear not,” and whose left hand invites approach. God is with us always, even when we are unaware of that holy presence. He is His creation. It is an extension of Himself; and God is never apart from it nor limited by it. When we act wrongly, we create negative karma for ourselves and must then live through experiences of suffering to fulfill the law of karma. Such karmas may be painful, but they were generated from our own thoughts and deeds. God never punishes us, even if we do not believe in Him. It is by means of worship of and meditation on God that our self-created sufferings are softened and assuaged. God is the God of all–of the believers within all religions, and of the nonbelievers, too. God does not destroy the wicked and redeem the righteous; but grants the precious gift of liberation to all souls. The Agamas state, ”When the soul gradually reduces and then stops altogether its participation in darkness and inauspicious powers, the Friend of the World, God, reveals to the soul the limitless character of its knowledge and activity.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 365 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE
It is important that all of you here with me tonight band together and do what you can to make a difference. It is important that you immediately refrain from following the patterns taught to you or your parents by the British Christians. One such pattern is that if one person in the community comes up, cut him down, malign him, criticize him until all heads are leveled. In the modern, industrial society everyone tries to lift everyone else up. People are proud of an individual in the community who comes up, and they help the next one behind him to succeed as well. They are proud of their religious leaders, too. Not so here, because if anyone does want to help out spiritually they have to be quiet and conceal themselves, lest they be maligned. Nobody is standing up to defend the religion; nobody is allowing anybody else to stand up, either. This has to change, and change fast it will.
Yes, the tide has to change. It has to change, no matter how painful it might be to praise people rather than criticize them, and to support and to protect them. The tide has to change. It has to change no matter how painful it might be to admit that we worship many Gods as well as one supreme God. The time has come for Hindus to be openly proud of their religion–the oldest religion on the planet. The time has come for Hindus to proclaim their beliefs and to defend their beliefs. The time has come for Hindus to stand up for Hinduism, no matter what the cost. The results will be a younger generation which respects the older generation again. The results will be a younger generation proud to be called Hindu. The results will be a younger generation eager to pass the tenets of Hinduism on to the next generation in a proud and a dynamic and a wonderful way. The time is now–begin!
Western nations are becoming truly pluralistic. These are days of truth. They are days of correction of wrongdoing, days of Self Realization, which cannot be hidden under a cloak of deception. Believe me, no Christian or Muslim looks at the Vedic-Agamic goal of atmajnana, Self Realization, in the same way Hindus do. The days are gone when it is necessary to observe Christmas in the ashrama and sing non-Hindu hymns at satsanga. There was a time to hide the Vedic Truth beneath a basket and behind a cross, but now is a time to shout Self Realization from the rooftops. Self Realization is, in fact, what all people on the planet have come here to experience.
The Self within all is the sustainer of all, yet it acts not in that sustaining and is itself unsustained. It sustains our thoughts, our emotions, our physical universe, yet it lies mysteriously beyond them all, perfectly obvious to the knower, perfectly invisible to most. It is and yet it is not. Hindus need nothing else to hide behind than this Paramatman. Certainly we no longer need to define ourselves in a Christian or a Muslim way, or any other way but our own. So, no need to send out Christmas cards this year or have a tree in the ashrama, right?
In looking back on all the wonderful aspects of Hinduism that have been spoken of tonight on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka, it is clear that Hinduism is the answer for the future generations on this planet. It is the answer for the New Age, for the dawning Sat Yuga. The gracious Sanatana Dharma, our great religion, has all the answers. It has always had all of the answers in every age, for there was never an age when it did not exist. The time has now passed for many and is quickly passing for everyone when they can deny their Hindu heritage, when they can be afraid to admit their belief in Hinduism or even the simple fact that they are a Hindu. The time has come for Hindus of all races, all nations, of all cultures, of all sects to stand up and let the peoples of the world know of the great religion of which they are one of the staunch adherents. Take courage, courage, courage into your own hands and proceed with confidence. Stand strong for Hinduism.
SUTRA 365 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
THE END IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
Numberless successors of the Nandinatha lineage have gone before me. Numberless shall follow. I have woven these 365 threads of wisdom, but there is infinitely more to know of the mysterious Nathas. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 365 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
ETERNAL QUESTIONS
Many people think of the realization of timeless, formless, spaceless Parasiva, nirvikalpa samadhi, as the most blissful of all blissful states, the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Gods, as a moment of supreme, sublime joyousness. Whereas I have found it to be more like cut glass, diamond-dust darshan, a psychic surgery, not a blissful experience at all, but really a kind of near-death experience resulting in total transformation. The bliss that is often taught as a final attainment is actually another attainment, Satchidananda, an aftermath of nirvikalpa samadhi, and a ”before-math.” This means that Satchidananda, savikalpa samadhi, may be attained early on by souls pure in heart. It also means that one need not gauge the highest attainment on the basis of bliss, which it transcends.
In my experience, the anahata chakra is the resting place of dynamic complacency, of thoughtful perception and quietude. Those of a lower nature arriving in the bloom of this chakra are released from turbulent emotions, conflicting thoughts and disturbances. This to many is the end of the path, attaining peace or shanti. Once one attains shanti as just described, in my experience, this marks the beginning of the path, or part two, the second level. It is from here that the practices of raja yoga take hold, once shanti is attained. In the anahata chakra and vishuddha chakra, Satchidananda, the all-pervasive being of oneness, of the underlying being of the universe, is attained, experienced.
But unless brahmacharya, chastity, is absolutely adhered to, the experience is not maintained. It is here that relations between men and women play an important part, as in their union temporary oneness occurs, followed by a more permanent two-ness and ever-accumulating distractions, sometimes along with insolvable difficulties. Those who practice sexual tantras, seeking Self Realization through this path, will agree with this wisdom.
Does Self Realization bring bliss to the realized one? Self Realization is in several stages. Realizing oneself as a soul–rather than a mind, an intellectual and emotional type or a worthless person–gives satisfaction, security, and this is a starting point. Realization of the Self as Satchidananda gives contentment, a release from all emotions and thoughts of the external world, and the nerve system responds to the energies flowing through the vishuddha and anahata chakras. Realizing the Self that transcends time, form and space, Parasiva, is a razor-edged experience, cutting all bonds, reversing individual awareness, such as looking out from the Self rather than looking into the Self.
There are many boons after this transforming experience, if repeated many times. One or two occurrences does make a renunciate out of the person and does make the world renounce the renunciate, but then without persistent effort, former patterns of emotion, intellect, lack of discipline, which would inhibit the repeated experience of Parasiva, would produce a disoriented nomad, so to speak. Therefore, repeated experiences of the ego-destructive Parasiva, from all states of consciousness, intellectual, instinctive, even in dreams, permeates the transformation through atoms and molecules even in the physical body. It is then that the bliss can be enjoyed of Satchidananda–and simultaneously, I would say, Satchidananda and the rough, unrelenting, timeless, formless, spaceless Parasiva merge in a not-merging way, such as light and darkness in the same room. This is different than the concept of sayujya samadhi, which is maintaining the perpetual bliss within the fourth and fifth chakra and stimulating the sixth and seventh. For this to be maintained, a certain isolation from worldly affairs and distracting influences is required to prevent the reawakening of previously unsatisfied desires, repressed tendencies or unresolved subconscious conflicts.
Someone asked, ”If realization in and of itself is not blissful, then what impels a soul that has arrived at bliss to strive for further realizations?” We are all moving forward to our ultimate goal of merging with Siva. Bliss quiets the senses. It is the natural state of the mind when unperturbed by previous desires unfulfilled, desires yet to be fulfilled and the desires known to not be fulfillable. As long as the anahata and vishuddha chakras spin at top velocity, the senses will be quieted, few thoughts will pass through the mind unbidden, and the understanding of the Vedas and all aspects of esoteric knowledge will be able to be explained by the preceptor. Many choose to remain here, as the explainers of the inexplainable, and not go on. Deep into the sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh chakras, into the beyond of the beyond, the quantum level, the core of the universe itself, there comes a point when the powers of evolution move one forward, and even these desireless ones desire the greatest unfoldment, once they have found out that it is there to be desired.
Realizing Parasiva is merging with Siva, but it is not the end of merging. At that pinpoint of time, there are still the trappings of body, mind and emotions that claim awareness into their consciousness. Ultimately, when all bodies–physical, astral, mental, even the soul body–wear out their time, as all forms wear out in time, bound by time, existing in time, as relative realities, then vishvagrasa, the final merger with Siva, occurs, as the physical body drops away, the astral body drops away, the mental body drops away, and the soul–a shining, scintillating being of light quantums–merges into its source. As when a drop of water merges into the ocean, it can never be retrieved, only Siva remains. Aum Namah Sivaya.
