SLOKA 87 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT ARE THE HINDU’S DAILY YOGA PRACTICES?
Devout Hindus perform daily vigil, called sandhya upasana, usually before dawn. This sacred period of puja, japa, chanting, singing, hatha yoga, meditation and scriptural study is the foundation of personal life. Aum.
BHASHYA
Each day hundreds of millions of Hindus awaken for the last fifth of the night, bathe, don fresh clothing, apply sectarian marks, called tilaka, and sit in a clean, quiet place for religious disciplines. Facing east or north, the devotional puja rites of bhakti yoga are performed. Hatha yoga, hymn singing, japa and chanting are often included. Then follows scriptural study and meditation, listening to the sound current and contemplating the moonlike inner light during brahma muhurta, the auspicious hour-and-a-half period before dawn. The duly initiated practice advanced yogas, such as those revealed in Merging with Siva–but only as directed by their guru, knowing that unless firmly harnessed, the kundalini can manifest uncontrollable desires. Through the day, karma yoga, selfless religious service, is performed at every opportunity. Besides these yogas of doing, Hindus practice the central yoga of being–living a joyful, positive, harmonious life. The Vedas declare, ”The mind, indeed, is this fleeting world. Therefore, it should be purified with great effort. One becomes like that which is in one’s mind–this is the everlasting secret.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 87 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
THE FIVE STATES OF MIND
In Merging with Siva we embarked on a great study of the mind in its totality. Here we shall review the five states of mind. The conscious mind is our external mind. The subconscious mind contains our memory patterns and all impressions of the past. The sub of the subconscious mind holds the seeds of karmas that are not yet manifest. The subsuperconscious mind works through the subconscious mind, and intuition flows daily as a result. Creativity is there at your bidding. Your superconscious mind is where intuitive flashes occur. The accomplished mystic can consciously be in one country or another instantaneously, according to his will, once he has, through the grace of Lord Siva, attained a full inner knowing of how to remain in Satchidananda, the superconscious mind, consciously, without the other states interfering.
Yes, sadhana begins in the home, and it begins with you. It must be practiced regularly, at the same time each day–not two hours one day, one hour the next and then forgetting about it for three or four days because you are too busy with external affairs, but every day, at the same time. Meeting this appointment with yourself is in itself a sadhana. In the technological age nearly everyone finds it difficult to set one hour aside in which to perform sadhana. This is why in your sadhana vrata you promise to dedicate only one half hour a day. In the agricultural era, it was easy to find time to perform sadhana two to three hours a day. Why? The demands of external life were not as great as they are now, in the technological age. Half an hour a day, therefore, is the amount of time we dedicate for our sadhana.
Brahmacharis and brahmacharinis, celibate men and women, in their respective gurukulas dedicate their time to the performance of sadhana. They rise together early in the morning, perform their sadhana as a group, and then are off to their daily work. The regular practice of sadhana, they have found, enables them to get along admirably well with one another because of their newly acquired abilities of absorbing their difficulties, thus avoiding argument and confrontation. In these gurukulas, found worldwide, various kinds of sadhanas are performed, such as scriptural study, chanting the names of the Lord on the japa beads, group chanting of bhajanas, the singing of Devarams and the yogic concentration of holding the mind fixed on one point and bringing it back to that one point each time it wanders. The more disciplined gurukulas religiously administrate group sadhana at the same time each day, every day without fail. Daily life revolves around this period of sadhana, just as in a religious Saivite home life revolves around the shrine room and each one’s daily personal vigil.
Ask yourself what you put first in your daily life. Do your emotions come first? Does your intellect come first? Do your instinctive impulses come first? Does your striving to overcome worries and fears and doubt come first inside of you? Does your creativity, your love for all humanity, your search for God and peace within yourself come first inside of you? What are your priorities? The pancha nitya karmas outline our basic religious priorities. Your inner priorities in implementing these five duties must be just as well defined, and you must define them for yourself and therefore, come to better ”Know thyself.”
SUTRA 87 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
RESTRAINT WITH OTHER WOMEN
Siva’s married men, in the workplace and in the world, hold a courteous aloofness toward all women, whether young, older, single, married, divorced or widowed. They reserve their affections for wife and family. Aum.
LESSON 87 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
STEP THREE: MEDITATION
After we are able to hold awareness hovering over that which we are concentrating upon, we come into great powers of observation. We are able to look into and almost through that which we are concentrating upon and observe its various parts and particles, its action and its reaction, because we are not distracted. Even observation in daily life, as a result of regular participation in the practice of concentration, comes naturally. We are able to see more, hear more, feel more. Our senses are more keen and alive. Observation is so necessary to cultivate, to bring awareness fully into the fullness of meditation.
This leads us then into our very next step, meditation. Meditation and concentration are practically the same thing, though meditation is simply a more intense state of concentration. The state of meditation is careful, close scrutiny of the individual elements and energies which make up that flower. You are scrutinizing the inner layers of the mind, of how a flower grows, how the seed is formed. You are observing it so keenly that you have forgotten that you are a physical body, that you are an emotional unit, that you are breathing. You are in the area of mind where that flower exists, and the bush that it came from, and the roots and the seed and all phases of manifestation, all at the same time. And you are seeing it as it actually is in that area of the mind, where the flower that you first put awareness at attention upon, then began to concentrate upon. Then you are meditating on the actual inner area of the mind where, in all stages of manifestation, that particular species actually is within the mind.
