SLOKA 33 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION?
Reincarnation, punarjanma, is the natural process of birth, death and rebirth. At death we drop off the physical body and continue evolving in the inner worlds in our subtle bodies, until we again enter into birth. Aum.
BHASHYA
Through the ages, reincarnation has been the great consoling element within Hinduism, eliminating the fear of death, explaining why one person is born a genius and another an idiot. We are not the body in which we live but the immortal soul which inhabits many bodies in its evolutionary journey through samsara. After death, we continue to exist in unseen worlds, enjoying or suffering the harvest of earthly deeds until it comes time for yet another physical birth. Because certain karmas can be resolved only in the physical world, we must enter another physical body to continue our evolution. After soaring into the causal plane, we enter a new womb. Subsequently the old manomaya kosha is slowly sloughed off and a new one created. The actions set in motion in previous lives form the tendencies and conditions of the next. Reincarnation ceases when karma is resolved, God is realized and moksha attained. The Vedas say, ”After death, the soul goes to the next world bearing in mind the subtle impressions of its deeds, and after reaping their harvest returns again to this world of action. Thus, he who has desires continues subject to rebirth.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 33 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
BODY LANGUAGE AND CONSCIENCE
There is another way to show remorse for misdeeds. That is by performing seva, religious service, for persons you have wronged. Give them gifts, cook them food. Some people are unreachable by words, too remote for an apology, which might even lead to an argument, and then the wrong would perpetuate itself. Be extra polite to such people. Hold the door open as they walk through. Never miss an opportunity to be kind and serve. Say kind words about them behind their back. The praise must be true and timely. Mere flattery would be unacceptable. This kind of silent behavior shows repentance, shows remorse, shows that you have reconsidered your actions and found that they need improvement, and the improvement is shown by your actions now and into the future.
Often people think that showing shame and modesty and remorse for misdeeds is simply hanging your head. Well, really, anyone can do this, but it’s not genuine if the head is not pulled down by the tightening of the strings of the heart, if shame is not felt so deeply that one cannot look another in the eye. When the hanging of the head is genuine, everyone will know it and seek to lift you up out of the predicament. But just to hang your head for a while and think you’re going to get away with it in today’s world, no. In today’s world, people are a little too perceptive, and will not admire you, as they will suspect pretense.
There is an analogy in the Saivite tradition that compares the unfolding soul to wheat. When young and growing, the stalks of wheat stand tall and proud, but when mature their heads bend low under the weight of the grains they yield. Similarly, man is self-assertive, arrogant and vain only in the early stages of his spiritual growth. As he matures and yields the harvest of divine knowledge, he too bends his head. Body language has to truly be the language of the body. It’s a dead giveaway. Body language is the language of the mind being expressed through the body. Let there be no doubt about this. To cry, expressing remorse–the crying should not be forced. Many people can cry on cue. We must not think that the soul of the observer is not perceptive enough to know the difference between real tears and a glandular disturbance causing watering of the eyes.
Hri is regret that one has done things against the dharma, or against conscience. There are three kinds of conscience–one built on right knowledge, one built on semi-right knowledge and one built on wrong knowledge. The soul has to work through these three gridworks within the subconscious mind to give its message. Those who have been raised with the idea that an injustice should be settled by giving back another injustice might actually feel a little guilty when they fail to do this. Those who are in a quandary of what to do, what is right and what is wrong, remain in confusion because they have only semi-right knowledge in their subconscious mind.
We cannot confuse guilt and its messages with the message that comes from the soul. Guilt is the message of the instinctive mind, the chakras below the muladhara. Many people who live in the lower worlds of darkness feel guilty and satisfy that guilt through retaliation. This is the eye for an eye-for-an-eye, tooth-for-a-tooth approach. This is not right conscience; it is not the soul speaking. This is not higher consciousness, and it is certainly not the inner being of light looking out of the windows of the chakras above the muladhara. Why, even domesticated animals feel guilty. It is a quality of the instinctive mind.
True conscience is of the soul, an impulse rushing through a mind that has been impregnated with right knowledge, Vedic, Agamic knowledge, or the knowledge that is found in these yamas and niyamas, restraints and practices. When the true knowledge of karma is understood, reincarnation, samsara and Vedic dharma, then true remorse is felt, which is a corrective mechanism of the soul. This remorse immediately imprints upon the lower mind the right knowledge of the dharma–how, where and why the person has strayed and the methodology of getting quickly and happily back to the path and proceeding onward. There is no guilt felt here, but there is a sense of spiritual responsibility, and a driving urge to bring dharma, the sense of spiritual duty, more fully into one’s life, thus filling up the lack that the misdeeds manifested through adhering to these twenty restraints and practices and the Vedic path of dharma, which is already known within the bedrock of right knowledge, firmly planted within the inner mind of the individual.
SUTRA 33 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
GOD’S UNMANIFEST REALITY
Siva’s followers all believe that Lord Siva is God, whose Absolute Being, Parasiva, transcends time, form and space. The yogi silently exclaims, ”It is not this. It is not that.” Yea, such an inscrutable God is God Siva. Aum.
LESSON 33 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
THE GREAT STUDY OF AWARENESS
The study of awareness is a great study. ”I am aware.” The key to this entire study is the discovery of who or what is the ”I am.” It is the key to the totality of your progress on the path of enlightenment. What is awareness? As you open your physical eyes, what is it that is aware of what you see? When you look within, deep within, and feel energy, you almost begin to see energy. A little more perception comes, and you do actually see energy as clearly as you see chairs and tables with your physical eyes open.
But what is it that is aware? When awareness moves through superconsciousness, it seems to expand, for it looks out into the vastness of superconsciousness from within and identifies with that vastness. This is what is meant by an expanded state of awareness. What is awareness? Discover that. Go deep within it. Make it a great study. You have to discover what awareness is before you can realize the Self God. Otherwise, realization of the Self God is only a philosophy to you. It is a good philosophy, however, a satisfying and stable philosophy. But philosophies of life are not to be intellectually learned, memorized and repeated and nothing more. They are to be experienced step by step by step. Get acquainted with yourself as being awareness. Say to yourself, ”I am awareness. I am aware. I am not the body. I am not the emotions. I am not the thinking mind. I am pure awareness.”
It will help for us to make a mental picture. Let us now try to visualize awareness as a round, white ball of light, like one single eye. This ball is being propelled through many areas of the mind, inner and outer, and it is registering all the various pictures. It has, in fact, four eyes, one on each side of it. It is not reacting. The reaction comes when awareness is aware of the astral body and the physical body. It is in those bodies that reaction occurs. We are aware of the reactions in these bodies, for the physical body and the astral body are also part of the vast, vast universe of the mind.
Each individual awareness, ball of light, is encased in many bodies. The first and nearest encasement is the body of the soul. The second encasement is the astral, or intellectual-emotional, body. The third encasement is the physical body. The radiation from awareness, this ball of light, is the aura.
Awareness is an extension of prana from the central source, issuing energy. Energy goes where awareness flows. When awareness focuses on relationships, relationships flow. When awareness focuses on philosophy, that unfolds itself. Ultimately, when awareness focuses on itself, it dissolves into its own essence. Energy flows where awareness goes. I was always taught that if one foot was injured, for example, to focus on the other foot and transfer the healthy prana from that foot to the ailing foot.
