SLOKA 52 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS SIN? HOW CAN WE ATONE FOR IT?
Sin is the intentional transgression of divine law. There is no inherent or ”original” sin. Neither is there mortal sin by which the soul is forever lost. Through sadhana, worship and austerities, sins can be atoned for. Aum.
BHASHYA
What men term sin, the wise call ignorance. Man’s true nature is not sullied by sin. Sin is related only to the lower, instinctive-intellectual nature as a transgression of dharma. Still, sin is real and to be avoided, for our wrongful actions return to us as sorrow through the law of karma. Sin is terminable, and its effects may be compensated for by penance, or prayashchitta, and good deeds which settle the karmic debt. The young soul, less in tune with his soul nature, is inclined toward sin; the old soul seldom transgresses divine law. Sins are the crippling distortions of intellect bound in emotion. When we sin, we take the energy and distort it to our instinctive favor. When we are unjust and mean, hateful and holding resentments year after year and no one but ourselves knows of our intrigue and corruption, we suffer. As the soul evolves, it eventually feels the great burden of faults and misdeeds and wishes to atone. Penance is performed, and the soul seeks absolution from society and beseeches God’s exonerating grace. The Vedas say, ”Loose me from my sin as from a bond that binds me. May my life swell the stream of your river of Right.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 52 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
ONE FOCUS PER LIFETIME
Life is long; there are apparently many years ahead. But time is short. One never knows when he is going to die. The purpose of sampradaya is to restrict and narrow down, to reach out to an attainable goal. We must not consider our life and expected longevity as giving us the time and permission to do investigative comparisons of one sampradaya to another. This may be done before making up one’s mind to follow a traditional verbal lineage. After that, pursuing other paths, even in passing, would be totally unacceptable.
But it is also totally unacceptable to assume the attitude of denigration of other paths, or to assume the attitude that ”our way is the only way.” There are fourteen currents in the sushumna. Each one is a valid way to escalate consciousness into the chakra at the top of the skull and beyond. And at every point in time, there is a living guru, possessing a physical body, ordained to control one or more of these nadis, currents, within the sushumna. All are valid paths. One should not present itself as superseding another. Let here be no mistake about this.
The yamas and niyamas are the core of Hindu disciplines and restraints for individuals, groups, communities and nations. In fact, they outline various stages of the path in the development of the soul, leading out of the marul pada into the arul pada, from confusion into grace, leading to the feet of the satguru, as the last five practices indicate–siddhanta shravana, mati, vrata, japa and tapas.
Since the sampradayas are all based on Hinduism, which is based on the Vedas, any teacher of Indian spirituality who rejects the Vedas is therefore not a Hindu and should not be considered as such. Anybody in his right mind will be able to accept the last section of the Vedas, the Upanishads, and see the truth therein. One at least has to accept that as the basis of siddhanta shravana. If even that is rejected, we must consider the teacher a promulgator of a new Indian religion, neo-American religion, neo-European religion, neo-New-Age religion, nonreligion, neo-sannyasi religion, or some other ”neo-ism” or ”neo-ology.” This is not sampradaya. This is not siddhanta shravana. This is what we speak against. These are not the eternal paths. Why? Because they have not been tried and tested. They are not based on traditional lineages; nor have they survived the ravages of time, changing societies, wars, famine and the infiltration of ignorance.
For sadhakas, yogis, swamis and mendicants who have freed themselves from the world, permanently or for a period of time according to their vows, these yamas and niyamas are not only restraints and practices, but mandatory controls. They are not only practices, but obligatory disciplines, and once performed with this belief and attitude, they will surely lead the mendicant to his chosen goal, which can only be the height that his prarabdha karmas in this life permit, unless those karmas are burned out under extreme tapas under the guidance of a satguru.
Some might still wonder, why limit oneself to listening to scripture of one particular lineage, especially if it has been practically memorized? The answer is that what has been learned must be experienced personally, and experience comes in many depths. This is the purpose of disregarding or rejecting all other sampradayas, -ism’s, -ologies and sects, or denominations, and of limiting scriptural listening to just one sampradaya, so that each subtle increment of the divine truths amplified within it is realized through personal experience. This and only this–experience, realization, illumination–can be carried on to the next birth. What one has merely memorized is not transforming and is forgotten perhaps shortly after death. Let there be no mistake that siddhanta shravana, scriptural listening, is the only way; and when the seeker is ready, the guru will appear and enter his life.
SUTRA 52 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
CHARITY AND FAITH
All Siva’s devotees practice dana, tithing and giving generously, creatively, without thought of reward. They sustain an unshakable faith, astikya, believing in God, Gods, guru and the Vedic path to enlightenment. Aum.
LESSON 52 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
PSYCHIC SOUNDS
Occasionally, through his newly exercised extrasensory perception, he may hear the seven sounds he previously studied about in occult lore. The sounds of the atomic structure of his nerve system, his cells, register as voices singing, the vina or sitar, tambura, or as symphonies of music. Instruments to duplicate these sounds for the outer ears were carefully tooled by the rishis of classical yoga thousands of years ago, including the mridanga or tabla, and the flute. He will hear the shrill note, likened to a nightingale singing, as psychic centers in his cranium burst open, and then an inner voice indicating to his external consciousness–like a breath of air–direction, elucidation. This inner voice remains with him as a permanent yoga of the external, with the internal consciousness an ever-ready guide to the unraveling of complexities of daily life.
Occasionally, in a cross-section of the inner mind, when light merges into transcendental form, the young aspirant may view the golden actinic face of a master peering into his, kindly and all-knowing. He is looking at his own great potential. As the clear white light becomes more of a friend to his external mind than an experience or vision and can be basked in during contemplative periods of the day, the nourishment to the entirety of the nerve system, as ambrosia, bursts forth from the crown chakra. This is identified inadequately as ”the peace that passeth understanding,” for he who reaches this state can never seem to explain it.
The highly trained classical yoga adept intensifies, through techniques imparted to him from his guru, the clear white light to the brink of God Realization, the void. His entire body is faded into a sea of blue-white light, the akasha, where now, past and future are recorded in the linear depths or layers, sometimes seeing himself seated or standing on a lotus flower of shimmering light in an actinodic clear, transparent, neon, plastic-like-body outline as his consciousness touches, in tune with a heart’s beat, into the Self, God Realization.
Keeping this continuity alive and not allowing the external consciousness to reign, the young aspirant lives daily in the clear white light, having occasionally more intense experiences as just described while meeting daily chores here and now, until he attains the maturity of the nerve fiber essential to burst his consciousness beyond itself into the pure nonconscious state, nirvikalpa samadhi, the Self. Only known and identified by him as an experience experienced. Only recognized by others as he maintains his point of reference: that mind is only illusion, ever changing and perpetuating itself by mingling concepts of past and future into the present; that the only reality is the timeless, formless, causeless, spaceless Self beyond the mind. He knows that the mind, which is made from a consciousness of time, creates, maintains and defabricates form, and exists in a relative concept of space. The Self is the only reality and is an intensity far greater than that of any phase of the mind.
