SLOKA 89 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW DO HINDUS REGARD ART AND CULTURE?
Hindus of every sect cherish art and culture as sacred. Music, art, drama and the dance are expressions of spiritual experience established in shastras by God-inspired rishis as an integral flowering of temple worship. Aum.
BHASHYA
Art and culture, from the Hindu perspective, are the sublime fruits of a profound civilization. Every Hindu strives to perfect an art or craft to manifest creative benefits for family and community. The home is a spiritual extension of the temple. Graced with the sounds of Indian sacred music, it is adorned with religious pictures, symbols and icons. The shrine is the most lavish room. Children are raised to appreciate Hindu art, music and culture, carefully trained in the sixty-four kalas and protected from alien influences. Human relationships are kept harmonious and uplifting through the attitudes, customs and refinements of Asian protocol, as revealed in Living with Siva. Hindu attire is elegantly modest. Sectarian marks, called tilaka, are worn on the brow as emblems of sectarian identity. Mantra and prayer sanctify even simple daily acts–awakening, bathing, greetings, meals, meetings, outings, daily tasks and sleep. Annual festivals and pilgrimage offer a complete departure from worldly concerns. The Vedas proclaim, ”Let the drum sound forth and let the lute resound, let the strings vibrate the exalted prayer to God.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 89 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
GUARDIAN ANGELS
Then the devas within your home see you performing your sadhana each day, they give you psychic protection. They hover around you and keep away the extraneous thought forms that come from the homes of your neighbors or close friends and relatives. They all mentally chant ”Aum Namah Sivaya,” keeping the vibration of the home alive with high thoughts and mantras so that the atmosphere is scintillating, creating for you a proper environment to delve within yourself. The fact that the devonic world is involved is one more good reason why you must choose a specific time for sadhana and religiously keep to that time each day, for you not only have an appointment with yourself but with the devas as well.
By performing the pancha nitya karmas, living the yamas and niyamas to the best of your ability and performing your daily sadhana, your religion becomes closer and closer to you in your heart. You will soon begin to find that God Siva is within you as well as within the temple, because you become quiet enough to know this and experience that Lord Siva’s superconscious mind is identical to yours; there is no difference in Satchidananda. From this state, you will experience the conscious mind as ”the watcher” and experience its subconscious as the storehouse of intellectual and emotional memory patterns. In daily life you will begin to experience the creativity of the subsuperconscious mind, as the forces of the First World are motivated through love as you fulfill your chosen dharma in living with Siva.
Thus our religion is an experiential religion, from its beginning stages to the most advanced. You have already encountered the magic of the temple, and you have had uplifting experiences within your home shrine. Now, as you perform your sadhana, you will enjoy spiritual experiences within yourself on the path of self-transformation.
It is up to you to put your religion into practice. Feel the power of the Gods in the puja. If you don’t feel them, if you are just going through ritual and don’t feel anything, you are not awake. Get the most out of every experience that the temple offers, the guru offers, the devas offer, that your life’s experiences, which you were born to live through, offer. In doing so, slowly the kundalini begins to loosen and imperceptibly rise into its yoga. That’s what does the yoga; it’s the kundalini seeking its source, like the tree growing, always reaching up to the Sun.
It is up to you to make the teachings a part of your life by working to understand each new concept as you persist in your daily religious practices. As a result, you will be able to brave the forces of the external world without being disturbed by them and fulfill your dharma in whatever walk of life you have chosen. Because your daily sadhana has regulated your nerve system, the quality of your work in the world will improve, and your mood in performing it will be confident and serene.
When your sadhana takes hold, you may experience a profound calmness within yourself. This calmness that you experience as a result of your meditation is called Satchidananda, the natural state of the mind. To arrive at that state, the instinctive energies have been lifted to the heart chakra and beyond, and the mind has become absolutely quiet. This is because you are not using your memory faculty. You are not using your reason faculty. You are not trying to move the forces of the world with your willpower faculty. You are simply resting within yourself. Therefore, if you are ever bothered by the external part of you, simply return to this inner, peaceful state as often as you can. You might call it your ”home base.” From here you can have a clear perception of how you should behave in the external world, a clear perception of your future and a clear perception of the path ahead. This is a superconscious state, meaning ”beyond normal consciousness.” So, simply deepen this inner state by being aware that you are aware.
SUTRA 89 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
FULFILLING ALL HER NEEDS AND WANTS
Siva’s devotees who are husbands practice the mystical law of caring for and giving the wife all she needs and all she wants, thus releasing her shakti energy from within, making him contented, successful and magnetic. Aum.
LESSON 89 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
STEP FIVE: SAMADHI
This, then, leads to samadhi, the very deepest samadhi, in where we almost, in a sense, go within one atom of that energy and move into the primal source of all. There’s really nothing that you can say about it, because you cannot cast that concept of the Self, or that depth of samadhi, you cannot cast it out in words. You cannot throw it out in a concept, because there are no areas of the mind in which the Self exists, and yet but for the Self the mind-consciousness would not exist.
You have to realize It to know It; and after you realize It, you know It; and before you realize It, you want It; and after you realize It, you don’t want It. You have lost something. You have lost your goal for Self Realization, because you’ve got it.
I realized, went through that deep samadhi, right through these steps. I was taught these steps at a very young age: attention, concentration, meditation and contemplation, and then into the very deepest, deepest samadhi. After I went through that, I came out into contemplation, into meditation, into concentration, and thought, ”How simple. Where was I, wandering around all this time, not to have been able to perceive and be the obvious?”
The �handogya Upanishad (7.25.1-3) expresses it so beautifully: ”The Infinite is below, above, behind, before, to the right, to the left. I am all this. This Infinite is the Self. The Self is below, above, behind, before, to the right, to the left. I am all this. One who knows, meditates upon, and realizes the truth of the Self–such a one delights in the Self, revels in the Self, rejoices in the Self. He becomes master of himself, and master of all the worlds. Slaves are they who know not this truth. He who knows, meditates upon, and realizes this truth of the Self, finds that everything–primal energy, ether, fire, water and all the other elements–mind, will, speech, sacred hymns and scriptures–indeed the whole universe–issues forth from it.”
