SLOKA 112 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW DO DEVOTEES PREPARE FOR WORSHIP?
We visit a Siva temple after bathing, dressing in clean clothes and preparing an offering, which can be as simple as a few flowers or fruits. We bring the mind to the holy feet of the Deity even as preparations begin. Aum.
BHASHYA
Visiting the home of God Siva or of a God, the temple, is not without its trepidation, protocol and proper conduct, preceded by preparation that we administrate ourselves. Our worship is only as meaningful and effective as we make it. Before we attend or conduct a puja, we should carefully bathe the body, rinse the mouth and dress in fresh clothing–saris for women and dhotis or veshtis and shawls for men where this is the custom. Throughout these preparations we may sing hymns or chant mantras or God’s holy names silently or aloud, taking care to keep the mind free from worldly matters. We then gather offerings for the Deity. If mealtime is near, we eat only after puja has been concluded. Although the outer details of our worship are important, it is our inner feelings and thoughts, our love and devotion, which are the truest offering we can make. The Vedas testify, ”The Gods, led by the spirit, honor faith in their worship. Faith is composed of the heart’s intention. Light comes through faith. Through faith men come to prayer, faith in the morning, faith at noon and at the setting of the sun. O faith, give us faith!” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 112 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
CONTINUITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS
Students functioning odically and out of actinic harmony with their satguru found that they did not have control of the actinic power and had difficulty in maintaining the continuity of consciousness of the yoga path and its teachings. Something went wrong. In realizing this, these students wondered what they could do to regain and maintain this awakening. They knew the laws of the disciplines, the practices. They entered into concentration and meditation, and yet they were not able to maintain their power. They discovered that it was the law of actinic harmony in effect between themselves and their satguru that maintained them as actinic force channels through a deeper state of comprehension. By working with the law of harmonious flow of actinic forces, they would have been able to enter into complete harmony with all states of their own mind and those of their satguru, whether or not they were in his presence.
This particular yoga master had gained a cumulative power of actinic force within himself through his yoga unfoldment, enabling him to hold the vibration of comprehension for his students. Because his actinic yoga students were in harmony with him, they were tuned into his actinic force reservoir. The odic yoga students analyzed themselves and found that much of the time they were not in harmony with the satguru, that they were mentally criticizing him on worldly matters or debating with him in a way which they did not think would make much difference. And they did not use their actinic power to resolve these differences. In discovering this, they went to the guru and said, ”We have realized something about the necessity of being in harmony with you.” The guru said, ”Yes, you have realized your own actinic force, and now I am going to start testing you.” In his testing he showed them consciously that they had been attached to their personalities and had not been able to attain any realization at all, because of this attachment.
There are some people who go after a job with the idea of working for advancement. But after they are settled into the routine for awhile, they begin to lose their impetus, their self-reliance. They begin to feel, ”Oh, it’s too much trouble; there are too many blocks in the way.” In their mind they keep working for promotion, but never really get around to doing anything to advance themselves. These yoga students were in the same predicament. They had started their yoga training, and then became settled and comfortable in it. They began to lose their impetus for unfoldment subconsciously. In other words, they began to live instinctively, using only the odic force.
To demonstrate the difference between the use of odic and actinic forces, this Indian satguru began to test his students, asking them to do different tasks. He would start them on one thing, and when they were in the middle of it and personally attached to the doing, he would ask them to do something different. The students found it very hard to drop one thing and go into another because, involving themselves in odic power, they had become egotistically attached to what they were doing, instead of just enjoying the action. When the guru showed them how they were more interested in and attached to material things than to awakening an actinic cognition and comprehension of the truths within themselves, they were able at that time to comprehend what he was saying. But the comprehension was projected to them from the guru, maintained by his own actinic vibration at the moment of their harmony. They had yet to awaken this ability on their own.
It is the actinic continuity of comprehension that is the important ability to be awakened and maintained in this study. For instance, if you comprehend formlessness, and then you find that you comprehend the form of a particular experience, you have to maintain that comprehension while you are going through your everyday-world experiences in the external mind. In other words, you must become conscious of having actinically comprehended something that is out of the realms of the lower states of consciousness.
By holding your mind to one particular physical object and seeing how long you can maintain this one-pointedness, you are mastering the art of concentration, controlling the odic forces. You will discover the consciousness of comprehension that encompasses an entire principle, and eventually all the great yogic laws of life. Comprehension is superconsciousness, the actinic force flowing through the mind; and maintaining the consciousness of comprehension is having conscious control of the superconscious mind.
SUTRA 112 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
FORCED MARRIAGE IS PROHIBITED
Siva’s followers are forbidden to force any marriage arrangement that overrides astrological incompatibility, the couple’s feelings or the guru’s advice. To do so would bind them to a life of unsolvable problems. Aum.
LESSON 112 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
LIVING IN THE ETERNAL NOW
To begin to work toward establishing yourself in the eternal now, first limit time and space by not thinking about or discussing events that happened more than four days past or will happen more than four days in the future. This keeps awareness reined in, focused. Be aware. Ask yourself, ”Am I fully aware of myself and what I’m doing right now?”
Once you have gained a little control of awareness in this way, try to sit quietly each day and just be. Don’t think. Don’t plan. Don’t remember. Just sit and be in the now. That’s not as simple as it sounds, for we are accustomed to novelty and constant activity in the mind and not to the simplicity of being. Just sit and be the energy in your spine and head. Feel the simplicity of this energy in every atom of yourself. Think energy. Don’t think body. Don’t think about yesterday or tomorrow. They don’t exist, except in your ability to reconstruct the yesterdays and to create the tomorrows. Now is the only time. This simple exercise of sitting and being is a wonderful way to wash away the past, but it requires a little discipline. You have to discipline every fiber of your nerve system, work with yourself to keep the power of awareness expanded. Regular practice of meditation will bring you intensely into the eternity of the moment. Practice supersedes philosophy, advice, psychology and all pacifiers of the intellect. We have to practice to keep awareness here and now. If you find yourself disturbed, sit down and consciously quiet the forces in yourself. Don’t get up until you have completely quieted your mind and emotions through regulating the breath, through looking out at a peaceful landscape, through seeking and finding understanding of the situation. This is the real work of meditation that is not written much about in books. If you can live in the eternity of now, your life will be one of peace and fulfillment.
Visualize yourself sitting on top of a mountain. There is no place to go except inside yourself. If you were to go down the northern side of the mountain, you would be going into the future and its ramifications, which are only conceptual. If you were to go down the southern side, you would be going into the past and its similar recorded ramifications. So, you stay where you are, at the pinnacle of consciousness, well balanced between past and future. Everything is in its rightful place in the master plan of evolution, so you sit, just watching, sensing the clarity of your own perfect being, learning to live in spiritual consciousness every day. That is your heritage on this Earth.
