SLOKA 148 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT ARE THE VIEWS ON GOD AND SOUL?
For the monistic theist, the soul is an emanation of God Siva and will merge back in Him as a river to the sea. For pluralists, God pervades but did not create the soul; thus, God and soul remain separate realities forever. Aum.
BHASHYA
Pluralistic Siddhantins teach that Siva pervades the soul, yet the soul is uncreated and exists eternally. It is amorphous, but has the qualities of willing, thinking and acting. It does not wholly merge in Him at the end of its evolution. Rather, it reaches His realm and enjoys the bliss of divine communion eternally. Like salt dissolved in water, soul and God are not two; neither are they perfectly one. For monistic Siddhantins the soul emerges from God like a rain cloud drawn from the sea. Like a river, the soul passes through many births. The soul consists of an uncreated divine essence and a beautiful, effulgent, human-like form created by Siva. While this form–called the anandamaya kosha or soul body–is maturing, it is distinct from God. Even during this evolution, its essence, Satchidananda and Parasiva, is not different from Siva. Finally, like a river flowing into the sea, the soul returns to its source. Soul and God are perfectly one. The Vedas say, ”Just as the flowing rivers disappear in the ocean, casting off name and shape, even so the knower, freed from name and shape, attains to the Primal Soul, higher than the high.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 148 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS A REAL FAMILY?
How to strengthen family ties is a very important question these days. It is said that Jawaharlal Nehru was instrumental in breaking up the extended family structure in his attempt to industrialize India. After that, once tightly-knit families really suffered as age-old family ties became loosened. The wealth of extended families dispersed in many directions as nuclear families formed and money was unnecessarily spent to maintain the ever-increasing needs of a multiplicity of households.
Let’s explore what a family actually is. People seem to have forgotten. In America before the First World War there were wonderful, well-established and large joint families, with twenty, thirty or more people all living as one unit, often in one home. Everyone had chores. And they all knew their place within the family structure. They loved and cared for each other, and mother was always in the home. We may be a long time in rebuilding family togetherness to the point where the extended family is back in vogue, but meanwhile we are still faced with maintaining family unity. Hindus around the world are working hard to rediscover their roots and strengthen family values. Our staff of Hinduism Today had many inspiring interviews with bright young Asian Hindus in America who are working in their communities to make a difference and reestablish the old culture of caring for one another. We congratulate them and welcome their efforts, for they are the leaders of tomorrow.
I tell parents who seek my advice that one way to keep a family together is to show all members that you want to be with them, that you need them in your life. Not: ”Get out of my life, you are bothering me. I have other things to do. I have goals in life that don’t include you.” This hurtful attitude is based on the belief that when children reach age eighteen they should leave home and support themselves. In the West, this pattern is the result of two world wars, when every able-bodied young man left home to join the armed forces. This callousness on the part of parents leads to alienation from their children, who then begin leading independent lives. That leads to the first step in leaving home: keeping secrets from the parents.
With each secret kept, a small distance is created. A large distance is created when five or ten secrets accumulate and deception becomes a habit. When too many secrets mount up, parents and their children don’t talk to each other much anymore. Why do secrets create a distance? Because every secret must be protected. This requires cleverness, sneaking around to keep the matter hidden, even lying. Secrets give rise to angry outbursts to keep others away, such as, ”I’m insulted that you would even suspect me of that!” Arguments erupt that go unresolved, and an impenetrable barrier is established.
Mom and Dad are heard confiding to one another, ”They’re so different now. I can’t reach them anymore.” Of course, the children have been taught to be cautious, in a sense forced into keeping secrets, lest unloving parents curse them or physically punish them without mercy for transgressions large and small. Many are afraid of the wrath of mothers and fathers who rule their families by fear. In today’s world it is so easy to leave home. It is so easy for the family to break up. It’s even expected. Husbands’ and wives’ keeping secrets, similarly, creates a distance between them. The final divorce decree started with the first secret.
In an ideal family, children should be able to tell their mother and father anything and everything. The parents should want to understand and realize that if they don’t understand but misunderstand, they participate in the break-up of their own family. Of course, it might be hard for them to deal with certain experiences their children are having, but all they have to do is look back at their own life, actions and private thoughts to know that their children are living out the same fantasies. The children repeat the still-active karmas of their parents. Children are born into families with karmic patterns that are compatible with their own. I can predict what young people are going to do in their future, and the temptations that will come up, if I know the karmic patterns of their parents. With this knowledge, it is easy to guide them through life, helping them avoid temptations and unwholesome experiences that their parents lived through. All of these experiences are set into motion by the individual himself, by his own past actions.
SUTRA 148 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
CHERISHING CHASTITY
Siva’s young followers are taught to protect their chastity as a treasure and to save sexual intimacy for their future spouse. If a premarital affair does occur, a marriage of the young couple is seriously considered. Aum.
LESSON 148 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE ANAVA MARGA?
Much has been said of the path toward merger with Siva, and much remains to be said. But the truth is this: most people on this Earth are following another path for the moment, the path of self-indulgence and self-interest and selfishness. No doubt, it is the most popular path, and it has its own pandits and masters, who teach how to perfect the path of the external ego, how to perfect worldliness, how to perfect the trinity of I, me and mine, how to perfect self-indulgence. But that is not the ultimate path, which is followed by the few, by mature souls. It is important for aspirants to know that the real path leading toward merger with Siva has many detours, pitfalls and sidetracks that beckon unwary travelers. It is important for him or her to know about these side paths, to be warned, as I am doing now, to be wary of them, to be cautious, to be extremely careful.
One of these I call the anava marga, or the path of egoism. True, it is not a traditional path, but it is a path well worn, well-known in all human traditions. In fact, you could say there are three such untraditional paths, three worldly margas: anava, karma and maya. The last two bonds, karma and maya, are the first to begin to diminish their hold on the soul as one proceeds on the path to enlightenment. And when these fetters begin to loosen, the anava, the personal ego identity, thoughts of ”me,” ”my” and ”mine,” should also begin to go, but often don’t. When karma and maya begin to go, anava often becomes stronger and stronger and stronger.
The karma marga is when the soul is totally enmeshed in the actions and reactions of the past and making new karmas so swiftly that little personal identity, or egoism, is experienced, like a small boat bouncing on a vast ocean of ignorance, the ignorance of the maya marga. This marga is not spoken of at all in Hindu scripture, except indirectly, yet all the sages knew of its delightful distractions. It is truly there for the soul who is bound to ignorance of how to know karma, know dharma, or even know anything but the next and the next experience, as each is eagerly thrust upon him. Here the soul is bound by karmas, bound by maya, giving the abilities to ignore. That is the path that has to be left once on it, the sidetrack to be ignored and passed by. A sharp turn, a firm decision, brings this unhappy soul onto the anava marga, the path of extreme personal identity. Here the realization comes that ”Yes! I am a person on this Earth with the rights of all. I am no longer bound and harassed by experience. I can adjust experience, create new experience for myself and for others. I can be the controller. I am I.”
The I becomes the realization and sometimes the end of the path of the karma and maya marga. The I, that all-important personal identity, so strong, becomes the realization of the small and limited ”self,” which appears to be a big and real ”self” to those who have found this path, which is not the spiritual path, but the path of grayness; while the karma and maya margas are the paths of darkness. Yes, the anava marga is a real marga, a labyrinth. It truly is.
We are concerned to define anava because a word can be dispatched too quickly; a concept can be forgotten. Anava, the personal ego, finding oneself, with a small ”s,” the personal identity, gaining intellectual freedom are all modern cliches. Defining the anava marga appeared in my mind as a necessary thing to do while I was helping devotees to understand the charya marga, the kriya marga, bhakti yoga, karma yoga and raja yoga. To offset the negative with the positive better explains the positive. To understand the pure essence of ignorance, where it comes from, its values, beliefs and motivations, better defines the heights of wisdom out of which comes dharma and aspirations for mukti. Sometimes, in fact, we see anava margis thinking they are yoga margis.
We cannot advance on the path without a starting place. No race was ever won but that everyone began at the same place. To know where we are on the path of life progressing to mukti–which is one of the four tenets of life, dharma, artha, kama, and mukti, merger with Siva–we should not be deluded by the ignorance of what the anava actually is, and what artha and kama are, the strength of their hold on the soul, preventing the dharma and the final attainment of mukti.
