SLOKA 35 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
HOW DOES ONE BEST PREPARE FOR DEATH?
Blessed with the knowledge of impending transition, we settle affairs and take refuge in japa, worship, scripture and yoga–seeking the highest realizations as we consciously, joyously release the world. Aum Namah Sivaya.
BHASHYA
Before dying, Hindus diligently fulfill obligations, make amends and resolve differences by forgiving themselves and others, lest unresolved karmas bear fruit in future births. That done, we turn to God through meditation, surrender and scriptural study. As a conscious death is our ideal, we avoid drugs, artificial life-extension and suicide. Suicide only postpones and intensifies the karma one seeks escape from, requiring several lives to return to the evolutionary point that existed at the moment of suicide. In cases of terminal illness, under strict community regulation, tradition does allow prayopavesha, self-willed religious death by fasting. When nearing transition, if hospitalized, we return home to be among loved ones. In the final hours of life, we seek the Self God within and focus on our mantra as kindred keep prayerful vigil. At death, we leave the body through the crown chakra, entering the clear white light and beyond in quest of videhamukti. The Vedas affirm, ”When a person comes to weakness, be it through old age or disease, he frees himself from these limbs just as a mango, a fig or a berry releases itself from its stalk.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 190 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
KEEP TEACHING, KEEP LOVING
The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems. Children are perfect devas until puberty, when so many changes come, when prarabdha karmas–the results of past actions they bring with them to live through in this birth–begin to manifest and the growing-up process intensifies. Is there a set way, a rule book, for raising Hindu children in our contemporary society? I think not. But the basic principles of Hinduism have not failed. No, not at all. Teach the young adults to look ahead mentally into the future before making a decision, and to base their decisions for life on the value judgments of Sanatana Dharma as well explained in Dancing with Siva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Catechism, here in Living with Siva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Culture and in Merging with Siva, Hinduism’s Contemporary Metaphysics. This Master Course trilogy is all that’s needed for a fine future for young adults. What are these values? Peace; harmony within the home; tolerance for others; appreciation of the wisdom of those who have gone before us and of those who are older; purity of thought, word and deed; chastity until marriage; and, above all, cooperation and patience in choosing the right partner in life, for marriage is actually the joining of two families.
Marriage is not merely an individual decision between two people who are sexually attracted to each other. No, not at all. A marriage, to be successful, needs the support both of the young man’s family and the young lady’s. The days are going away very fast when, through the dowry system, the girl buys herself a husband or the boy commands a price to take her into his home as a servant girl for his mother.
All this should be explained time and time again to children who are growing up with mixed values. After all, they spend more time with their peers than they do with their parents in today’s world! This means that the parents have to actively teach them as well, and talk and talk and talk on well-rehearsed subjects to keep their children in the home, out of harm’s way and guided into a substantial, happy marriage in which the bride and the groom’s parents get along famously. It is a circle of love when two families marry along with their children.
These matters must be discussed when children are young, before puberty. Give many examples from your life and the successful lives of others they and you know. Later, when they reach the stage of puberty, watch out, for they may reject everything they have heard. But the knowledge is in there, deeply buried in their subconscious mind, just waiting to burst out when the right moment comes. So, even when they are not inclined to listen or discuss, you can know they are hearing. And you can be sure they are listening when you gossip about someone who is experiencing a similar problem they are facing–a high school senior you read of in the paper who is in dire circumstances, or a story with a moral that you have creatively thought up to put across the point that you are trying to make. Yes, they are listening, because who is it on planet Earth that does not just really, really love to hear a good story. Your well-placed parable will lift up the vasanas you implanted early on.
SUTRA 190 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
GOOD FOOD FOR GOOD HEALTH
Siva’s devotees know that a good diet is the best medicine. They drink two liters of water daily, minimize fried foods and avoid junk foods, white rice, white flour, processed sugar and degraded oils. Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 190 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
CONSCIOUSLY SUPERCONSCIOUS
We have to adjust our subconscious to the idea that we are a superconscious being, rather than an instinctive being or an intellectual being driven by the impulses of the five senses. Awareness is the core of us. If we dropped off this physical body today, we would be a superconscious being without a physical body. If we stepped into another physical body tomorrow, we would still be a superconscious being, but with another physical body, different than the one we had yesterday, with an entirely new subconscious and new external environment.
I would like you to visualize dropping off your physical body and going over to, say, Sri Lanka or Bosnia to pick up a brand new body. See yourself stepping into it, adjusting your nerve currents within it, getting up from the battlefield, putting it into the hospital and healing it up and going home to its parents with a medal of valor.
You would have a new physical body, a new subconscious mind and a new external environment to adjust to. In this new body you would soon forget that you are a superconscious being. You would be so involved in being Ananda from Toronto who recently arrived there as a refugee from the war. But the superconscious being of you would know that it was a superconscious being, and finally Ananda would begin to know it, too. New rays of light would be coming through Ananda’s aura. The subconscious would be reprogrammed quickly, and pretty soon Ananda would become a man who meditated, in the very same way you meditated before you dropped off your old body and picked up Ananda’s body on the battlefield. There would not be much of a break in continuity. This gives you a brief look at reincarnation. Your subconscious can readily adjust to this simple concept.
There is one theory of reincarnation that holds we do not have to incarnate as little babies, but that we can incarnate as full-grown people when we know how it is done. More evolved souls can do this because they know the inner laws. Less evolved souls must incarnate through the womb, because this is the process that is most instinctively natural. This is one of the fringe benefits of becoming conscious in the superconscious body. Become consciously superconscious. That is the goal.
