SLOKA 58 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE NATURE OF SOCIAL DHARMA?
Social law, or varna dharma, consists of the occupation, duties and responsibilities we must fulfill as a member of our nation, community and family. An important aspect of this dharma is religious and moral law. Aum.
BHASHYA
Every human society defines a complex stratification of community interaction. Scholarly, pious souls of exceptional learning are the wise brahmins. Lawmakers and law-enforcers are the guardian kshatriyas. Bankers and businessmen are merchant vaishyas. Laborers, workers and artisans are shudras. In addition to these four classes, or varnas, are hundreds of castes, or jatis. In Hindu societies, class and caste, which dictates one’s occupation and community, is largely hereditary. However, these birth-imposed categories can be transcended by the ambitious who enter new careers through education, skill and persistence. Social dharma is fulfilled in adherence to the laws of our nation, to our community responsibilities and to our obligations among family and friends. A comprehensive system of duties, morals and religious observances make up God’s law at work in our daily life. Rightly followed, varna dharma enhances individual and family progress and ensures the continuity of culture. The Vedas say, ”When a man is born, whoever he may be, there is born simultaneously a debt to the Gods, to the sages, to the ancestors and to men.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 213 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
GAMES THAT KILL
Nintendo–it’s a toy, but it’s not a game. Toys have real influence in shaping young minds and emotions, more than parents realize. When kids play in an open field or in the woods, they are experiencing nature and learning how to relate to natural things. So many messages are going into their minds, so much information is being absorbed. It’s very different when our kids spend their hours alone with popular video games like Nintendo, which work within the subterranean stratum of the subjective mind, aligning vasanas in the chitta to kill, kill, kill.
Nintendo–it awakens the desires to succeed through intimidation and force. Nintendo–it teaches kids that the world is full of enemies to be slayed, opponents to be conquered, attackers to be attacked first. Nintendo–it complements a strategy to develop a nation of terrorists within every home that harbors this asuric mechanism. For those who don’t know, Nintendo is a Japanese-produced video computer system that plays a variety of arcade-type games. And there are many other such games that you can buy on CD-ROM or play interactively on the Internet.
To develop sattvic youth for a brave new world, we have recently asked moms and dads and the youths themselves to disarm themselves of toy guns and knives, and of Nintendo and all other kinds of computerized killer games. Among the families in our fellowship, this has been accomplished. Lots of seven-year-old children have burned their guns and dismantled or sold their Nintendos in the name of ahimsa, the dharmic principle of not harming others–even in one’s mind, even in one’s dreams–physically, mentally or emotionally. The big games, Nintendo and Genesis, and all the similar computer and video games and toy guns and knives and cannons have been taken out of my followers’ homes and thrown into the garbage cans.
Instead of learning the ”us-versus-them” world, our children are learning about the ”us-helping-them” world of civilized society. It took a little courage, because these games are amazingly popular, and children become attached to them, even addicted. But our homes have all been disarmed, with no more violence masquerading as fun. What about your home? These video and computer games, as well as toy guns and knives and other weapons of death and destruction, educate children that this is the way to live on planet Earth. They learn that to solve a problem, it’s ”bang, bang, bang, you’re dead.” You don’t have to reason with anyone, negotiate, compromise or use any form of intelligence. ”Bang, bang, bang, you’re dead” solves the problem. Is that what we want them to learn? Playing like this hour after hour teaches children that life is cheap, meaningless. Those with the bang-bang-you’re-dead subconscious mind, how will they ever learn that life is precious? How will we ever teach them that living with asuras is different from living with Siva?
SUTRA 213 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
DRAWING WITHIN, RELEASING THE WORLD
Siva’s devotees who are dying concentrate on their mantra and find solace in the holy Vedic teachings on the soul’s immortality, ever seeking the highest realizations as they consciously, joyously release the world. Aum.
LESSON 213 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
PERSONALITY AND INDIVIDUALITY
Many people become attached to their personality and suffer when it changes. One cannot, however, be attached to his individuality. In identifying the difference between personality and individuality, we can say that man’s individuality is the actinic, superconscious mind, which is constant, permanent, ever-unfolding and secure, and deep within, at a more intense rate of vibration than his odic conscious and subconscious mind, which make up the ever-changing personality. It is conceivable that man can have many different personalities, but he can have only one constantly unfolding individuality. And so it is the ego or personality masks we must identify as being the unreal and impermanent, and the actinic individuality as being the permanent, secure, ever unfolding and refined actinic phase of the mind. This week do an internal concentration on the words personality and individuality. Try to locate your individuality by identifying your several masks or personalities that you have created in this life and write your findings on why you can get attached to personality but cannot get attached to individuality.
You perhaps have had a series of good, positive and constructive experiences. They have gone deep into your subconscious mind. The subconscious mind has reorganized itself, giving you a more positive, constructive, fruitful outlook on life. As a result, several weeks later your friends say to you, ”You look different. Your face has a glow. You appear eight years younger.” These compliments also go into your subconscious mind, and you begin to feel good about your physical body. These good feelings, constructive, healthy feelings, again go into the subconscious mind and build from within itself a new atomic structure for the physical body. You take a new lease on life. Your body grows younger because your mind has had good impressions placed within it.
Think on this. Be renewed by a change of your mind, and seek for the constructive experiences with a positive reaction. Allow the reaction to bear fruit within the subconscious mind. Concentrate and feel the good feelings permeating the nerve currents running through the physical body, thus being renewed actinically from within. Good feelings are like food to the physical body. Food from deep within the nervous system, fed out through the circulatory system, right out to the skin, makes for an inner glow which can be seen on your face and through the rest of the body. This constitutes happy organs. In other words, all of the organs of the body are working in perfect timing, one with another, being proportionately fed by actinic energy and the vital odic forces. A good, well-balanced ”force diet” makes for healthy organs and controlled, calm, central and sympathetic nerve systems.
