SLOKA 107 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE SPECIAL RITE CALLED ARCHANA?
Archana is an abbreviated form of temple puja in which the name, birth star and spiritual lineage of a devotee are intoned to the God by the priest to invoke special, individual, family or group blessings and assistance. Aum.
BHASHYA
If we wish to receive the Deity’s blessing for something special that is happening in our life, we may request an archana. This is arranged and paid for within the temple itself. We give a basket or tray to the priest, or pujari, upon which have been placed certain articles to be offered to the Deity: usually a flower garland, bananas and a coconut (carefully washed and not even breathed upon), holy ash, incense, camphor, rosewater and a contribution for the pujari. The pujari asks for our name, which we tell him aloud, and our nakshatra, or birth star. Then he asks for our gotra–the name of the rishi with which our family is associated. He then intones these, our credentials, before the Deity along with a Sanskrit verse. A brief puja, in which the 108 names of the God are chanted, is then performed specifically on our behalf and special blessings received. At the end, the pujari will return most of the offerings as prasada. The Vedas implore, ”By your favors granted enable us, O Lord, once again to leap over the pitfalls that face us. Be a high tower, powerful and broad, for both us and our children. To our people bring well-being and peace.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 262 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
HOW TO FACE YOUR KARMA
If difficult things are happening to you and your mind is disturbed because of them and you have mental arguments within you because you can’t accept your own karma, go to the feet of Lord Siva in your mind, go to the feet of Lord Siva in the temple with your physical body, and beg for the intelligence to place yourself firmly on the path of Sanatana Dharma.
Though it is true that we must work through all aspects and phases of past actions, there are ways of becoming excused from the punishments that drastic actions of the past impose upon the future. These ways are grace, sadhana, tapas and atonement through penance and the performance of good deeds, thus acquiring merit which registers as a new and positive karma, alleviating the heaviness of some of our past karma. Through seeking grace and through receiving it by performing sadhana and tapas and the doing of penance, the karmas are in themselves speeded up. The going through and meeting and reaping of rewards as well as displeasures embodied in past karma in the present is accelerated through these self-imposed actions. Therefore, the sages say, ”Bear your karma cheerfully.” And as the seeking of Self commences, the karma unfolds in all of its hideousness and glory, to be seen before the single eye and not reacted to by even a tremor within this physical and astral nerve system. The yoga must be that strong. Each time you blame another person for what has happened to you, or cast blame in any way, tell yourself, ”This is my karma which I was born to face. I did not come into a physical body just to blame others for what happens to me. I was not born to live in a state of ignorance created by an inability to face my karma. I came here to spiritually unfold, to accept the karmas of this and all my past lives and to deal with them and handle them in a proper and a wonderful way.”
Humility is intelligence; arrogance is ignorance. To accept one’s karma and the responsibility for one’s actions is strength. To blame another is weakness and foolishness. Let’s begin by not advertising our ignorance. If you must blame what happens to you on your friend, your neighbor, your country, your community or the world, don’t advertise it by speaking about it. Keep that ignorance to yourself. Limit it to the realm of thought. Harness your speech and at the same time work to remold your thinking and retrain your subconscious to actually accept this basic premise of Saiva Siddhanta.
SUTRA 262 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
CONNECTING WITH THE INNER WORLDS
My devotees rush to family gatherings for bhajana, havana satsanga and fellowship, to worship devoutly and sing loudly in praise of God, Gods and guru. They attend Saivite temples weekly and during festivals. Aum.
LESSON 262 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
WITHDRAWING INTO SUSHUMNA
How do you bring about a balance? It is done by regular practice of the five steps. Choose a time to withdraw deliberately the energies from both the ida and pingala currents and to move awareness into sushumna in a very positive way. In the morning when you awaken and at night before you sleep are the best times. Breathe regularly, the same number of counts in and out. Sit in the lotus posture. When you sit in the lotus posture, you are actually short-circuiting the ida current to a certain extent. When you are breathing regularly, through the control of the breath, you are short-circuiting the pingala current to a certain extent. Then, when awareness flows into the core of energy within the spine, you soon become consciously conscious of the sushumna current. At that point, awareness is within and begins immediately to draw upon all the externalized energies of the body, and these two psychic currents are drawn within to their source.
When we chant the mantra Aum, and do it correctly, we pronounce the AA so that it vibrates the physical body. The OO has to vibrate through the throat area, and the MM, the head. In doing this, we are deliberately moving awareness out of the muladhara and svadhishthana chakras, deliberately harmonizing all the forces of the instinct and physical body, and of the ida and the pingala currents. Chanting the AA and the OO and the MM brings the sushumna into power. We are transmuting and changing the flows of all the energies through the physical and astral body and blending them as much as possible into the body of the soul.
The mantra Aum can be chanted at any time. It can be chanted silently and cause the same vibration through the body. When you chant Aum, the ida and the pingala blend back into the sushumna.
You will actually see this happening. You will see the pink ida current begin to blend back into the golden center of the spine. At other times it is seen winding through the body. The same happens with the pingala force. It, too, moves back into the spine, until you are all spine when you are centered in the sushumna. This is how it feels, like being all spine. This beautiful, pure energy flows out through the sushumna and the ida and the pingala and then on out through the body. This energy becomes changed as it flows through the first three or four chakras. It makes what is called prana. This energy runs in and through the body. It is a great mind energy which is in the world of thought. All the stratas of thought are prana. The human aura is prana.
Prana, or odic force, is transferred from one person to another through touch, as in a handshake, or through a look. It is the basic force of the universe, and the most predominate force found within the body. You have to really study prana to get a good understanding of what it is. It runs in and through the skin, through the bone structure, through the physical body and around the body.
Breath controls prana. This practice is called pranayama. It is the control of prana, the regulation of prana, or the withdrawal of prana from the external world back to its primal source. That is why pranayama is so important to practice systematically, regularly, day after day, so we get all the prana into a rhythm. In this way we get a rhythm of the pure life force flowing through ida, pingala and sushumna and out through the aura. We gain a rhythm of awareness soaring inward, into refined states of the ajna chakra and sahasrara chakra, the perspective areas from which we are looking out at life as if we were the center of the universe. This is how we feel when we are in these chakras.
