SLOKA 33 FROM DANCING WITH SIVA
WHAT IS THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION?
Reincarnation, punarjanma, is the natural process of birth, death and rebirth. At death we drop off the physical body and continue evolving in the inner worlds in our subtle bodies, until we again enter into birth. Aum.
BHASHYA
Through the ages, reincarnation has been the great consoling element within Hinduism, eliminating the fear of death, explaining why one person is born a genius and another an idiot. We are not the body in which we live but the immortal soul which inhabits many bodies in its evolutionary journey through samsara. After death, we continue to exist in unseen worlds, enjoying or suffering the harvest of earthly deeds until it comes time for yet another physical birth. Because certain karmas can be resolved only in the physical world, we must enter another physical body to continue our evolution. After soaring into the causal plane, we enter a new womb. Subsequently the old manomaya kosha is slowly sloughed off and a new one created. The actions set in motion in previous lives form the tendencies and conditions of the next. Reincarnation ceases when karma is resolved, God is realized and moksha attained. The Vedas say, ”After death, the soul goes to the next world bearing in mind the subtle impressions of its deeds, and after reaping their harvest returns again to this world of action. Thus, he who has desires continues subject to rebirth.” Aum Namah Sivaya.
LESSON 343 FROM LIVING WITH SIVA
AFFIRMING BASIC HUMAN VALUES
I spoke on global education in January of 1990 at the Global Forum for Human Survival, Development and Environment in Moscow. My message to the 700 religious and political leaders there was that we need, in the century ahead, to teach all children tolerance, openness to different ways of life, different beliefs, different customs of dress and language. We need to stop teaching them to fear those who are different from themselves, stop teaching them hatred for peoples of other colors and other religions, stop teaching them to see the world as a field of conflict and instead instill in them an informed appreciation and a joyous reverence for the grand diversity we find around us. Modern education can do that, provided the approach is changed.
Basic human Vedic values should be taught to every child and every student. These eternal values have nothing to do with race, creed, caste, politics or ethnic culture. Learning how to read and write is not the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal of education is also knowing what to read and what to write, as well as how to live in tune with nature, in harmony with the universe and at peace with oneself and one’s fellow man. A great Hindu saint once wrote, ”Those who cannot live in harmony with the world, though they have learned many things, are still ignorant” (Tirukural 140).
The big question today that spiritual and political leaders are facing is how the peoples of the world are to live on this planet in harmony, and how to correct the errors of the past and the resentments that still linger, to ensure survival of humankind in the future. Education, they know, will play a key role, but only if educators focus first on human values which make us all better people, and secondly on technical know-how.
The human values we are speaking of here are known by all the tribal peoples, as they are inwardly a part of the knowledge within each of us. These principles must be cultivated, however, to manifest in any society, community, village or family. Global education must reach all the peoples, including the tribals, in our worldwide global village. It cannot be one-sided on the part of those who have the resources teaching others what they think they need to know. Rather, all voices must be heard, of the tribal and the industrialist. But will they be heard? Perhaps yes! The intelligentsia of industrialized societies are realizing that they don’t really have all the answers and that traditional tribal communities have something to teach after all. We have simple problems on this planet–food for survival, water, air, shelter and health care. The tribals are well aware of each of these and had them under control before they were conquered. In the same spirit that the modern pharmacologist journeys into the Amazon forests to discover medicines used for centuries that he can apply to world health care, so we in our various spheres of knowledge need to more and more rediscover the old ways and bring them forward.
In Russia, some bright young students asked me, ”What can Hinduism offer in contributing to world peace and global education?” I explained that Hinduism offers a unified vision of man and nature in which there is reverence, not dominion or carelessness. Mother Earth, sustainer of life, is a key Vedic idea. Respect for Earth, for life in its many forms, is found in the American Indian nations, in the Hawaiian religion, the African tribes and the many other indigenous peoples. It was lost by many in recent centuries, but now its depth is being discovered again.
While the family is suffering a lot in many parts of the world, I explained, it is still very strong in Hindu society. We have to keep it that way, and teach the world by our example that it is the family that nurtures the individual and stabilizes the religion and hence the nation. Only by keeping a strong sense of family can humankind hope for a secure future.
SUTRA 343 OF THE NANDINATHA SUTRAS
DISCIPLINES FOR SLEEP
My monastics sleep six to eight hours a day for rejuvenation and astral duties. They refuse a soft bed and sleep on a firm floor mattress, ideally on a neem plank. This custom may be relaxed when ill or traveling. Aum.
LESSON 343 FROM MERGING WITH SIVA
INSISTING ON SADHANA
Many gurus and swamis don’t insist on continued disciplines and sadhanas after a few inner accomplishments have been made. The beginning is the end of the course to them. These gurus and swamis are modern, and often take an easy approach of not putting excessive demands upon themselves or their devotees. Traditional Sanatana Dharma, however, insists on daily sadhana for the enlightened one who desires a greater on-going transformation and for the unenlightened who has little or no anticipation of becoming enlightened.
Puja bells are heard ringing before sunrise throughout the homes of India in every city. In these early morning hours, men and women are priests and priestesses in their own home. Children learn shlokas; hatha yoga is a daily exercise; pranayama is done for maintaining a healthy mind and body. Discipline is the criterion of being a good citizen. In Hinduism it happens to be a religious discipline. The effects of abandoning the earlier yogas upon reaching a certain stage of spiritual unfoldment for gurus and swamis is reflected in the lives of their students. When they began to teach, they would not be inclined to take their devotees through the beginning stages; they would not impart the practices of the first two margas–charya and kriya. They would be more inclined to start the beginners out at the upper stages, where they themselves are now, and abandon the beginning stages. This would be, and is, a mistake, one which many gurus and swamis have lived to regret when their own disciples began to compete with them or turned sour when unable to attain the expected results. Traditionally, the character has to be built within the devotee as a first and foremost platform before even the hint of an initiation into inner teaching is given. This purifying preparation involves repentance, confession and reconcilation through traditional prayashchitta, penance, to mitigate kukarmas. This crucial work often takes years to accomplish.
Once some level of enlightenment has been attained, this is the time to intensify the sadhana, not to let up. When we let up on ourselves, the instinctive mind takes over. We are still living in a physical body. Therefore, one foot must always be kept firmly on the head of the snake of the instinctive-intellectual nature. The higher we go, the lower we can fall if precaution is not taken. Therefore, we must prepare devotees for a sudden or slow fall, as well. They should land on the soft pillows of consistent daily sadhana, worship of God, Gods and guru, and the basic religious practices of karma yoga and bhakti yoga. Without these as a platform, they may slide down in consciousness, below the muladhara, into the chakras of fear, anger, doubt and depression.
The scriptures are filled with stories of certain rishis who reached high levels, but had given up all their bhakti and japa. When difficult personal karma came, each fell deep into the lower nature, way below the muladhara, to become demon-like to society rather than a holy seer and a guiding force.
The whole idea that bhakti is for beginners is a modern expedient. It was created by modern people who do not want to do the daily sadhanas, who do not believe the Gods really exist and who are so bound in their individual personality that they do not accept the reality that God is in and within everything. This nonbelief, lack of faith, changes their values very slowly at first, but changes them nonetheless into those that cry, ”Personal freedom is what is sought, making the little ego big, and then bigger.” Traditional disciplines and the spiritual teachers who know them so well nowadays come under the purview of these ”free thinkers,” later to regret it. This is similar to children being the head of the house, telling their parents what they will do, and what they will not do.
Only the strongest and bravest souls can succeed in enlightenment and maintain and develop it until true wisdom comes as a boon. Therefore, we reaffirm, having attained a small degree of enlightenment, or a fuller enlightenment, stay enlightened, because mukti, the transference from the physical body through the top of the head at the point of death, has not yet occurred. And only after that happens are we enlightened forever. This is the beginning of the ultimate merging with Siva in a physical body! Thereafter follows vishvagrasa, the final, final, final merger whence there is no return, where jiva has in reality become Siva, as a bowl of water poured into the ocean becomes the ocean. There is no difference and no return.
