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Find a quiet retreat for the practice of yoga,
sheltered from the wind, level and clean, free from rubbish, smoldering
fires and ugliness, and where the sound of waters and the beauty of the
place help thought and contemplation.
Krishna Yajur Veda, Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 2.10. UPM, P. 88

Monday
LESSON 85
Sadhana and The Five Duties
When we study and practice our religion, we are not necessarily performing deep sadhana. We are simply dispatching our religious duties. These duties are concisely outlined in the pancha nitya karmas, the five minimal religious obligations of Hindus. The first duty is dharma, proper conduct, living one's life according to the teachings of the Tirukural and atoning for misconduct. The second duty is upasana, worship, performing a personal vigil each day, preferably before dawn, including a puja, followed by the performance of japa, scriptural study, and meditation. The third duty is utsava,
holy days, observing each Friday (or Monday) as a holy day, as well as
the major festival days through the year. On the weekly holy day, one
cleans and decorates the home altar, attends the nearby temple and
observes a fast. The fourth duty of all Hindus is tirthayatra, pilgrimage. At least once each year, a pilgrimage is made to a Hindu temple away from one's local area. Fifth is samskaras, the observance of traditional rites of passage, including namakarana, name-giving; vivaha, marriage; and antyesti, funeral rites.
Another vital aspect of Hindu duty is service. The Vedas
remind us, "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" (Shukla Yajur Veda, SB 1.7.2.1. VE, P. 393). Service to
the community, includes helping the poor, caring for the aged,
supporting religious institutions, building schools and upholding the
lofty principle of ahimsa in raising one's children. Hinduism is a general and free-flowing, relaxed religion, experienced in the temple, in the ashramas, the aadheenams, at festivals, on pilgrimage and in the home.
The performance of personal sadhana, discipline for self-transformation, is one step deeper in making religion real in one's life. Through sadhana
we learn to control the energies of the body and nerve system, and we
experience that through the control of the breath the mind becomes
peaceful. Sadhana is practiced in the home, in the forest, by a flowing river, under a favorite tree, in the temple, in gurukulas or wherever a pure, serene atmosphere can be found. A vrata, vow, is often taken before serious sadhana is begun. The vrata is a personal pledge between oneself, one's guru and the angelic beings of the inner worlds to perform the disciplines regularly, conscientiously, at the same time each day.
Tuesday
LESSON 86
Establishing Your Sadhana
Many of you here today have studied with me for some
time and understand how a good religious life can be lived in this
technological age. You have learned how to pass the knowledge of Saiva
Dharma on to the next generation, the next and the next. But you may
not yet feel fully confident to teach Saiva Dharma outside your home
and immediate family. All of you are preparing yourselves to be
teachers of Saiva Dharma, so that the Saivite who has not had the
benefits of knowing a lot about his religion may know more, so that the
Hindu who does not have the benefit of knowing whether he is a Saivite,
a Vaishnavite, a Shakta or a Smarta may learn the difference and then
fully practice one of these four great religions of our heritage. In
order to teach with confidence, you must train yourselves. Since this
is an inner teaching, you must train yourselves inwardly through the
regular daily practice of sadhana.
Who sets the course of sadhana? The course of sadhana can be set by an elder of the Hindu community. It can also be set by one's satguru. Your mother and father, who are your first gurus, can also set the course of sadhana for their children. Or, it can be set by yourself, from a book. There are many fine books available, outlining the basics of yoga, sadhana and meditation.
Where does sadhana
begin? It begins within the home, and it begins within you. This is
ancient wisdom recognized not only in India, but among many great
civilizations of history. Thus upon the wall of a famous ancient Greek
temple and oracular center at Delphi was inscribed "Know thyself." The
religion of the Greeks, which was in many respects not unlike Hinduism,
is long since gone, but remaining temple ruins testify to its
magnificence. By disciplining your mind, body and emotions through sadhana, you come more and more into the inner knowing of yourself.
You
will first discover that when the breath is regulated, it is impossible
for the thinking mind to run wild, and when the breath is slightly
held, it is impossible for more than one thought to remain vibrating in
the mind at a time. You will experience that when the nerve currents
are quieted through diaphragmatic breathing, it is impossible to be
frustrated, and it is possible to absorb within yourself, into the
great halls of inner learning, into the great vacuum within you, all of
your problems, troubles and fears, without having to psychoanalyze
them.
Through the regular practice of scriptural study, which is a vital part of your daily sadhana vigil,
you will soon find that it is possible to touch into your
subsuperconscious mind and complement that study with your own inner
knowing. After you are well established in your sadhana, you will enjoy a greater ability to discipline your body, your breath, your nerve system and your mind.
We
first have to learn that in order to control the breath, we have to
study and understand the breath, the lungs, how the body is constructed
and how the pranas move through it. This enables us to
understand the subtle system within the body that controls the thinking
mind. Then we are ready to study the mind in its totality.
Wednesday
LESSON 87
The Five States of Mind
In Merging with Siva we embarked on a great
study of the mind in its totality. Here we shall review the five states
of mind. The conscious mind is our external mind. The subconscious mind
contains our memory patterns and all impressions of the past. The sub
of the subconscious mind holds the seeds of karmas that are not
yet manifest. The subsuperconscious mind works through the subconscious
mind, and intuition flows daily as a result. Creativity is there at
your bidding. Your superconscious mind is where intuitive flashes
occur. The accomplished mystic can consciously be in one country or
another instantaneously, according to his will, once he has, through
the grace of Lord Siva, attained a full inner knowing of how to remain
in Satchidananda, the superconscious mind, consciously, without the
other states interfering.
Yes, sadhana begins in the
home, and it begins with you. It must be practiced regularly, at the
same time each day -- not two hours one day, one hour the next and then
forgetting about it for three or four days because you are too busy
with external affairs, but every day, at the same time. Meeting this
appointment with yourself is in itself a sadhana. In the technological age nearly everyone finds it difficult to set one hour aside in which to perform sadhana. This is why in your sadhana vrata you promise to dedicate only one half hour a day. In the agricultural era, it was easy to find time to perform sadhana
two to three hours a day. Why? The demands of external life were not as
great as they are now, in the technological age. Half an hour a day,
therefore, is the amount of time we dedicate for our sadhana.
Brahmacharis and brahmacharinis, celibate men and women, in their respective gurukulas dedicate their time to the performance of sadhana. They rise together early in the morning, perform their sadhana as a group, and then are off to their daily work. The regular practice of sadhana,
they have found, enables them to get along admirably well with one
another because of their newly acquired abilities of absorbing their
difficulties, thus avoiding argument and confrontation. In these gurukulas, found worldwide, various kinds of sadhanas are performed, such as scriptural study, chanting the names of the Lord on the japa beads, group chanting of bhajanas, the singing of Devarams and the yogic
concentration of holding the mind fixed on one point and bringing it
back to that one point each time it wanders. The more disciplined gurukulas religiously administrate group sadhana at the same time each day, every day without fail. Daily life revolves around this period of sadhana, just as in a religious Saivite home life revolves around the shrine room and each one's daily personal vigil.
Ask
yourself what you put first in your daily life. Do your emotions come
first? Does your intellect come first? Do your instinctive impulses
come first? Does your striving to overcome worries and fears and doubt
come first inside of you? Does your creativity, your love for all
humanity, your search for God and peace within yourself come first
inside of you? What are your priorities? The pancha nitya karmas outline
our basic religious priorities. Your inner priorities in implementing
these five duties must be just as well defined, and you must define
them for yourself and therefore, come to better "Know thyself."
Thursday
LESSON 88
Questions and Challenges
When you first begin your daily sadhana, it
is likely to begin in an awkward way, and you may come to know yourself
in a way that you don't want to know yourself. Don't be discouraged
when the mind runs wild as you sit quietly and are unable to control
it. Don't be discouraged if you find that you are unable to even choose
a time to sit quietly for one half hour on a regular daily basis. If
you persist, soon all this will be overcome and a firmness of mind will
be felt, for it is through the regular practice of sadhana that
the mind becomes firm and the intellect pure. It is through the regular
practice of concentration that awareness detaches itself from the
external mind and hovers within, internalizing the knowledge of the
physical body, the breath and the emotions. Concentration of the forces
of the body, mind and emotions brings us automatically into meditation,
dhyana, and into deeper internalized awareness.
The
spiritual practice should be reasonable, should not take up too much
time, and should be done at the same time every day. Often seekers who
become associated with Hindu sadhana go to extremes and proceed
with great vigor in an effort to attain results immediately. Sitting
two or three hours a day, they wear themselves out and then stop.
Here's a formula for beginners: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Friday, twenty minutes to a half an hour of sadhana at the same time every day; Saturday and Sunday, no sadhana.
The keys are moderation and consistency. Consistency is the key to the conquest of karma. If you go to extremes or are sporadic in your sadhana,
you can easily slide backwards. What happens when you slide backwards?
You become fearful, you become angry, you become jealous, you become
confused. What happens when you move forward? You become brave, you
become calm, you become self-confident and your mind is clear.
It is often feared that meditation and religious devotion cause a withdrawal from the world. The practice of sadhana I have described does not detach you from or make you indifferent to the world. Rather, it brings up a strength within you, a shakti,
enabling you to move the forces of the world in a positive way. What is
meant by "moving the forces of the world"? That means fulfilling
realistic goals that you set for yourself. That means performing your
job as an employer or as an employee in the most excellent way
possible. That means stretching your mind and emotions and endurance to
the limit and therefore getting stronger and stronger day by day. You
are involved in the world, and the world is in a technological age.
The sadhana
that you perform will make your mind steady and your will strong so
that you can move the forces of the physical world with love and
understanding, rather than through anger, hatred, antagonism, cunning,
jealousy and greed. Daily sadhana performed in the right way
will help you overcome these instinctive barriers to peace of mind and
the fullness of being. If you have children, the rewards of your sadhana
will help you educate your children properly in fine schools and
universities and see that all of their physical needs are met through
the flow of material abundance that automatically comes as you progress
in your inner life.
Through daily sadhana we shall
come to know the body, we shall come to know the emotions, we shall
come to know the nerve system, we shall come to know the breath and we
shall come to know the mind in its totality. Each one of you will soon
be able to mentally pick up all of the dross of your subconscious,
throw it within, into the great cavity of inner knowing at the feet of
the Gods, there to be absorbed, dissolved and disappear. All this and
more can be unfolded from within each one of you through your daily
practice of sadhana. Sadhana is one of the great boons given to us in our religion.
Friday
LESSON 89
Guardian Angels
When the devas within your home see you performing your sadhana
each day, they give you psychic protection. They hover around you and
keep away the extraneous thought forms that come from the homes of your
neighbors or close friends and relatives. They all mentally chant "Aum
Namah Sivaya," keeping the vibration of the home alive with high
thoughts and mantras so that the atmosphere is scintillating,
creating for you a proper environment to delve within yourself. The
fact that the devonic world is involved is one more good reason why you
must choose a specific time for sadhana and religiously keep to that time each day, for you not only have an appointment with yourself but with the devas as well.
By performing the pancha nitya karmas, living the yamas and niyamas to the best of your ability and performing your daily sadhana,
your religion becomes closer and closer to you in your heart. You will
soon begin to find that God Siva is within you as well as within the
temple, because you become quiet enough to know this and experience
that Lord Siva's superconscious mind is identical to yours; there is no
difference in Satchidananda. From this state, you will experience the
conscious mind as "the watcher" and experience its subconscious as the
storehouse of intellectual and emotional memory patterns. In daily life
you will begin to experience the creativity of the subsuperconscious
mind, as the forces of the First World are motivated through love as
you fulfill your chosen dharma in living with Siva.
Thus
our religion is an experiential religion, from its beginning stages to
the most advanced. You have already encountered the magic of the
temple, and you have had uplifting experiences within your home shrine.
Now, as you perform your sadhana, you will enjoy spiritual experiences within yourself on the path of self-transformation.
It is up to you to put your religion into practice. Feel the power of the Gods in the puja.
If you don't feel them, if you are just going through ritual and don't
feel anything, you are not awake. Get the most out of every experience
that the temple offers, the guru offers, the devas offer, that your life's experiences, which you were born to live through, offer. In doing so, slowly the kundalini begins to loosen and imperceptibly rise into its yoga. That's what does the yoga; it's the kundalini seeking its source, like the tree growing, always reaching up to the Sun.
It
is up to you to make the teachings a part of your life by working to
understand each new concept as you persist in your daily religious
practices. As a result, you will be able to brave the forces of the
external world without being disturbed by them and fulfill your dharma in whatever walk of life you have chosen. Because your daily sadhana
has regulated your nerve system, the quality of your work in the world
will improve, and your mood in performing it will be confident and
serene.
When your sadhana takes hold, you may
experience a profound calmness within yourself. This calmness that you
experience as a result of your meditation is called Satchidananda, the
natural state of the mind. To arrive at that state, the instinctive
energies have been lifted to the heart chakra and beyond, and
the mind has become absolutely quiet. This is because you are not using
your memory faculty. You are not using your reason faculty. You are not
trying to move the forces of the world with your willpower faculty. You
are simply resting within yourself. Therefore, if you are ever bothered
by the external part of you, simply return to this inner, peaceful
state as often as you can. You might call it your "home base." From
here you can have a clear perception of how you should behave in the
external world, a clear perception of your future and a clear
perception of the path ahead. This is a superconscious state, meaning
"beyond normal consciousness." So, simply deepen this inner state by
being aware that you are aware.
Saturday
LESSON 90
Control of The Pranas
A great flow of prana is beginning to occur
among the families of our congregation worldwide because each one has
decided to discipline himself or herself and the children to perform sadhana. That brings the prana under control. If the prana is not under the control of the individual, it is controlled by other individuals. The negative control of prana is a control, and positive control of prana is a control. That's why we say, "Seek good company," because if you can't control your prana, other people who do control their pranas can help you. The group helps the individual and the individual helps the group. If you mix with bad company, then the pranas
begin to get disturbed. Once that happens, your energies are like a
team of horses out of control. It takes a lot of skill and strength on
the part of the individual to get those pranas back under control.
The control of prana is
equally important on the inner planes. When you leave the physical
body, you are in your astral body, your subtle body. It is not made of
flesh and bones like your physical body -- as the Buddhists say,
"thirty-two kinds of dirt wrapped up in skin." The astral body is made
of prana. It floats. It can fly. It's guided by your mind, which is composed of more rarefied prana,
actinic energy. Wherever you want to go, you'll be there immediately.
And, of course, you do this in your sleep, in your dreams and after
death. Many of you have had astral experiences and can testify how
quickly you can move here and there when your astral body is detached
from the physical body However, if you don't have control of your prana,
you don't have control of your astral body. Then where do you go when
you drop off your physical body at death? You are magnetized to
desires, uncontrollably magnetized to fulfilling unfulfilled desires.
You are magnetized to groups of people who are fulfilling similar
unfulfilled desires, and generally your consciousness goes down into
lower chakras. Only in controlling your astral body do you have
conscious control of your soul body, which is, of course, living within
the astral body and resonating to the energy of the higher chakras.
My satguru, Siva Yogaswami, spoke of Saivism as the sadhana marga, "the
path of striving," explaining that it is a religion not only to be
studied but also to be lived. "See God everywhere. This is practice.
First do it intellectually. Then you will know it." He taught that much
knowledge comes through learning to interpret and understand the
experiences of life. To avoid the sadhana marga is to avoid
understanding the challenges of life. We must not fail to realize that
each challenge is brought to us by our own actions of the past. Yes,
our actions in the past have generated our life's experiences today.
All Hindus accept karma and reincarnation intellectually, but
the concepts are not active in their lives until they accept the
responsibilities of their own actions and the experiences that follow.
In doing so, no blame can fall upon another. It is all our own doing.
This is the sadhana marga -- the path to perfection.
The sadhana marga leads us into the yoga pada quite naturally. But people don't study yoga. They are not taught yoga. They are taught sadhana,
and if they don't perform it themselves -- and no one can do it for
them -- they will never have a grip strong enough over their
instinctive mind and intellectual mind to come onto the yoga marga, no matter how much they know about yoga. So, we don't learn yoga. We mature into it. We don't learn meditation. We awaken into it. You can teach meditation, you can teach yoga, but it's all just words unless the individual is mature and awake on the inside.
To
be awake on the inside means waking up early in the morning. You woke
up early this morning. That may have been difficult. But you got the
body up, you got the emotions up, you got the mind up, and your
instinctive mind did not want to do all that. Did it? No! Spiritual
life is a twenty-four-hour-a-day vigil, as all my close devotees are
realizing who have taken the vrata of 365 Nandinatha Sutras.
It means going to bed at night early so you can get up in the morning
early. It means studying the teachings before you go to bed so that you
can go into the inner planes in absolute control. It means in the
morning reading from my trilogy, Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva, to prepare yourself to face the day, to be a strong person and move the forces of the world.
Sunday
LESSON 91
Sadhana and Life's Stages
Devotees who are doing sadhana and who are in the grihastha ashrama, between
age twenty-four and forty-eight, should move the forces of the world
rightly, dynamically, intelligently, quickly and make something of
their lives. Such devotees should not be stimulated by competition. In
today's world most people have to be stimulated by competition to
produce anything worthwhile, even if that means hurting other people.
They have to be stimulated by conflict to produce anything worthy of
producing in the world, and that hurts other people. They have to be
stimulated by their home's breaking up, and that hurts other people.
And they have to be stimulated by all kinds of other lower emotions to
be able to get enough energy to move the forces of the world to do
something, whether it be good or bad. Those who perform sadhana draw on the forces of the soul to move the forces of the world and make a difference.
It is during the latter stages of life that family devotees have the opportunity to intensify their sadhana and give back to society of their experience, their knowledge and their wisdom gained through the first two ashramas. The vanaprastha ashrama,
age forty-eight to seventy-two, is a very important stage of life,
because that is the time when you can inspire excellence in the brahmacharya students and in the families, to see that their life goes along as it should, according to the Nandinatha Sutras, which have the entire ideal life pattern embedded within them. Later, the sannyasa ashrama, beginning
at seventy-two, is the time to enjoy and deepen whatever realizations
you have had along the way. We are all human beings, and every one of
us -- including the sapta rishis, seven great sages who help
guide the course of mankind from the inner planes -- is duty-bound to
help everyone else. That is the duty. It must be performed by everyone.
If you want to help somebody else, perform regular sadhana.
Traditionally,
a Hindu home should be a reflection of the monastery that the family is
attached to, with a regular routine for the mother, the father, the
sons, the daughters, so that everyone is fulfilling their rigorous
duties and sadhanas to the very best of their ability. We had a
seventeen-year-old youth here as a guest in our monastery from one of
our families in Malaysia that performs sadhana. That sadhana enabled him to come here to perform sadhana. If his parents had not been performing sadhana in their home regularly, he would not have been inclined to come here and perform a more strenuous sadhana with us.
I
was asked recently what to do about all the things that you cannot
avoid listening to and seeing on the TV and news and reading about --
atrocities, crime, murders, poverty, unfairness -- which may tend to
disturb one's sadhana. To perform good sadhana, we have to have a good philosophical foundation, which is found in Dancing with Siva, Living with Siva and Merging with Siva -- The Master Course trilogy.
A good philosophical foundation allows us to understand why we have the
highest and the lowest human expressions here on planet Earth.
Philosophers and mystics have for centuries said, "Only on planet Earth
in a physical body can you realize the Self, because only here, in this
world, do you have all twenty-one chakras functioning." You
need the lowest in order to realize the highest. Some people are born
peaceful because of merits attained in past lives. They are born
helpful, and they are the uplifters of mankind. Others are born angry,
scheming, conniving, resentful, and they are the doubters, the
detractors, of mankind. But all have an equal place here on planet
Earth. All are going through a similar evolution up the spinal column
to the top of the head, through the door of Brahman and finally out.
From
the Western religionist's point of view, God is doing it all. He is
punishing mankind. He is helping mankind. And many Hindus who were
raised in Christian schools hold that perspective. But from the
perspective of Sanatana Dharma, the oldest religion in the world, we do
it all. By our karmas we are creating our future this very moment. So, as you proceed in your sadhana, disconnect from the lower and proceed into the higher. As a family person, it is your dharma
to serve society, uplift mankind and help relieve human suffering
within your sphere of influence. But do not try to fix, or even
entertain the desire to fix, that which you cannot fix, which is the karma,
the action and reaction, of individuals who are going through the lower
phases of life and must experience what they are experiencing and which
you read about and hear about daily in newspapers, on TV and on the
Internet.
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