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Vasana is divided into two, the pure and the impure. If thou art led by the pure vasanas, thou shalt thereby soon reach by degrees My Seat. But should the old, impure vasanas land thee in danger, they should be overcome through various efforts.
Shukla Yajur Veda, Mukti Upanishad, 2. UPA P. 7

Monday
LESSON 120
Means of Atonement
Vitalized by bhakti's grace, a devotee's
conscience is aroused, bringing the desire to confess, repent and make
up for misdeeds. Through divine sight, the soul perceives unwise
actions, performed when in the lower nature, as a hindrance to
spiritual progress. Tantras are many to release the soul from
these burdensome bonds. Penance well performed propels the soul into
its natural state of bliss.
Chakras look like lotus flowers. There are four petals on the muladhara chakra,
which is situated at the base of the spine. These petals unfold one
after another as a person's consciousness emerges upward from jealousy,
anger and fear into memory, reason and willpower. Only then awakens the
consciousness of religiousness and the ability to admit the existence
of God and angelic beings. This new humility causes the devotee to
admit that grace is needed to progress on the spiritual path and
resolve unwholesome karmas of the past, to admit that wisdom is needed to avoid making new unwholesome karmas in the future. The four petals of the muladhara can be described as unrestrained remorse, confession, repentance and reconciliation.
All help is given by the divine devas to those who admit their mistakes and are seen performing a sincere penance. These devas that
oversee those in a penitent state of mind are similar to doctors and
nurses gathered to help their patient become well again. The angelic
helpers surround their "patient," assisting in the relief of mental and
emotional illness caused by transgression of dharma and the guilt that follows. When the penitent is undergoing penance, it is a form of tapas, described by some as psychic surgery performed by the devas working together to bring the soul from darkness into light. It truly is a happy event, but only long after it is over.
When
penance is given, it must be fulfilled, especially when requested.
Otherwise, the life of the penitent is vulnerable to the company of asuras.
Penance is given after a certain degree of remorse is shown and the
urgency is felt by the devotee to rid his mind of the plaguing matter.
Admitting a transgression, I have discovered, is often preceded by one
of three forms of denial: casual denial, soft denial or hard denial.
Say a boy steals some candy from a store. Casual denial is making
little of the matter, "Big deal! Why is everyone so upset?" Soft denial
is rationalizing, "Yes, I took the candy, so what? It was only two
dollars' worth!" Hard denial is to say, "I didn't do it. They have me
mixed up with another boy!"
We all know the refined, uplifting feeling of bhakti. Every
religious person in the world has experienced this at one time or
another. It is the total surrendering of oneself to God and the Gods.
As the soul emerges out of the lower aspects of the instinctive mind,
the muladhara chakra begins to unfold because of the bhakti that has been awakened through daily worship and sadhana.
Admission and honest confession then bring up repentant feelings
through the subsuperconscious mind quite unbidden. When this happens
within the devotee, it is truly a boon, marking progress on the
spiritual path. Confession, the voice of the soul, can now be heard. As
the intellect clears, the honest truths of experience, formerly hidden
to oneself as well as to others, are revealed. The soul, the
conscience, emerges in all honesty and remorsefully confesses the
burdens it has been carrying. Yes, confession is truly the voice of the
soul. Nothing is hidden to oneself when dharma supersedes adharma.
Tuesday
LESSON 121
Confession And Penance
As a mature being in the higher nature, above the muladhara chakra, ever seeking higher plateaus through sadhana, the
Saivite seeks peace whenever the mind is troubled. How does such a
Saivite confess? How does one tell of the reactions to misdeeds
performed in all innocence when but a child in the lower consciousness,
living in the lower nature, below the muladhara chakra? How and whom does one tell of misdeeds performed during a lapse of conscience, even when living a life of dharma? A Saivite confesses to God Siva, the Gods or his guru. To confess to God Siva, go to His temple and mentally, psychically place your burden at the holy feet of the murti in
the sanctum sanctorum. To confess to Gods Murugan or Ganesha, go to
their temple and place your confession at their holy feet. Or go to
your satguru and tell him of your inner plight, holding nothing
back. This is how a Saivite confesses inner burdens as he emerges out
of the instinctive mind of the lower nature into the purified intellect
of the higher nature.
Yes, reconciliation is food for
the soul. After the soul has unburdened itself of the dross of the
lower mind through honest confession, a resolution must be made not to
reenter the lower states or rekindle the flames of the chakras below the muladhara. To
achieve reconciliation by apology for hurts caused another, or to atone
by performing acts of penance if a long time has passed since the
apology could have been made and received, is truly food for the soul.
There are many forms of penance, prayashchitta, such
as 1,008 prostrations before Gods Ganesha, Murugan or Supreme God Siva,
apologizing and showing shame for misdeeds; performing japa slowly 1,008 times on the holy rudraksha beads;
giving of 108 handmade gifts to the temple; performing manual chores at
the temple for 108 hours, such as cleaning, making garlands or
arranging flowers; bringing offerings of cooked food; performing kavadi with miniature spears inserted in the flesh; making a pilgrimage by prostrating the body's length again and again, or rolling around a temple. All these and more are major means of atonement after each individual confession has been made.
The keynote in serious cases is asking one's satguru to give a specific penance once the problem has been revealed. Once the satguru is
asked for penance, the penance must be performed exactly according to
his instruction. It should be done with full energy and without delay.
Deliberate delay or refusal to perform the penance shows the devotee
has rejected the assistance of the satguru. Further advice and
guidance will not be forthcoming until the instruction has been
fulfilled. Therefore, a devotee in such a condition does not approach
the satguru. He may, however, beseech the guru's assistance and continued guidance if he is in the process of fulfilling the penance over a period of time.
Wednesday
LESSON 122
The Esoterics Of Penance
The inner process of relieving unwanted karmic
burdens occurs in this order: remorse and shame; confession (of which
apology is one form); repentance; and finally reconciliation, which is
making the situation right, so that good feelings abide all around.
Therefore, each individual admission of a subconscious burden too heavy
to carry must have its own reconciliation to clear the inner aura of
negative samskaras and vasanas and replenish the inner
bodies for the struggle the devotee will have to endure in unwinding
from the coils of the lower, instinctive mind which block the intellect
and obscure spiritual values. When no longer protected by its
ignorance, the soul longs for release and cries out for solace. Prayashchitta, penance, is then the solution to dissolve the agony and bring shanti.
The guru has to know the devotee and his family karma over a long period of time before prayashchitta
is given. Otherwise, it may have the wrong effect. Penance is for
religious people, people who practice daily, know the philosophy and
have a spiritual head of their family, people who genuinely want to
reach a state of purity and grace. It is not for nonreligious people.
Just as in the Catholic Church, penance, to be most effective, is given
to you by the spiritual preceptor. It is not a "do-it-yourself,"
New-Age kind of thing. Those who try to do it alone may overdo it. It
takes a certain amount of talking and counseling to gain an
understanding of what is involved. Before undertaking any of the
physical prayashchittas, I have devotees do the maha vasana daha tantra -- "great purification of the subconscious by fire" -- writing down and then burning ten pages of memories, called samskaras, good and bad, for each year of their life to the present day.
Anything
can be written down that concerns you: friends, home, family,
relatives, sports, TV shows, vacations, work, pastimes, indulgences,
anything that is in your mind. This may automatically clear up events
of the past. The idea is to remove the emotions from the experience and
bring yourself to the eternal now. Forgetting the past, concern
yourself with the now, move with life day to day and create a glorious
future for yourself and others. Also, I've experienced that sometimes
just making the confession to the satguru is a sufficient prayashchitta
and nothing else is necessary. What the troubled conscience thought was
bad may not have been bad at all, just normal happenings, but the
conscience suffers until that fact is known.
It is important to note that the vasana daha tantra
must be done by hand, with pen and paper. Various devotees have tried
it on the computer and found it not effective. Writing is uniquely
effective because in the process the prana from the memory
flows from your subconscious through your hand, through the pen and is
embedded in the paper, bringing the memory out in the open to be
understood, defused and released when the paper is burned. Some
devotees have also tried sitting and pondering the past, meditating on
it and even visualizing themselves writing down their recollections and
burning them. This often does more harm than good, as it only stirs up
the past.
Thursday
LESSON 123
Suitable Prescriptions
Anger, I have observed, is the most difficult
fault for people to overcome, because it comes in so many different
forms: pouting, long silences, shouting, yelling, swearing and more.
Psychotherapist Ron Potter-Efron says in his book, Angry All the Time, that
there are eight rungs of anger on the "violence ladder:" sneaky anger,
the cold shoulder, blaming and shaming, swearing, screaming and
yelling, demands and threats, chasing and holding, partly controlled
violence, and blind rage. Some people are just angry all the
time because they live in the lower nature, constantly engaged in
mental criticism and arguments. Anger can eventually be controlled by
putting a sum of money -- five dollars, for example -- in a jar each
time one becomes angry and then donating that money to an orphanage. It
soon gets too expensive to get angry. However, for devotees who are
wealthy, that doesn't work. For them, I've found the penance of fasting
for the next meal after they get angry works.
The "flower
penance" has proven useful especially to young people who have been
beaten and abused by their parents. They put up a picture of the person
who beat them -- father, mother or teacher -- and every day for
thirty-one days place a flower in front of the picture. While doing so,
they sincerely forgive the person in heart and mind. Some are able to
see the experience as their own karma. They forgive their
parents and experience a great deal of freedom. Others have so much
hatred and resentment toward their parents that they can't do it at
all. This penance has also worked for those who have a mental conflict
with their employer. There is a severe penance, too, for one who beats
his children. It involves private self-punishment and giving public
lectures against corporal punishment, as well as teaching classes on
Positive Discipline to the public many times throughout the years.
For wife-beating, adultery and various collections of smaller transgressions, I advise the traditional, age-old penance of kavadi,
putting small spears in the body, at least fifteen, and
circumambulating the temple many times during a temple festival with
the supervision of trained priests. Wife-beating and adultery are very
serious matters; they break up homes astrally and often physically and
create for the perpetrators a rotten birth in the next life. To atone
for all that is very difficult.
Without resolve and remorse,
no penance will work. People have an internal ego and an external ego,
and for many, one is quite different from the other. For instance,
someone may be smiling and joking all the time, but inside himself be
angry and critical of those around him, though he lets no one see that
he is. There are also those who are smiling and sociable on the outside
but crying on the inside over hurts and memories of things that have
happened in the past. The maha vasana daha tantra -- writing
down and burning all the emotion out of the memories of the past, the
hurts of the past, the good things and the bad things that have
happened to us since birth -- harmonizes the internal and external ego
so that we are the same person on the inside as on the outside. When we
write down our hurts and fears and misunderstandings, as well as all
the happy times, our loves and losses, our joys and sorrows -- and then
crumple up the paper, light it with a flame and watch it burn, thinking
of it as the garbage of yesterday -- we detach the emotion from the
memories. Almost magically, the emotion that had held the memory
vibrating within the subconscious mind, perhaps for years, goes away in
the flame. There is nothing left but the quiet memory. As a result,
finally the soul begins to shine forth within the person as the memory
patterns of the deep past no longer bind awareness. The inner and outer
become one and the same.
It is very easy to read the external
personality of an individual by listening to what he says, looking at
what he does and observing his various forms of communication. The
internal personality of the person can be read by observing body
language, facial expressions, movements of the eyes, movements of the
feet and hands, the way a person walks, the hesitancy before he answers
a question. All of this shows the workings of the internal ego, which
generally blocks the natural joyousness of the soul. So, the first step
in spiritual unfoldment is for the individual to harmonize the internal
and the external ego so that he is a complete, integrated person
twenty-four hours a day, and nothing is hidden, even to himself.
Friday
LESSON 124
Releasing The Past
The older we get, the more memories we have, and
those memories contain emotion -- both positive emotion and negative
emotion. Emotion takes many forms. We can have happy emotions, we can
have sad emotions, we can have emotions of depression, we can have
emotions of elation, we can have emotions of discouragement, we can
have emotions of encouragement. As you go over your life, reliving it
year by year, writing it all down from year one to the present, ten
pages per year, you are the author of your own script. You are the star
upon the stage of your own life. You may run into happy emotion,
discouraging emotion, encouraging emotion. It's good to get rid of it
all. If you uncover a period of your life that makes you depressed,
then you have been carrying that depression around with you for many,
many years. Reliving the depression and the unhappy feelings as you
write about the experiences in detail and burn the paper unwinds and
releases the pranic emotional energy from each memory. You
especially want to deal with the traumatic areas of the inner mind and
release the discouragement, the regret, the depression, the loss of
faith in humanity, the loss of faith in yourself and all those negative
emotions that you've been carrying for so many years. They will go away
like paper dragons. They will disappear.
You have three kinds of prana inside of you: spiritual, intellectual and instinctive. When you think, you make or cause a motion in that prana and create a form of prana. You speak, laugh, cry, think and interact with others; all this is the use and movement of one kind of prana or another, or a mixture of the three. In the inner mind, the subconscious pranic
forms have a color and a corresponding sound when they vibrate with
emotion, not unlike a Technicolor production. The purpose of this
ancient tantra is to remove the color/sound from the memory
pattern so that the memory would appear as a black-and-white silent
movie when revisited, without the vivid, vibrating emotion. Your life,
in moving and creating with the prana inside of you, can be
like writing on water. An experience happens and it just goes away,
without residue, without attachment, without lingering emotion. Or your
life can be like carving in stone; each experience remains with you,
embedded in memory by the impact of emotion. As you look back through
the pages of your life, you want to melt the stone, break it up and
make it go away. That's the whole idea, regardless of what the motion
is of the mind. The stones in your past are generally the surprise
things that come along in life. Living a routine life -- you go to work
and you come home, and one day is pretty much the same as another --
does not produce memories with emotions so much. But then you come to a
major change, such as moving to a new home, or some new person coming
into your life. That makes a big impact, and you have to deal with it.
Like many people, you may deal with these things by packing them away:
"I don't want to think about that anymore." "I don't like that person"
or, "I like that person," but you are married so you can't like him or
her too much; so you just pack it away and try not to think about it
anymore. Those are some of the things you want to dig up and discharge,
to break up the patterns.
Each of us has a story. You are the
major actor on the stage of your life, playing the script that you
wrote. You are the director and you are the lighting engineer, the
stage manager, costume designer and make-up artist. When a particular
experience or pattern of experience is repeated over a long period, it
creates in the sub of the subconscious mind a latent tendency or
propensity in that same direction. This is a vasana, which may be positive, shubha, or negative, ashubha. A negative vasana is like a subconscious motor that makes you do things you later wish you had not done. A positive vasana brings success and good fortune. Through the vasana daha tantra, we withdraw the energy from the memories, and in so doing weaken, even destroy, the pathways or vasanas that led us to the experiences that created the negative memories and leave in place the pure, positive vasanas that will continue to create a positive future.
Saturday
LESSON 125
Spiritual Journaling
The maha vasana daha tantra, a once in a
lifetime experience, is the practice of writing down ten pages of
memories on lettersize lined paper (about ten words per line,
twenty-eight lines, totaling 250-280 words per page) for each year of
your life to date and burning them in an ordinary, nonauspicious fire.
To begin, put together a collection of ten blank pages for each year of
your life. Each page must be carefully marked with the page number, the
year and your age at that time. Then set aside at least fifty pages for
each of the other four parts of this tantra. As you proceed in
your journaling, you will find it necessary from time to time to
backtrack or jump ahead to a year when memories pop up related to a
certain period. In other words, it's okay to write about years out of
order, especially when old memories arise naturally, but do so on the
designated pages. This is the reason for numbering each page in the way
suggested above. Each time a page on one of the years has been
completed, it must be immediately burned.
After your
journaling of ten pages per year is complete, there are five more
steps, making six in all. Step two, the "spot check," is to scan back
through the years of your life and see if there are memories you missed
in your previous journaling. These, of course, would be the happy and
unhappy experiences, and anything else that comes to mind. The mere
remembrance of an experience coming unbidden proves there is still
color/sound emotion attached to it. Pay close attention to times when
you did not apply the eternal laws of karma, reincarnation and
the acknowledgment that Siva is everywhere and in all things. Note the
times when you blamed others for what happened to you, when you did not
acknowledge all happenings in life as your own creations accomplished
in one life or another in the past. Be honest here. It is important to
acknowledge when we do and do not put Sanatana Dharma into action in
our lives. Be honest; no one is looking. You are the actor on the stage
of your own experience, having written the script yourself. Write down
those experiences and burn them up as garbage.
Step three is
the "people check" -- to write about each person who had an influence
in your life, including family, friends, neighbors, teachers,
co-workers and casual acquaintances. Write about your interaction with
them, happy times, misunderstandings, upsets and apologies. Ask for
forgiveness, forgive and give best wishes for a long life and positive
future. Call each face before you and write a letter expressing
appreciation, dismay, hatred, anguish, misunderstanding. Get it all
out. Don't hold anything back. No one will read it. It is a letter you
do not mail, e-mail or leave lying around. Just burn it as garbage. The
effect of the "people check" is to harmonize the pranas that
flow from one to another. We are all connected, for we are a one human
race. Those we know and whose faces and names we can remember are the
closest, whether they be friends or enemies. Sometimes enemies are
closer, because they are thought about more than friends. During the
"people check," bring up the love, the forgiveness, the acceptance that
whatever happened in the relationship was part of the birth karmas, the prarabdha karmas,
of each of you. Once the letter or series of letters has been written,
the memories fade into the silent, colorless past. Then you should
truly be able to bring up each face in your mind and mentally say the
six magic words, the magic mantra, "I love you. You love me."
Sunday
LESSON 126
Three More Steps to Clarity
Step four is "sex check" -- to go over any past
sexual experiences, including visual images such as pornography in
adult movies, on the Internet, television or in magazines, dreams and
fantasies. This is quite an obsession for some people, often called an
addiction. Also be sure to write about youthful experimentation and,
yes, masturbation and the thoughts before, during and afterwards.
Include sexual repressions, regrets that you have had throughout your
life up to the present day, especially any that are currently bothering
you, then write them down and burn the emotion out of the memories as
the garbage of the mind. This area is very important, as repeated
experiences that have produced guilt or ended in sadness, and those
that no one knows about but you and your partner -- and happy,
satisfying, longing-to-be-repeated experiences -- do leave colorful
memories. Some are brightly colored and sing happy songs in the memory
patterns, while others are bathed in darkness and resound with dull
tones. Both need to be reduced to black-and-white pictures. The modern
notion of "Let's put this behind us and go on with life'' is held
hostage here as color/sounds pile up in the inner aura and inhibit
creativity, productivity, energy flows and even health. The "sex
check'' should be written in many pages of explicit detail, including
letters to the partner or partners, which are not saved or mailed, of
course, but immediately burned. Be open and honest with yourself; you
may be writing the best porno novel of all times. Include on your last
page of "sex check" some new resolves for the future in regard to
sexual matters.
Step five, the "teacher check," is to write about your relationship with your satguru,
teachers, mentors or advisors, including your first meetings,
initiations, encounters, instructions and any misunderstandings, large
or small. Again, letters may be written, descriptions in detail, about
whatever need be said. Of course, the person's face and name should
always be present in your mind when writing, as if a conversation were
being held. Appreciation can be shown that was never shown,
misunderstandings settled and hurts on both sides healed. As you
complete each writing session, burn the pages as garbage.
The sixth stage is the "penance check." Penance, prayashchitta, is of three kinds: mental, emotional and physical. In completing parts one through five of this tantra, you have completed the mental and emotional prayashchitta.
Now we must deal with the physical in a different way. There will be a
few emotional memories that writing will never cause to go away, such
as not paying full taxes several years ago, stealing something, killing
birds or animals for sport, or beating children, wives or husbands.
These and other transgressions require resolution through actually
physically doing something to mitigate these karmas made in
this life. You can not write them away. Should there be in your life
any of these kinds of experiences that require a physical prayashchitta,
tell your spiritual teacher about them, and if ordained to do so, he or
she will give you a penance to perform to put to rest those specific karmas. If I happen to be your satguru,
write a letter of rededication and mail or e-mail it to me at
prayas@hindu.org before beginning this sixth and final stage of the maha vasana daha tantra.
After these six steps of the maha vasana daha tantra
have been completed, rejoice. Now you are ready to begin the serious
practice of traditional meditation, as you dance with Siva, live with
Siva and merge with Siva.
The maha vasana daha tantra is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Thereafter, you continue your subconscious spiritual journaling, vasana daha tantra,
when needed to maintain the clarity and inner freedom that you have
achieved. I encourage everyone to write at least ten pages at the end
of every year about the just-completed year in the same way, ten pages
for the year, followed by the other steps, including the sixth one.
This annual journaling is called the vatsarika vasana daha tantra.
Those who have performed and continue to perform this lifetime, yearly and when-needed sadhana have
testified to remarkable transformations. They find that they are free
of burdens, clear of mind, joyously alive in the eternal now, eager to
serve and able to enjoy sublime, penetrating meditations. Unlike
before, their past is now small and their future, once limited, looms
large and inviting. They enjoy new-found harmony with family and
friends. They find it easy and natural to fulfill the Hindu restraints
and observances, the yamas and niyamas. Why? They are not burdened by vasanas created by past experiences that have not been understood, resolved and released.
Of
course, at the time of death it is the memories of all the emotional
happenings that pop up before one's inner vision, and which have the
power to bring you back in a future birth to be faced. Those that have
been resolved and released in understanding are no longer strong in the
mind. So, you are effecting a near-death experience, in a sense, upon
yourself by doing this tantra, because you are putting to rest
the memories of the past that you might not otherwise face until you
actually die. This doesn't mean that you forget your past. It just
isn't bothersome to you anymore. It seems almost as though it all
happened to someone else.
PART 1, CHAPTER 18, VEDIC VERSES
When
the soul gradually reduces and then stops altogether its participation
in darkness and inauspicious powers, the Friend of the World, God,
reveals to the soul the limitless character of its knowledge and
activity. Mrigendra Agama, Jnana Pada 5.A1. MA, P. 138
O God, grant us of boons the best: a mind to think
and a smiling love, increase of wealth, a healthy body, speech that is
winsome and days that are fair. Rig Veda 2.21.6. VE, P. 191
O self-luminous Divine, remove the veil of ignorance
from before me, that I may behold your light. Reveal to me the spirit
of the scriptures. May the truth of the scriptures be ever present to
me. May I seek day and night to realize what I learn from the sages.
Rig Veda, Aitareya Upanishad, Invocation. UPR, P. 95
O earthen vessel, strengthen me. May all beings
regard me with friendly eyes! May I look upon all creatures with
friendly eyes! With a friend's eye may we regard each other! Shukla Yajur Veda 36.18. VE, P. 342
There are five great sacrifices, namely, the great
ritual services: the sacrifice to all beings, sacrifice to men,
sacrifice to the ancestors, sacrifice to the Gods, sacrifice to Brahman.
Shukla Yajur Veda, Shatapatha Brahmana 11.5.6.1. VE, P. 394
The world of Brahman belongs only to those who find
it by the practice of chastity and the study of Brahman. For them there
is freedom in all the worlds. Sama Veda, Chhandogya Upanishad 8.4.3. VE, P. 638
What people call salvation is really continence, for
through continence man is freed from ignorance. And what is known as
the vow of silence, that too is really continence. For a man through
continence realizes the Self and lives in quiet contemplation.
Sama Veda, Chhandogya Upanishad 8.5.1. UPP, P. 123
Maintaining the austerity of silence, facing east or
north, having full control over the system of inhalation and exhalation
and the air of prana, he should recite the Panchakshara hymn and meditate.
Chandrajnana Agama, Kriyapada 8.54-55 CJ, P. 80
O Agni, since we are kindling the fire of the Spirit through tapas, may we be dear to the Veda, long-lived and bright in intellect.
Atharva Veda 7.61.1. BO HV, P. 71
Like butter hidden in milk, true knowledge dwells in
all that lives; ever with mind as the churning rod, everyone should
churn it out in himself. Using the whirling rope of knowledge, one
should obtain, like fire by friction, that partless, stainless silence;
"I am Brahman," as it's said.
Atharva Veda, Brahmabindu Upanishad 20 -- 21. UPB, P. 690
Say not, "This poor man's hunger is a heaven-sent
doom." To the well-fed, too, comes death in many forms. Yet the wealth
of the generous giver never dwindles, while he who refuses to give will
evoke no pity.
Rig Veda 10.117. 1. VE, P. 850
In vain the foolish man accumulates food. I tell
you, truly, it will be his downfall! He gathers to himself neither
friend nor comrade. Alone he eats; alone he sits in sin. The
ploughshare cleaving the soil helps satisfy hunger. The traveler, using
his legs, achieves his goal. The priest who speaks surpasses the one
who is silent. The friend who gives is better than the miser. sRig Veda 10.117. 6 -- 7. VE, P. 851
Against fear, against anger, against sloth, against too much waking, too much sleeping, against too much eating, not eating, a yogin shall always be on his guard. Atharva Veda, Amritabindu Upanishad 27. UPB, P. 696
Lightness, healthiness, steadiness, clearness of
complexion, pleasantness of voice, sweetness of odor, and slight
excretions -- these, they say, are the first results of the progress of
yoga.
Krishna Yajur Veda, Shvetasvatara Upanishad 2.13. UPR, P. 723
The word Namah should be put first, then the word Sivaya.
This is called the knowledge of Panchakshara, the greatest among the
hymns of the scriptures. In short, the wisdom of Panchakshara is the
matrix of all shabda (word). This wisdom, which emanated from the mouth of Siva, expresses the very nature of Siva Himself.
Chandrajnana Agama, Kriyapada 8. 5-6 CJ, P. 72-73
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