Lesson 278
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Sloka 123 from Dancing with Siva
Are There Other Terms for Holy Ones?
Many terms name Hindu masters, teachers and aspirants including: jivanmukta, rishi, muni, siddha, mahatma, guru, swami, sannyasin, tapasvin, yogi, sadhu, sadhaka, pandita, acharya, shastri, pujari, shishya and brahmachari. Aum.
Bhashya
A jivanmukta is a liberated soul. Rishi refers to a venerated sage or seer. A muni is an ecstatic mystic, especially one living in seclusion or vowed to silence. Siddha refers to a perfected being or one who has attained magical powers. Mahatma denotes a great soul or renowned guru. The term guru usually describes a spiritual master, but can connote a teacher of any subject. A sannyasin, or swami, is a formally ordained renunciate monk. A tapasvin is an ascetic seeking purification through rigorous disciplines. The yogi is dedicated to intense meditation for inner attainment. Sadhu is a general term for a holy man or wandering mendicant. A sadhaka is a serious seeker of the Self, and is often a monk. The acharya, like the pandita, is a respected teacher and advisor. Shastri refers to an expert in scripture. A pujari is a temple priest. A shishya is a formal disciple. A brahmachari is a celibate student, often under simple vows. Some titles have feminine equivalents, such as sadhvi, yogini and brahmacharini. The Vedas explain, "The brahmachari moves, strengthening both the worlds. In him the devas meet in concord; he upholds earth and heaven." Aum Namah Sivaya.
Lesson 278 from Living with Siva
Two Kinds Of People
I have often been asked how it is that some people work for peace and others seem always to work for contention. There are two kinds of children or souls that are born on this planet and are spoken of in our Vedas and other scriptures. Some come to Earth from up down and others from down up. This means that the children who come to Earth from up down come from a place in the inner world of higher consciousness, and the children who come to Earth from down up come to Earth from a place in the inner world of lower consciousness. We call the place of higher consciousness the Devaloka and the place of lower consciousness the Narakaloka. The Devaloka is a heaven world and the Narakaloka is not.
The Narakaloka exists wherever violence and hurtfulness take place, whether in the inner or outer world. We see such things in action on television. On the astral plane the terrible deeds perpetrated by Narakaloka people are much worse than in the physical world. Children who are born into Earth consciousness from the Narakaloka will not respond to meditation, yoga or any kind of quieting controls. They are strangers to self-discipline and enemies to their own parents. The parents of these offspring do have a challenge, to be sure, and are bound by the karmic implication of neglect to face up to it and make every effort to reform, lift up and thus enhance the learning of the young souls whose forces of deception, anger and resentment are stronger than their responsibilities to parents and society. Many such parents wisely direct their difficult offspring into agriculture, farming and nurturing nature, thus allowing them to blend with the forces of nature and rise into higher consciousness as they learn from the slow processes of nature. Some well-meaning but mistaken families demand of them a high education and suffer the results of their upbringing for a lifetime.
In contrast, children who are born into Earth consciousness from the Devaloka do respond to meditation, yoga and all kinds of methods of self-control. These are the gentle people. Self-control and personal advancement are the reasons they have taken a birth. There are ways to tell the difference between these two types of people. The mere fact that someone becomes penitent would show us that he is really a Devaloka person. This is because Narakaloka people don't become penitent. There is another way to tell the difference, and that is by looking into the eyes of the person. Narakaloka people generally have dull or sullen eyes, whereas Devaloka people have bright, clear, wide-open eyes. The former come from the world of darkness, the latter from the world of light. It is difficult to tell the difference at times, because the Narakaloka people are very cunning, and they will try to appear in the way they feel they should to measure up to your standards. They must be tested.
Peace will only come when the Narakaloka people are lifted up and made to obey the new standards in the world, standards which must be set by the Devaloka people. It is when the Devaloka people are in charge that peace will truly come; it can come in no other way. So, if the Devaloka people really desire to have peace on Earth, they should not be shy but take charge.
Sutra 278 of the Nandinatha Sutras
When To Stop Shunning
My devotees who refuse to shun those who should be shunned should themselves be shunned. But none shall shun those who have reconciled with the preceptor and been publicly welcomed back into association. Aum.
Lesson 278 from Merging with Siva
How Forces Can Go Awry
Odic force is magnetic force. Actinic force comes from the central source of life itself, from Lord Siva. It is spiritual force, the spirit, pure life. The blend of these two forces, the actinodic, is the magnetic force that holds a home together and keeps everything going along smoothly. If a family man and woman are both flowing through the aggressive-intellectual current, the magnetic-odic forces become strong and congested in the atmosphere of the home, and inharmonious conditions result. They argue. The arguments are never resolved, but it is a way of dissipating the odic forces. If the man and the woman are flowing through the passive-physical current, the magnetic odic forces are not balanced. They become physically too attracted to one another. They become unreasonable with each other, full of fear, anger, jealousy, resentment, and they fight or, worse, take their frustrations out by beating, calling names and hurting, in many other ways, each other and their own children who came trustingly into their family. True, it is within the child's prarabdha karmas to experience this torment, but it is the duty of the parents to protect them from it, creating an environment in which unseemly seeds will not germinate. True, it may be the child's karma to experience torment, yet the parents do not have to deliver it. Wise parents find loving means of discipline and protect themselves from earning and reaping the unseemly karmas through improper himsa methods of punishment.
However, if each understands--or at least the family man understands, for it is his home--how the forces have to be worked within it, and realizes that he as a man flows through a different area of the mind than does his wife in fulfilling their respective, but very different, birth karmas, then everything remains harmonious. He thinks; she feels. He reasons and intellectualizes, while she reasons and emotionalizes. He is in his realm. She is in her realm. He is not trying to make her adjust to the same area of the mind that he is flowing through. And, of course, if she is in her realm, she will not expect him to flow through her area of the mind, because women just do not do this.
Usually it is the man who does not want to, or understand how to, become the spiritual head of his house. Often he wants the woman to flow through his area of the mind, to be something of a brother and pal or partner to him. Therefore, he experiences everything that goes along with brothers and pals and partners: arguments, fights, scraps and good times. In an equal relationship of this kind, the forces of the home are not building or becoming strong, for such a home is not a sanctified place in which they can bring inner-plane beings into reincarnation from the higher celestial realms. If they do have children under these conditions, they simply take "potluck" off the lower astral plane, or Pretaloka.
A man goes through his intellectual cycles in facing the problems of the external world. A woman has to be strong enough, understanding enough, to allow him to go through those cycles. A woman goes through emotional cycles and feeling cycles as she lives within the home, raises the family and takes care of her husband. He has to be confident enough to understand and allow her to go through those cycles.
The pingala force takes man through the creative, intellectual cycles. Man brings through creativity from inner planes. He invents, discovers, foresees. We normally consider it as all having been created within his external mind, but it is done through his pingala force operating on inner planes of consciousness. He is not going to be smooth always and living in superconscious states, for he has to go through experiential cycles. He must be inspired one day and empty the next. He must succeed and fail. He is living his destiny and working out karmas.