We are pure energy. We chose the chakras we're going to express our energy, the life force through. Transmutation of energy from one chakra up to a higher one. Speaking originates in our thought. Harness the thought. Expressing willpower, challenging ourselves through inner striving. Opening ourselves to the purified blessings of the Deity, keeping energy in the higher chakras through temple worship and daily vigil.

Master Course, Lesson 80. Merging with Siva, Cognizantability, Canto 5

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

Reading from Lesson 80 from Merging With Siva.

"Odic and Actinic Forces

"Meditation can be sustained only if one lives a wholesome life, free from emotional entanglements and adharmic deeds. Intensive, consistent meditation dispels the antagonistic, selfish, instinctive forces of the mind and converts those channels of energy into uplifted, creative action. The same force works to make either the saint or the sinner. The same force animates both love and hate. It is for the devotee to control and direct that one force so that it works through the highest channels of creative expression. When this soul force is awakened, the refined qualities of love, forgiveness, loyalty and generosity begin to unfold. In this ascended state of concentrated consciousness, the devotee will be able to look down on all the tense conditions and involvements within his own mind from a view far 'above' them. As the activity of his thoughts subsides, he begins to feel at home in that pure state of Being, released from his identification with and bondage to lower states of mind. A profound feeling of complete freedom persists. "

Had an interesting experience on our website this morning. I read that this morning, just today's lesson. And, I thought of my example of the temple water system with the spigots. You remember that one? In India you have temples where lots of people are trying to wash their hands and feet at the same time. So they don't all queue up in one line, right? You'd have about a thousand people in one line, take a long time. So, they have multiple spigots, multiple faucets on one pipe. So, you can get twenty people can come up to twenty different faucets and wash their hands and feet at the same time. So, that's my usual examples and of course, when it, it relates to fourteen spigots which I'll explain in a minute.

So, I went to our web site, looked up fourteen spigots and what I found was amazing. So, this is July first, 2013, right? So I found July second, 2011; I gave a talk on this very lesson. And with fourteen spigots. Said: "Boy, that's consistency, right?" So I read what I said then I decided well I have to say something a little different this morning and then you could put the two together and you'd get even more.

But that, it's a very good analogy, fourteen spigots. What are the fourteen spigots? Well, the seven on the right are the higher chakras and the seven on the left are the lower chakras. And you have water going through them. And, does the water on the first spigot seem different than the water on the 14th spigot? No it's water, right? It's water going through a spigot. So, likewise, we are the pure energy and we put it through a few of the chakras. Gurudeva says we're usually in about two or three chakras that are adjacent to one another. We're not in just one.

So, by our, by the way we think, by the way we act, by our accumulative past we chose the chakras we're going to express our energy through. It's a choice and we can change it. But, when you look at it that way, it makes the energy which, motiva.., you know makes the expression of energy through willpower for example, and the expression of energy through anger; you get out of this good and bad concept. You're just putting the energy through a lower part of human nature. Still energy.

When you look at it that way it kind of impersonalizes the whole thing. It's just energy management, it's what we need to do. We need to control our life force as to how we want to express it. And therefore, if we express it through fear or anger or jealousy and we look at it through this analogy it takes on a different sense. It doesn't have a bad or a negative sense to it as much as it does through western concepts of good and bad, sinful and so forth. It's just, we made a choice here and it came out that way. Maybe we don't want to make that choice again.

What determines where our energy expresses itself? Well, what we do on a regular basis and what we don't do on a regular basis determines it.

Lots of people like to live in the past. It can be the distant past or the near past. And, in the monastery we don't do that very much. So, sometimes we get visitors, maybe it's a monk's family person and all they do is talk about the past and it stands out. You know. Sometimes people, to fill the time of day, you know, there's not enough good TV shows on so we entertain ourselves by talking about other people. You know, what they did last week. Harmless gossip in a sense but it's talking about the past, right? So, what is that doing? Well, that's putting the energy through the Muladhara Chakra or the first of the higher chakras. Not a bad thing but is it helpful for wanting to experience the highest chakras? No, not at all. It's putting too much energy through memory. No, it's a, why put so much energy through memory. Then it's harder to get it up higher.

One of the challenges, at least for the youngest monks of monastic life is, you know, we're really busy on our days we do our mission work. Then we have retreat days. So, if you have a two day retreat you're really free for one and a half days. You do almost anything you want. And, if you're not careful what'll happen? You'll won't challenge yourself enough and your energy will go down from willpower. You know, it'll just go down from into reason and memory. Because you haven't challenged yourself that day. So, one of the things monks have to learn is: Even on a day off we have to challenge our self. We have to express our energy through willpower with something that's a little hard to do. And that keeps the energy in the willpower chakra, strongly. Otherwise, it goes down and you start your next week and you have to work to get your energy back up where it was.

Well, that's a waste of time right? Spend a few days just getting back to where you were the previous week. What a waste of a few days. So you want to be careful on a day off. You want to relax of course but you also want to use part of it to challenge yourself to get your energies up.

Gurudeva attributes great importance to speech in this process. And the word he uses for moving energy from one chakra up to a higher one is transmutation. So, it just means instead of putting it through one spigot you're moving up one or two spigots on the right. You're expressing it through a higher chakra.

I didn't talk about that two years ago so I get to add that. Comes from the part of Merging With Siva which is even, which is the hardest to understand not that the rest is easy. This is the hardest part, the Cognizantability resource. Gurudeva wrote it in his early years and he doesn't bother to explain everything as he did in his latest, writings. In Later writings he was more careful to try to explain saying, this he just wrote down what he saw. Sometimes it's pretty obscure. But this part isn't.

"Speaking without due consideration and discrimination causes intellectual and psychic upheavals." In saying the wrong thing. Either upsetting yourself or upsetting others because of that. "Therefore the control of speech is the second step in the transmutation of the creative forces. To speak is to create. As to think is to create. Both go hand in hand. As a child is to man and woman so is word to thought. Hence the control of the mind and tongue is of the greatest importance in the transmutation process. "

So, it's not only speaking it's thinking as well. Because what we speak, of course, originates in our thought. So we need to harness the thought otherwise we can blurt something out.

"Excessive talk overloads the subconscious mind, thus making it extremely difficult for the superconscious mind to express itself."

So that means you imagine you're here, looking in. So, this is the conscious mind and what you want to see inside is the superconscious mind. But what's in the middle is the subconscious. So, if it's got too much clutter in it you can't see through it. So, Gurudeva is saying here: "Excessive talk overloads the subconscious mind..." It would be like watching exciting movies all day long and then going to bed every day. You're loading up the mind with all of these images and you're not taking time to sort through them. You create subconscious congestion which makes it harder to contact your superconscious.

Then the one I usually quote: "Observation is the first faculty of the awakening of the superconscious regions. This observation is cultivated by abstinence from excessive talk."

Of course, the key word is excessive. You don't want to stop talking cause we read this. But we don't want to talk excessively. It's a waste of energy and it puts energy, usually, in the memory chakra. That's the reason we talk what we talk, we're talking a lot usually it relates to memory. So that it just makes it harder to get the memory up to what's Gurudeva's calling observation. So: "Observation is the first faculty of the waking of the superconscious regions..." By observation Gurudeva means the fourth chakra, the anahata. That's what he means by observation. The ability to observe the first three of the higher chakras: memory, reason and will comes from the fourth. You're looking down on them.

So, how do we get enough energy into that chakra? How do we get enough energy flowing through that force spigot for it to turn on, for it to work? Well by not having a huge amount of memory; that's the first thing. We got to move it up. And then we have to be expressing our willpower. We have to be challenging ourselves, accomplishing things on a daily basis. Otherwise, the energy, you don't have enough energy and willpower. So, that's why inner striving and outer work aren't totally separate realms, they're inter-related.

The willpower, the ability to use willpower and the willpower we use today, in outer things, is there, is going through that third pipe. And allows us to get up to the fourth pipe if we direct it that direction. And then in, just to repeat, what I read, what I said two years ago: It talked about meditation and worship. Is a, as ways whereby we move the energy up into the higher chakras. Particularly regular meditation, that's what it stressed. The goal is to meditate every day at the same time. That's a really powerful discipline for keeping the energy in the higher chakras. And the way Gurudeva suggests that is to have a vigil. A daily practice that we do which incorporates meditation as well as worship. And that these activities raise our energies.

One of the challenges when I go out and talk, if there is Hindu groups in the U.S,. is that very rarely is temple worship being explained to Hindu youth and children in a way they can understand it. It's more, we go to the temple because we're supposed to and that's the end of it. Not a lot of explanation behind it. But the temple relates to what we're talking about. It relates to energy. It relates in two ways. The purpose of pujas and homas is to bring forth spiritual energy through the murti or the homa fire to bless everyone. The blessings of the Deity. And if we're at least somewhat sensitive to those blessings, somewhat open to them, which is a subject in itself, how to be open to the blessings that come through the temple ceremonies.

First of all they're purified. So what does purify mean? It means what we were talking about before: It gets rid of the clutter in the subconscious mind. It gets rid of what's standing between us here and trying to go into our superconscious mind. It lessens that; it cleans it up. As well as it just pulls the energy up. It puts us into a higher chakras or the higher spigots in our analogy. What does that do? Well it can make us feel happier, feel a little bit lighter about life. Can make us more creative and can even bring us into the deeper sense of feeling close to the Deity. Feeling love of God.

So, those are the benefits of attending the temple in a way where we're open to the blessings which relates very much to our subject of controlling energy.

Thank you very much. Have a great day.