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November 22, 2002 
Yogaswami sang:
Divine Grace sweeps o'er
And my soul revels in bliss.
With none resisting
Truth reigns supreme.
Is it One or is it Two;
No more do I query.
Aum Sivayanama refrain
Floods my heart with joy.
Yama the terrible God of Death
No more can sting but serve in tremor.
Be no more fearful
For there's nothing to fear.
--Natchintanai. 200.
Our Beloved and Revered Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami
Attained Maha Samadhi on November 12th, 2001
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All are intensely active with their various duties., but the Aadheenam is quiet today
Gurudeva writes:
LESSON 48 from Merging with Siva
Don't Get Side-tracked
"The mystic seeks to gain the conscious control of his own willpower, to awaken knowledge of the primal force through the direct experience of it and to claim conscious control of his own individual awareness. In the beginning stages on the path, you will surely experience your mind wandering--when awareness is totally identified with everything that it is aware of. This gives us the sense, the feeling, that we are the mind or that we are the emotion or the body. And, when sitting in meditation, myriad thoughts bounce through the brain and it becomes difficult to even concentrate upon what is supposed to be meditated upon, in some cases even to remember what it was. That is why the sadhana of the practices of yoga given in these lessons must be mastered to some extent in order to gain enough control over the willpower and sense organs to cause the meditation to become introverted rather than extroverted. The grace of the guru can cause this to happen, because he stabilizes the willpower, the awareness, within his devotees as a harmonious father and mother stabilize the home for their offspring. If one has no guru or has one and is only a part-time devotee, then he must struggle in his efforts as an orphan in the institution of external life. For the world is your guru. His name is Shri Shri Vishvaguru Maha Maharaj, the most august universal teacher, grand master and sovereign."
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Title: Malaysia Conference Part 2 |
Cybertalk: Bodhinatha continues his talk about unethical and ethical religious conversion and cites a number of very useful quotes from Gurudeva's recent book, How to Become a Hindu. Gurudeva encourages religious leaders to behave professionally and ensure conversions that are voluntary, ethical and legal, including a graceful exit from one's former religion by sitting and talking to one's former spiritual leader from that religion. Many other significant points are discussed on this rare, hot topic.
Cybertalk Ends"
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Paramacharya Palaniswami with our new Saivite princess: Shaila Pushpa Sendan.
Saiva Siddhanta Church
Malaysia Mission
Annual Gurudeva Mahasamadhi Puja
Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, our beloved Gurudeva's first Mahasamadhi annual prayers was held in Kulapathi Guhan Sivalingam's residence on the 4th of November 2002.
A Simple yet attractive sanctum was prepared for our Satguru with sarees and flowers decorated around his portrait.
Abhishekam and Arati for Gurudeva's Tiruvadi.
Pancha Arati after decorating Gurudeva's Tiruvadi.
A Natchintanai session followed after the Guru Puja. Our Kulapati and the youth joined in, intensifying the prevailing vibration
Add to the spirit of the day: a Deepavali bhajans session by Kailasam and his boys.
All joined in, clapping and singing out joyfully.
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Work is proceeding on the Iraivan temple site. Here we see the 14th course in place and our team of silpis is doing the tedious work of grouting the joints. This is Raman working on the inside of the sanctum in the back in an area which will be up close to the ceiling when all is done.
We asked Raman to sit up for us.
This is a good shot of Raman, who looks very healthy these days after nearly two years on Kauai.
Adaikkalam shaved his head to give himself a fresh start on Krittika Deepam. He is also grouting joints today. Note the Parampara stone that sits over the temple doorway has been carefully wrapped for protection as the work proceeds. Adaikkalam is a young man and has been very impressed with his experience here at Kauai Aadheenam and working with the temple project has made him more religious. Now, when he goes home, back to India, he wants to go on more pilgrimages and visit more ashrams and visit the holy men of his country.
Andiappan is working on this stone which is a bit wide. The entire face needs to be lowered down to fit.
Down underneath the platform, Sundaram Achari and Karuppiah are grouting the joint between course 14 above and 13 underneath it. These are difficult to reach areas and they are standing on the sand below the current platform.
We asked Sundaram Achari to look our way. The air is dry today, a cool fall breezes blows and the afternoon sun creates striking shadows across the temple.
Sundaram Achari is a wonderful man, full of bhakti and a kindly heart. He is the second-in-command being Shanmuga Sthapati's assistant. and "co-envisionary." Together they discuss the future stages of the construction and plan the daily work flow.
Shanmugam Sthapati stands overseeing the others. He is ever thinking, ever planning, constantly reviewing the overview and the future steps. This is a giant chess-game, and there is no going back. Everything must be anticipated in advance and he is constantly meditating on the moves his crew will have to make in the days, weeks and months ahead. He will be going back to India for a few weeks next year to visit his family, but he really wants to finish this temple and will be returning to Kauai to see Iraivan through to the end.
Karuppiah works with the challenging task of grouting a joint that is deep underneath the lip between this overhanging stone on course 14.
Karuppiah is a religious man and a Muruga bhaktar, pilgrimaging on foot annually from his home to Palani Hills every year.
Here is Chinnu, our wonderful cook. He hails from a family of farmers who are also cooks. He pitches in during the afternoons after lunch is all done for a few hours before going back to the house to prepare dinner. He is also a young man and, like Adaikkalam has been inspired by his stay here and hopes to do more pilgrimage in India when he returns.
Our Hong Kong Orchid trees along the path have matured beautifully over the past few years. Now they arch just over the heads of guests on the paths.
The flowers from this tree are special: delicate, exquisitely colored with a subtle sweet perfumed fragrance.
Siva's gifts are everywhere around us. Thank you Gurudeva!
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A note for transcription readers: The following is Part One of Bodhinatha's talk on Mahavakya. Part Two was posted out of order, yesterday, November 21st,2002. So, if you did not see that and want to read the continuation of this transcript, go to the archives and click on November_21_2002. Aum.
transcription begins
Date: November_09_2002
Title: Gurudeva's Mahavakya Part 1
Category: Hinduism and Tradition
Duration: 8 min., 25 seconds
Date Given: October 30, 2002
Given by: Bodhinatha
Good Morning everyone. We are very happy to have you all join us for our first annual Gurudeva Mahasamadhi Observance.
In thinking about what to say this morning about Gurudeva and Mahasamadhi, I came up with the idea of giving a talk on Mahavakya. One Maha for another! Mahasamadhi, of course, is the Great Attainment and Mahavakya is the Great Saying, sometimes very short, a short statement, a truth.
In Mahavakya, you start with the classical Mahavakya which comes from the Upanishads, which we will look at first. Then we will turn to our Kailasa Parampara. We have four Mahavakya for Chellappaswami and four for Yogaswami. Then, we created some for Gurudeva, unofficial of course. We couldn't reduce it to four. Gurudeva had more to say than you could put in four Mahavakya. But we have some Mahavakya for Gurudeva and we will comment on each of those.
The first ones we will go through rather quickly, there is not enough time to comment on each of the four sets of Mahavakya.
The classical ones all come from the Upanishads and emphasize the identity of the soul and God.
Prajnanam Brahma. Pure consciousness is God.
Aham brahmasmi. I am God. That is a very common one.
Tatvam asi. Thou art That.
Ayam atma brahma. The soul is God.
These four Mahavakya are all focusing on the soul and God and the identity of the soul with God, which of course is one of Gurudeva's primary teachings and the teaching of the Parampara as well. These four classical Mahavakya from the Upanishads, certainly permeate all the teachings of our Parampara.
Chellappaswami had Mahavakya and he not only had them, he would work at them for extended periods of time. The story goes that he would repeat one Mahavakyam for a year or two or three at a time, meditating on it. There are wonderful references to these four Mahavakyam in many of Yogaswami's Natchintanai. Certainly respected them well and speaks about them and interprets them quite frequently throughout all the Natchintanai songs.
You will have to excuse my Tamil. This is written in English, so it is even harder to pronounce because I don't know what is long and what is short.
Oru pollappum illai. There is not one wrong thing.
Before I prepare a talk which I do usually over two days, I get half of it ready yesterday and then get up early and get the other half ready. So when I get up early the first thing I do is, look at Gurudeva's Master Course 'Lesson of the Day'. See if there is anything that stands out for the talk. Because quite often, the 'Lesson of the Day' and life relate in a mystical way, it is amazing.
So I found something. It is talking about, "What the ignorant see as evil, the enlightened see as activities of low minded and immature individuals." I thought that related very nicely to the idea that there is nothing wrong, there is not one wrong thing. It struck me in a way I had not thought about it before but if everyone was high-minded, there would be no one to return your karma to. We would all be stuck, we could not evolve. We would have this karma and no one is going to give it to us, no one is going to hit us, no one is going to speak badly to us. This karma we are going to carry it forever, right? We will never achieve moksha.
So, we need a mix of people just to work through our karma. In that sense you can see, it is deliberate. You don't want everybody as kind of perfect because no one will become totally perfect. You need a world with a mixture of people in it. In that sense, it is destined to be, it is necessary. Otherwise, we would not make spiritual progress.
I had never quite looked at it that way, that we need a mix of people on earth just to bring back our karma to us, move forward.
Eppavo mudintha kariyam. It has been accomplished long ago. I am skipping that one, that one is worth a number of minutes but I can't do them all.
Naam ariyom, we do not know. That is an important one. Of course, this is referring to intellectual knowledge and it says, "We do not know." Normally when you think of knowledge you think you are trying to acquire a lot of knowledge. But this is distinguishing between the knowledge of the intellect and the knowledge of the superconscious.
So when it comes to deeper mystical experiences, when it comes to the experience of God, the intellect does not have a clue. We do not know. If the intellect thinks it understands it, that is a barrier to actually experiencing it. We have to give up the idea that, "I can figure this out rationally, I can figure this out with my intellect and that is how I will come to experience God." It does not work that way.
'We do not know', is the emphasis of the Parampara. Yogaswami's famous remark was, in scolding someone, he said, "It is not in books, you fool." Same idea and of course Gurudeva's Raja Yoga aphorism is "That the intellect is the greatest barrier to the superconscious." So all of that is saying the same thing that when it comes to religion, when it comes to the experience of God, the intellect cannot help us experience God. It can help us do a lot of things. It can help us run a computer, it can help us go shopping, it can help us cook, it can help us calculate, it can help us do many, many things. It a useful tool, it is not that the intellect is not good. It just does not have any place when it comes to experiencing God. It can be the barrier.
Last but not least from Chellappaswami:
Muluthum unmai. All is truth. That one repeats in Yogaswami, coming up.
Moving on to Yogaswami, the first one:
Tannai ari. Know thyself. This of course, we have heard Gurudeva say a few times. Know thyself. Realize the Self. Realize the Self yourself. Definitely, that is a strong theme of the Parampara.
Sarvam Sivan seyal. Siva is doing it all, even creating evil.
Sarvam Sivamayam. All is Siva.
Summa iru. Be still.
transcription ends
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