Beginning the Moksha Ritau

This morning we begin our winter season, the Moksha Ritau by raising our coral flag. This morning was also the Chitra Nakshatra, prior to the parade and flagrasing, monks and devotees attended a padapuja to Gurudeva in Kadavul Temple. This is the cool season, from mid-December to mid-April. It is the season of dissolution. The key word is resolution. Merging with Siva: Hinduism's Contemporary Metaphysics is the focus of study and intense investigation. The colors of this season are coral-pink, silver and all shades of blue and purple; coral for the Self within, silver and blue for illumination, and purple for enlightened wisdom. High above flies the coral flag, signaling Parashiva, Absolute Reality, beyond time, form and space.

The Moksha Ritau is a time of appreciation, of gratitude for all that life has given, and a time of honoring elders, those in the sannyasa stage of life.
Moksha Ritau is excellent for philosophical discussions, voicing ones understanding of the path through an enlightened intellect. In finance, it is the time for yearly accounting and reconciliation. On a mundane level it is a time of clearing attics, basements, garages, sheds, warehouses, workshops and desks, getting rid of unneeded things, of pruning trees, of streamlining life on the physical plane of reengineering.

\"Man came from God, evolves in God and ultimately merges into God.\"

Thus, whether you fully know it or not, you are the story of God.

Your life is the story of evolution.

Now that story becomes more conscious and purposeful than ever before.

Inwardly, people intuit that they are special, as indeed they are.

They know, perhaps not consciously, but still they know deep down,

that there is a profound meaning to life, a profound purpose for being here.

The rare few find this purpose consciously and begin to pursue life as a great spiritual adventure.

You may be one of these fortunate souls, these old souls, for whom theyogashere are familiar,

for whom the inner light and sounds are like old friends, for whom the worlds material opportunities are like the sand that could never quell the hunger of the famished villager.

You may well be such an old soul, on a journey within.

There is nothing more wonderful than knowledge about oneself that improves self-image.

Everyone almost everywhere has this foremost on their agenda.

But, still, there are those who are content to remain forever as they have been schooled to be.

This division between those who are on the spiritual path of enlightenment and those who are not has existed for as long as I remember, and have been told much longer.

How do we know when someone is on the path or not?

Well, there are signposts, and the biggest and most obvious is this one: people on the spiritual path will not argue.

They will accept, meditate and draw their own conclusions.

It now is obvious that those not on the path, when faced with challenging concepts, which can only be proven by personal realization and transformation, will endeavor to argue them out of their existence.

These are those who resist selfless service of any kind of a spontaneous nature, always harboring an excuse of why they cannot and how they cant.

Realization is a signpost of finality.

The question is often asked, \

How do we know we have realized something?\''

The answer is easy: you just know,

for realization is deeper than belief.

Beliefs can be changed more easily than not.

Realization is much deeper than faith. That can be taken away, too.

But personal realization, especially of the spiritual kind, becomes stronger as the years pass by and is the foundation for personal transformation.

This Self of which we speak is subtle and elusive.

To the ordinary man it is a fiction.

But to those who know this Truth, It is the All in all.

It is the essence of life and love.

The heart itself, with its every beat, sleeping and waking, touches instantaneously into this Self and thus continues its life-giving work.

Thought and feeling could not be if the Self were not.

Nor the senses, nor the stars, nor time and space.

It is there, underlying all,

sustaining all,

giving existence to all,

silently and without notice.

In fact, this Self is so subtle as to be hidden from all but the most awakened.

How can it remain so unknown?

Simplicity is the answer.

The Self is so simple, so uncomplicated, that the ramified external mind overlooks it.

From birth to death and back to birth, we live in the ocean of Being and see only the fishes of objective perception.

We neglect to notice that these swim in the ocean of Being.

When man comes to a point, as he must, when the things of this world possess less attraction for him than the path toward merging with Siva

then only will he begin to detach himself enough to see the obvious, the Ocean of Sivaness that lies on every side, inside, outside, above and below.

Then only will the merging we speak of here become meaningful

Then only will he be able to simplify his life and his thinking, his very perceptions, his hour-to-hour way of looking at things,

enough to quiet the mind, for this Self can only be known in a quieted consciousness.

Not even a thought can remain.

Not a feeling. Not a hope or a question.

One must be very pure for this realization to come, very pure indeed.

The Self reveals itself, by the satgurus unique grace,

to a mind that has, in a mystical but very pragmatic manner, eliminated itself.

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You must die before you die,\' my satguru, Siva Yogaswami, said. That is all that needs to be said.'
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