In this upadesha, Satguru shares the second half of Gurudeva’s profound description of the fifth dimension, which relates to the vishuddha chakra. “If we strew clothing from room to room, that disorder is always nagging awareness, bringing us too far out into external consciousness and plunging us into the mire of ‘I should haves’ and ‘Well, it really doesn’t matter.’ Till the outer dimensions are ordered and stabilized in crystal clear patterns of daily life, we never go deep. The foundation must be built first, and it must be strong. It is not advisable to overlook the importance of the most basic and ordinary daily chores and activities. No one wants to build the rest of the house, only to have to take it down later to repair weaknesses in the foundation.”
In this upadesha, Satguru picks up from where he left off last week which was sharing about the fourth dimension in depth. Today he begins exploring Gurudeva’s profound description of the fifth dimension, which relates to the vishuddha chakra. “The perspective that all is well in the world, the experience that everything is as it should be, perfect right now, is of the fifth dimension. In this state we realize a great bliss, a comprehensive, all-encompassing acceptance of the universe as it is, which reveals that the whole of existence is working proportionately one with another.”
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami shares the upadesha that he gave at satsangs in Singapore and Malaysia last month. He quotes Paramaguru Sage Yogaswami comparing the inner climb up the chakras to reaching the summit of Mount Everest, and then elaborates on the stages of this climb.
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
“Many seekers work or even struggle regularly with their meditations, especially those who are just beginning. “How does one know if he is really meditating or not?” That’s a question that a lot of people who meditate ask themselves. When you begin to know, having left the process of thinking, you are meditating at that point. When you sit down and think, you are beginning the process of meditation. For instance, if you read a metaphysical book, a deep book, and then sit quietly, breathe and start pondering what you have been reading, well, you’re not quite meditating. You’re in a state called concentration. You’re organizing the subject matter. When you begin to realize the interrelated aspects of what you have read, when you say to yourself, “That’s right. That’s right,” when you get these inner flashes, the process of meditation has just begun. If you sustain this intensity, insights and knowledge will come from the inside of you. You begin to connect all of the inner flashes together like a string of beads. You become just one big inner flash. You know all of these new inner things, and one insight develops into another, into another, into another. Then you move into a deeper state, called contemplation, where you feel these beautiful, blissful energies flow through the body as a result of your meditation. With disciplined control of awareness, you can go deeper and deeper into that. So, basically, meditation begins when you move out of the process of thinking. “
This is the first in a series of articles focusing on the four padas of Saiva Siddhanta: charya (conduct), kriya (worship), yoga (meditation), and jnana (enlightenment). Each article will explore one pada, providing a clear and straightforward understanding of these key aspects. As you will see, each pada has four stages, also called charya, kriya, yoga and jnana.
Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami gives his weekly upadesha in Kadavul Temple at Kauai’s Hindu Monastery in Hawaii. It is part of a series of talks elaborating on the inspired teachings of Satguru Śivaya Subramuniyaswami as found in his book Merging With Śiva.
“The grand old man of the East who ordained me, Jnanaguru Yoganathan, Yogaswami of Jaffna, used to say time and time again, “It was all finished long ago.” It’s finished already. The whole mind is finished, all complete, in all stages of manifestation. Man’s individual awareness flows through the mind as the traveler treads the globe. ¶Now we come to the real study, and this applies right to you and to you personally: the five steps on the path of enlightenment. What are they? Attention, concentration, meditation, contemplation and Self Realization. Those are the five steps that awareness has to flow through, gaining strength each time, on the path to enlightenment. When we first start, awareness is flowing through many areas of the mind. And if it is a mature awareness, we will say it’s a great big ball of light, flowing through the mind. And if it’s not a mature awareness, it’s like a little ping-pong ball, bouncing around. The little ping-pong ball awareness is not going to walk the path of enlightenment, so to speak. It’s going to bobble around in the instinctive mind, incarnation after incarnation, until it grows to a great big ball, like a great big beach ball. Then finally it will have enough experiences flowing through the mind to turn in on itself. When this happens, certain faculties come into being. One of them is willpower. And we learn to hold attention. We learn to hold awareness at attention. Awareness: attention! “
