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.
“There are two traditional paths for the devout Hindu of nearly every lineage. The first is the path of the renunciate. The second is the path of the householder,who guides human society and produces the next generation. The ancient ṛishis evolved well-defined principles for both, knowing that unmarried aspirants would most easily unfold by adhering to principles of nonownership, noninvolvement in the world and brahmacharya, while married men and women would uphold the more complex and material family dharma. Though the principles or guidelines for these two paths are different, the goal is the same: to establish a life dedicated to spiritual unfoldment, hastening the evolution of the soul through knowledge of the forces at work within us, and wise, consistent application of that knowledge.“
Satguru carries the lamp which will ignite the maha dipam
Earlier in the afternoon Pravin Kumar begins the puja
Satguru, monks and devotees are present as afternoon turns to evening
diyas are lit
Nandi received an abhishekam hours earlier, during pradosh
Night begins to fall with a full moon in the sky
The flame is carried around the sanctum and then brought outside
Smaller lamps are lit for the acharyas to carry
The flame is lit, and burns brightly
Aum Namah Sivaya
Last night, Iraivan Temple came alive with the radiant celebration of Sivalaya Dipam, a sacred festival honoring Lord Siva as the infinite light of consciousness. This festival commemorates Lord Siva’s boundless nature as an endless pillar of light. Devotees gathered at sunset for the enchanting ceremony. A collection of oil lamps encircled the temple sanctum, casting a serene glow. After a puja to Mahalingesvara, the flame was carried by Satguru out to the front of the temple. The event culminated in the lighting of a grand fire in front of Iraivan, mirroring the traditional hilltop beacon lit at Mount Arunachala in Tamil Nadu.
The lighting of lamps symbolizes the victory of wisdom over ignorance and the illumination of the soul’s inner light. This deeply spiritual evening offers a moment for reflection and renewal, inspiring all to nurture Siva’s eternal presence within, as the sacred flames merge with the starlit sky. Aum Namah Sivaya!
Photos from the day’s first event, the Krittika Homa
Preparation has began
The main Kumbha
Vel concentrating on the homa
Jai Ganesha!
Today is a special day for us because we observe Maha Krittika in the morning, Pradosha Puja in the afternoon and then Śivalaya Dipam in the evening. This morning in Iraivan Temple we held our monthly Krittika Homa with extra blessings on this annual event. Our priest Pravin Kumar performed the homa while Mayilnathaswami was assisting. Satguru attended the puja along with devotees. The abhishekam was done with kumbhas passed into the sanctum by the monks. It was a four-hour long event and everyone who attended felt the divine vibration. Later this evening will enjoy Pradosha and Śivalaya Dipam. Aum!
As announced earlier, we have professionally cloned Gurudeva’s voice based on hours of Merging with Siva lessons he recorded in the late 1990s. We have completed generating the remaining lessons of Merging with Siva in his cloned voice, and we have completed about 5/6 of the 365 lessons in Living with Siva.
Right now the audio files are appearing in the daily Master Course lessons on our website and in the daily email version if you are signed up for that. We are also going to present each book as a audiobook on our website. In this context, we want to generate additional parts of the book. For Merging with Siva, this means generating the Introduction, the resource section called Cognizantability, and the Conclusion. We just recently generated the Introduction, which lasts an impressive one hour and twenty minutes. Here it is–
The Introduction contains some thoughts not found anywhere in the 365 lessons, such as this section called “Nine Ways of Merging with Siva”–
Nine Ways of Merging with Śiva
Merger—that is what this book, the third book in the trilogy of Dancing with Śiva, Living with Śiva and Merging with Śiva, is all about. Some of the big questions about something as wonderful as becoming one with the universe or with God are: Is merger something to accomplish in this lifetime, or shall we put it off to another round? Is merger something that can be achieved even in future lives, or should we consider that it might never happen, or that it just might happen unexpectedly? Is merger with Śiva complete annihilation, an undesirable nothingness that we should delay as long as possible? Shall we cease all striving for realization and wait for mahāpralaya, the end of the universe, the Great Dissolution commanded by Lord Śiva, when every soul, young or old, merges in the All of the All—no exceptions, no one left behind, the ultimate perk of the Divine Cosmic Drama, the guarantee of final merger of every soul? Fortunately, the next Big Bang may happen after Śiva gets lonely dancing by Himself and starts His creation all over again.
Merger on the great inner path described in this book is already happening in your life and in the life of every soul on the planet, in the natural course of evolution. In Sanskrit, we express “Merging with Śiva” as Śivasāyujya, “Intimate union with the Divine.” Nine progressive ways of merging with Śiva are possible today, in fact impossible to avoid. Shall we now explore these nine ways, the wonderful ways of merging with Śiva as we walk the San Mārga, the straight path of dharma?
A jīva, or soul, merges with his potential mother who gives a physical body to which his astral body is attached. This is the first merger. Then, when his first guru, the parents, train him to quell the instinctive mind and become a producing member of the family and the social and global communities, the second merger occurs. Why should these two developments be related to merging with the Supreme? It is because Śiva is the life of our lives, as the venerable saints teach. Śiva is the life of the life of all sentient and insentient beings, the sea of prāṇa, ever emanating, mysteriously, from the All of the Allness of His mystery Being, by which all life exists and all happenings happen. Therefore to merge energies with all other humans without making differences is to find Śivaness in all and within all.
Having merged with the biological and social worlds, it then is for the young jīva, embodied soul, to be introduced by the parents to the family guru for spiritual training. Obedience and devotion to the guru is again another merger into Śivaness, for the satguru is Sadāśiva, or Śiva in form, having realized Śiva in Formlessness. It is from the satguru’s constant, silent emanation that the śishya thrives, as do flowering trees, bushes and vines thrive and grow from the sun’s silent rays and the occasional showers of rain. No words need be spoken, for both śishya and guru know the same—the śishya having had his training in scripture, divine inspiration of song, meaning and dance from his first guru, the parents.
Having walked the San Mārga through the charyā and kriyā mārgas, and having disciplined mind and emotions, the śishya is ready for the fourth merger into Śivaness. This is accomplished through art, calligraphy, drawing divine forms, writing out scripture in one’s own hand and depicting through drama, by learning and playing music, by having all bodily currents move into the rhythm of the sounds of nature, for nature is nāda in the external. It has its own choreography, and this merger is with Naṭarāja, Lord of the Dance. It is also the merger with knowledge of all kinds, of language and mathematics, of the many sciences and arts.
The fifth merger is deeper: endeavoring to penetrate the intuitive world, communing with nature, encountering the many dreams, visions and other mystical experiences that await the seeker of Truth. It is merger with the selfless life, of seeing oneself in others, and others in oneself, of losing the barriers that divide one from another, and the internal world from the external world. It is living a harmonious life with a heart filled with love, trust and understanding for all, desiring to give rather than wanting only to receive. The light that lights each thought picture when traced to its source is the sixth merger—the yoga of detaching awareness from that which it is aware of and being the light that lights the thoughts, rather than claiming identity as being the thoughts, then tracing this light of the mind out of the mind into the beyond of the beyond. Yea, this is the sixth way we merge into the Divine. The Lord of the Dance emanates His own lighting effects, does His own choreography, creates His own music and enjoys, as the audience, His own performance.
The seventh merger is into the nāda-nāḍī śakti, that unrelenting sound heard as an inexplainable “eee,” of a thousand vīṇās being played simultaneously by Vīṇādhāra, another form of Lord Śiva, the maker of sound, the composer of the symphony. The nāda is traced to its source, deep within the within, the city of a thousand lights and sounds, for sound is light and light is sound in this sphere of Satchidānanda, all-pervasive oneness with all form, the Self flowing through the mind, untouched by it, yet sustaining it in a mightily mysterious way.
The eighth merger with Śiva is Paraśiva. Becoming and being timeless, formless, spaceless is the total transformation of the soul body, the mental body, the astral body, the prāṇic body and the physical body. It is the breaking of seals which subsequently makes changes never to be repaired. A new, an entirely new, process begins. It is the ultimate healing of all karmas, the ultimate knowing of dharma.
And now, lastly, once the soul evolves out of the physical, prāṇic, emotional, mental and causal sheaths—annamaya, prāṇamaya, manomaya, vijñānamaya and ānandamaya kośas—and they are needed no more, it evolves into viśvagrāsa, the ninth and final merger with Śiva, as an infant effortlessly becomes a child, a child a youth and a youth an adult. Yes, the soul, jīva, encased in five bodies, is indeed merged into the emanator, preserver and absorber of the inner and outer universes as simply as a drop of water merges into the ocean, never to be found again. This is the timeless path the holy Vedas of the Sanātana Dharma proclaim. As a seed becomes a bud, and a bud becomes a flower, these nine steps of spiritual unfoldment are inevitable for all humankind. A parallel analysis known as dasakariyam, “ten attainments,” is found in ancient Tamil texts.
Iraivan Day is a day each month that the whole monastery devotes to work related to Iraivan Temple and the San Marga Sanctuary. First thing in the morning, we all gather around in the Guru Pitham and prepare the month’s paper newsletters to be mailed to devotees. Once done with that each monk and taskforcer is assigned to do another task, by Yogi Haranandinatha. Here is a look into what Vel was doing for his Iraivan Day. He began by cleaning the Rudraksha Forest Ganesha which hadn’t been cleaned for quite a long time. Vel was very thorough, and Ganesha is now looking very neat and clean. Once done with that, he went to Murugan hill and cleaned the area around the granite Vel in top of Muruga Hill. Once finished, Vel took the Nataraja statue from the Saivite Satguru Path and washed and shined it well. It also hadn’t been touched for a very long time. As you can see, Vel took his tasks seriously and gave 100% effort. Aum!
For the last couple weeks a contractor has been here to install sheetrock on the walls and ceiling of all the rooms in the new office. There is plenty of cutting involved to fit the sheets around all the windows, light fixtures and electrical outlets, and then he applies joint compound where one sheet meets another. He is nearly finished, and then a painter will come in for the next stage.
