The Purpose of Life, Part 1
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: Gurudeva returned to Ceylon after 20 years in 1969 to carry through his mission to Yogaswami and made plans for the Alaveddy Ashram to expand its service to the Tamil community. The immortal soul body has seen many lives come and go; find that place that has never changed, Anif in Shum, an area within you that’s calm, peaceful, dynamic, vibrant, watching. That sacredness within you, the core of you, is the observer of all experience. That is anif. Come into the clear white life, the path to realization of the Self. "Master Course Trilogy, 1970 Master Course,” “Guru Chronicles,” “ Merging with Siva”, Lessons 15. 16.
Transcription:
Good morning everyone.
Today we are starting a new lesson from "Merging with Siva" which is Chapter 3 and is entitled "The Purpose of Life" and is drawn from "The 1970 Master Course."
And before we look at the text we're describing some events from 1969 from "The Guru Chronicles" to give a historical setting to when these lessons were created.
"What was most dear to Gurudeva during this three-month odyssey was his return to Ceylon, Satguru Yogaswami’s home. Twenty years had passed since he left the island, and he had longed to be back. The Saivites of Jaffna received him with enormous respect, with pomp and ceremony spiced with a little uncertainty. Ha, ha, that's a nice phrase, '...spiced with a little uncertainty.' They knew Yogaswami had said, 'I have a man in America,' and they could see that the American guru was a remarkable soul, but there was resistance, a reluctance, to take a Western man as spiritual guru. It had never happened, and some were determined it never would. But Gurudeva paid them no heed. He had his mission from Yogaswami and he would carry it forward, with or without them.
"He sponsored special feasts and festivities centering around the Subramuniya Ashram and initiated a resident program for his monastics there, whereby they would stay for extended periods at the ashram to broaden their personal exposure to Hinduism and gather scriptures for publication in the West. Temple pujas, temple talks, cultural events and gatherings filled the days. With not a single hotel in the area, Innersearchers stayed, in twos and threes, in the homes of Yoga swami’s disciples, living the Saivite culture they had only heard tales of, learning the charms and subtleties of the East and making the deep human connections that would tie the East and the West together for decades. Gurudeva was home. All could feel it. He stayed at the home of Kandiah Chettiar, who had introduced him to Yogaswami, and renewed their connections. He wore a white veshti everywhere, to the surprise of all who had never seen him in one. Feeling the time to be auspicious, he gave advanced dikshas to monastics and devotees and made plans for the Alaveddy Ashram to expand its service to the Tamil community."
Very nice.
And from Chapter 3, we have Lesson 15.
"Find the Core Of Your Being
"The superconscious mind and the body of the soul have been around a long time. This immortal body of yours has been around a long time, and it’s seen many lives come and go, many experiences pass by the windows of its eyes. Some need no explanation, because they are the playing out of vibrations. Others do need an explanation, the explanation that would come and impress you intellectually from your superconscious, would give you power maybe to face an experience that was yet to come. So, don’t analyze every nuance of a reaction or try to anticipate the next series of experiential patterns, for life is a series of experiences. They are all great experiences.
"Hold your center. Find the place within you that has never changed, that’s been the same for many lives, that feeling that has been the same within you since you were a little child up to this very time. Find that! Catch that vibration, and you’ve caught the vibration of the soul and identified it to your intellectual mind and your instinctive area of the mind. Then build on that. Work with that. Say to yourself, 'There’s something within me that never changes, no matter what happens'..."
Here's a related Shum word and the commentary here:
anif
The sublime vibration of a place or platform of worship, an altar outside or inside; finding the place within yourself that is absolutely quiet; in anif, we are deep enough within that all of the forces of the mind can be seen and we are, like the hummingbird, totally quiet; from anif, we look out and see the forces equalizing themselves.
And my commentary on the commentary is: A simple approach to experiencing anif as when in the temple feel the sacredness of the murti. Then look for that same sense of sacredness within you. That is anif.
Back to our text:
"Work on the analogy that if your foot hurts, your head doesn’t hurt. If you have a pain in your stomach, it doesn’t mean that you have a pain in your hand. In the very same way, if your emotions are upset and you’re suffering, there’s an area within you that’s calm, peaceful, dynamic, vibrant, watching. That’s the body of the soul. Work with that. Find that within you that has never changed, never will change, cannot change. All it can do is become more than what it is. This will give you understanding. This will allow you to innersearch, because you have an inner anchor which you’re always trying to get into. You have identified the core of yourself very, very thoroughly. And each time you have unwound the emotional patterns and the intellectual patterns of an experience, you’ve graduated out of the classroom and you’re on to greater and fuller experiences in this lifetime. If you would like to live a lifetime where you have no experiences at all, because you don’t like experiences—you’ve had a lot of experiences that have been distasteful to you—you cannot do it on this planet. Lifetimes don’t come about that way on this planet. But the core of you is the observer of all experience of the emotional, the instinctive, the intellectual areas of the mind."
Then we get Lesson 16:
"Awareness as A Lotus Flower
"Be That which never changes. Then what happens? When we become this spiritual body and grasp that infinite intelligence of it, we’re just in a state of pure consciousness and we come into the clear white light. We have a wonderful foundation, the only foundation necessary for Self Realization—at that point piercing the last veils of the mind, for even light is mind, and consciousness is, of course, the mind itself. And then we merge with the Self itself. So, that is the path: experience, harnessing the reactions to experience, becoming the body of the soul, merging that body with the physical body after the instinctive and intellectual elements have been harmonized, coming into the clear white light, and then the realization of the Self. It’s a beautiful path. It’s a challenging path, and it’s the path that you’re on; otherwise you wouldn’t be here listening to the story about the path."
Why don't we stop there.
Om Namah Sivaya
Have a wonderful day.