How To Realize God, Part Four
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: The path of Śaiva Siddhānta is the path of Love, of devotion, of discipline, worshiping God on the outside and realizing God on the inside, and when the two come together—transformation! Śiva, on the inside of you is right there. He never changes. If you love Śiva, obviously you have to love everyone else. Make yourself a very simple, uncomplicated person. "Master Course Trilogy", "Merging with Śiva", Lesson 7.
Transcription:
Good morning everyone. This morning we're reading the last lesson in Chapter One of "Merging with Śiva", "How to Realize God".
(And it's a bit short so I'm going to read from the last Lesson in "Merging with Śiva" Lesson 365, the last part of it. Give us a full session. However for the TAKA Transcript we can just do the, the first part and not do this part for the TAKA transcript.)
Lesson 7
"A Path Of Love
"We have been walking through the path of the many Śaiva saints on our garden temple lands. Together we have looked back through history and seen real people living real lives, doing pragmatic things, sometimes foolish things, some even hurtful. There were workers among them, royalty, housewives, yogīs, businessmen, a spiritual community divided by caste but with one thing only in common.
'They all loved Śiva. That is their heritage. That is their message: but there is hope for all of us on this path to Śiva, hope of attaining His grace. These men and women will be remembered as they were for thousands of years. On this path, you don’t have to be a great ṛishi or a highly trained yogī. You don’t have to be a great philosopher. You don’t have to know Sanskrit. Just love God, which is the Life of the life within everyone. And to realize that God is the Light of the light within everyone, you have to be very simple, very uncomplicated, so that obvious realization can manifest through your conscious mind, through your subconscious mind, through your superconscious mind.
"It’s very simple: the energy within our body is the same energy that pervades the universe, and it’s all emanating right out of Lord Śiva. It’s very simple: the light that lights our thoughts, that light doesn’t care—it has no preferences—whether it’s a good thought or not a good thought. That light is illuminating every thought. Take away the thoughts, and you realize that you are just light."
Commentary:
So that last sentence, take away the images and you are just light. That reminded me of our Shum meditation. Shum meditations are in three levels. So the first level of Shum meditation on the inner light.
tyemmuif
sikamchacha
uu
nimrehnimlng
niimf
balikana
Right? We all know that.
But English:
Begin by looking out into the exterior world through the physical eyes, which are slightly opened, and at the same time looking back into the head as if one had pupils on the back of the eyeballs. Tyemmuif. Next visualize a tree. See the image of the tree and the light that lights it up. Repeat this with different trees for a few minutes. Move on to the next portion of the meditation by the command niimf balikana meaning to focus on the light and hold it without any images appearing. It is the moon-like glow that remains where the mental pictures used to be. If the mind wanders and starts to create images, quickly dismiss them and bring it back to the imageless light.
So that's the Shum version of Gurudeva's last sentence there in the text.
Back to the text:
"The path of Śaiva Siddhānta, as you all know, is a very simple path. It’s the path of love, a path of devotion, which makes you want to be self-disciplined, because to maintain a feeling of love all the time, you have to be self-disciplined. You don’t discipline yourself to attain the feeling of love. You attain the feeling of love and then you want to discipline yourself because you love the discipline, because it brings much love.
"The path of Śaiva Siddhānta is worshiping God on the outside and realizing God on the inside, and when the two come together—transformation! That means that you’re different than you were. You have different desires. You have different motivations, different goals in life, because you’ve been transformed. You look at your previous life and you say, 'That’s another person.' Why? Because you have found something real on the inside of you. Thoughts on the inside of you—they’re not real, they’re always changing. Feelings on the inside of you—they’re not real, they’re always changing too. Śiva on the inside of you is right there—never changes. Those of you who hear the nāda, it’s the same inner sound, morning, noon and night, 365 days a year. The light that lights your thoughts, 365 days a year, twenty-four hours a day, is the same. It lights up your dreams also. And the energy of your body—all coming from Śiva.
"Śiva is so close to you. The Nayanars, the saints of Tamil Śaivism, teach us a great lesson. They did so much wrong, but they survived with just the love of Śiva and maintained that love without anything getting in the way of it.
"Of course, if you love Śiva, obviously you have to love everyone else. Love brings forgiveness. Love brings understanding. Love brings feeling.
"All Śaivites of the world love Śiva. They love each other, and they love the Vaishṇavites, the Śāktas, the Smārtas, the tribal Hindus and everyone in the world, because Śiva’s energy is working through everyone in the entire world—plants, trees, animals, fish, birds. It’s so simple. The object of the lesson is to make yourself a very simple, uncomplicated person. Aum Namaḥ Śivāya."
Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.
[End of transcript.]