The Path Of Egoity, Part Two
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: Description: We need a personal identity and well defined ego, āṇava, but once we've acquired it we have to let it go. “Love you, use you and abuse you” is the methodology of those on the āṇava mārga. The āṇava mārgī looks at God from a distance. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. The āṇava mārga is easy to leave through total surrender to God, Gods and guru, along with seva, service to religious institutions. Surrender, prapatti, is the key. “Master Course Trilogy”, “Merging with Siva”, Lessons 149-151
Transcription:
Good morning everyone. This morning we are continuing with "Merging with Siva" Chapter twenty-two entitled "The Path of Egoity" from 1989. Tuesday's Lesson.
"Self-Concern Self-Preservation. (This is a continuation of the lesson [149].)
"Then we see on TV the āṇava mārgīs by the dozens. They come and go, are hired and not rehired.
"Before the āṇava mārga, there is only confusion, unqualified thoughts, desires that are only motivative or directional, not crystallized into any kind of a concept that can be manifested toward a fulfillment. The confusion arises out of the drive for self preservation. All animal instincts are alive in such a human being. He does not hold to promises, does not seek to strive, is a proverbial burden on society. Society is made up of āṇava mārgīs and those who live in the other mārgas. Deception, theft, murder, anger, jealousy and fear are often the occupation and the emotions of those living without a personal identity, a well-defined ego.
(So we need a well-defined ego if we don't have one. If we have one then we're trying to get rid of it. Very interesting. So we try, we need to acquire but once we've acquired it we have to let it go.)
"A personal identity and well-defined ego is the āṇava, and the pursuit of the development of that is the mārga. Each purusha, human soul, must go through the āṇava mārga, a natural and required path whose bloom is the fulfillment of the senses, of the intellect and all the complexities of doing.
"It is prior to our entrance upon the āṇava mārga and while we are happily on the āṇava mārga that we create the karmas to be understood and overcome later when we walk the charyā and kriyā mārgas. You have to understand before you can overcome. This is the time that we “do ourselves in” and later understand the all-pervasiveness of Śiva, the laws of karma, dharma, saṁsāra. Yes, of course, this is the time the mischief is done."
Lesson 150
"Fear, Anger and Opportunism
"Those who want to hold a position and those who don’t want to hold a position combined, those who have no time to perform sādhana, who avoid their yearly pilgrimage, whose family cannot gather in the shrine room, who do not read scripture daily and attend a temple infrequently, if at all—they are doing extremely well on the āṇava mārga, in my estimation. Their artha and kāma are coming along just fine. Dharma is ignored, and mukti just may not happen.
"Many people on the āṇava mārga perform yoga, japa, disciplines of this kind, and gain great adulation, as well as business contacts, through it. But nothing is gained other than a few minutes of quiet and aloneness. These are the opportunists, the people who make the world go ’round as we “see it today.
"Swāmīs are most precious to those on the āṇava mārga, giving blessings, amplifying their desires; adulation is sincere but not real. The swāmī is taken into their family as a personal figurehead of it, like a status symbol. They do not enter the swāmī’s āśrama to do sādhana and become a part of his life.
"And if the swāmī rebels, preaches dharma and holds back blessings, he is generally abused. “Love you, use you and abuse you” is the methodology of those on the āṇava mārga. All swāmīs, gurus and priests know this only too well. The āṇava mārgī looks at God from a distance. He does not want to get too close and does not want to drift too far away, lives between lower consciousness and higher consciousness, between the maṇipūra, svādhishṭhana and mūlādhāra and the lower three, atala, vitala and sutala, which represent fear, anger and jealousy. He does not get into confused thinking. That is super lower consciousness, in the realm of the talātala chakra. He is guided by reason. That is why he can come into the other mārgas.
"Therefore, God is at a distance. He sees himself pluralistically, separate from God, coexistent with God. Those who fear God anger easily. They fear their elders. They fear their government. They fear impending disaster, and they fear disease. God is just one more item on the long list of things that they fear. They are not on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Their higher chakras are dreaming benignly, waiting for the consciousness to explore them. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Only then is he a seeker. Only then does his budding love begin to focus on religious icons. Only then is he able to nurture his love into becoming a bhaktar and at the same time a religious person, a giving person. This is the charyā path. We come onto the charyā mārga from the āṇava mārga. We come to Lord Gaṇeśa’s feet from the āṇava mārga. He is now the guide. The personal ego has lost its hold.
"The āṇava mārga, and the glue that holds it together, is ignorance of the basic tenets of Hinduism. There is no way one can be on this mārga if he truly accepts the existence of God pervading all form, sustaining all form and rearranging all form. There is no way this mārga could be pursued by one understanding karma, seeing his manifest acts replayed back to him through the lives of others, his secret diabolical thoughts attacking him through the lips of others.
"The āṇava mārga does not include this knowledge. The dharma of a perfect universe and an orderly life, the consciousness of “the world is my family, all animals are my pets” is an abhorrent idea to someone on the āṇava marga, especially if he is casted by birth in this life. The āṇava mārgī abhors the idea of reincarnation. To pay the bill of one’s indiscretions in another life is not what āṇava is all about. There is a forgetfulness here. When you renounce your childhood, you forget that you ever were a child. You forget the moods, the emotions, the joys and the fears and all that was important at that time."
Next Lesson [151]:
"Surrender Is the Way Out
"The yoga mārga must come naturally out of intense bhakti and internalized worship. The intensity of bhakti is developed on the kriyā mārga. The final remains of the ego are pulverized on the charyā mārga, where Sivathondu, selfless service, is performed unrelentingly with no thought of reward, but a hope that the puṇya, merit, will be beneficial in the long run. The āṇava mārga is easy to leave through total surrender to God, Gods and guru, along with seva, service to religious institutions. Surrender, prapatti, is the key. All the religions’ teachings teach surrender to the divine forces. Great suffering, the psychic surgery kind of suffering, great repentance, is experienced in the overlapping of the charyā mārga with the āṇava mārga. The beginning knowledge of Hindu temple worship, scripture, being dragged into it by some aggressive teacher, later a desire for reconciliation—all this leads to penance, prāyaśchitta, followed by serious sādhana. It is not without a great ordeal and effort, soul-searching and decision-making that one mārga bends into the other or bows before the other before it releases the consciousness to go on. One mārga must really bend before the other before one can be released.
"Before entering another mārga, it is a matter of giving up, which is painful, most especially for the āṇava mārga people, for whom suffering is no stranger. How can someone on the āṇava mārga be convinced that there is a better way to live, think and act? The word here is pursuit. We are talking about pursuit. Āṇava people are always pursuing something, the fulfillment comes on the āṇava mārga, and there is fulfillment, but in a never-stopping pursuit of fulfillment. As soon as we stop the pursuit of fulfillment, we become unhappy, empty, feel unfulfilled and, I might even say, at times depressed."
So, āṇava mārga. Beautiful insights into it.
Thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.
[End of transcript.]