Total Surrender, Part four
Author: Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami
Description: Description: To learn bhakti yoga choose the finest bhaktar among your religious group and emulate him. Those who have no barriers to love find it is easy to see God in everyone. Shum series; karmic cycle. The yogī yoked within enjoys the amṛita that flows from the cranium throughout his body. Fulfill the basic Śaiva Siddhānta sādhana, the disciplines, known as the pañcha nitya karmas. All the Gods of all three worlds will open their hearts and shower their blessings upon devotees who are sincere uncompromising bhaktars. Shum series; surrendering of divine energies to their source, kamlnsimnyamtyebi, the astral silver cord running through the chakras from the base of the spine to the top of the head. "Master Course Trilogy", "Merging with Siva", Lessons 146-147.
Transcription:
We're continuing with Saturday's Lesson 146. We're about half way through.
"How Bhakti Is Cultivated
"The best way to learn bhakti yoga is to choose the finest bhaktar among your religious group and emulate him. You can read about bhakti yoga, understand it intellectually and learn what it is supposed to do for you. That is fine. But to progress on the path up the spine, it is necessary to be a part of a religious group. The group helps the individual, and the individual helps the group. There are nearly always one or two real bhaktars within every religious group. Therefore, to learn bhakti yoga, emulate one of them. This in itself is forgetting yourself, as you copy another person’s actions and attitudes. True, the person you choose may not measure up to your standards in other areas of life. But if in approaching the Deity, he shows true humility, patience and total surrender, be like him. If you join another Hindu group, visit another temple or satsaṅga, pick out a true bhaktar there and emulate him or her as well. This is the way to learn bhakti yoga. Vegetarianism is an essential for the bhakti yogī, as is proper personal, cultural conduct in all matters of society. Śaivite culture and a consistent lifestyle keep the bhakti yogī always reminded of the Divine within the universe and within himself. Those who have no barriers to love find it is easy to see God in everyone."
And we have Sunday's Lesson 147.
"Unqualified Surrender
"What do we mean by internalizing worship? In external worship we are trying to see God and communicate with God with our two eyes and our physical nerve system. We enjoy His darshan and feel His śakti. In deep meditation, the external worship is deliberately internalized, and we are trying to see God with our third eye and feel God’s all-pervasiveness through our psychic nerve system. Externalizing bhakti is really much easier than internalizing it. But once the externalized bhakti is perfected, it will be easy and natural to internalize bhakti right along. When this is accomplished, the most rigorous hurdles and time-consuming practices of yoga, which often lead the person onto āṇava mārga, will have been side-stepped.
"To internalize worship, after the pūjā is over sit before the Deity and draw into yourself all the prāṇas you feel around your body. Then draw those energies up the spine into the head. This is done with the mind and with the breath. It is very easy to do. It is especially easy when one is at the end of a major karmic cycle."
So we have a commentary which is a Shum series about a karmic cycle. So second, third and fourth dimensional words.
Second dimension:
yuta
A hoop or circle, made of anything.
Third dimension:
rehyuta
Karma, a cycle of experience repeating.
kamrehyuta
Preparing for a new karmic cycle, as outlined in jyotisha; as one enters an area of the mind, he travels through it either quickly or slowly, as a traveler passes through a city; having had the experience, a new cycle begins; plans for a new cycle, for entrance into new areas of the mind, can be made while still within a persisting experience.
So we can plan ahead.
Text:
"The bhakti of uncompromising surrender, prapatti, to the God during a temple pūjā awakens the amṛita. The amṛita is the sweet essence from the sahasrāra chakra. It is the binding yoke to the Divine. Bind yourself in the lotus posture after temple worship and simply internalize all the feeling that you had for the God during the worship. That’s all there is to it. The yogī yoked within enjoys the amṛita that flows from the cranium throughout his body. Devotees who want to awaken the higher chakras and sustain that awakening on the safe path will throw themselves into becoming uncompromising bhaktars. Then all the Gods of all three worlds will open their hearts and shower their blessings upon them. What is my advice for those who find such uncompromising surrender hard to imagine but realize it is their next step on the path? Go on a pilgrimage once a year, read scriptures daily, perform pūjā daily, go to the temple at least once a week, if not more often—fulfill these disciplines, known as the pañcha nitya karmas. This is the basic Śaiva Siddhānta sādhana.
"But on another level, one will not be able to fulfill the pañcha nitya karmas if he or she is not fulfilling the yamas and the niyamas, for these are the character-builders. We must possess a good character to be successful in bhakti yoga. Therefore, begin at the beginning. Right thought produces right speech, which produces right action. Right thought is produced through the knowledge of dharma, karma, saṁsāra and the all-pervasiveness of God. This knowledge correctly understood disallows the devotee from having wrong thoughts. He simply has right thought, and of course, right speech and action follow naturally.
"Śaiva Siddhānta extols the guru and says that when the student is ready, one will appear. The guru will always restate the dharma to a devotee who is having problems with bhakti yoga practices. He will always direct the mind to the beginning teachings, for it would be obvious that the student does not understand one or more of them. If the devotee is not following the pañcha nitya karmas or the yamas and niyamas, it is obvious that purified knowledge of these four areas—dharma, karma, saṁsāra and Śivaness—needs to be strengthened.
"Individual practices to advance spiritual unfoldment include prostrating before God, Gods and guru, full body, face down, arms and hands outstretched, and in that act, total giving up, giving up, giving up, giving up. In Sanskrit it is called prāṇipāta, “falling down in obeisance.” What are these devoted ones giving up? By this act they are giving the lower energies to the higher energies. It is a merger, a blending. When one is performing this traditional devotional act, awakening true prapatti, it is easy to see the lower energies from the base of the spine, the mūlādhāra chakra, rising, rising, rising up the spine through all six chakras above it and out through the top of the head. It is transmuting, changing the form of, the base energies which breed conflict and resistance, 'mine and yours' and 'you and me,' division, insecurity and separateness, into the spiritual energies of “us and we,” amalgamation, security, togetherness."
Then we have a Shum series here, preludes to surrendering energies.
Second dimension:
tyebi
Model or example of something to visualize.
nyamtyebi
Surrender of divine energies to their source. (Which is what we were talking about.)
simnyamtyebi
Awareness bound to the path of Self.
lnsimnyamtyebi
Working with the divine energy.
(And the big one here; this is long.)
kamlnsimnyamtyebi
The astral cord within kundalini; the thread inside the ausisium; sutratma in Sanskrit; name of the connection of the actinodic body to the physical body; this current has no relation to the body itself, as it is a current within the kundalini; this subtle silver cord works within the kundalini as a connecting link of all the inner bodies one to another;the mental body, astral body as well as the physical body all are connected by this cord running through the chakras from the base of the spine to the top of the head; it has the ability to stretch from one body to another at quite a distance without breaking; even when the physical body drops away, this cord still connects the other inner bodies.
And then back to the text here:
"Once the giving up of the lower is total—body and face on the ground, hands outstretched 'before the image of God, Gods or guru'—those energies are surrendered into the higher chakras within the devotee, and it is a blissful moment, into the consciousness of 'us and ours,' 'we and oneness,’ and inseparable love, thus claiming their individuality, not as a separate thing, but as a shared oneness with all. Thereafter, these devoted ones, having been transformed, are able to uplift others, to harmonize forces around them that they work with day after day after day, year after year after year. This total surrender, prapatti, is the meaning of Siddhānta. This is the true meaning of Vedānta. The combination of both, and the pure practice of prapatti as just described, brings out from within the deeper meanings of Vedānta, the Vedic philosophy, without having to depend on the path of words, lectures and debates. My satguru was once heard saying, 'It’s not in books, you fool.'”
Thank you very much, wonderful day.
[End of transcript.]