Set aside personality. Focus on being a spiritual individual. Hatha yoga helps release stress and tension. Use subsuperconscious, not reason, analysis and intellect for understanding in an intuitive way. Let go of negative attachments, flow with the river of life in a natural way. Fulfill the highest dharma. Dissolve the seeds of desire.

Master Course, Merging with Siva, Lesson 214.

Cognizantability, Twentieth Aphorism.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

This is from today's Merging with Siva, Lesson 214.

"Tuning Up With Hatha Yoga.

"When we live in our personality, we are limited, but our individuality reigns supreme. A balance of actinic and odic forces running through the physical body bursts into individuality within the aspirant on the spiritual path. This cherished individuality, the feeling that you are the center of the universe, and your created world revolves around you, does not make one egotistical, but rather forms within the consciousness a deep humility, or a deep feeling of the realities of life, thus laying a solid foundation for meditation. "

So, Gurudeva's distinguishing between personality and individuality. Individuality in this sense is a spiritual identity. Personality of course is a very complex idea of who we are in terms of likes and dislikes, abilities and disabilities, relationships with other people. And this sets all of that aside and just focuses on being a spiritual individual.

"...Through the practice of hatha yoga, the physical body becomes a perfect vehicle for the mind to live in. The tensions which have been built up through the years become fleeting, and the mind becomes actinically alive. This enables the yoga student, as he presents himself to the yoga master for training, to single out the seed of desire and, in the light of understanding, destroy it. This retroactively brings forth a great wisdom through the conscious use of the subsuperconscious mind. When this happens, you don't have to think to know. You know, and thinking is the result. Affectionate detachment from friends and relations is automatically accomplished, and a greater love for them flows in through actinic understanding."

We'll look at the seed of desire in a minute.

Gurudeva's talking about subsuperconsciousness which is the superconscious working through the subconscious, subsuperconsciousness. Subsuperconsciousness relates to what we're doing. It's having understandings of what we're doing in an intuitive way. Instead of going through the lengthy process of reason and analysis we simply understand something. And, one of the things that prevents us from achieving that is tension or stress. Sometimes the very act of trying to figure out a problem and not being successful causes a stress or tension. So it's an interesting dilemma. Here we are, we've created some stress and we're trying to solve the problem but the stress we created in trying to solve the problem prevents us from solving the problem, right? What do we do?

Well what I find is helpful is just to step back. Go get a cup of coffee for five minutes or go for a walk for five minutes. Do something that helps you let go of whatever you were working on for at least five minutes. Then you come back to it and you may find the answer comes to you immediately. And you wonder how you didn't see it before. So the tension you created, analyzing it through your intellect, was what was preventing you from understanding it through your subsuperconscious. So, hatha yoga helps in a more general way, release tension, which is important in terms of being able to use your subsuperconscious.

"...Affectionate detachment from friends and relations is automatically accomplished, and a greater love for them flows in through actinic understanding."

Gurudeva's idea of affectionate detachment is sometimes misunderstood. Someone focuses on the detachment. You read you're supposed to be detached and so you start pulling back from other individuals and other things and: I'm very detached; I'm a great yogi. I'm detached. But that's not what it means. You're supposed to detach from negative attachments. Meaning, you're depending on somebody else to give you security rather than your own spine. Depending on somebody else to make you happy instead of making yourself happy. Things like that. Those are the attachments we want to give up. We're clinging to the past and things that went wrong that we really regret. That's a real negative attachment to let go of.

So it's, Gurudeva gives us the image of a river flowing along. More like a tree limb in the river. And the idea is to flow with the river but the tree limb can get stuck off on the side. We were at Niagara Falls a few years ago and we went down the river a bit and there was this huge whirlpool. Lots of things were stuck in it. Instead of going down the river and turning the bend there was a whole set of objects that had gotten stuck in this whirlpool. So, what does that mean? They weren't moving on with their life as they should. They weren't moving into the glorious future that was there in their dharma cause they were clinging to the past. Therefore, they were standing still. So, if we let go of the past, let go of negative attachments, then what happens? We flow with the river of life. We're the stick just flowing along in a natural way and then we're able to fulfill the highest part of our dharma.

But, in doing so, we should become more affectionate. That's what Gurudeva says in the text. Affectionate detachment doesn't make you less affectionate towards people it makes you more affectionate. "...and a greater love for them flows in..." So we become more affectionate because we're not as attached. So, it's why it's called affectionate detachment. By detaching from that which is negative, be it people, be it events, be it our past, we become more affectionate in the process.

"Hatha yoga, practiced correctly over a period of time, makes the mind so acute that you become able to 'single out the seed of desire by disregarding all other corresponding erroneous thoughts.' In other words, in the practice of this science alone, the yoga student begins to burn out congested seeds of desire from within without even thinking about them. As you become more and more perfected in hatha yoga, the odic forces, both passive and aggressive, become adjusted, balanced and controlled."

So that's referring to the cognizantability, Cognizantability Aphorism Number Twenty which I'll read, comment on quickly.

"The seed of desire is a false concept in relation to corresponding objects. The conscious mind throws into its subconscious a series of erroneous thoughts based upon a false concept. This creates a deep-rooted desire or complex. Single out the seed of desire by disregarding all other corresponding erroneous thoughts. Then destroy that seed through understanding its relation in itself and to all other corresponding thoughts. The deep-rooted desire or complex will then vanish."

So it's the job of advertising agencies to create seeds of desire. They're paid to do that. Madison Avenue in the U.S. where all the big advertising agencies are in New York City. So Madison Avenue is paid to create seeds of desire in you. "Seed of desire is a false concept in relationship to corresponding objects." So you take a, let's say a Tesla, fancy car. Tesla car. I've never seen adds for Teslas. I guess they don't sell them in Hawaii. But, these adds for Teslas just give you this impression that if you own a Tesla all the problems in your life will be solved because only very successful people are shown in the adds for Tesla. If you see a Tesla you see all these wonderfully successful people. That happens a number of times and the seed of desire: If I only could own a Tesla I'll be so successful. That's what goes in the subconscious. And we believe it cause it was in there a number of times and we didn't screen it out.

So that's a simple example and the advertising agencies do it to children unfortunately. You know, all these adds go in the mind of children and then they want all these objects that they think make kids happy. So even at that level we can see the desire. But at the adult level it's usually something big, you know, a condo in Waikiki looking out over the beautiful beach. That'll really make me happy right? I saw all these happy people owning one.

Ideas about occupation, we see certain successful people in a certain field a number of times and that puts in our mind the idea that if I was only of that occupation I'd be so happy and great. So these are all false concepts because it's not true. And that's what you're trying to ferret out. So it's a, why is it important? Because it's a strong external desire. So if you're sitting in meditation, instead of meditating you're thinking about the seeds of, thinking about these seeds. So it tends to pull the mind out into pursuing external activity. So we want to not have mind get pulled out because of the seeds of desire.

And hatha yoga is one way of they're showing themselves. So to understand the seed of desire you have to use the subsuperconscious mind. The intellect won't sort it out. Is this a seed of desire or isn't it? It won't be able to decide. But, if you're using your subsuperconscious and you encounter one you'll quickly see that this is how it works and in seeing that then it dissolves.

Have a wonderful day.

Aum Namah Sivaya.