The three distinct attainments in our philosophy: realization-nirvikalpa samadhi, moksha-liberation and merger-vishvagrasa. Believe in our ability to raise consciousness high and hold it. Every day live in the highest state of consciousness you can. Take on Siva's point of view, see divinity. Experience what's real. Pay attention to that aspect of you which is Siva.

Path to Siva, Lesson 3.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

Reading from our new book Path to Siva, Lesson 3.

"What is the Ultimate Goal of Life?

"Knowing God is life's highest goal, reached by mature souls following a spiritual path. Just as only the most highly disciplined climbers reach the summit of Mount Everest each year, only a few mature souls reach life's highest peak in this life. This is because souls were not created all at once. There are old souls and young souls. Older souls have matured over many lifetimes. They have enjoyed life's pleasures, suffered all the many sorrows and faced countless challenges. This process has made them strong, like the mountaineers, and ready for the final ascent, ready to become one with God Siva. As we mature, we become kind, generous, understanding and truthful. Anger, fear and jealousy no longer control us as they once did. We become wise and loving. Reaching this maturity moves us toward life's true purpose. Eventually we no longer need the experiences of Earth, so we do not need to be reborn. Instead, we continue to evolve and serve humanity in the heavenly worlds in our subtle body. This graduation from the cycle of reincarnation is called moksha, which means freedom, release or liberation. But before we attain moksha, we must experience the highest goal of raja yoga--the realization of the Self, God. After Self-Realization, you no longer see yourself as just someone from some place. Instead, when you look inward, you see Siva. When you look at other people, you see Siva. All souls will achieve moksha, but only a few will do so in this lifetime. Hindus know this and do not think that this life is the last. While seeking to perfect themselves through service, worship and yoga, they know there is also much progress to be made in fulfilling life's other three goals: righteousness, wealth and enjoyment. Even moksha is not the end of our path. After liberation from rebirth, the soul body continues to evolve in the inner worlds until it fully merges with God. Jiva (the soul) becomes Siva, a union called vishvagrasa. Being on an ancient path followed by countless souls gives the serene feeling that everything is all right as it is, that everything is perfect."

Where to start, huh? So many wonderful points in there to comment on. We have notes on a few.

The lesson is pointing out three specific attainments which in our philosophy are distinct, in some philosophies they're not. Cause when they achieve moksha, that's it. You merge with Siva. But in our philosophy you keep going because you're still in your subtle body.

So the three points are, in English: realization, liberation, and merger. Three specific events that are different in our philosophy. So realization, of course we have Self Realization. I looked it up in our lexicon to see what Sanskrit word we use for Self Realization and we use nirvikalpa samadhi. So that's a good one. The highest form of samadhi, you realize the Self or Parasiva. In Dancing with Siva we use another term, the whole section is for Self Realization is called Paramatman Darshanam. So that's another term we've used.

So that's an experience, an experience we have many times. Realizing Parasiva, realizing the Self to transcend it. So that's part of the goal here.

The next one is liberation which we often call moksha, sometimes mukti, the two words are synonymous. Well what are we being liberated from? We're being liberated from being reborn on Earth. Why would we be liberated? As it says here there's nothing more to do. Been there done it, you know it's like when you've graduate from high school you can't start over. You wouldn't fit in. You know you've matured through that experience and to mature more you have to go somewhere else. So if you want to mature more intellectually you go to the university. You don't go back and start high school over and try and learn more. Doesn't work that way. So likewise, if you've learned what Earth has to offer you keep going. And then you exist in your subtle or astral body and then eventually you slough that off and then you exist in your soul body, anandamaya kosha. And then eventually that drops off and that's when you have merger.

Merger is an interesting experience to think about; you try and come up with an analogy. Cause you're already that, that you're becoming that. How do you encompass both ideas? Well, one analogy I have is a container. So, let's say it's a plastic bottle with a top. So you put a plastic bottle without the top on it into the ocean and then you put the top on it. Of course, you've separated the water that's in the bottle from the water of the ocean. It was one and now it's two. So that's like the soul, the jiva has been separated. And in normal consciousness it's stuck in the bottle, it's finite. But once it matures in deeper consciousness the bottle temporarily goes a way. So, then the oneness that was there reappears. It's like the bottle becomes so subtle that it's not there. You experience the oneness of the ocean with the water in the bottle, they're no longer different. So that's temporary in higher states of consciousness or samadhi. The bottle is going away temporarily during the samadhi. And then, vishvagrasa, the final merger, the bottle totally disappears for once and all. Once and for all. It's not, doesn't come back. So the body, the bottle disappears. That's vishvagrasa. So it makes it seem more, what would you say? Less remote. In other words, you're so close to it all the time it's just you're surrounded by this bottle. But, it's right there. So if you can make the bottle go away then the original state returns where there's no difference between the water in the bottle and the water in the ocean. Once they merge then you can't separate them.

So sometimes I've heard people say: Well why would I want to do that? I enjoy being who I am. I enjoy being an individual which of course is one of the attachments. Patanjali describes that, being attached to being an individual. So you have to kind of work up to it. It's like a child can be overwhelmed by the thought of being an adult, right? Say: Whoa, what's that responsibility? So you have to work up to it gradually. And then when you become the adult it's very natural cause it wasn't done quickly.

So likewise, you have to work up to the idea of being Siva. So how can you do that? Well you can take, try and take on Siva's point of view. What would Siva's point of view be? Well, I'm everything; I'm everyone. That's Siva's point of view. So if you want to work up to the idea of vishvagrasa just, you know, take Siva's point of view now and then. I'm everyone; I'm everything. Then it seems more natural cause you're already everyone and everything. We just tend not to pay attention to that aspect of you which is Siva.

One of the strong points of Hinduism is that it's not based on that which you can't experience. Some religions are based on that which you can't experience. For you that's called faith. You have to accept what's going to happen to you after death based on faith. And, there's a picture on one of the humanist, secular humanist websites. Secular humanism doesn't believe in God. Just believes in helping the fellow man. There's no God involved. So the picture is probably a sixteen, seventeen year old girl. And she says: "I'm too old to believe in imaginary beings." So, it's talking about God, there's some graphic in there which indicates God. So, I'm too old to believe in imaginary beings.You know, you've got Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and God, you know. In her mind they're all the same; they're just imaginary beings that she's been told about. And so there's no way of experiencing God in that, in that way of looking at it.

So, here we're talking about Self Realization and but it's not just a question of: Okay, at some point in the future I will realize the Self. I'm holding my breath for that event and nothing happens till then. You know that's not how this is written.

It's written: "...As we mature, we become kind, generous, understanding and truthful. Anger, fear and jealousy no longer control us as they once did. We become wise and loving..."

So our consciousness is coming up all the time. It's not just here we are in this consciousness and then one day we realize God. And then we're totally different and nothing happened in between no matter how many years or lifetimes that took. Our consciousness is coming up through religious practice slow and steady. So that's what we experience. And the way I described it in one of my Publisher's Desks is we move from negative states of mind into positive. So, negative states of mind are fear and anger. Which, you know, most people experience in a fairly serious way. Fear and anger. So, we need to rise above those, we need to learn to control those. There's no reason in the world we should become fearful or angry. There's no reason in the world we should become fearful or angry. There's no advantage in becoming fearful or angry unless the house is on fire. You know, then fear has a purpose. Fear does have a purpose when you're faced with extreme danger, you know. The road is very winding and we're driving too fast. We become fearful. Fear does have a limited purpose if there's an actual physical threat. But otherwise you don't want to be fearful. There's no advantage to being fearful. Definitely there's no advantage to being angry. If we get angry, we're giving up the most intelligent part of us. We can't be that intelligent if we're seriously angry. We lose our ability to solve things with our highest intelligence when we're angry. So there's no reason to be fearful and angry. We need to rise above them.

And that's an accomplishment and that's one of the realisms in Gurudeva's teachings. You know, he doesn't give us a weekend seminar and you get initiated. Saturday you study, Sunday you get initiated and Monday you realize the Self. You know it's now Saturday you stop, study, Sunday you study and then maybe after a couple of years you're no longer angry and fearful. Well congratulations. You've moved up into the muladhara chakra, the first of the major chakras.

So, we start by trying to stabilize our self in the muladhara chakra above fear which is down one, anger which is down two chakras. There's no reason to go down below the muladhara and of course we do that through the worship of Lord Ganesha.

But back to the point; that's one of Gurudeva's sentences that kind of wandered around there. Can see the punctuation would be really hard. This doesn't have any of that, no parenthetical, end dashes, etcetera, parenthesis.

We're trying to come up in consciousness, that's the point. And that's what we experience. That's what's real; that's the experience. So we come up out of the negative states into a positive state. What's a positive state mean? It means when we get up in the morning we have the feeling we'll be able to accomplish what we're supposed to today. That's a positive state of mind. And if we don't quite have that Gurudeva gives us tools. It's always a tool to move up to the next state of consciousness. In that case to move from negative to positive we use affirmations and vasana daha tantra. We readjust the subconscious mind. So, we get out of fear and anger, then we're kind of negative perhaps. So we need to become positive. From positive we want to become creative. We want to be a creative person, able to solve things with our intuition. Be an artistic person. Maybe we like to write poetry, music. Write creative essays. We want to be creative. So creative consciousness. And if we created consciousness we want to become aware of divine, divinity. Go within us, within our days within the temple we should be able to see divinity So, it's a gradual moving from the negative states to the positive to the creative to the divine.

That's what we're experiencing when we put the philosophy and the practices in motion in our life. We move up in consciousness and therefore we're not believing in something that's going to happen in the future only. We're believing in our ability to raise our consciousness slow and steadily.

I got quoted in the Pub. Desk, I got quoted in "Quotes and Quips." Natyam Jayanatha quotes me sometimes. Sit's there, reading along and I proof read it. Reading along and there's my quote. I say: Oh. So this one was something like: Every day you should live in the highest state consciousness you can. You know that's the essence of Hinduism. Something like that, right? So that's, the point is: On a daily basis we should raise our consciousness as high as we're able to that day and hold it. So that's what we're practicing. We're not practicing for the future. We're practicing for the every single moment.

So, it's not a futuristic religion and we're hoping something will happen after death. It's an in the present religion where we're raising our consciousness by our philosophy and our practices into it's highest state as we're able to that day and then hopefully the next day it'll be a little higher. A little higher, of course the challenges of life sometimes upset us and that's not true but then we pull ourselves back together eventually keep moving. So it's not an absolute straight line,it has it's little dips and all but over the long run it's a straight line going up. That's what we should see in consciousness. So that's probably quite enough, huh?

Thank you very much. That's Lesson 3. Stay tuned for Lesson 4.