Aum Namah Sivaya takes us into the reality above and beyond the 'relatively real.' Part of us is always identical with God. Nothing has to happen for that to be true. We're moving up in our division between human and divine nature. We are Advaita Ishvaravadins the fusion of Vedanta and Siddhanta with the fire of Realization. Meditation on the divine nature within, which is already one with Siva, is our monism, the 'Shumif' perspective. Worship of the Deity in the temple is our theism. In Saiva Siddhanta consciousness of and communication with the devas, Mahadevas and God Siva experienced in the temple, is from the 'Dimfi' perspective.

Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva, Lesson 161.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone.

Reading this morning from Merging with Siva, Lesson 161.

"Panchakshara Is Perfection

"Aum Namah Sivaya is such a precious mantra because it is the closest sound that one can make to emulate the sounds rushing out of the Self into the mind. Chanting it is profound because it is a sound channel which you can follow to get close to the Self of your self--sort of like following a river upstream to yourself. Aum Namah Sivaya can be equated with Siva's drum of creation, called damaru. When 'Aum Namah Sivaya' is repeated, we go through the chakras, Na-Ma-Shi-Va-Ya Aum. The Aum is in the head chakra. Within Namah Sivaya is each of the elements--earth, water, fire, air and ether--which in the mind are transmuted into all-pervasive consciousness, and that is also transmuted into the great chakra way above the head at the end of the Aum. In just the breath, the space of time between the next repetition of 'Aum Namah Sivaya, Aum Namah Sivaya, Aum Namah Sivaya,' the pranas, having reached Parasiva, fall back into the spiritual, mental, astral and physical worlds, blessing them all with new energy, new life and new understanding. 'Namah Sivaya Aum, Namah Sivaya Aum, Namah Sivaya Aum, Namah Sivaya Aum' is the constant process of life. It is the essence of life itself..."

That's quite a lot to assimilate. Maybe I should just stop there before we're totally overwhelmed here. Lots of ideas here. There's a very interesting one, new energy.

"The pranas, having reached Parasiva, fall back into the spiritual mental, astral and physical worlds, blessing them all with new energy, new life and new understanding..."

You've all heard one of my analogies. Which is, you take a shower, it's turned on, we have water coming out of it, you have the shower head. And then you make the shower head invisible. Remember that one? So you have water coming out of something that's invisible. Or, something coming out of nothing. So of course, the nothing, or the invisible shower head is Parasiva. So somehow, energy comes out of it so to speak. So therefore, what we're talking about here is, could be imagined as all of a sudden there's a lot more water. Something increased the water. You got more water flowing. So if there's more water flowing you must have attained Parasiva. Cause that's what happens, it increases, it gives: "...new energy, new life and new understanding..."

Came up with a trick question to ask everyone. If you had a multiple choice question: How many chakras are there? Seven, fourteen or twenty-one? Which one would you choose? In Gurudeva's teachings. [answer from devotee]. Right, yes, you'd choose all three. All of the above. So, in Gurudeva's writings sometimes he talks about seven chakras, that sounds like there's only seven of them. And then sometimes he talks about fourteen and you're sure there's only fourteen. And then once in a while he talks about twenty-one but not very often. So this is talking about chakras so that thought came to my mind this morning, early.

Seven of course is the most common number. If you read books on chakras they'll say there's seven chakras. And to clarify that Gurudeva sometimes uses the word 'principle'. Seven principle chakras; main ones. So those are the chakras we're used to that he's talking about here. Muladhara chakra through the Sahasrara chakra. There's seven of them.

But below those are the seven lower chakras which most people don't talk about, starting with fear, then we get anger, then we get jealousy and then it gets really pretty low-minded down there. So there's seven that go down and one of the unique things in Gurudeva's teachings is, again you've heard me say this which is: lots of teachers when they talk about the chakras the emphasis is let's stimulate the higher chakras, right? That's what we want to do; we want to stimulate the higher chakras. But Gurudeva's emphasis is: Well let's close off the lower ones first. Cause whatever you stimulate, they all get stimulated. So if you have more energy in the higher chakras you're gonna have more energy in fear and anger unless you close that off. So, we don't want that. We don't want to cause ourselves more of a challenge in controlling fear and anger by intensifying anything before those are not present. So those are the seven lower chakras

Then there's seven above which he rarely talks about. He says they're so subtle, they're more like nadis meaning nerve currents than they are chakras. He does make reference to them above the Sahasrara, seven more that can be explored. And he gives names for them in the lexicon. So that's the answer that all three are correct. Seven, fourteen and twenty-one. In terms of Gurudeva's writings.

See what else is here.

"We must realize that at any given moment we are a complete Parasiva- Satchidananda jiva,... (So we'll come back to that term in a second.) ...only working on the 'Maheshvara part'--on the jiva's becoming Siva. Parasiva is there. Satchidananda is there. The maturity of the purusha, of the jiva, the embodied soul, is not. (Not there, of course.) Therefore, Aum Namah Sivaya takes us into the reality above and beyond the relatively real. To know it is to experience it, and to experience it is to become initiated."

Nice way of explaining what initiation is. It's an experience. So this is a very important point and said simply, part of us is always identical with God. Nothing has to happen for that to be true. The divine within us is always there and we call it the essence of the soul. And in English we say 'Pure consciousness and transcendent reality.' English words.

So there's two aspects of God, God Siva, which are inherent in the nucleus of the soul. So in that sense jiva is Siva or Sivohum. It's always true. Nothing you do effects that fact. But, the soul body is maturing. The soul body has a lot of work to put in to get itself up to the vibration of Siva's soul body. So when we look at the soul body, we're separate from Siva. So we're both! And that's a very important point. And, said another way. We have an outer nature, is comprised of emotions and thinking and instincts. And that has nothing to do with Siva. Human nature. And then inside of us is a divine nature. So let's use that one. Human nature and divine nature. And, it's a sliding scale. Zero to a hundred. At the zero point we're only aware of our human nature. We're not at all aware or we're not even acknowledging our divine nature. We don't think it exists. God doesn't exist. So we haven't even thought about the question we're just so busy experiencing the world. Haven't thought about it much.

Hundred percent, that probably happens after you leave the physical body somewhere. Ninety, ninety-five percent maybe is a great jnani. Ninety-five percent of oneness identified with his divine nature and just five percent with the human nature. So the whole spiritual path, is the point, we're trying to move up. That's what spiritual progress is, that's what spiritual practice is for; we're trying to move. So we start zero in a hundred. Five in ninety-five. Ten in ninety, so forth. We're moving up, becoming more and more identified with the divine nature and less and less identified with the human nature; that's the goal.

So the human nature is imperfect. I even read it in Yogaswami the other day. Says: Everyone's imperfect, meaning the human nature. And sometimes the imperfection, it disturbs us because we think it should be perfect. But no, that's the wrong part of you. You know, divine nature is already perfect. Human nature always has certain problems. We just have to kind of keep them under control. So, you get a sense of what Gurudeva's talking about. We're moving up in our division between human nature and our divine nature.

"I have been performing Aum Namah Sivaya for over fifty years. At first it had no meaning other than, 'Wonderful, at last I got my mantra, and an assignment from my guru to perform japa regularly.' As the japa progressed, all the inner worlds opened, all the doors of the mind. All the spiritual forces were unleashed, and the ability to control them came naturally. You see, Namah Sivaya Aum brings the totality of the individual to the forefront and makes it manifest in daily life. This most pragmatic mantra is found at the center of the Vedas, in the hymn known as Shri Rudram, and Siva is the center of Namah Sivaya. As the center of the Vedas, it blends Vedanta with Siddhanta, fusing them together with the fire of realization. So, I and all Saiva Siddhantins are a fusion of Vedanta and Siddhanta, with all doors open of understanding of the fourteen windows, the chakras of the mind, and even more than that."

Thanks, we're up to fourteen now, we started with seven. So you notice he says fourteen windows, the chakras of the mind and even more than that. So he's making reference to the other ones. Then he talks about importance of japa.

I wanted to comment on this last one idea here: The fusion of Vedanta and Siddhanta. We talked about that before. In this context Vedanta means monism and Siddhanta means theism. Or advaita and advaitavada and ishvaravada. Sanskrit. So we are Advaita Ishvaravadins. Quite a mouthful. That's who we are, cause we believe in both. In other words, we give equal emphasis to both practices. Worship of the Deity in the temple, that's our Siddhanta in this context. And meditation on the divine nature within which is already one with Siva. That's our monism. Meditation. So, it's temple worship for theism and meditation for monism. Both practices.

And we give, most Vedantins, don't give that much importance to Ishvara, to the personal deity. They're not, they're basically you know give token appreciation or token acknowledgement of Ishvara. They're whole emphasis is on the divinity within. They're not trying to pay that much attention to devotion.

In Shum these two are called different perspectives. Remember the four perspectives? Shumif, mulif, simnif and dimfi, which used to be deemfee. Right now it's dimfi. So I thought we could look at two of them. Four is quite a lot to encompass at once.

"Dimfi: One of four perspectives, the metaphysical viewpoint of looking into inner and outer space; it is a perspective that acknowledges, understands and communicates with God and Gods, beings on the astral plane, people from other planets; it is here that all psychic phenomena take place; in Saiva Siddhanta it includes the consciousness of the devas, Mahadevas and God Siva experienced in the temple; it is dvaita or a dualistic viewpoint."

Of course it's just kind of broadened beyond just the deity into even beings that are more, not so unfolded, beings you'd see more in psychic experiences. So, but basic quality is, what are we doing? We're going within a bit and then we're looking out. We're seeing somebody else who's not us. That's the essence of this perspective. There's a second being who is not us. A totally separate being we're seeing and communicating with. Then depending on the nature of that being if it's God, if it's a Mahadeva, if it's a deva, Gurudeva even has beings from other planets. People on the astral plane, we relate to them in different ways. We don't relate to our grandfather on the astral plane the same as we relate to God Siva, you know, just cause we happen to see them both with our inner sight. There's a protocol for different beings. But, we're seeing them and they're separate. So, we're going within and we're looking into different planes with our inner sight and we're seeing other beings.

So in dimfi there's always two, it's dualistic. Cause it's a dvaita or a dualistic viewpoint. There's no monism at all. There's lots of people. One population count was 330 million. That point in time. There may be more now. "Muppattu Mukkohdi Devagal Mangalam!" (Yogaswami) Three hundred and thirty million Gods is what it says. But I think it just means 330 million residents in certain loka. Thirty-three crores.

"Shumif: One of four perspectives, the meditative viewpoint of being awareness flowing from one area of the inner mind to another, the mind itself being stationary; the perspective of the Shum-Tyeif language; it is also simply called the Shum perspective; in Saiva Siddhanta, it includes the deeper meditative practices; it is an advaitic or monistic viewpoint."

In order for monism to work you go in, you can't go out. If you go in and you go out you're in dualism. So you have to go in and stay within yourself. You don't use your psychic abilities; your spiritual eye to look out and see into realms; you're looking in. You're just going deeper within and within and within of yourself. So, you have to stay within yourself and then if you go deep enough you find the essence of your soul. So you have to stay within yourself to find that. There's no other persons involved; it's just you. So these two perspectives are very different and generally they aren't combined in the same philosophy they're being so different. People are usually just monists or theists.

Most Vedantins are monists and the theists, the biggest group of theists are the Vaishnavas. They're so theistic their description of Siva is very simple. This is ISKCON's description; I don't know the other traditions that well. But so Siva's meditating, that's the classic pose. So, in Vaishnavism, the only thing they could conceive of is Siva must be meditating on Vishnu. They're so, you know they're totally dualistic. They don't have the idea just going in themself. They can't, they're not thinking that Siva's meditating on himself. Why would he meditate on a second person. He's just going deeply within himself. So it shows how inherently theistic they are in their thinking.

So thank you very much. Have a wonderful day.