The Self God is within man. Feel the spiritual force permeating the entirety of your body. All knowing is within oneself. Accept that you are not the body, mind or emotions. Create a great inner peace within yourself. We are the sum total of everything we've lived in the past. Awareness does not stop because the physical body falls away at transition. We don't want fear to be present in the idea of having to transition from this world to the next.

Master Course Trilogy, Merging with Siva, Chapters 11, 50.

Unedited Transcript:

Good morning everyone. Continuing our series, going through the chapters of "Merging with Siva" choosing the oldest talks first and supplementing it with some stories from "Guru Chronicles." This morning we have one last lesson from "The Power of Affirmation," "Merging with Siva" Chapter 11 and then we'll be starting Reincarnation, "Merging with Siva", Chapter 50. And both of these inspired talks were given in 1958 at the Sutter Street Temple. So we have a couple of quotes from Gurudeva about his teaching approach during those years to start with: "The theme of all these years was to present the teachings and practices in such a way where man is able to bypass what he thinks he is into that which he really is--to become conscious of the power within the spine and the refined energies within that, and that within that, and that within that, until he realizes the Self God--the underlying principle which cannot be described, which is at a higher velocity than energy itself. (That's a nice statement: "...the higher velocity than energy itself.") Working on the matter-antimatter principle is the closest that science has come to explaining the realization of the Self God as presented in the advaitist teachings and realized by myself and many of my close disciples. "Realizing that in the West this theme did not penetrate the Western mind, I worked for many years developing a comprehensive study program so that this theme could be brought out clearly and precisely--not intellectually, but in the actual experiential patterns of an individual's life."

Then we get a second quote on, back in 1958:

"The best of the East is adhering strictly to the philosophy that the Self God is within man. Man can realize it fully within this life. That basically means opening the sahasrara chakra and having awareness escape through the door of Brahman, merging with the Self. Or the kundalini rising up through the various chakras through the spine, the pituitary and the pineal gland merging in power and awareness moving so deep within that it comes to the very core of Being itself. This is the fundamental philosophy of the great rishis of the East, the philosophy that I have lived with since my studies there and to this day. (That really ...). This is the fundamental philosophy of the great rishis of the East, the philosophy that I have lived with since my studies there and to this day.

"Basically, the best of the West are the facilities for disseminating this teaching to the various levels of people on the path, the step by step organizational presentation leading one to his eventual goal without allowing him to digress in the presentation of the path."

And we get the last lesson from "The Power of Affirmation," Lesson 77, "All Knowing is Within You."

Text:

"'I will be what I will to be. I will do what I will to do.' You can repeat these two powerful affirmations over time and time again and thus rearrange, restructure, the forces of your subconscious mind and create a great inner peace within yourself. Become acquainted with the spiritual energies and bring the forces of superconsciousness through your subconscious. This creates feeling, a feeling that you are what you say you are--positive, direct, full of life and energy and creative power. Your intuitive mind proves this through your conscious mind, not only through feeling, but you will find yourself acting out the part in all kindness and security, exercising the positive will of 'I will be what I will to be,' ' I will do what I will to do.' Feel the spiritual force permeating the entirety of your body. You are the security of your statement, and you accept it into your subconscious mind. As the days go by, you will become more creative and more consciously aware of your spiritual destiny. Find your spiritual destiny for this lifetime."

And my comment:

Gurudeva is again talking about how you are rearranging, restructuring, the forces of your subconscious mind. And as I mentioned before this is not a topic that many teachers present. However, it is an important one. In the terminology of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras you are replacing externalizing samskaras with internalizing ones. That's how he expresses it.

Text:

"The greatest thing that a devotee must learn is that all knowing is within oneself. Therefore, go to the great superconscious school within you and bring forth knowledge. In order to do this, be confident within yourself. In order to be confident within yourself, have no fear. In order to have no fear, say to yourself, 'I am all right, right now.' This will quickly bring you into the here-and-now consciousness. You will feel spiritual force permeating your body, and your intuitive state of mind will be active. Go ahead in full confidence that you are the knower of all that is known. This does not mean that you know everything that is to be known about the material plane, the emotional world of people, or what goes on within their minds. This means that you are nearing the source of all sources, that you understand the ultimate destiny of all souls--to unequivocally merge with Siva."

So my comment:

Gurudeva says: "The practice is to go to the great superconscious school within you and bring forth knowledge."

And my comment is: Each time you are successful at this practice, it impresses your subconscious mind and it becomes easier to be successful next time. So it gets easier and easier as you have more and more successes at it.

Text:

"Spiritual destiny is manifested in the lives of those who stand out from the masses and actually do something, who live a creative life for the benefit of others. This last affirmation affirms an age-old truth and may be said several times before sleep and upon awakening: 'I am not my body, mind or emotions. They are but shells of the infinite energy that flows through them all. I am this energy. I am its source. I am on my way to merge with Siva.'"

So my comment is:

All problems happen in either the body, the mind, or the emotions. To accept that you are not body, mind and emotions frees you from the sense that you are having a problem. Rather my body, mind or emotions is having this problem. The problem is external to who you are.

Then we get to move on to Chapter Fifty, "Reincarnation" with the first lesson there which is Lesson 344 "The Transition Called Death."

Text:

"Death--what is it? The dropping off of the physical body is the time when all of the karma-making actions go back to seed in the muladhara chakra, into the memory patterns. All of our actions, reactions and the things we have set in motion in the pranic patterns in this life form the tendencies of our nature in our next incarnation. The tendencies of our nature in the present incarnation are the ways in which, in which awareness flows through the ida, pingala and sushumna currents."

So my commentary is:

There is no need to remember our past lives as the tendencies of our nature in this life are the sum total of all actions in all our past lives. So we're the sum total right now of everything we've lived in the past so if we understand who we are now, we're understanding our past lives. There's no reason to remember them separately.

Text:

"These tendencies of man's nature also are recorded under the astrological signs in which he is born. Man comes through an astrological conglomeration of signs, or an astrological chart, according to his actions and reactions and what he set in motion in the seed-karma patterns of his past life. So, we are always the sum total, a collection, of all the karmic experiences, a totality of all the seed patterns that have happened to us, or that we have caused to happen, through the many, many lives. We are now a sum total, and we are always a continuing sum total.

"A past life is really not so many years ago. That is not the way to look at it. It is now. Each life is within or inside the other. They exist as karmic seeds that appear in the pranic force fields in our life now and, like seeds, when watered they grow into plants. These seeds are nourished by prana. When we die, or when we discard the physical body, that is the end of a chapter of experience. Then we pick up a new physical body. This begins a new chapter that is always referring back to the last chapter for direction. These are tendencies.

"This is the entire story of what happens after we die. We simply step out of the physical body and are in our astral body, going on in the mind as usual. The awareness does not stop simply because the physical body falls away. The ida force becomes more refined, the pingala force becomes more refined, the sushumna force is there like it always was, but all are in another body that was inside the physical body during life on Earth."

Commentary:

There's definitely a lack of clarity on what happens at the time of transition. We've had a few transitions in our group recently and that asked questions. So the way I like to explain it is, it's like walking into another room. Here we are in this room; we're walking into another room. Are we still the same person? Yes! Has anything changed? Only the room. So it's like what happens at the point of transition, we're the same person, we're just in another world that most people in this world can't see into, that we haven't had a drastic change. The major change would of course be if the physical body was in significant pain; we don't have that any more, that's a relief so that's going to cause a change in our general mood. But otherwise, we're basically the same person, nothing has changed us. So it's a simple way of looking at it.

Text:

"One great peculiarity about man is that he individually feels that he is never going to die and goes on through life planning and building as though he were going to live forever and ever. The fear of death is a natural instinctive reflex. We encounter it sometimes daily, once a month, or at least once a year when we come face to face with the possibility of obliteration of our personality and of leaving the conscious mind. The fear of change or fear of the unknown is an ominous element in the destiny of a human being. The study and comprehension of the laws of reincarnation can alleviate this fear and bring an enlightened vision of the cosmic rhythms of life and death. It is a simple process, no more fantastic, shall we say, than other growth problems we experience daily. A flower grows, blossoms and withers. The seed falls to the ground, is buried in the earth, sprouts and grows into a plant and a flower."

It's very interesting in my emails, I've noticed in the last few months when I get a notice that someone has undergone transition, generally on the same list of emails there's an announcement that someone was born. And so, you can see the cycle of life right in your emails; one has departed and another one is coming back.

So commentary:

"The fear of change or fear of the unknown is an ominous element," says Gurudeva. So this can be overcome through a better understanding of the process of what happens when we depart the physical body. So that's what this text is trying to help us accomplish. We have a better understanding, more confidence in it, and therefore we don't become fearful. Definitely we don't want fear to be present in the idea of having to transition from this world in to the next.

Wonderful day.