Lesson 360 from Merging with Siva The Process Of Evolution When a beginning devotee comes to the temple to worship Siva, he sees Siva as a man, a person not unlike himself, yet more than a man, for He is a God, the God of Gods, so powerful, so aware and complete within Himself that He is the center of endless universes. In coming to worship Siva, this devotee prostrates himself before the Deity just as if he were in the presence of the grandest potentate or majesty imaginable. Siva is that to him. We know how wonderful it can be to approach a distinguished and honored personage. It makes us feel special. It brings out the best within us. The same thing happens to this man. He feels himself in the presence of the Supreme Lord, and he brings the best of himself to the temple. If he has a problem, if something is not going well in his family or in his business, he will come to the temple with special offerings. The priest takes that offering into the inner sanctum for the puja. During the puja it is blessed and then some of it is returned to the worshiper to take back to his home, carrying the vibration of the temple into his everyday life. During puja he will concentrate his efforts on opening himself to the divine influence of Lord Siva. And as he leaves the temple, he will look for a break in the problem, for a new perspective to arise as a result of his worship in the temple. He will look for some telling signs from his environment--the way the lizard chirps, how many crows come down, and even what kind of people walk by his house. Perhaps the solution to his problem is simply a new way of seeing it, a different perspective that gives him the insight to handle the matter, or there may be a change in his external circumstances. As this man worships, he grows more and more devoted, becomes capable of a profound understanding of the rituals and practices of his early samskaras. From the practice of putting holy ash on his forehead and the feeling that goes through his nervous system whenever he does that, he begins to discover sound reasons for doing it, reasons he can confidently tell his children. His worship leads him little by little into new realms of consciousness. Another man, more refined and awakened, may have worshiped during the exact same puja. This devotee came to worship the same Deity, but to him it was not only an ethereal being external to himself. He perceived it also as an essence pervading the universe, a oneness of pure consciousness flowing through all form, and he worshiped that Satchidananda in the sanctum and equally within himself. As the energies of the puja reached their crescendo, he could feel that pure essence of consciousness as himself. After the puja, he went to a secluded corner of the temple, there to meditate, to bask in the kundalini energy awakened in him through his temple worship until he knew himself as one with that vast sea of pure life energy and light. He went home feeling peaceful and calm and just at one with everyone and everything that came along in his life. He has no awareness of time and just lives fully in the intensity of the moment. When he applies holy ash at the temple or in his shrine room at home before he sits down to meditate, he sees it as the ash of those forces which hold him in individual consciousness--the forces of karma and ego and desire. He applies the ash so that it makes three distinct lines across his forehead. They are lines to impress him with the need to keep these three forces subdued in his life. This man lives in tune with the worship of Lord Siva and the darshan he receives, and opens up within himself from that worship. Everything in his life flows smoothly and harmoniously. He is in touch with a divine voice within himself and he follows it as his own will. His life is simple. And he feels himself complete. Neither fretting over the past nor worrying about the future, he lives totally in the present. His evolution is steady and graceful. He grows greater in his capacity to hold those moments of darshan he feels until he carries that darshan steadily through every aspect of his life. That is his only experience. He is a witness to what goes on around him--doing it perfectly but detached from the doing. He sees light within his head when he meditates. And that grows until he knows that the light is more real than anything he considers himself. That way his unfoldment continues. He comes to be purer and purer, more and more aware of the real. A third man, living under strict vows and the guidance of his satguru, having long ago perfected the harmony and discipline that allowed him to see himself as the Pure Consciousness within all beings, is immersed within states of contemplation, whether in a mountain cave or before a temple sanctum. His goal is to find the source of that energy, and the source of that source, and the source of that, until he realizes That, Parasiva, the Absolute beyond all form. He experiences himself and Siva as one.
Posted on: Mon, 07 Apr 2014 12:08:49 +0000
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