Tattva, Kashmiri Shaivism Monday Ramble

The Tattva Revisited

You know the Tattva’s? The 25 – 36 elements of existence.

Coming to know the 25 elements is like coming to know the air you breathe and the space that existing things take up.

Every existing thing is made up of the element. Though depending on what level of existence we are talking about, every existent isn’t necessarily made of all the elements.

Some things don’t quite make it into being, they don’t coming to fruition: they stay in the imagination, in the thoughts, in the ideas, maybe it’s even put into words, sketched out, discussed. But for whatever reason it doesn’t come out in material form. And even if it does it might not have much life of its own.

How much of what is produced is immediately transformed (broke, forgotten discarded) to the trash heap.

Of course a good percentage of that is packaging materials so these items fulfil their destiny; they do what they were made to do. Each package is meaningless pointless little thing, but as a group, plastic has a massive influence.

But what about the Unicorm: Humans have thought on this topics for centuries but still there is no unicorn come to life. Images, shapes, sculptures, costumes, animation, collective imagination… The unicorn is a huge part of our understanding of reality, but yet it is not real. It used to be common to lear children to believing in Santa Clause. But no matter how much your visualise, hope, wish, manifest, do what you want; unicorns and Santa Clause will not be walking the earth any tie soon. They might have in the past, and who knows the future; even the astrologers are dumbfounded. It aint gonna be the promised land any time soon. 2000 years ago Buddha became famous for saying the most obvious thing: Life sucks. It’s a never ending cycle of suffering. It’s been that way forever. These days we say we have things pretty go because we have been trained to say that. It must be better than living in caves with a bunch of people who mastered fire and knew every inch of the forest.

Tribal relationships based on trust, loyalty, protection, mutual bond of one for all and all for one. These’s tribes and gangs are so dangerous living outside of all established norms. Their whole life is outside of the box somehow; 12th from 4th, cancer.

The tattva relate with this tribal perspective where everything is open to interpretation, where the natural world provides the signs, signals and messages to understanding the bigger picture. Gemini’s are crafty like this. They are not domesticated.

They are always looking for something, watching for signs, navigators. As travellers they are looking of the literal signs to tell them where to go and how to get there, they are stopping and asking for directions, they are detailing every aspect, flagging things on the map, adding something to the itinerary, schedules and appointments, phone calls and messages.

This is the throat and lungs. Tis is where the voice comes from, where the appetite comes from. It’s subtle desire of what you want and how are you gonna get it. This is the will power. How hungry are you? (Each planet will affect the hunger differently.)

I have had the Bhairava energies describes to me this way: They are the source and power of your hunger. The basic will that sets you I this direction of that. The will to power, the will to have taken this birth, the will to study philosophy, or yoga or to do anything. Bhairava especially protects spiritual places. So that will to study philosophy, shaivism, yoga, tantra and mantra is especially ruled by Bhairava. The very fact that you have even hear of these things is testament to the power of Bhairava.

Bhariava is sometimes listed as the 38th element in the 36 element design. He always goes beyond, it’s probably better to not give numbers above 36 because it’s so subtle compares to any symbol.

What we have to remember is that in Tantra it always goes beyond. There is always more to learn; more to yearn. As individual human beings we are whinny and needy and never complete. There is always this emptiness, this distance we feel from the source of life. The older we get, the further away we feel; death is coming, it’s practically here; this is actually the land of the dead where time moves linear; where things are born and then they die. It’s like a big factory, powered by recycled human souls.

The most precarious place for anything to exist is in the introductory tattvas like imagination which we might see as stretch from Space to Air, and in the final most dense and solid earth Tattva. The cycle moves to quick in earth tattva, everything is constantly coming and going. This is a little like the imagination; but in this case there is no glue, no attachment. Even the monsters under the bed have to get to the denser imagination and start playing with the thoughts before there is any outward expression of that master under the bed: like actually checking to see if there is indeed a monster there. Something in the mind has to grab that image of the imagination and say: “maybe it’s real!”

Even as a deaf man if I listen closely enough for a monster under my bed I will hear noises to confirm my suspicions. And the mind will have just conjured up its own monster!

It’s hard to say which monster is more powerful; the actual monsters or the ones we created in our mind. The actual monster is only infant of us in the moment he eats us or not. But the mind monster lurks behind every corner. The funny thing is that we don’t need a real monster to make a mind monster.

The point I’m trying to make is that things exist at different levels. Even if they don’t come into full physical existence their effect is undeniable.

The other thing to understand about the tattva is that this existence, this life that we are experiencing is the product of a multitude of elements coming together, each of them experiencing existence in a similar hierarchy of metaphysical and physical reality.

The metaphysical principles start with one of the most potent and powerful forces of this existence: Maya.

The orthodox always leave this out of their cosmology of principles. They say it’s illusion, it’s not real, it’s not actually an element. The problem with this argument is that everything that comes out of and after Maya is also not real The only thing really and true is God; a principle that is beyond out minds to even comprehend. The whole project of discovery, self-discovery and invention gets thrown out the window. There is no reason to interact with the world since none other it is real.

It becomes this pop fluff vedanta you see in the west these day. La la land manifestation.

So a mystic takes these small things seriously, the details all have meaning, the things that have effect also have some kind of existence even if they don’t really exist.

Do you really want really know who you are? Are you ready to look beyond your limited identity?

The Tattva’s are a map that takes you from earth to god and back to earth again. This is life: always dynamic, always moving.

The mystic path is a little like the money person in the midst of a crowd. The connection is always there, we are essentially a smooth channel for universal energy to flow through to make things happen to carry out the five functions through which we recognise shiva. He treats, maintains, destroys, conceals the truth and reveals the truth.

Every act of shiva has all these parts, everything that exists has all these parts.

Shakti it the medium through which he acts. Remember Marshall McCluan, “The medium is the message.’

Shakti, she triggers our senses on any level. She stands up, moves, produces heat stands as a testament to the spirit who brings life; the shiva who rides the tides of the pranavayu to enliven and excite the senses and the sense of being, of individuality, distinctness, duality, division.

It’s all a blessing and a curse really.

At some point some philosopher defied truth as singular and uncaring; eternal, true in every circumstance. The problem is that in this world, as fa as most of us know this world, everything is ever changing, transforming, coming and going.

Even the names of the gods change as different names come into and go out of fashion.

It’s all lies, it’s all here to hide the truth from you. This can be said of pretty much everything that is on the surface. All these intellectual exercises that utilise reason are really just bouncing the ball back and forth like newtons cradles. Every response just gives power and momentum to the opposite side. In many cases the hole discussion and debate really just maintains the momentum of bad ideas and makes them that much closer to being implemented.

I don’t discount reason. It’s a good medium for getting to know about the world, for medicine and engineering, the law courses. It’s a rather unbiased way of approaching the world. We always need more reason.

But if your path is spiritual, reason will only get you so far: it will only take you to Yoga, to Kavalaya, to the distinction between what you have power over and what you don’t. It makes you a master of the the worldly world; a master of lies.

But once you understand that it’s all lies, the you really want to connect with the truth in a non-dual way, then you have to jump.

There are no words for non-dualism; even our thoughts of non-dualism arise with duality attached. We are kinda stuck in this strange reality where all we can see is the shadows of reality.

But we also have to ask ourselves how much of this shadow reality we are wiling to bear witness to? How much of it can we accept and maintain in our lives?

The extreme mystics leave society and civilisation completely. Maybe it’s the warmth of humanity they seek. You know, a world where human bing treat each other like human beings. Humanity has been completely separated from the civilised world which treats us all as numbers, objets, walking desires to be exploited.

So how do we not treat others and even our own self life an object? We get to know ourselves earth to Purusha and from Purusha to Shiva and then Bhairava. Com to know yourself as greater than time, eternal, unchanging. Know yourself as the subject, as the master craftsman with a body a tool of completing projects in the world. The body is just some covering with various limitations which in an odd way leave all of us with some very particular and sometimes peculiar skills and abilities.

The soul is on a timeless pilgrimage, it’s indistinguishable from the God, which in this case might be defines as a vast pool of energy that doesn’t look like it will ever run out, though it may take a break to recharge every so many hundreds of thousands of years. Some life ties are for rest, some are for work, some are for ease, some ar for suffering.

I make a lot of jokes about useless Jimmy, but the truth is that none of us are actually useless. We all have some kind of purpose, even if it is just to be antagonistic, to roam the earth as a devil and a hungry ghost. We always want to judge: that person does good things so he is doing gods work. That guy’s an asshole so he’s doing devils work. God favours one by making him rich and shows his disfavour to the other by taking everything away. But if you’re gonna go non-dual, go all the way. See all as being moved by the same, non-dual universal energy. Do judge people based on their actions, on their outward expressions, look deeper. Connect with them on a deeper level, see the pure soul that bring life to all. We are all a reflection of the divine. Like god entering a house of mirrors, we each get a certain perspective a certain side of that massive, unbound energy. It’s only stands to reason that some people will be a perfect reflection of Gods ass hole. We have to face this as well.

He put us in this brutal world that is bound by so many limited truths, a jungle where only the strong survive, a world ruled mostly by reason, the laws of duality, and the basic laws of nature; but he threw in a healthy dose of luck, luck, things that just can’t be understood: metaphysics. He put the truth just out of reach but close enough to many of us that we think we can reach it. We give our lives to reach it. Many of us even feel like we are getting closer and closer and closer, but still it remains just out of reach.

Understanding the Tattva is like a map, like understanding your ayurvedic dosha, your comic constitution, but the tattva will help you place everything on a scale of sorts.

But you know something, don’t bother, it’s just gonna be a bunch of trouble for nothing. Remain ignorant, you have bliss, don’t worry about truth and consciousness. They are there, they will always be there; they aren’t going anywhere.

Learning this stuff, giving your life to self knowledge, to trying to connect with god is all a little, you know, dodgy. Study, contemplate, meditate, but keep it you yourself, don’t bother others with your god or your bright ideas. No body want to hear your truth. Apply it to yourself and your actions. Keep quite! And before you think you know anything, spend some time purifying yourself, get out the bad and install the good. Keep the good in you by keeping quiet; get the bad out by speaking and making some noise. Do tapas, do lots of tapas, and when you think you’ve punished yourself and suffered enough by grace (or curse) of god, then do more tapas. Process it on your own. By grace of god you find a guru to help you process it, but don’t go telling the whole world how great you are, how spiritual you are or how liberated you are.

This is the thing about non-duality, what happens there stays there, you can’t take it out and show it to anyone because no oe will understand and few will care even if they do understand. This is the way with pretty much any feeling or experience that goes to any kind of depth: your love, your excitement for anything, your good and bad feelings, your devotion, your feelings of enlightenment. Really, and I mean this will full sensitivity, no body cares.

People who can see beneath the surface will already know, you will find an inexplicable link between yourself and others who are vibrating at your frequency. And this is really what it’s all about, vibration, the movement of energy, the dynamic force that is continually moving between earth and heaven. Open the channel, become more sensitive to this by learning the Tattva, become more a

Kashmiri Shaivism

Many people want to dive deeper into Kashmiri Shaivism these days with only the understanding that it is a kind of Tantra Scripture. It’s a very low and debased thing to talk about Tantra (sex and black magic) while all the intellectuals are talking about Kashmiri Shaivism.

Kashmiri Shaivism is the philosophy of Tantra, the scriptures is more of an explanation of how magic is possible than a manual of how to perform magic; though in a subtle way, understanding how magic is possible and that it’s even possible to begin with goes a long way to making your whole life experience one of magic.

Kashmiri Shaivism does this near impossible task of bringing non-duality into words. Unsurprisingly, many. Of the gurus of Kashmiri Shaivism turn to music, poetry and aphorism as a means of crossing that barrier.

But you have two engage with Tantric scripture a little more than with normal scripture. You have to engage your reason, but you also have to get into your experience that goes beyond reason; experience the truths expressed int eh tantra. Many of the techniques that are described in books like Vijnana Bhairava are mean of this: An experiential description, a kind of trip to the museum of internal reality to learn something.

The introductory books for Kashmiri Shaivism the Spanda Karakas & the Vijnana Bhairava. If you get the full Spanda Trilogy it will be four fair slim books that will give you a solid foundation for the philosophy and for the practices.

The practices are almost all mind games rather than physical asana or anything lie that. If you really want to understand the mind games, you move one to the Pratybhijnana texts.

If you want to start at the very base, then look at the dualists texts like Saddhanta that lays out all the foundational cosmology and the dualistic perspective that the 25 and 26 Tattva help us to understand and navigate. Understanding the tattvva is important for understanding any of the Vedic Sciences: Astrology, Ayurveda, Yoga, Tantra, Yatra & Mantra. It’s really the foundational understanding of eastern thinking. Every philosophy is basically a variation on the undertstanding of the tattva and how they are applied to life. The different Yantra’s offer a different pictorial understanding of reality. They also offer potent keys for understanding an unlocking some of the magic of Vedic understanding the zodiac, the 27 nakshatras and the 108 Pada.

In some sense, magic is a very mundane thing, it’s the foundation of everything you see, know, experience and imagine. It’s all magic, the trick is to tap into that magic.

The ascetic baba’s do so by leaving the material realm all together and allow nature or god to feed them. Other more orthodox inspired baba’s take on the task of feeding them. They both discovered magic in a path that is greater than themselves. They both experience magic in a karmic relationship that is complete and unburdened. Once offered, one receives. They are both following dharma, they each offer a mirror to the other to move that dharma into the karmic field without attachment.

Shiavism is for the householder, the renunciate and everyone in between. In some sense I think everyone is a natural Saivite; everyone is realised and conducting universal their duties in perfect harmony. It’s quite lovely.

What the opposite of shaivism? A truth and a perfection that is static, that also remains in that unattainable realm. They dynamic aspect of Shaivism is what allow it all to change but remain perfect all the same. The dynamism reminds us that everything came from somewhere and will go somewhere: from nothing to nothing?

There’s a symmetry to the light and dark that goes beyond “The Truth”: beauty. In some sense, you might say that beauty is the path. The Path of Shakti. On the Tanric path generally, Shakti is the one who takes you to Shiva. Astrologically speaking Venus becomes your Guru; you take the mystic path.

This is where something like Kashmiri Shaivism in a modern context, in an intellectual context, misses the point a little bit. It gets turned into an exercise to understand a philosophical point as if reading these scriptures will make you a better Saivite or yogi or something. There is no inherent blessing conferred by any exercise, not even studying scripture, it ’s in the subtleties of how you apply that scripture to life that bless of curse you and your family line. This is the same with any action you perform: the karmic consequences of your action (the blessing or curse) is dependent on the subtleties of the action more so than the action itself.

In any case, it’s good to know, and if you’re a reasonable thinking human being it can be nice to take your intellectual faculties to their limits, and I think scripture is sort of open to everyone on their level.

Many of the scriptures go over the same basics in the opening: the tattva, the universal & particular, static & dynamic aspect of existence, the five functions, the four means.

They often form it all a little different, perhaps around their own deity, offering a slightly different perspective of the same thing. Commentaries are invaluable offering subtle philosophical distinctions. The historical period in which much of this thought fermented in Kashmir was 9th – 11th century when the Persian empire started moving in and the scholars and philosophers were killed or went underground or to South India.

For quite some time before that, it was a paradise of peace, the arts, intellectual and spiritual discipline. It was one of the last holdouts of a time long past. It had till then bee isolated from foreign hoards. Maybe it was Alexander who opened those doors. And there are rumours that even Jesus was there a 1000 years earlier. So these scriptures arose from that, We might see places like Kashmir and Nalanda as the Athens and Alexandria of Hellenistic times.

Again, even this scripture we study came from somewhere; practically disappeared from the planet for 1000 years and was again revealed by Swami Lakshamanjoo. To his students who translated and disseminated it to the world and continue to do so.

In some sense, it a little like the return of an ancient prophet with a bunch of textbooks that are suddenly right for the age we are in. Translations of most of these text books have only been done within my life time and it’s only been maybe 20 years that the Shaivism translating and publishing pipeline has been turned on. And access to original scripture remains a problem.

The point is, it only came back when we were ready for it, a deeper truth brought to us by an avatar of Vishnu: scripture dredged up from he depths. These ideas themselves have a history. From Lakshmanjoo many of us have had the honour of meeting with and learning from his students. A truly magnificent bunch of apostles tirelessly spreading the word; translating, teaching, inspiring us with their great feats of translation and commentary; this kind of poetic lives they have lives in tireless service to scripture, the ideas of the ancients, and the modern human who gets to benefit from this. This wisdom is still an infant. The scholars, and every joe-shmoe-Mike Holliday thinks they know something that’s worth sharing. The wisest thing I’ll tell you is to forget about me and study the scriptures themselves; they stand on their own. And since translators all have their own biases and blind spots, study several translations and really think about the different way they have been translated; they different meaning that comes through.

The point is, if you like scripture, and deep intellectual exercise, then Kashmiri Shavism is a good path. A text of practices such as Vijnanabhairava of 112 meditation techniques can still be useful. The introduction of most of these text will lay out everything you need to know.

All this blah blah about Shaivism and I haven’t even mentioned the goal of this whole project. Liberation from the karmic cycles here in this life time. We don’t really have to change anything on the surface, we rather seek to change the subtitles, but of course it’s sometimes the subtlest changes, like a thought pattern, that have the greatest effect on our lives.

They say there are four way to get to the goal. Each way works in the subtlest way; the highest way is no way at all. And the three others start with the individual means. This is most of what we call yoga, self improvement, physical fitness, wellness, all the common techniques that, if followed, will bring benefits to you physical and mental well being. But in some sense, they work very much on that surface level. The next is what they call the empowered means, the way of shakti, this is more obviously aligned with tantra, psychoanalysis, personal reflection which is a huge part of any branch of Tantra. There is then a much more subtle way to engage the divine through Bhakti and spiritual devotion. But then there is the fourth means with is most interesting: no means at all; just directly knowing, pervasive engagement with the divine reality of infinite being.

The highest truth is experiences beyond all the techniques, exercises and so called spiritual experiences. God is with us through it all, at no point are we ever apart from what we long so much to merge with. Merge with what? We are an example of the merge of shiva and shakti; we are indeed the strange consequence of this union between time and energy. The static reality and the dynamic reality.

What many of us yearn for is a physical expression of that union. This is the yearning that truly allows us to bend time and conserve anergy. We have to think in cycles, in movement. We have had a linear clock imposed on us for a 1000 years measuring out the days in equal portion through all the seasons. We are born, we live for so many years and then we die. This indeed is a life of suffering, what comes before or happens afterwards is not of concern. But it is? Where do you come from? That matters! It’s like this philosophy of momentariness that gets blended into the theory of Now! Nothing exists except the moment. As if each moment is an isolated event nothing before and nothing after: just the moment! Like the nihilistic perspective of life: pointless, meaningless, empty.

I think the reason many people are looking to Shiavism generally or Kashmiri shaivism is because they are looking for meaning, perhaps something inside of them tells them there is more meaning to this world and they are looking for confirmation.

And it is confirmation that there is meaning in everything. The whole world comes alive all with a life and perspective and purpose of its own. We find ourselves in a delicate dance with everything and everyone.

The trick of the mystic path is to go to Lala land while remaining firm grounded. Be like Spanda steady and unmoving while also dynamic and completing all that needs to be done. As the Bhagavad Gita put it: action in inaction & inaction in action. Accomplish everything without making effort; allow it arise naturally.

This is the highest means, if you’re too lazy or incompetent to do any of the other three then I guess you can rely on this: “Babaji told me I don’t have to do anything.”

This is one of those tricky points. I would say that most of us will be better off if we spend most of our life on the means that demand body, mind and soul and leave the no-means mean for late in life when we’ve already spent most our lives trying to realise ourselves time and tie again. It’s one of those things that happens, sometimes everything is so clear: who you are, your place in this world, your purpose, the bigger picture of it all and all the little signs all just add up to a clarity that leaves no question. But questions, uncertainty and mental vibrations always return. Shiva reveals himself & conceals himself, sometimes at the same time.

Practicing the means for realisation, the three that are actually means is what is meant by doing the work. Are you doing your yoga, your meditation, your mantra? Are you journaling or reflecting on yourself, practicing gratitude for what has been, while also taking action that will make your future better. Are you seeing the world as one where everything is connected, are you practicing seeing the world from other peoples perspectives; figuratively standing in their shoes. This is work. There is no end to the work. You can’t say: I finished the work, I’ll come back to it tomorrow, I don’t feel like it. Because once you start the work there is a constant flow of issues to work on. You empower yourself to find all the deficiencies in the system and there is no shortage. Any work you do will have effects on every level, and certainly after some time you start to apply the subtleties to everything and then everything you do becomes liberating.

This brings us to the question of Karma and liberation. We have been taught that karma is bad and liberation of good. There are so many problems with this way of thinking. Karma is karma: you might say that there is no distinction between good karma and bad karma. Karma is fuel, stored energy that is released through activity.  Most karma isa made while other karmas are being destroyed and it’s this constant cycles of having to do things that are not necessarily the things you wan to do. In some sense, karma keeps you from being free, this is the same for good karma and bad karma. In some sense it a law of action and reaction that is recorded on some universal tablet and some point in the future, usually imeadiatly, you will have to experience some consequence to your actions. We are all a bit blind to our biases and this belief that the actions that feel good with bring good karma and the actions that made up feel some guilt or shame with bring bad karma.

There’s a very good buddhist text, the Diamond Suttra that illuminates the subtlety of seeking merit though good actions. We might also turn our attention back to the four means we use to acquire enough merit to be let into the castle of realisation. This also points to the supremacy of the highest means which must almost be there from the beginning threading its way through all the other means or there will be no luck. The Diamond Sutra essentially says this: if you try to do good deeds in order to gain merit, no merit will be gained. Good deeds should be performed for the sake of themselves, not for any fruit that might be gained in this world or the next.

This also brings us to a very important point in the path of yoga or spirituality. The Bhagavad Gita is the great book of Karma Yoga: how action should be performed in order to, as we say here, gain merit; for that action to be of use in a spiritual sense. We should again not worry about gaining fruit from our actions, we should do everything to the best of our ability without seeking fruit. We don’t have choice of fruit, there is no freedom in hankering after fruit for our actions. The hankering actually spoils the fruit. God is the one who determines fruit. You can control your actions, but never the reaction.

One area that brings such confusion in regards to Tantra, shaivism, mysticism, astrology is free will. If astrology can predict everything and if everything has already happened, then what the point? Why try? So much of this seems to support the nihilistic perspective.

But astrology actually has certain kinda of freedoms encoded into it. And tantra is sometimes known as the Science of Freedom. So, how are we free when it’s all Maya and karma.

In short, we are free in the subtler realms. There’s not much freedom at the level of earth, but there’s planet is air. And as bound as we are on the level of earth, we are that much free at the tattva of space. The freedom offered in Tantra goes beyond the astrology chart. It starts when you really do realise that you are much more than the sum of your astrology chart; much more than the sum of your karma. So, do everything you can to know yourself as both a dynamic vibration of energy, and a perfectly still unmoving potential of energy.

As yogis we want more and more to fill the pool of potential energy at least partly by not dissipating it through kinetic action.

Once you understand you dharma, you can focus your karmic activity, the stream of your energy to make you free. But there’s another thing you should know about freedom, again, from my studies it was the Buddha who passed this along to me, but Shiavism is full of examples. There is a path higher than freedom, and that is the path of sacrifice. And it’s actually the sacrifice that brings the meaning. What this means is that on the path to freedom there will be many distractions, many things want to take your freedom away from you and tie you down like draft animal to do your duty wether you want to or not. The whole world is a trap man! But if you’re aware and attentive, you will consider that there are some things that are worth sacrificing your freedom for. Most people sacrifice freedom before they even know what it is. It’s the most precious thing you have. Savvy student call this freedom time. Time to do what you want to do whatever it is you want to do. Many people don’t even know what it is they want to do, but they don’t care, as long as they are calling the shots on their own doing for a while.

This is perhaps a good tie to point out the two different kinds of spiritual freedom. Orthodoxy and buddhism focus of the freedom from suffering side of freedom. In regards to social or civic freedoms we are free from unreasonable treatment, free from being imposed upon, free from those in power meddling too much with our lives.

But there is another side of freedom and though we like to say that tantra offers both, it sometimes seems to offer this second one to the expense of the first. The second freedom is the freedom to do what you want to do. The freedom to…. Rather than the freedom from…. One of the scriptures uses this second definition very early: the freedom to do whatever you want to do.

This is the promise of Tantra that makes it so tantalisingly dangerous. Because tantra is just the opposite of nihilistic and hedonistic. Tantra is refined like a fine scotch where even and especially the subtleties matter. It’s not just crudely made to get you drunk, to get you off.  Again, if everything about tantra in subtle and simplicity, where does this leave this crass explicit sex classes mascaraing as tantra. Even when it comes to sex it’s the subtleties that make all the difference.

And the magic of sex is not in the orgasm, it’s not that moment when your senses collapse and you’re overrun by excitement that pours out through your genitals. (I refer her to Osha’s Sex & the Super conscious. The magic of sex is in creating a human that recycles your own self and allows you to be reborn. It’s a massive karmic undertaking but one of the most beautiful things that you can sacrifice your freedom for. And something else I think is important to know: karma is not your enemy. Karma and Maya are very closely connected, they are better seen as your mothers Lakshmi and Durga. Saraswati, vac herself sitting high above in the abode of Param Shiva that also contains Bhairava and his Shakti Bhairavi. Creating a human being that is both exactly like momma and exactly like papa is about as incredible as human magic gets. It’s like all the magic goes together to make that happen.

The great doom is that we will die and that will be the end of it. We only have x number of years, whatever the number it’s never high enough, so our energy, our life force, figured out how to recycle itself and continue through time indefinitely. I don’t know if one quite attains the status of infinite being, but if we look to non-human origins and destinations of the individual soul, then one does pretty close to defying death and living on forever. The spiritual merits of this path are understated and misunderstood. Spiritualists sometimes dismiss the householder paths as not really becoming of a spiritual path. They don’t really have time and focus and concentration for “the work” when one is busy working to feed the fruit. It’s like when we have children and wife and family and community the thinking can very easy go to accomplishing any task or attaining fruit by any means necessary. There is something more important than yourself, than your own grace, then your own connection with the divine. Lahiri baba, whose ashram is still just around the corner from when I live in Varanasi, was one of these great householder saints. He had an accounting job or something like that that he maintained until the end and retired. I imagine his work in the office got pretty lax once he was recognised as a great spiritual saint. He was Yukteshawrs guru and Yukteshwar was Paramhansa’s guru: Kriya yoga: Pranayama, meditation, mantra and visualisation of the flow of energy through the energy centres. You could say that even with wife, family and career, Lahiri continued to do the work. It’s not really the amount of time you put it, it’s the quality you put into the time. You might see this as a general rule for life. Don’t aim for a long life; aim for a life that is high quality: lots of love and lots of respect.

In any case, I find cause to criticise pretty much everything, I just don’t necessarily do it in a critical manner. Again, it’s the way it’s done, not what id done.

How do you do things that are typically considered impure in a pure way. How do you do activities that typically have very powerful karmic implications in a way that doesn’t have the heavy karmic baggage. How do you burn away karma and not make any new karma so that you can be free? And did I even gt finished tell you how free you are.

So aside from the grand freedom of knowing that you are in fact shiva and not just Mike, or whatever name identifies you in this incarnation, there are two levels of freedom that we exercise very day.  1. We are fee in every moment to make a choice. I can get up from this chair and head off in any direction for any reason, or I can keep sitting here. I can type or not type. But I’ve started writing something so I’m inclined to keep sitting and keep typing. The choice I have in this very moment has been preconditioned: I’m more or less inclined to make one kind of choice over another. The joy of being a traveller is that I’m often choosing between two unknown directions. This brings us to the second kind of freedom we have which is many times more powerful and more effective. It’s the real reason I’m sitting here writing you this… whatever this is: I trained for it, I conditioned myself to sit and write and think about this stuff for hours on end. You could say this is what I wanted to do, so I sacrificed years of my time just doing it until it became just what I do. It’s doesn’t take much effort anymore.

Pavlov taught us all about conditioning of canines. We basically just apply the theories of conditioning and dog training to ourselves and we can learn to make different choices, to choose to be free from… and free to… just do whatever the hell you want. Just figure out how to do it in a way that you don’t have to pay the karmic consequences of bad choices because no matter how much you hope and prey, consequences still have to be paid in this world, especially if what we want to do steps on other peoples toes. Nobody has to put up with anyone acting like jackass in public or even in private. Have some respect!

There are not really a lot of rules in behaviour, but if you are just chasing after fruit and greedily enjoying fruit without doing much work, then you probably have to do more work.

You are truly free and empowered to do whatever you want when what you what uplifts others, and often times it will take a greater amount for the well bing of others than for ones own self.

I’m tired, mahadev