MAHAPRALAYA - COSMIC DISSOLUTION

Monistic theists hold that at mahapralaya, cosmic dissolution, all creation is withdrawn into Siva, and He alone exists.

Pluralistic theists hold that world and souls persist in seed form and will later reemerge.

Pluralistic Siddhantins contend that after mahapralaya--the withdrawal of time, form and space into Siva--souls and world are so close to Siva that, for all practical purposes, He alone exists.

Actually, they say, both world and souls continue to exist, not as things, but as "potentialities." As if in a deep sleep, souls, now in a bodiless state, rest. Individual karmas lie dormant to germinate later when creation again issues forth and nonliberated souls are re-embodied to continue their spiritual journey.

Monistic Siddhantins believe that souls persist through the lesser pralayas of the cosmic cycle, but hold that only Siva exists following mahapralaya. There is no "other," no separate souls, no separate world.

The universe and all souls are absorbed in Siva. Pasha--anava, karma and maya--is annihilated. In the intensity of pre-dissolution, when time itself is accelerated, all souls attain complete maturation, losing separateness through fulfilled merger with Siva. Yea, jiva becomes Siva. The Vedas boldly decree, "By His divine power He holds dominion over all the worlds. At the periods of creation and dissolution of the universe, He alone exists."

What Makes a House a Home?

What is it that makes a house a home? A home is a place of companionship with people in it who love each other, who are harmonious and closer inside with one another than they are outside with associates in the workplace or with classmates at school. A home is a place that's so magnetic that it's difficult to leave. In a home there is love, kindness, sharing and appreciation, and the inhabitants help one another. It's a place of selflessness and togetherness, where everybody has time for everybody else. In a home, the guests are treated like

Deities or devas coming to the temple. That is the spirit of hospitality in the Hindu framework. It is the same spirit of sublime energy flowing to the guest that also flows within the household. And a righteous household that worships every morning together as one family is like a temple. That's a home, and everything else is just a house or a hotel lobby.

If you were to look at a harmonious home with your astral vision, you would see the three primary colors--pale pink, pale blue, pale yellow--and white, all intermingling in a big pranic force field. Moving over to another house, you might see a congestion of various colors, with dark and light shades and strange astral forms, and you would know that house was not much different from a hotel lobby.

But if they live together, if they sleep together, if they talk together, if they eat together, they are a family, even if they are destitute. Such a family is at home wherever they are.

The truly homeless are some of the rich people who build multi-million-dollar houses and are too busy to really live in them.

The truly homeless are those who have turned their home into a hotel lobby. The husband works. The wife works. The children are delinquent. There's no companionship. They don't talk together every day.

They don't eat together every day. They rarely see each other. The truly homeless people are those with babysitters, caretakers, gardeners and maids, but who don't spend quality time with the family in their house. Babysitters often abuse their children.

Parents are unaware, too busy making money outside the home that they don't live in. This is another way of looking at the rich and the homeless. Who is to be pitied? Control of the computer and the Internet is also important to make a house into a home. If the computer is on all the time, the house turns into an office, even if everyone is at home.

Many homes these days are just offices. Human communication has stopped. The computer eats up the time that one should be giving to others within the home. Using the computer moderately gives us time for gentleness, play and communication, not with a screen, but with a human being. And that is the vibration needed in a home.

Fear, Anger and Opportunism

Those who want to hold a position and those who don't want to hold a position combined, those who have no time to perform sadhana, who avoid their yearly pilgrimage, whose family cannot gather in the shrine room, who do not read scripture daily and attend a temple infrequently, if at all, they are doing extremely well on the anava marga, in my estimation. Their artha and kama are coming along just fine. Dharma is ignored, and mukti just may not happen. Many people on the anava marga perform yoga, japa, disciplines of this kind, and gain great adulation, as well as business contacts, through it.

But nothing is gained other than a few minutes of quiet and aloneness. These are the opportunists, the people who make the world go 'round as we see it today. Swamis are most precious to those on the anava marga, giving blessings, amplifying their desires; adulation is sincere but not real.

The swami is taken into their family as a personal figurehead of it, like a status symbol. They do not enter the swami's ashram to do sadhana and become a part of his life. And if the swami rebels, preaches dharma and holds back blessings, he is generally abused. "Love you, use you and abuse you" is the methodology of those on the anava marga.

All swamis, gurus and priests know this only too well. The anava margi looks at God from a distance. He does not want to get too close and does not want to drift too far away, lives between lower consciousness and higher consciousness, between the manipura, svadhishthana and muladhara and the lower three, atala, vitala and sutala, which represent fear, anger and jealousy. He does not get into confused thinking.

That is super lower consciousness, in the realm of the talatala chakra. He is guided by reason. That is why he can come into the other margas. Therefore, God is at a distance. He sees himself pluralistically, separate from God, coexistent with God. Those who fear God anger easily. They fear their elders. They fear their government. They fear impending disaster, and they fear disease.

God is just one item on the long list of things that they fear. They are not on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Their higher chakras are dreaming benignly, waiting for the consciousness to explore them. Only when someone begins to love God is he on the path of spiritual unfoldment. Only then is he a seeker. Only then does his budding love begin to focus on religious icons. Only then is he able to nurture his love into becoming a bhaktar and at the same time a religious person, a giving person. This is the charya path. We come onto the charya marga from the anava marga.

We come to Lord Ganesha's feet from the anava marga. He is now the guide. The personal ego has lost its hold. The anava marga, and the glue that holds it together, is ignorance of the basic tenets of Hinduism. There is no way one can be on this marga if he truly accepts the existence of God pervading all form, sustaining all form and rearranging all form.

There is no way this marga could be pursued by one understanding karma, seeing his manifest acts replayed back to him through the lives of others, his secret diabolical thoughts attacking him through the lips of others. The anava marga does not include this knowledge.

The dharma of a perfect universe and an orderly life, the consciousness of "the world is my family, all animals are my pets" is an abhorrent idea to someone on the anava marga, especially if he is casted by birth in this life.

The anava margi abhors the idea of reincarnation. To pay the bill of one's indiscretions in another life is not what anava is all about. There is a forgetfulness here. When you renounce your childhood, you forget that you ever were a child. You forget the moods, the emotions, the joys and the fears and all that was important at that time.