AFFIRMATION OF THE FAITH

How Is the Affirmation of Faith Used?

Intoning the affirmation of faith, we positively assert that God is both manifest and unmanifest, both permeating the world and transcending it, both personal Divine Love and impersonal Reality.

On the lips of Saivites throughout the world resounds the proclamation "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality." It is a statement of fact, a summation of truth, even more potent when intoned in one's native language. "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality," we repeat prior to sleep. "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality," we say upon awakening as we recall the transcendent knowledge gained from the rishis during sleep.

These sacred words we say as we bathe to prepare to face the day, God Siva's day, reminding ourselves that His immanent love protects us, guides us, lifting our mind into the arena of useful thoughts and keeping us from harm's way. Devotees write this affirmation 1,008 times as a sahasra lekhana sadhana.

It may be spoken 108 times daily in any language before initiation into Namah Sivaya. Yea, the recitation of this affirmation draws devotees into Siva-consciousness.

The Tirumantiram says, "The ignorant prate that love and Siva are two. They do not know that love alone is Siva. When men know that love and Siva are the same, love as Siva they ever remain."

Please read a fine message from a Saivite lady in Sri Lanka who follows beautifully the spirit of stri dharma.

"I am a Hindu wife and take pride and pleasure in being one. I am a graduate of the London University and was a teacher in a girls' school before I got married in 1969. I belong to an orthodox Saivite Hindu family, and when I reached age twenty-six my parents proposed a marriage. My future husband, too, hailed from an orthodox Saivite family and was thirty years of age. After our parents discussed and decided upon details, an opportunity was afforded to us to meet.

The venue was a Ganesha temple, and the time was 7am. As each of us stepped into the temple from different directions almost simultaneously, the temple bells started ringing to herald the 7:00 puja. 'A good omen,' both of us thought independently. After the puja was over, we were introduced to each other by my mother.

Out of inborn shyness and a certain amount of fear of meeting a stranger, I was hardly able to look up and even see the color of the man who was going to be the lord of my life. I heard him talk and even noticed him gazing meaningfully at me all the time. The 'confrontation' lasted about ten minutes, and we parted. Each of us approved the selection so carefully made by our parents and, to make a long story short, our marriage was solemnized in due course.

"From the date of marriage, I resigned my job as teacher because my duties as a housewife appeared more onerous and more responsible. My husband earned enough to maintain a family, and we started setting up a home of our own. I brought in some money by way of a dowry, and this helped us to furnish our home with all essential requirements. We loved each other very much and lived like Siva and Shakti. The most important corner of our house is the shrine room where our day-to-day life starts every morning.

"I get up from bed at 5am every day. After a wash, I enter the shrine room and clean up the place. Remnants of flowers from the previous day's puja are removed, the brass lamps and vessels are polished, water is sprinkled on the floor and the place kept ready for the day's puja, performed by my husband. Then the kitchen is swept and the pots and pans washed.

Water is kept on the gas to boil, and I go for a bath. Returning from the bath, I do a short prayer and pick flowers for my husband's puja. By now it is 6am--the time my husband awakens. I go to the bedroom and wait there ready to greet him for the day. He looks upon me as the Lakshmi of the home, and it pleases him a lot to wake in my presence--all gleaming with holy ash and kumkum pottu on my forehead.

As soon as he gets up, he goes out for a half-hour walk and is back home by 6:30. A cup of coffee is now ready for him. He takes this and, after five minutes' rest, enjoys a fine bath. He then makes the necessary preparations for the puja. I could do this myself, but my husband feels these preparations are also a part of the puja. Sharp at 7am, the puja starts.

I join him and so do our children (we now have two boys and a girl). It is a pleasure to watch my husband at puja, which he does very piously and meticulously. At 7:30 we come out of the shrine room for our breakfast. I personally serve my lord and the children meals prepared by my own hands and then get the two elder children ready for school.

By 8:30 all the three are out of the house on their respective missions. I then clean up the house, put my little three-year-old son to sleep and by 9:30 I am back in the kitchen preparing lunch. "In the evening I am dressed up and ready for an outing with my husband and children. Almost every day he takes us out, but occasionally he comes home tired and prefers to remain indoors.

At 6pm I start cooking the dinner and at 7:00 we have a joint prayer in the shrine room. Dinner at 7:30, then a little bit of reading, listening to the radio, some chit chat and off to bed by 9:30. This has been my routine for the last eleven years, and I have enjoyed every minute of it. "In the house, I give first place to my husband.

It has never been my custom to find fault with him for anything. He understands me so much and so well that he is always kind, loving, gentle and compassionate towards me. I reciprocate these a hundredfold, and we get on very well.

My husband is the secretary of a religious organization, and I give him every help and encouragement in his work. My household duties keep me fully occupied, and so I don't engage myself in other activities. I respect my husband's leadership in the home, and so life goes on smoothly."

Timely Observance Of Sacraments Siva's followers provide their children the essential sacraments at the proper times, especially name-giving, first feeding, head-shaving, ear-piercing, first learning, rites of puberty and marriage.

Grace of The Gods

When you worship the God in the temple, through puja and ceremony, you are bringing that Divinity out of the microcosm and into this macrocosm. You supply the energy through your worship and your devotion, through your thought forms, and even your physical aura.

The pujari purifies and magnetizes the stone image for this to take place.

The Gods and the devas are also magnetizing the stone image with their energy, and finally the moment is ready and they can come out of the microcosm into this macrocosm and bless the people. You observe that they stayed only for an instant, but to them it was a longer time. The time sense in the inner worlds is different.

If you want to get acquainted with the Gods, first get to know Lord Ganesha. Take a picture and look at it. Put a picture of Lord Ganesha in your car or in your kitchen. Get acquainted through sight. Then come to know Him through sound by chanting His names and hymns. This is how you get acquainted with your personal Deity. You will get to know Him just as you know your best friend, but in a more intimate way, for Ganesha is within you and there ahead of you to guide your soul's evolution.

As you get acquainted with Him, Ganesha then knows that you're coming up on the spinal climb of the kundalini. He will work with you and work out your karma. Your whole life will begin to smooth out. Religion is the connection between the three worlds, and temple worship is how you can get your personal connection with the inner worlds.

You never really lose connection with the inner worlds, but if you are not conscious of that connection, then it appears that you have. The Gods of Hinduism create, preserve and protect mankind. It is through their sanction that all things continue, and through their will that they cease. It is through their grace that all good things happen, and all things that happen are for the good.

Now, you may wonder why one would put himself under this divine authority so willingly, thus losing his semblance of freedom. But does one not willingly put himself in total harmony with those whom he loves? Of course he does. And loving these great souls comes so naturally.

Their timeless wisdom, their vast intelligence, their thoroughly benign natures, their ceaseless concern for the problems and well-being of devotees, and their power and sheer Godly brilliance--all these inspire our love.

SAIVISM'S AFFIRMATION OF FAITH

The proclamation "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality" is a potent affirmation of faith. Said in any of Earth's 3,000 languages, it summarizes the beliefs and doctrines of the Saivite Hindu religion.

An affirmation of faith is a terse, concise statement summarizing a complex philosophical tradition. "God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality," is what we have when we take the milk from the sacred cow of Saivism, separate out the cream, churn that cream to rich butter and boil that butter into a precious few drops of ghee.

"God Siva is Immanent Love and Transcendent Reality" is the sweet ghee of the Saivite Hindu religion. In the Sanskrit language it is Sivah Sarvagatam Prema, Param Satyam Parah Sivah. In the sweet Tamil language it is even more succinct and beautiful: Anbe Sivamayam, Satyame Parasivam.

In French it is Dieu Siva est Amour omniprÚsent et RÚalitÚ transcendante. We strengthen our mind with positive affirmations that record the impressions of the distilled and ultimate truths of our religion so that these memories fortify us in times of distress, worldliness or anxiety.

The Tirumantiram proclaims, "Transcending all, yet immanent in each He stands. For those bound in the world here below, He is the great treasure. Himself the Parapara Supreme, for all worlds He gave the way that His greatness extends."

Why Respect Tradition?

Let's look at the word tradition. Webster defines tradition as "a story, belief, custom or proverb handed down from generation to generation, a long-established custom or practice that has the effect of an unwritten law." We all know human nature, because we are people living on this planet. We are fickle; we are changeable. We are always curious to try new things. Change is a wonderful part of life, within certain bounds. We do not want to be too restrictive, yet we do want to be strict. Be strict without being restrictive, and life will be balanced between discipline and freedom.

This has always been the Asian way. Take a look back into history, back to the time of Saint Tiruvalluvar, who lived 2,200 years ago.

He would not have written the Tirukural if people were perfect, if they were, as a whole, strong, steady and self-disciplined. He wrote those sparkling gems of wisdom and advice for fickle, changeable people, so that they could keep their minds controlled and their lives in line with the basic principles of dharma for men and women clearly set forth in the Vedas six to eight thousand years ago. Tradition adapts itself to culture and climate.

The Hindu women raised in Western countries will not be able to follow all the traditions of the East. But they have to fulfill enough of those traditions to fulfill their stri dharma. And, of course, they will have to adjust slowly. Scriptural advice is just as pertinent today, thousands of years later. Why? Because people are human, because they are little different today than they were then. Societies change, knowledge changes, language changes. But people do not change all that much.

That is exactly the reason that traditions do not change much or change very slowly. They still apply. They are still valid. They are the wisdom of hundreds of generations assembled together. The wise always follow the ways of wisdom, always follow tradition. Does that mean they cannot be inventive? No. Does that mean they cannot use their mind and will to advance themselves and humanity? No. Does that mean they must avoid being creative, original, individualistic? No. It simply means that they express these fine qualities within the context of religious tradition, thus enhancing tradition instead of destroying it.

Tradition, with its spoken and unspoken ways, is far too precious to throw out or tear down. The unwritten laws and customs of tradition are what has developed and proved out to be best for the peoples on this planet for centuries. We cannot casually change tradition. It takes centuries to build a tradition. We cannot sit at a meeting and arbitrate a change like that. Take all of this that has been said into your meditations.

Think deeply about the natural balance of masculine and feminine energies in the world and within yourselves. You will discover a new appreciation for the woman's role and for the traditions which allow her to fulfill it.

Teaching And Modeling Good Conduct

Siva's followers love their children, govern them in a kind but firm way and model the five family practices: proper conduct, home worship, religious discussion, continuous self-study and following a preceptor.

Microcosm, Macrocosm

The mind of man--his entire mental, emotional and spiritual structure--exists within the microcosm, which exists within the macrocosm that we can see and touch and that we call the physical universe.

The Gods also live within the microcosm.

The microcosm is within this macrocosm, and then again, within that microcosm is another dimension of space, another macrocosm.

Similarly, one can look into a drop of water through the microscope and see a new dimension of space in which myriads of tiny creatures are experiencing a total existence. Those minute living things are in the microcosm; from where they stand they see it as a macrocosm.

While one might say there is only one millionth of an inch between each of those little organisms swimming in the drop of water, to them it may seem like fifty yards. There are tens of thousands within that single drop, and yet they are not at all crowded, for it is a different dimension of space. This is how the microcosm can have an even bigger macrocosm than this one within it.

That bigger macrocosm is the Third World, the Sivaloka, where all the Gods and Mahadevas reside. It is within you, but it is ethereal, which means it is nonphysical. Your mind is in the microcosm. That is how it does all the things that it does. You can take your mind completely around the world in an instant, or across the galaxy.

Right now we can take our minds to a star that is 680 million light years away from Earth. We can think about that star and see it in our mind. Time is not involved, nor is space. Thought is there instantly.

The Gods are also in the microcosm, and in the macrocosm within the microcosm. From their view, all that they do is, to help you work out a problem, even if they work on it for days of their time, happens faster than instantly.

Since our mind, too, exists within the microcosm, the change takes place instantaneously. It then takes a day or two for the effects of that change to be felt in the macrocosm. Deep within our mind, in the microcosm, the problem vanished the instant we stood before the God in the temple.

It takes us a few days, or at least a few hours, to catch up to the inner event and see the results in physical form.

AUM NAMA SHIVAYA AND KARMA AND CONSCIOUSNESS - THERE IS NO SECOND COMING OR DAY OF JUDGMENT

Namah Sivaya is among the foremost Vedic mantras. It means "adoration to Siva," and is called the Panchakshara, or "five-letters." Within its celestial tones and hues resides all of the intuitive knowledge of Saivism. Aum.

Namah Sivaya is the most holy name of God Siva, recorded at the very center of the Vedas and elaborated in the Saiva Agamas. Na is the Lord's concealing grace, Ma is the world, Shi stands for Siva, Va is His revealing grace, Ya is the soul.

The five elements, too, are embodied in this ancient formula for invocation. Na is earth, Ma is water, Shi is fire, Va is air, and Ya is ether, or akasha. Many are its meanings. Namah Sivaya has such power, the mere intonation of these syllables reaps its own reward in salvaging the soul from bondages of the treacherous instinctive mind and the steel bands of a perfected externalized intellect.

Namah Sivaya quells the instinct, cuts through the steel bands and turns this intellect within and on itself, to face itself and see its ignorance. Sages declare that mantra is life, that mantra is action, that mantra is love and that the repetition of mantra, japa, bursts forth wisdom from within.

The holy Natchintanai proclaims, "Namah Sivaya is in truth both Agama and Veda. Namah Sivaya represents all mantras and tantras. Namah Sivaya is our souls, our bodies and possessions. Namah Sivaya has become our sure protection." Aum Namah Sivaya.

The Home As a Temple

This working together of the home and the temple brings up the culture and the religion within the family. The family goes to the temple; the temple blesses the family's next project. The mother returns home. She keeps an oil lamp burning in the shrine room on the altar to bring the shakti power of the God and devas into their home.

This is only one of the beautiful practices of her religious stri dharma, so sensitive and so vital to the furtherance of the family and its faith. All this happens because her astral body is not fretted by the stresses and strains of a worldly life, not polluted by the lustful thoughts of other men directed toward her, causing her to live in the emotional astral body to ward them off, or be tempted by them.

She is not living in the emotional astral body. She is living in her peaceful soul body of love, fulfilling her dharma and radiating the soulful presence called sannidhya. She was born to be a woman, and that's how a woman should behave. If she does not do her dharmic duty--this means the duty of birth--then she accrues bad karma. Every time she leaves the home to go out to work, she is making kukarma. Yes, she is.

That negative karma will have its affect on her astral body and on her husband's astral body and on the astral bodies of their children, causing them to become insecure.

The Judaic-Christian-Islamic idea of just one life, after which you either go to heaven or to hell gives the impression that time is running out. Some even think "you have to get everything out of this life, because when you're gone, you're gone, so grab all the gusto that you can."

This has given the modern Western woman the idea that she is not getting everything she should, and therefore the man's world looks doubly attractive, because she is just passing through and will never come back. So, living a man's life is very, very attractive.

She doesn't want to stay home all the time and not see anything, not meet anybody, go through the boredom of raising a family, taking care of the children. She wants to be out with life, functioning in a man's world, because she is told that she is missing something. Therefore, you can understand her desire to get out and work, start seeing and experiencing life and mixing with people, meeting new people.

The traditional Hindu woman, however, does not look at life like that. She knows that she was born this time in a woman's body--this soul has taken an incarnation for a time in a woman's body--to perform a dharma, to perform a duty, for the evolution of the soul. The duty is to be a mother to her children, wife to her husband, to strengthen the home and the family, which are the linchpin of society. She knows that the rewards are greater for her in the home.

She knows that all she is missing is a man's strenuous work and responsibility, that her stri dharma is equally as great as a man's purusha dharma, even though they are quite different by nature. Because she knows these things, she fulfills her dharma joyously.

Siva's followers use astrology, tradition and wise counsel to cultivate each child's inherent talents and higher nature. They hold family meetings daily to share, plan, express love and discuss issues with mutual respect.

Karma and Consciousness

The Hindu does not have to die to have a final judgment or to enter into heaven, for heaven is a state of mind and being fully existent in every human being this very moment.

There are people walking on this Earth today who are living in heaven, and there are those who are living in hellish states as well. All that the Hindu has to do is go to the temple. As soon as he goes to the temple, to a puja, he is contacting the divine forces. During the puja, he is totally judged by the Deity.

All of his karma is brought current, and he goes away feeling good. Or he might go away feeling guilty. That is good, too, because then he performs penance, prayashchitta, and resolves unseemly karma quickly. It might be said that every day that you go to the temple is judgment day.

Isn't it a wonderful thing that in our religion you can either go to heaven or hell on a daily basis, and the next day get out of hell through performing penance and ascend to heaven? The Hindu sees these as states existing in the here and now, not in some futuristic and static other-worldly existence. There are certainly inner, celestial realms, but like this physical universe, they are not the permanent abode of the soul, which is in transit, so to speak, on its way to merger with Siva.

It is not necessary for the Hindu to wait until the end of life to become aware of the results of this particular life. Because he knows this and does not wait for death for the resolution of the results of his accumulated actions and reactions in life, his evolution is exceedingly fast.

He lives perhaps several lives within the boundaries of a single lifetime, changing and then changing again. If he errs, he does not worry inordinately. He merely corrects himself and moves on in the progressive stream of human evolution. He is aware of the frailties of being human, but he is not burdened by his sins or condemning himself for actions long past.

To him, all actions are the work of the Gods. His life is never static, never awaiting a judgment day; whereas the Western religionist who believes there is an ultimate reckoning after this one life is spent is piling up everything that he has done, good and bad, adding it to a medley in his mind and waiting for the Grim Reaper to come along and usher in the Day of Judgment.

Hinduism is such a joyous religion, freed of all the mental encumbrances that are prevalent in the various Western faiths.

It is freed of the notion of a vengeful God. It is freed of the notion of eternal suffering. It is freed from the notion of original sin. It is freed from the notion of a single spiritual path, a One Way. It is freed from the notion of a Second Coming.

Why, I think some of the devas in this temple are on their, let me see,... 8,450,000th coming now!

They come every time you ring the bell. You don't have to wait 2,000 years for the Gods to come.

Every time you ring the bell, the Gods and devas come, and you can be and are blessed by their darshan.

They are omniscient and omnipresent, simultaneously there in every temple on the planet as the bell is rung.

That is the mystery and the power of these great Gods who exist within the microcosm.

YOUR "WILL" AND THE GODS' - WILL

Someone once asked, "They say true bhakti is giving your whole will, your whole being, to God. If you do that, aren't you making yourself completely passive?"

Many think that the ultimate devotion, called prapatti in Sanskrit, means giving up their willpower, their independence and their judgment for an attitude of "Now you direct me, for I no longer can direct myself, because I no longer have free will. I gave it all away."

This is a good argument against prapatti, to be sure, but a gross misinterpetation of the word, which is the very bedrock of spirituality. This is not the meaning of prapatti at all. Not at all. I shall give an example. People who are employed work with full energy and vigor, utilizing all their skills on the job, day after day after day, year after year after year. They give of their talents and energies freely, but they do hold back some of the energies and fight within themselves. This is called resistance. That resistance is what they have to offer on the altar of purification.

Getting rid of resistance, to be able to flow with the river of life, is what prapatti is all about. Prapatti is freedom. This truly is free will. Free will is not an obstinant will, an opposite force invoked for the preservation of the personal ego. This is willfulness, not free will.

Free will is total, intelligent cooperation, total merging of the individual mind with that of another, or of a group. Those who only in appearance are cooperative, good employees rarely show their resistance. They hold it within, and day after day, year after year, it begins tearing them apart.

Stress builds up that no remedy can cure. In religious life, we must have prapatti twenty-four hours a day, which means getting rid of our resistance. There are various forms of free will.

There is free will of the ego, or the instinctive mind, there is free will of the intellect that has been educated in dharma, and there is free will of the intuition.

For many, free will is an expression of the little ego, which often entangles them more in the world of maya. For me, true free will means the dharmic will that is divine and guided by the superconscious. In reality, only this kind of will makes you free.

Hindus with Western education, or who were raised and taught in Christian schools, whether they have accepted the alien religion or not, find it very difficult to acknowledge within their own being the existence of the Gods, because the West primarily emphasizes the external, and the East emphasizes the internal.

Thoroughly immersing oneself in the external world severs man's awareness from his psychic ability to perceive that which is beyond the sight of his two eyes.

You might ask how you can love something you cannot see. Yet, the Gods can be and are seen by mature souls through an inner perception they have awakened.

This psychic awakening is the first initiation into religion. Every Hindu devotee can sense the Gods, even if he cannot yet inwardly see them.

This is possible through the subtle feeling nature. He can feel the presence of the Gods within the temple, and he can indirectly see their influence in his life.

LORD GANESHA - THE GATE KEEPER

Lord Ganesha is the first God a Hindu comes to know.

As the Lord of Categories, His first objective is to bring order into the devotee's life, to settle him into the correct and proper flow of his dharma--the pattern of duties, responsibilities and expectations suited to the maturity of his soul.

As the Lord of Obstacles, He deftly wields His noose and mace, dislodging impediments and holding avenues open until the individual is set in a good pattern, one that will fulfill his spiritual needs rather than frustrate them.

Always remember that Ganesha does not move swiftly. He is the elephant God, and His gait is slow and graceful. As the God of the instinctive-intellectual mind, His darshans are carried on the slower currents of mind, and so His response to our prayers is usually not overnight or sudden and electric, but more deliberate and gradual.

Yet, our patience is rewarded, for His work is thorough and powerful, of matchless force persisting until our lives and minds adjust and our prayer has become reality. Lord Ganesha is also known as the Gatekeeper. Access to all the other Gods comes through Him.

It is not that He would want to keep anyone from another God, but He prepares you to meet them and makes the meeting an auspicious one.

This preparation can mean lifetimes. There is no hurry. It is not a race.

Ganesha will faithfully bar access to those who do not merit a divine audience and an ensuing relationship with the other Deities whose darshans are faster. Should a devotee gain unearned access and invoke the powers of other Deities before all preparations were concluded, karma would accelerate beyond the individual's control.

Worship of Lord Ganesha, however, may begin at any time. Ganesha is the ubiquitous God. There are more shrines, altars and temples for Lord Ganesha than for any other God.

Ganesha bhakti is the most spontaneous worship and the simplest to perform. It requires little ritual.

Just the ringing of a small bell at the outset of a project before His picture or the burning of camphor or the offering of a flower is enough to invoke His presence and protection.

Throughout India and Sri Lanka, there are small, unadorned shrines to Ganapati under shaded trees, along country roads, at bus terminals, along footpaths and in the city streets. His blessings are indeed everywhere.

Helping Ganesha, whose powers of mind outreach the most advanced computers we can conceive, are His ganas, or devonic helpers. These ministering spirits collect the prayers of those in need, ferret out and procure the necessary information and bring it before Lord Ganesha's wisdom.

As we come closer to the wonderful Gods of Hinduism, we come to love them in a natural way, to be guided by them and to depend on them more than we depend on ourselves. The exuberant enthusiasm so prevalent in the West, of holding to an existential independence and expressing an autonomous will to wield the direction of our lives, loses its fascination as we mature within the steady radiance of these Gods and begin to realize the divine purpose of our Earthly sojourn.

One might ask how the Hindu can become so involved in the love of the Gods that he is beholden to their will? Similarly, one might ask how does anyone become so involved and in love with his mother and father, trusting their guidance and protection, that he is beholden to them? It works the same way.

Where you find the Hindu family close to one another and happy, you find them close to the Gods.

Where they are not close, and live in a fractured or broken home, the Gods will unfortunately have been exiled from their lives. They will not be invoked, and perhaps not even believed in.