Nandinatha Sutras

Nandinatha Sutras describe the qualities of those who are on the way to Siva. They are as follows. Siva's followers do the following :-

• Life's Highest Purpose : Strive for God Realization as the first and foremost goal of life.

• Four Noble Goals :Are ever mindful that life's purpose is to wholeheartedly serve God, Gods and guru and fulfill the four traditional Hindu goals: duty (dharma), wealth (artha), love (kama) and liberation (moksha).

• Seeing Siva's Energy In All : The Devotees bask contentedly in Siva consciousness, seeing the pure life energy in every person, animal, bird, reptile, fish, insect, plant, tree and even microscopic intelligence as Supreme God Siva Himself.

• Oneness With The Satguru : They Strive to be inwardly one with their satguru, acknowledging the paramount need for a spiritual preceptor to guide them on the upward climb, the straight path that leads to Lord Siva's holy feet.

• Seeking While Strong : Siva's devotees heed the ancient wisdom: "The physical body does not last forever. Age prowls like a leopard. Before the limbs lose their vitality, one should take to the auspicious path to the Self."

• Living Contemplatively : Siva's devotees cultivate a contemplative nature by meditating daily, seeking the light, drawing the lesson from each experience and identifying with infinite intelligence, not with body, emotion or intellect. Aum.

• Accepting Our Karma : They Accept all experiences, however difficult, as their self-created karma, without cringing or complaining. Theirs is the power of surrender, accepting what is as it is and dealing with it courageously. Aum.

• Flowing With The River Of Life : They live vibrantly in the eternity of the moment and flow with the river of life by giving up negative attachments, releasing the pains, injustices, fears and regrets that bind consciousness in the past. Aum.

• Purpose, Plan, Persistence And Push : They Approach each enterprise with deliberate thoughtfulness, and act only after careful consideration. They succeed in every undertaking by having a clear purpose, a wise plan, persistence and push. Aum.

• Moving The Forces Of The World : By remaining steadfast on the path, upholding the yamas and niyamas and relying on their indomitable will, move the forces of the world, and are not moved or affected by them. Aum Namah Sivaya.

• The Lion-hearted Ones : Those who live with Siva fulfill life's purposes by placing heavy demands on themselves from within themselves, never shirking their duty to religion, family, community or planet. Jai, they are the lion-hearted. Aum.

• Excellence And Noncompetitiveness : Those who live with Siva endeavor to be their best in whatever they do, to excel and make a difference. Even so, they remain apart from the demeaning and contentious "winners and losers" spirit of competition. Aum.

• Teaching The Five Precepts And Practices : Those who live with Siva teach children the five precepts: God as All in all, temples, karma, reincarnation/liberation, scripture/preceptor; and five practices: virtue, worship, holy days, sacraments and pilgrimage. Aum.

• Guarding Against Instincts And Intellect : Those who live with Siva keep the mountaintop perspective that life on Earth is an opportunity for spiritual progress. They never lose sight of this truth by becoming infatuated with instinctive-intellectual pursuits. Aum.

Getting back to basics

Your journey on this Earth has only one goal, Self Realization. You are here to attain the highest possible states of consciousness. You are not here to react to the petty incidents that occur in the valley of the subconscious. You are here to learn to control the mind and live on the mountaintop. If you fail yourself, you are the one who must suffer your failure. Often, in retelling their failures or their sufferings, people react to or re-enact the original experience all over again. But learning to extract the lesson from the experience is like walking through the rain without getting wet.

We have to hold a constant vigil and keep our feet firmly planted on the spiritual path at all times, knowing that we can fall off the path until we have attained full illumination, or Self Realization, in this or future lives. By taking a stand within yourself on small issues, you can always find a different way, a way which will open the door to new opportunity, selflessness and serenity. But, to the degree that we are unable to restrain the inclinations of our lower mind, to the degree that we find ourselves incapable of entering into positive observances, so do we open ourselves to inferiority complex, jealousy, hatred, self-indulgence, lust, fear, greed and all sorts of mental and physical ailments. Being aware of the laws of life allows an uninhibited and natural unfoldment, just as a bud unfolds into a flower.

Some more golden words from my Respected Guru -

We're here to realize the Self, to have that one dramatic experience where everything that we thought was things is turned upside down, and our whole perspective afterwards changes. That is the purpose for living on this Earth. That is the purpose for being here this very moment. That is the purpose for my speaking to you in this way, to impress upon you very thoroughly that you are here for Self Realization, walking on this planet. Get it. Direct all your energies toward it, and then the tremendous power of desire will be for the one goal, not for the many goals toward which desires usually flow. When that happens, Self Realization will come to you. It'll be very easy. One day, you will be Self Realized.

Step IV - Become The Watcher

The beginning stages of watching the mind think I shall describe as similar to sitting quietly with your eyes open and, while not thinking about anything in particular, simply looking at what is around you -- all of the time feeling somewhat empty on the inside, but seeing what is in front of you, to the left side of you, to the right side of you, above you, below you, and knowing what each object is, but not thinking about any object or collection of objects. Your eyes are watching; who lives behind them is the watcher. The objects that the mind perceives are similar to thoughts.

Your perfected state, too, as the watcher, is right there, deep within you. The next time you sit for meditation, follow my guru's advice to us all and witness your thoughts. Be that stationary awareness, holding form in its own perfection. All you have to do is to watch your mind think. Then and only then are you experiencing your perfect state of inner being. The only difference between the jnani and the novice is that the jnani stays in there longer as the watcher, whereas the novice experiences this only momentarily from time to time.
This is the result of a great abundance of your sadhana, and as the watcher, once stabilized within a new platform, a new beginning is commenced. There is much preparation that you can perform to attain this prolonged state more rapidly. There are some do's and don'ts to be heeded and explicitly obeyed. Do regulate your in-breath to equal the same number of counts as your out-breath, and feel the bliss of your body as it becomes relaxed and harmonized. Don't allow indulgence in sexual fantasy for even one moment. Do correct your diet to that of sattvic foods that grow above the ground. Don't indulge in mental argument with yourself or anyone else.
These four suggestions are the basic formula for cleansing the dross from the mind as well as from the subconscious by not putting more into it.

Step III - Consciously Superconscious

The following tirumantiram saying summarizes it all as to what i need to execute for Step III.

You need no shouting when you withdraw into understanding. You need no speaking when you are seated in superconsciousness. You need no holy rites when you are inwardly detached. You need no meditation when you have reached the actionless state.
Tirumantiram 1634

It is easier to know when you are NOT superconscious than when you are superconscious, because your superconsciousness is such a natural state. It is such a beautiful state. It is such a full, wholesome state to be in, that you are not aware generally that you are superconscious. When you are not feeling too well within yourself, you are not superconscious. When you are feeling really good and satisfied within yourself, you are superconscious. When you are arguing with yourself, you are not superconscious. You are flowing through an area of the intellectual mind, taking two points of view and flowing from one to another. When discussing something with someone, you are not superconscious, for superconsciousness is a one-way street. You speak right from the core of existence without really thinking about what you are going to say. You just speak out and hear what you said afterwards.

I liked the last sentence - I speak out and hear what i said afterwards :-)

If you can remain totally centered in awareness of the energy within your spine and the energy within the head, you become aware of the same energy within everybody and everything you see. You are immediately in a superconscious state when this happens. Therefore, the simple goal is, stay in this consciousness of energy for the rest of your life. It is just that easy, but it is not quite that simple to accomplish, because you have already trained your awareness to move into other channels of the mind, and it will do that automatically as soon as you cease to be aware of the energy within the spine.

All you have to do is to reprogram the subconscious a little and move awareness out of the conscious mind, and your journey is within. You are superconscious now. You have to accept that. You do not have to "get to be" superconscious. This is not something that is going to happen to you all of a sudden and then cause you to be different. The thing that is going to happen to you is that you will release your individual awareness from the so-called bondages of the habit patterns of the external mind that it had been accustomed to flowing through. Once it is released, you will automatically flow into other inner areas of the mind because you have been studying about them and now have the map clearly outlined for you.

Step II - Lean on your spine and get centered.

You are only that "AWARENESS" which visits different areas of minds, like how a traveler travels to different cities in the world. Just ponder over the words, AWARENESS, WILLPOWER, ENERGY. And you will be centered. You are that intangible energy that powers every muscle and vein in your body. Awareness has to pass through confused states of mind in meditation where consciousness tends to indentify itself with awareness itself rather than that which is aware of and has to be eliminated through the light of understanding. By becoming consciously conscious every moment, we live in the present fully aware of whats happening around, "Am i fully aware of what im doing right now?" .... "Im all right, right now" These will be mantras going forward from this moment. And I will find my self god in the that of the that of the that, I will, I Will and I WILL.

Excerpt from Sri Sri Sivaya Subramuniya swami's "Merging with Siva"Chapter 16 "Im all right right now", my loving guru:

We have to lean on our own spine. But first we have to claim our spiritual heritage and feel "I'm all right, right now." By saying this and believing it, we pull the energies in just a little and become centered again. When we ask ourselves point blank, "Am I all right, right now?" we have to come up with a "Yes." Lean on your own spine. Feel the power in the spine. Feel the energy in the spine. The energy in the spine is not concerned with any fear or worry or doubt -- not at all. It is a pure, powerful, blissful energy. Lean on it, and you will go crashing through into inner states of meditation. Things in the world will also work out right for you. You will be in the flow of life. You will have perfect timing. Beautiful things will begin to happen to you in the exterior world. Opportunities will open up for you where there were no opportunities before. People will become nice to you who ordinarily would not. All this and more begins to happen because mentally you are leaning on yourself, and people in general like you to do this.

Realization Is the Key

What does it mean to "get centered" and to "be centered"? Actually, what it means is to feel the primal source within, to feel so centered that you are the center. And we always are something of what we feel, our hands or our legs or our bodies or our emotions or our desires. Most people on the path have the desire to get rid of their desires. It's an impossible battle. Have you ever tried to get rid of your desires? If you would stop trying to get rid of your desires, then you would be centered, because you then take the energy out of desire. You take awareness away from that world of desire, and you get right in the primal source of the energy which flows through the physical body. It flows through the emotional network, right through the intellectual mind. That primal source of energy is flowing through the spine in each and every one of us this very moment. Feel it?

The entire spiritual unfoldment process, oddly enough, is designed to throw you off center so that you have to work to pull yourself on center. First life throws you off center. You have all kinds of experiences. You make mistakes and, with your indomitable will, have to control that fluctuating awareness to get it right on center and be all right, right now. Feel that powerful energy flowing through every nerve current and be that energy rather than the fluctuating nerve current. Then, one day, when you really get good at it, you find a guru. You are firmly on center, and he tries to throw you off.

My guru, Yogaswami, would always throw his disciples off center and set them spinning. They had to work hard with themselves to get on center again. That strengthens the sinews and the muscles of man's becoming himself, becoming totally aware that he is aware and then controlling his mind by not allowing his awareness to get caught up in the vast illusion of the externalities of the mind. How's that? That's a good one -- the vast illusion of the externalities of the mind!
What is this center? Well, it's like the inside of an empty glass. You know something is there, and when you're aware of it, you know that you're aware inside that empty glass. However, when you're aware of the glass itself, that's something else. When you're aware of the outside of the glass, that's something else again. When you're aware of the table the glass is sitting on, again that's something else. Now imagine you are like the glass. Become aware of the space inside. That is the tangible intangible you have to grasp.

The best way to work this is a very simple way. Let's try it now. Just open and close your hands and feel the muscles and the bones. Now feel an intangible something, an intangible energy, which is that life force, and soon you will feel a force within that. That is your force of awareness that gives the command to the life forces, to the muscles and sinews which open and close your hand. So, be that intangible force rather than the hand. Be the commander who commands the muscles to relax and tense, to open and close. It's an intangible reality. This you realize. You don't think about it. Your intellect cannot give it to you. Your instinct and emotions cannot give it to you. It's something you have to realize. When you grasp it, you start to unfold and awaken spiritually. It comes from the deeper chakras, the higher chakras. And it's very easy. You either have grasped it or you haven't grasped it. So, work with that and grasp that. Then the unfoldment process begins. Finally you begin to see light within the head, light within the body. You begin to have beautiful, beautiful inner experiences. Everybody these days wants to have profound inner experiences without the use of drugs, or without the use of anything but their own positive willpower. That's the goal of the unfoldment of the people of all nations today, according to my own poll. And it is the right and mature goal.