Discourse 3 (Part 1)
Swami Pritam Muni
Karsanpura, 6 February, 2010.
Divya Sanskriti, April 2010

Say three prolonged ‘AUM’ with me: Aum……Aum….Aum.

Aum, Jai Bhagwan to all dear loved ones. We just witnessed yogasan demonstration by small girls. How well have the young children have learned to bend the body sideways and forward and backwards on the strength of practice. We should practice asan pranayam everyday to keep the body healthy. You can see from the pictures on the banner displayed here that the children were demonstrating difficult asans as shown in the banner. We are establishing Life Mission centers in various villages. Sequenced Yoga seminars are arranged there. Training in asan-pranayam, Shatkarmas, etc., is imparted through these seminars. Through these, children come to learn the initial stages of yoga from childhood. You must have seen a dog or cat stretch soon after waking up in the morning. Thus, they pull and stretch the whole body from the time they get up in the morning so that all parts of the body may receive excellent exercise and the excellent blood flow may be maintained throughout the body. How different it is with us. Only our head and neck and hands and legs move from the tome we get up in the morning to the time we go to sleep again at night; the part of the body in between remains inert like a sack of wheat since we are either standing up or lying down or sitting or reclining in a chair. In whatever of these positions we are, the back remains straight and unbending.

The children have demonstrated such difficult yoga postures. How flexible they have made the body by practicing yogasans involving twisting and turning the body every which way. It is said that the body should not be like that of an elephant but like that of a lion. The lion’s chest is higher and the stomach is lower. It should be so with us too. But it is the opposite so that diseases soon become our guests and become like relatives who do not leave for long time.

We should practice asan – pranayam daily. These are not merely for children; on the contrary, older people even in the ages of 70, 80, 90 years would experience energy in their bodies if they practiced asan-pranayam.

Many people revel in taking interest in what others are doing and in finding fault with them. It is not right to criticize others only on the basis of distant observation or what others say about them. Bad people scald their hearts by criticizing other people, by criticizing them take upon themselves the sins of others and also some of the burden of the sins of those before whom they articulate the criticism. Good people do not criticize others but themselves live the life of lions, fearing no one nor engaging in gossip and criticism. This is not the work of good people and we should avoid it. Divine displeasure visits those who engage in malicious gossip and criticism of others and physical ailments and social difficulties trail them through the given and many lifetimes to come. Just as poison is not something to be experimented with, this too is not a matter to be tested through experience. Instead, using discrimination, we should try and stay away from this evil tendency. So, it is better to stay at home and practice asan-pranayam instead of sitting in the homes of others and engaging in malicious gossip.

We have known about Lord Krishna, Lord Rama and other incarnations of Lord Vishnu. In the same way, there are incarnations of Lord Shiva also. But since there is very little propagation of them in society, fewer people know about them. Why does God incarnate? Our Sages and Saints, the Scriptures and God himself has said, “Whenever and wherever there is harm to dharma on the earth and evil is on the ascendant, I incarnate from age to age to rescue the devout and destroy evil and reestablish dharma”. Simply stated, whenever there is harm to the pure values of dharma God incarnates on this earth to re-establish those pure values.

So the question arises, which pure values does this imply? God himself delineated the pure values, ideals and principles of dharma at the beginning of creation and these will remain till the end of creation. Collectively, they are called sanatan dharma or the eternal religion or eternal culture. Sanatan dharma is called “apaurusheya” or that which is not created by man. Whatever we now refer to in normal social parlance as dharma are creations that have arisen during computable time and will perish sooner or later. Some have originated five hundred years ago, some a thousand years ago, others a thousand and five hundred years ago; all are the product of ideas of some individual’s imagination, synthesis, brilliance, assumptions or some experience. Collections of human society accepted these ideas as enshrined in texts as valid principles and recognized a separate religion on that basis. Thus new religions mushroomed from time to time, all really based on ideas and principles derived from the true sanatan dharma but projected as something new and original. These prevail for some time and are eventually destroyed. This goes on perpetually.

We should clearly understand that all of us on earth are followers of the sanatan dharma. Sanatan dharma is the mother of all other so called religions. It is “apaurusheya” – not created by any human. By contrast, all other religions we know are associated with the name of its founder. If we consider their history, we see that each has been founded by some individual and his followers believing in those ideals and ideas joined together to establish a new religion.

There is no such thing as the commonly known “Hindu dharma”. There is no such religion or community. By an aberration of history, in times past, the people living on the banks of the River Sindhu came to be called and known as ‘Hindu’. But the Scriptures themselves, not even one, do not anywhere contain the words “Hindu religion”. The Ramayan, Mahabharat, Smritis, Puranas, Upanishads, Aranyas, Brahamanas, Shad Darshans, none of them contain this concept or word. None of our vast coda of Scriptures have anywhere used the words ‘Hindu religion’. All refer only to Sanatan Dharma.

So, as we have seen, God incarnates for the purpose of re-establishing dharma when it has suffered harm. Lord Shiva incarnates during the interregnum between every Dwapar and Kali Yuga at the end of each chaturyugi. (Four Yugas: Satya, Treta, Dwapar and Kali). One Kali Yuga is equal to 4,32,000 human years. Dwapar is twice as long, Treta thrice as long and Satya is four times as long. The four Yugas (or eons or ages) put together make one chaturyugi (literally, four yugas). So a chaturyugi is 43, 20, 000 human years.

Those among you who may have performed rituals as prescribed by the Scriptures will remember that at the beginning of the procedure the Brahmin places water in the hands of the host of the prayer or ritual and makes him place himself in context as to who is offering the prayer and at what point in time (called ‘taking sankalpa’). We usually articulate three main things in the ‘sankalpa’- the name of the Rishi of our gotra, the name of father or, in the case of a female host, the husband or father, and then one’s own name, where we stay, what is the present time when we are performing the ceremony, ending with “twenty-eighth kali yuga, such and such month, such and such date and date of week’.

Presently the Dwapar age of the twenty-eighth Kali Yuga has ended and the Kali Yuga is in its first leg. Lord Shiva incarnates in the interregnum between every Dwapar and Kali Yuga. This period with reference to the present Kali Yuga was about four and a half to five thousand years ago. That is the time when the twenty-eighth incarnation of Lord Shiva took place. He was known by the name Lord Lakulish. The Shiv Puran contains the names of all the twenty-eight incarnations of Lord Shiva. The twenty-eighth name there is that of Lord Lakulish. At the time of that incarnation. Lord Lakulish had many kings, yogis, ascetics and devotees of that time as his disciples and he had re-established the values of the Sanatan Dharma over the entire earth. In the passage of time these values came to be eroded and forgotten.

How does dharma come to get eroded? The principles of dharma remain unaltered but with the passage of time all manner of intellectuals, philosophers, each according to his own capacity, imagination and understanding, assay commentaries and analysis and interpretations to display their own prowess. Their works pass on as gifts to society till a time comes when the original form of what constituted dharma is lost. Society is then thoroughly confused as to which commentator is right and which is wrong.

When it becomes difficult to determine questions of ethics and dharma, humanity gets divided into many sects and faiths in the name of religion. If we may use an analogy, when it comes to choosing between one who has tasted sugar and another who has not but both venturing to tell us bout it, it is wiser to listen to the one who has tasted sugar and therefore is in a position to know. All the averments of the one who has not tasted sugar will be mere imagination, ratiocination, conjecture and intellectual gymnastics but certainly neither the truth nor anything close to it. This is about what overtakes dharma too. A time comes when its true original meaning and content is lost. It is than that God incarnates in one form or another and once again confers on mankind the pure principles of dharma.

Lord’s Shiva’s incarnation during the interregnum between Dwapar and Kali Yuga is the Lakulish incarnation. The very same Lord Lakulish reappeared for a few minutes in 1913. A sannyasi named Swami Pranavanand was sitting alone in a Shiva temple at Haridwar. After the Pujari had left, Lord Lakulish appeared in the sanctum sanctorum of the temple and initiated Swami Pranavanandji into Divine Yoga.

You must have heard the phrase “Divine yoga” many times, but follow its true meaning in the later portion of my discourse. Later, Lord Lakulish again appeared and initiated Swami Kripalvanandji into Divine Yoga. He appeared again in 1956 and commanded Swami Kripalvanandji “Reawaken again our ancient Vedic Indian culture”.

Kripalvanandji exerted his energies to this end to the best of his abilities during his lifetime. Later, he initiated Swami Rajarshi Muniji into Sanyas in 1971. Kripalvanandji passed away in 1981. Swami Rajarshi Muniji was mostly in seclusion and had very little public contact. He had advanced very far in his yoga practice. The final result of his spiritual practice is what the Shvetashvatar Upanishad describes as one “who is beyond disease, old age and death attains the immortal body burnished in the fire of yoga.”. One who, through his yoga practice, has burnt his gross body of the five elements in the fire of yoga and attained a body beyond disease, old age and death, is a siddha (adept, perfected yogi, jivanmukta – liberated while alive from the cycle of birth and death), a Maharshi.

The Lord states in the Bhagvad Gita: “One who dies is born again”. Assume that I or any other Guru known to you, who has for years served the people, has provided spiritual association (satsanga) is honored in society, venerable yoga sadhak and all in all a great soul – passes away and we perform his last rites, cremate or bury him and give him what is called ‘samadhi’. We use respectful terms to describe the event and say, “He attained Nirvana”, or “He has passed onto Akshardham or Gauloka”. We say this to honor the departed but in the neighboring village someone else following another persuasion and who may not have known him would simply say, “He died”. We may use whatever respectful words we choose but that person would simply say, “He died”. It is natural that he, and others like him, should speak in this manner. It is said in the Bhagvad Gita that one who dies is certain to be born, and this may well be in any form, species and place (loka) in the cosmos according to the karmas of the departed. In this way, souls keep coming into this world time and time again in accordance with their karmas.

To escape this cycle of birth and death, one has to do such yoga practice that there may be no death or rebirth. There have been many devotees, Rishis and Munis (Saints and Sages) who had conquered death. You must have heard the name of Mirabai. She had not died. She got bodily absorbed in the Lord’s idol. Tukaram and Chaitanya Mahaprbhu had not died. They left this world with their bodies. Lalleshwari in Kashmir and Muktabai in Maharashtra took leave as beams of light within sight of witnesses. So too Tibet’s great yogi Mila Repa. There have been many such devotees, yogis, Saints and Sages and great souls but there having been none in recent memory there is little awareness about this in society. Pujya Rajarshi Muniji too is making progress on the path of the spiritual sadhana which confers freedom from old age and death.

Lord Lakulish appeared in Gurudev’s sadhana room at 11:20 in the night on 15th February, 1993 and gave darshan to Muniji. This darshan was neither imagination nor dream nor delusion but actual direct darshan. A glowing shape appeared in Guruji’s room, about four feet above the ground. And its divine glow spread in the surrounding atmosphere. Blinded by the glow, Guruji put his hands before his eyes. He prayed to Bhagwan to allow him to have his darshan. The divine form of God is not visible to men. Our scriptures say that the divine form of God is not visible even to gods and goddesses in heaven. Bhagwan said, “Son, the divine body blinds normal human eyes. But the material body is visible. Therefore to satisfy your desire, I will now convert my divine body into a material body.” With this the bright glow diminished and a figure not unlike a human figure of about 17, 18 years of age could be distinguished at a height of about 4 feet above the ground. It had neither beard nor moustache, its eyes did not blink, the body glowed like gold and was dressed in only a loin cloth.

Bhagwan spoke to Guruji for about 40 minutes. After that he said, “One reason for appearing before you is to give you guidance to help you advance further in your yoga practice”. Such guidance can be given only by an adept yogi in one’s own spiritual lineage or by God himself.

So, God said, “I have appeared before you today to give you guidance in your yoga sadhana”. The sadhana Bhagwan was referring to is the sadhana of the divine body beyond disease, old age and death, one that gives knowledge of all states of time, past present and future, one that confers the eight great Siddhis of yoga, and immortality. God gave the required guidance to Guruji and said, “you will attain six high states in your sadhana, as a result of which you will acquire the powers of siddhis like clairvoyance and clairaudience”.

We can understand the meaning of this which is that a yogi sitting in one place can visualize the entire cosmos or hear all sounds floating throughout the cosmos. From this statement of Bhagwan, you can clearly understand that, for example, if for some time Guruji so chooses to find out where I am and what I am doing, his ‘camera’ will focus on me as well as you and everyone else and he can clearly see what we are all doing and what I am speaking. We have a limitation, namely, that when I speak you can hear me, but you cannot divine what is in my mind. But advanced yogis hear not only what we speak, but also what we think. We have a limitation that at any given time we can do only 5, 7, 10 works, like watching television while at the same time glancing at a newspaper and enjoying some snacks, supervising some children at play to ensure that they do not go out of the house, or dogs do not enter the house. Thus, we can maybe do a few tasks at the same time. But there is a limit. But a yogi can assume innumerable consciousnesses and listen to many thousands of others at one and the same time. Great yogis have numerous such capabilities.

Whatever Bhagwan spoke to Guruji is an event of 1993. we’re presently in 2010. We cannot imagine how many capabilities can reside within a human body. I believe that anything and everything that you can imagine will still fall short of reality. Not one among those presently on the face of the earth concerning whom I have heard or read or come to know, is fit to be stood up on the same platform even at a great distance from Swami Rajarshi Muniji, let alone be put on the same level as him. If there is any such in the peaks of the Himalayas or the caves of Girnar I do not know.

We have read conversation in the Puranas, where the earth is depicted as observing, “it is my fortune that at the present time there is such great person upon the earth”.

We have to resort to the use of binoculars, if we have to observe something at a great distance. If we wish to see the planets, satellites and stars, we have to use high powered telescopes. If we look upon blood, we cannot see the microorganisms there, but can do so with the help of a microscope. All this, for the observation of the very small or the very large or the very distant things of the gross cosmos, but the cosmos also contains wondrous subtle creations created by divine power. To see these, we have to utilize the ‘binocular’ of yoga. For that, the ordinary binoculars made of glass will not be enough.

Situated above our earth is the Pitraloka which is made up of elements subtler than those of the earth. Our fifteen earthly days make up one day of Pitraloka, and another fifteen earthly days make up one night of Pitraloka. Above Pitraloka are located Swargaloka or Mahendraloka. It is that which is called Heaven. It is ruled by Devraj Indra, who is not subject to disease or old age and does not have to work for earning a living. The six earthly months, when the sun is in its southern transit, makes up one night of heaven, and the six earthly months when the sun is in its northerly transit, makes up one day of heaven. In this way, as we proceed to progressively higher realms, the measure of time also goes on proportionately increasing. Above Mahendraloka or Heaven, is Prajapatyaloka, which is also called Maharloka. And above that in turn is Brahmloka, which, in sequential ascending order, contains Janaloka, Tapaloka and Satyaloka. This Satyaloka is also called Brahmloka. The lord of this entire cosmos is Brahmaji who resides in the highest realm called Brahmloka.

Now, when a devotee or yogi transcends old age and death, what is his age or time span or lifespan? His age or lifespan is without limit. The passage of 1000 chaturyugis of earth is called a Kalpa. One day and night of Brahmaji is one kalpa, that is, one morning to evening of Brahmaji is one kalpa, but that is 1000 chaturyugis of earth. Similarly, another 1000 chaturyugis or one kalpa makes up one night of Brahmaji. His life span is made up of one hundred years comprised of 1 Cahturyugi + 1 Chaturyugi x 365 x 100.

We have pollution here on earth, and are not careful about what we eat and so fall sick. But the upper realms are without disease or old age. Therefore those in the upper realms enjoy their full life span appropriate to the respective realm. It is quite different in the case of yogis who have attained the divine body. Brahmas come and go, but not even a hair of such yogis is touched by time or decay. This is because everything in this cosmos is made from the five elements, but divine bodied yogis convert the five elements into energy. Bhagwan taught that divine knowledge to Gurudev and commanded Gurudev to undertake the work of resurgence of the Sanatan culture which he had first entrusted to Kripalvanandji. Bhagwan also explained how this is to be done.

What is sanatan dharma? What is our Sanatan culture? God explained to Gurudev how the values of Sanatan Dharma are superior to those of other followings. A printed booklet “Lakulish Prabodhan Abhiyan” is available containing the text of the forty minute conversation between Gurudev and Lakulish Bhagwan. Read it. From there you will come to know what a superior culture our Sanatan Culture is.

Guruji established an institution through which to carry out Bhagwan’s divine command. He said that this work was to be carried out throughout the world :“It is my will; you simply have to be instrumental in its execution”. Guruji named the institution Lakulish International Fellowship’s Enlightenment Mission, or LIFE Mission. Through it Guruji established around 1600-1700 LIFE Mission centers in several states of India and in Nepal. Hundreds of thousands of those desirous of learning yoga learn asan pranayam, and shat-karmas at these centers. Those who wish to progress further received guidance for their spiritual practice. Side by side, the work of cultural resurgence also kept expanding.

When we build a house, we also keep space there for a prayer room. For a world level institution like LIFE Mission, a similar place was also constructed. The LIFE Mission international headquarters was built in 100 acres of land in Jakhan village near Limdi, in Surendranagar district. The temples of the three principle deities, Lord Brahma, Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva, have also been built there. The campus also has a yoga vidyalaya, gau-shala, hospital, an English medium school, yoga exhibition hall and much else besides.

The pran-pratishtha of the idols in the spiritual centre was done on 26th, 27th and 28th January, 2007. The Indian Vice President, various Shankaracharyas and other spiritual heads and many visiting dignitaries from India and abroad witnessed these ceremonies. Later, on 29th January, at about 5:15 p.m., Guruji visited the temple alone. He performed some particular yogic kriyas and invoked Bhagwan. As he had done in 1993, so also now on this occasion, Bhagwan appeared again before Gurudev, first as an illuminated globe, from which light entered first into the idol of Brahmaji, thereafter into the idol of Lord Vishnu, and thereafter in the Shivalinga. We have heard about Pran-pratishtha many times. We perform these ceremonies with mantras from the scriptures, sacred materials and prescribed procedures. In the instant case the invitation was from a great Yogi and Lord Lakulish appeared in a globe of gentle light. The photograph which we distribute at the time of the opening of Life Mission centers is a representation of how Bhagwan Lakulish appeared to Guruji at the time of darshan by him.

In this second instance of darshan, Bhagwan Lakulish spoke to Guruji for about 20 minutes. He expressed his pleasure at the effort put in by all the disciples for the construction of the Spiritual centre. He also expressed satisfaction with Guruji’s work of the past 10 years and granted him permission to return to secluded sadhana, adding that he should nevertheless make arrangements to ensure that the important work of cultural resurgence goes on. (To be continued…)