Mail This Page
WORDS AND VERSES

To remind the river of its nature and its culture one had to reverse it to its source. To remind the words and verses of their holy purpose they had to be reversed.

QUALITY

Mercy is not a quality. You speak of mother’s love. You could speak volumes about it, still it remains unspoken. So is mercy. Mercy is not a Quality. “To put up with” is a quality. “To love” is not a quality. So qualities have to be acquired and abandoned at will.

UTILITY

When you go to the market to buy fish you have to carry currency, otherwise you cannot buy it. When you go to the riverside to catch fish by yourself you have to carry rod. Otherwise you cannot catch fish. But when you have bought the fish or when you have caught the fish, to eat it you do not require currency or the rod. So be it with reason.

Knowledge is an obstacle if you are unable to convert it as a handy tool. Let it remain there. But what is necessary alone may be used. For cooking your porridge a pot and a stove will do with the grains and water. A horse has no place there. But this is not to belittle the horse’s utility.

When you want to convert a desert into an Orchard you have to plant seeds and tend. It is not by a song or a wish or a curse that one is converted. Conversion involves ceaseless work done in cheer, meaning well throughout, within and without.

A bomb is also thrown with the same caution and dexterity as a seed is sown. The seed sprouts. The bomb explodes. The sprouting of the seed is an awakening. The explosion of the bomb is destruction. By sprouting the seed blossoms and becomes useful. The bomb destroys and gets destroyed.

Love is heaven. Hatred is hell. But it is necessary to avoid those who do not believe in God. If you are to remain a believer, you must mingle with believers only. The lion, why lion, the jackal may be more powerful than a lamb. But the lamb can never seek its security from a jackal.

Any soul is great, for the Almighty made it. There is a hand in this body and there is hair on the hand. The hand lifts. The hair cannot lift. But the hair is not inferior to the hand, for the almighty who made the hand made the hair as well.

YOGA

Your left side is the moon for you, as your right is the sun for you and the front the earth for you. Whatever you see is the earth. When you lean to your left side it is the moon and when you lean to your right side it is the sun. You can have the last word or even the last laugh. If you can vibrate with the moon you can decide your exit by being with the moon.

LOVE

Love that does not unite leads to narrow mindedness. On account of love, one may refrain from hitting a snake; but placing it on one’s lap is not love. It is ignorance. Love shall conform to the laws of nature. That conformity alone is wisdom.

A fish need not bathe, since it is always in water. Birds do not plunge into water for cleansing themselves. Still they are clean. Each has one’s own way of bathing.

ESSENCE

Regarding the experiences which are totally spiritual in nature, the one thing which should be remembered is that you stay where you are, but you become different and that is transformation; you stay where you are, but you are in a different place and hence you become different. That is transportation.

Now it is freedom that has laid a siege on all of us. It is love that has besieged us. It is earnestness that threatens to convert us. It is compassion that has sealed all our escape routes. Let us welcome this siege with hands raised in respect towards the merciful one.

How do these transportation and transformation help? Help becomes explicit when the experience is retained in its essence. Let us suppose that you visit a temple or a place of worship and come back to your house. You get help from that visit only by retaining the memory of having visited that place and retaining the memory of what happened there ‘in essence’. This memory is not remembrance. Retention is not remembering where you had been. When you remember you tend to visualise the place, which you visited, and those who also visited along with you and things like that. They are perfectly Okay, but this is not the point. The point is to retain the 75 essence of it. Each fruit retains its essence in its core.

Siddhas – The Perfected Beings


Mahesh 'Matt' Krishnan: a disciple of Dr. Nithiyanandham since 1985 , shares his life experiences and spiritual philosophy grounded in the tradition of our guru Dr.Nithiyanandam

Every creation of the Supreme being has within itself the seed of perfection, as a natural condition of it’s divine origins. This seed of perfection creates the aspiration in each being to be free of limitations akin to its source. Perfected beings are known as Siddhas. They are the original scientists who were the noble women and men who studied life deeply, mastered themselves and taught others how to live the highest life.

Siddhas understood that body, mind and soul were one bundle that had to be addressed holistically as one influenced the other in an intricate balance. Siddhas researched, meditated upon and understood the human anatomy, the psychology of the mind and the collective realm of the spirit from which we came and to which we return. Thus, they mastered the major areas of knowledge of the self, knowledge of the world and knowledge of the beyond (our origins).

Siddhas are considered those who have gone beyond the egoist mind (ahamkara) into a expanded state of joyful consciousness in the divine. While philosophical aspects of knowledge of the self have become known, such as Tirumoolars Tirumandiram or Tiruvalluvars Thirukurals, other aspects that Siddhas brought to light on the structure of the universe such as Surya siddhanta are relatively less known. Our guru Doctor Nithiyanadham was such a Siddha, a master whose mission was to bring to light the lesser known aspects of mind and life handed to him by Masters such as Sage Agastya. He has accomplished this not only through the information given to us in personal discussions, songs and verses, but also as a living realization in his disciples who practiced the Vasi yoga method of pranayama given to them.

The Yogic Method of the Siddhas

The essential approach of Siddhas was to get as directly as possible to the root cause of life and it’s forces. They understood that the goal of spiritual perfection involved a sound body and clear mind and went about creating the conditions for it. Siddhas believed that maximizing the life span of the body was an obviously efficient way to complete one’s desires in a single journey as opposed to returning numerous times in various bodies to fulfill a few remaining desires. Hence a healthful life was the very first element that was emphasized. Siddhas are famous for being the original medicine men who studied herbs and natural cures to manage health and metabolism through diet, breathing and posture. Bogar, the siddha, is believed to have invented acupuncture and carried it across to China. There are numerous lesser known Siddhas who are responsible for the everyday benefits we get from various important life giving discoveries.
Doctor in Eternal Bliss

The essence of Vasi yoga is that the central nervous system is run by fine currents that are governed by the movement of the subtle breath. The voluntary nervous system gets rested during sleep while the involuntary nervous system keeps working around the clock with no rest, as it runs the various organs of the body even when we sleep. The erosion of the involuntary nervous system eventually leads to the demise of the body. Extending the life of the involuntary nervous system is accomplished by the energy infusion in the subtle breathing method of Vasi yoga. ( refer Sri Yukteswar’s treatise called ‘Holy Science’). This subtle breathing also opens up dormant endocrine glands in the brain that provide critical natural hormones and secretions to help us live in greater health and fuller awareness of reality, perceptions and details. Modern medicine is still exploring the mysteries of memory, sleep and consciousness that the Siddhas penetrated centuries ago. An example is the finding a few years ago that a hormone called Melatonin secreted from the tiny Pineal gland situated between the two hemispheres of the brain, regulates sleep and body rhythms.

The Experience of Siddhas

Yogic practice - combined with a simple life, an uncluttered mind with few desires, high ideals and associating with those of refined interests and devotional pursuits - brings about the transformation of everyday affairs into personal joy and meaningful collective development. Siddhas were not religious in the traditional sense as they embraced paths and masters across religions. Their emphasis was on a direct experience of the divine and love of the divine mother whose manifestations we are. As the Dalai lama said, by using common sense, common experience and scientific study we can go much further in bringing a higher awareness than by organized religious activity.

In my experience, on this path as a disciple of a great master, the essential experience of life is one of joy, wonder and affinity for reality. If we give up our conditioning and expectations and keep our awareness open and receptive we find that life is working itself out in a majestic and oftentimes beautiful way. It may not fit our own design, preconceived notions or any particular logic but the acceptance of life as it is, is the first step to being in harmony. Life is essentially happening as a fresh new event each moment filled with possibility if we are open to the ever pristine reality in the now, without shutting it off with echoes of previous experience and recycled thoughts and ideas. Thus a clear mind means exactly what it says - to be clear of any thoughts unless you are required to reflect for a focused reason - and to be ready to absorb what is happening around us fully and attentively. This open attentive state of affinity may also be called love.

Gratitude – The key to Maintaining Faith

In the spiritual world there comes a time when the questions stop and the need for demonstrable proof diminishes. This state of faith comes from experience in seeing how things work. Sustaining the faith on a daily basis is through a continuous gratitude for every little blessing that we have each day. This is the way our mind overcomes its habit of nagging doubt or negative ideas. When we are thankful for the stars, the trees, the atmosphere that sustains all, we grow beyond our idea of separation and the overwhelming largeness that surrounds us rushes in to fill any gaps. Ideas emerge. Our presence evokes others to make a response. Our gratitude and attention solves the puzzle in mysterious but delightful ways down to the most uncanny detail.

Desire and Will

I am told that there is really no equivalent in Sanskrit for the word will, related to individual will. The word Sankalpa or Ichha mean goal or desire but it is assumed there is only one will. The will of the divine. Well, then do you not have your own desires and will.? If your mind is purified and in state of expanded consciousness transcending oneself, the desires that you have – even if it is just for a better home for yourself, or for a better school for your children or for world peace or solving world hunger – it will find a way to be fulfilled without undue struggle. Retain the desire, examine it lovingly for it’s intent and reasonableness. Do not fight the desire. Watch it and pay attention to it’s roots. If they are not for a real need they will disappear or simply not materialize for your own good. If it remains in your heart persistently the divine will finds a way to fulfill it and you simply play the role of a ‘courier’ or executioner of the activity that happens at the right time and place as part of a greater flow. This has been my experience by the grace of our guru.

Mahesh "Matt" Krishnan

Article submitted on 15th June, 2008


Back to Top
Go to next article by the author Next Page