The Glittering Fragrance of God Consciousness: Shiva Sutra 3.22 & 3.23
All of manifestation is undergoing creation, maintenance and dissolution— but we usually only pay attention to the first and last parts, and the maintenance portion is often overlooked. According to the Sutras, though, the maintenance yogi is what we are striving for— being able to ‘maintain our awareness’ through the middle of our life and practice. These yogis are rewarded with the intoxicating fragrance of Glittering God Consciousness, Sphurana— a perfume that is only given to the Maintenance Yogis among us. So today let’s spend some time seeing how we can become maintenance yogis in our life and practice, and begin to enjoy the fruits of that special kind of labor. See Full Text below!
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3.22. prāṇasamācāre samadarśanam //
“When his breath begins to slowly move out toward the external state, then he also experiences the pervasion of God consciousness there.”
3.23. madhye ‘varaprasavaḥ //
“He does not experience the state of God consciousness in the center of these three states.”
All of manifestation undergoes a three stage process. Creation, maintenance, and disillusion, known as the Acts of Shiva. This process is at work in the biggest cycles of reality, like our expanding universe, as well as smaller cycles, like the cycle of a day, or even smaller like the cycles of our cells. And in terms of time, most of our life is spent in the maintenance phase. Think about it, a sunrise and sunset are relatively short compared to the overall length of a day. The time it takes to build a house, or the time it takes to tear down a house, pale in comparison to the amount of time you spend living in, and maintaining, the house. And likewise during the activities of our day, we’re excited to start a project, received to end it, how do we feel in the middle of it? This middle space is where a majority of our lives and practice take place, and according to the Sutras, is also where we tend to lose our focus the most. As Lakshmanjoo teaches in Sutra 2.10, “Losing awareness happens to all yogīs, it is the great crisis in the yogīc world. All yogīs generally experience this state of losing awareness.” That’s why in this set of Sutras we are focusing on unlocking the energy in this maintenance phase of our practice.
What pulls us away from center during the midst of our lives and practice? Everything! For thousands of years, yogis have been pulled away from center by absolutely everything that surrounds them— “About this, the Mālinīvijaya Tantra says:‘Due to the impressions he has of what others think of him or expect from him and of his wanting to help others, to satisfy them with boons, he may lose his temper and become careless and uneven-minded, blocking his flow of God consciousness from the center of the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep. So, although he is aware of God consciousness in the beginning and in the end, he is played by this universe in the center, played by this universe in the center, played by hunger, played by thirst, played by every aspect of daily life. Therefore, the one who desires to achieve the highest being should not be attached to these outer impressions. (Mālinīvijaya Tantra)”
To rise to this challenge of the maintaining our awareness we need to pick up the mop bucket and start paying attention to the maintenance phase of our lives and practice. Imagine your on your own special episode of undercover boss, and your going to take a break from being the CEO of your life, and put on the Maintenance person’s uniform. We can begin to shift our energy from being the Director to being the maintainer. And what we find, according to our teachers and the Sutras, is that our lives get better when we take on this new job as maintenance yogis— As Babaji teaches, “The most surprising thing for me over the years was realizing that what I was clinging to and how I thought something should be were the biggest obstacles to having something better come along. We cling so desperately to our tensions. It is as if we have a strangle hold on an anchor, and we are sinking to the bottom of the ocean, and we won’t let go. It is not a fun way to be. But, if for a moment or two, you can reach that state where you are totally present, you are not in the past, you are not in the future, your heart is open, and you have a deep sense of gratitude, then everything releases. All you have to do is not grab it again. Grabbing it again is often our biggest problem.” (SP, 102)
Our status as CEOs is our biggest limitation. Put down the business card, and pick up the screwdriver, because creating our reality usually just re-creates our patterns. Being a maintainer of reality may not appear to be changing anything on the surface, but under the surface it’s changing everything. Be aware, though, that being the maintenance person is not initially as glamorous or exciting as being the CEO. The Maintenance person looks around the environment they are in instead of looking at their phone. The maintanence person can take a breath into their heart and practice Santosha, contentment, when 'nothing is going wrong’, where others might look for something to go wrong. The maintenance person might move slower, speak slower, breathe slower, react slower— because they are in it for the long run. To maintain our awareness across this huge swath of our lives and practice requires a big shift in our daily approach to tasks. It’s like Babaji is always teaching us, “see what’s possible,” instead of always trying to make things the way you want them. Support your environment, work within it, not against it. In this way we begin to work with our distractions instead of being flattened by them. A maintenance person is always ready to grease a squeaky wheel, to help prop up a wobbly table— they are ready to work, and they are working with what is present. Because the distractions of our day are very real, and they’ll always be there. So instead of trying to accept or reject them, start to work through them as they arise.
And what does a job like this pay? Maintenance yogis are not paid in dollars and distractions, they are paid in Spuranas. What’s a Spurana?… That’s the most exciting part of the job. A Sphurana is described as “The fragrance of the supreme glittering of God consciousness,” that’s what is directly deposited to your energetic bank account. For this Yogi, “the three states of waking, dreaming and deep sleep are filled with the dense nectar of God consciousness…They never loses the fragrance of God consciousness. This means that his God consciousness endures in each and every state of their life, whether it be waking, dreaming, or deep sleep.”
As a CEO you might get a lot of horizontal rewards, but as the Maintenance person you are paid in the Fragrance of Glittering God Consciousness. It should be noted that Babaji and Faith always say that Rudi smelled amazing. Faith talks about it in her book numerous times, “He hugged often and he smelled great – like the incense he burned in his Oriental antique shop.” Or later, "My primary feeling of the city was Rudi, and Rudi always felt and smelled fresh as a baby.” So whether this smell is literal, or energetic, the important thing to remember is that it is only paid to the maintenance yogis, those who are doing the work, slow and steady. As Faith also wrote in her book, "Rudi once said that he felt like a water buffalo hitched to a water wheel. Instead of grinding wheat into flour, he was being used to grind up the tensions of his students.” It is the slow and steady work that defines our practice. Our work is not complicated, its our lives that are complicated. Our work is as simple as an ox guiding grain, but we try to make it more complicated to match our lives. Let’s let both of them be a lot simpler this week. This kind of work is so valuable that Rudi used to say that he would trade 10 lawyers for 1 plumber, meaning that the value of a maintenance yogi is truly priceless. You know who were also maintenance yogis historically, Ram and Krishna— forms of Vishnu, the maintainer. They came to help clean things up here on earth, we should be so lucky as to follow in their footsteps. That’s the thing about being a maintenance yogi, you stop seeing life in terms of rank and hierarchy— you see life in terms of Consciousness. As the Sutras tell us, and as Rudi has taught about our practice in general, this kind of work dissolves all difference, and frees us from the bondage that difference entangles us within:
“When he has brought the daily active routine of his life to an end and holds the monistic state which bestows final liberation, then he is one with each and every deity. All castes (varṇa) and positions in life (āśrama), whether it be brāhmaṇa, kṣatriya, vaiśya or śūdra, are equal to him. He does not discern any difference between what is to be eaten and what is not to be eaten, or what is forbidden and what is accepted. He is liberated (muktaḥ), totally freed from all the various kinds of bondage of daily life.”
So this week, take a step into the background of your life. Observe the space you’re in, listen to it. Is it running smoothly? If so, take a breath into that space of contentment. Is it squeaking? Are you squeaking? Then let your awareness sink inwards and oil your heart with the Nectar of the pure consciousness, Turyarasa. Let’s all try to walk and talk a little slower than usual, in the hopes of occupying this middle space of our lives and practice with more presence and awareness. And be on the lookout for a direct deposit into your energetic savings account in the form of Spuranas— the Glittering fragrance of God Consciousness.
Mantranōm
To help with this in my practice I’ve created a little tool called the Mantranōm. It is a way of keeping my mantra going during the middle of my tasks. It is not going to somehow do the work for you, but it can give you a way to do the work yourself. Its basically a metronome, strategically set up for a certain mantra, while also allowing an optimal amount of time to breathe between mantras. This breath aspect is perhaps the most important. I have found it is precisely the lack of room for breathing in my mantra practice that keeps me from doing more mantras. We overload ourselves and have no way of sustaining. So this breath after each mantra keeps you nourished, and allows for the space of dissolution to take place naturally, so that each mantra can be born, live, and fade away.
Also, the subtlety of the mantranōm is what allows it to exist in the background of your life. It is the supreme maintenance person, quietly chipping away at their task while office life goes on as usual. It s quiet little tapping, like the ticking of a grandfather clock perhaps, that can simultaneously rest in the background of your awarensss while also being a part of its foreground. THe link between it being a background or foreground is you— its there when you need it, and by simply chanting along with it you bring it in to the foreground. When you need to answer a call, or talk to someone, its fades back easily, but stays there quietly till you can pick it up again.
I have found that the middle of my tasks have begun to be infused with mantra at th level I always wish they could be. For years I have tried, but that middle phase of awareness just slips away, but with this little tapping of the mantranōm it has a life of its own. This is not a new concept, I first heard a type of mantranom during the 21 Taras practice we do with Faith, you can hear it quietly in the background when people take breaths. For them the mantranom is a person with a small hand drum, helping keep everyone on track and chanting togehter— with modern technology, though, we can carry that little hand drum with us everywhere we go. We can literally put it in our pocket, which is what I do, and let that drum tap away, supporting us in our growth.
What’s fun about the mantranom too is that it can run in the background of apps, and even when your phone screen is off— this means that it can run while you are scrolling instagram, or while you are reading a text message, and while your phone is literally in your purse or pocket. It also works great in group settings, like the dish room here at Konalani. There will be 3 of us in the room toegehre, and we can easily do mantra and breathe while doing our taks, and when someone needs to say something its easy to just respond, chat for second, and then resume— instead of missing a verse in a song, for example, or even having to have a mantra or kirtan leader in those settings.
And finally, as an auditory learner, the mantronom helps me focus without over stimulating my auditory senses. I get saturated with music very quickly. AFter 10 minutes or so I physically need quiet— with the mantranom I haven’t felt that way, its just a comforting little tap. And after each male, there is room for silence, to help you feel that space again.
So this week perhaps the mantranom will help support you in bringing the practice into th emidst of your life. There is not trick for growth of course, but a good tool in the hands of a skilled practitioner can be a tremendous resource. A good tool in the hands of someone who doesn’t want to the do the work, of course, means nothing. But we are practitioner, its the most wonderful part of what we are, we practice, we want to grow. Some days more than others, but we are a hungry sangha. I hope this is like your best cooking tool, or favorite wrench, or most helpful app— I hope it helps you do the work of growing.