The Path to God Awareness: Shiva Sutra 3.30 Part 2
Even though Shiva is all around us, and in us, there is still a path we must walk to that realization, and that is the reason we practice. This Path to God Awareness is the path we walk when we do mantra, pranayama, selfless service, hatha yoga— these are the ways that we can walk from our object based awareness to God awareness. As we will see in tonight’s Sutra, it is precisely from our limited object-awareness that we can '“walk” towards an expanded God Awareness, meaning that we can’t reject or accept the objects of our life to find God, but we in fact must learn to surrender them— to use our practice simultaneously with those objects of our awareness in order to illuminate the path to the higher Consciousness we seek. (Full text below)
Shiva Sutra 3.30 Part 2
śvaśaktipracayo’sya viśvam // “For the yogi, this universe is the embodiment of their collective energies”
To review in this Sutra we are taught that the practicing yogi sees this universe as the embodiment of their own energy.
Just like our own body, there are infinite parts to it— you can zoom into to it infinitely, never ending. Muscles, bones, cells, atoms, etc. So the whole world is like your own body, there are infinite topics to learn about. But without inner awareness, that learning will never teach you about your self, who you are, and what this universe is really about. Its like trying to fit an ocean in a cup, instead throw your cup in the ocean. How do you do that? Cultivate a meditative state while you learn, work, play, and even relax, and then everything you do will teach you about your own true nature.
As we will see in today’s teachings, cultivating this inner awareness is absolutely possible for anyone willing to try it, because everything you think, see and do is happening within this Universal Body of Shiva, which is also your body, as the Sutra tells us. There is nothing you can perceive that is not Shiva, as Swami Mutktananda’s own book tells us, and therefore this Shiva awareness is always available to us.
But even though Shiva is all around us, and in us, there is still a path we must walk to that realization, and that is the reason we practice. This Path to God Awareness is the path we walk when we do mantra, pranayama, selfless service, hatha yoga— these are the ways that we can walk from our object based awareness to God awareness. As we will see in tonight’s text, it is precisely from our limited awareness of the object that we walk towards an expanded awareness of God Consciousness, meaning that we don’t need to reject the objects of our life to find God, but we in fact must learn to use our practice alongside those objects in order to illuminate the path to a higher level of awareness.
We saw in the text last week that the word Knowledge can be confusing. Thanks to Usha, we saw the possibility to replace the word knowledge with awareness in order to simplify the work of the Sutra.
Why are knowledge and awareness interchangeable? Because wherever awareness flows, knowledge naturally grows. My neighbor Billy is the best mango farmer on the island, when I asked him his secret he just said “I look at them everyday.” And the same could be said about our own hearts, our own true nature— if you take time to simply look inside everyday, you will grow! Just like a mango!
Let’s take a look at a paragraph now and read it with that substitution.
“This knowledge is found everywhere, inside and outside, because without knowledge, an object cannot exist. This entire universe is, therefore, filled with that knowledge. And that knowledge, which may be objective knowledge, is, in fact, knowledge of God consciousness. No one has ever perceived an object without that knowledge. That knowledge, which is the real knowledge of God consciousness, has taken the form of the object. Objective knowledge is not separate from that knowledge of God consciousness. It is by that knowledge of God consciousness that this knowledge of objects takes place.”
Free Write: Where do you see this relationship of awareness and knowledge at play in your own life?
We can take this investigation of knowledge and awareness further as we see the Sutra describing the relationship of Object awarensss, or knowledge, and God awareness, or knowledge. We are told that they are not opposite of each other, but are intimately related. As yogis, we use our practice to walk from Object to Awareness to God Awareness— We use the object to discover Shiva. This is a part of every practice we do-- every single thing we do. Mantra walks you from the mouth to the heart, pujas walk you from the Aarti try to devotion, seva walks you from chopping a carrot to a disciplined mind. Its endless— this path from object to God in Yoga.
Let’s see how the Sutra teaches it:
“If you think that in practicing yoga, God consciousness is to be possessed and that which is other than God consciousness is to be discarded, that is not the proper understanding. The correct understanding is that you must unite these two together. God consciousness must be united with objective consciousness and objective consciousness must be united with God consciousness. And so, you will not find any difference between God consciousness and objective consciousness.”
“When you simultaneously possess this kind of knowledge, then knowledge and the known will be not separated. Known will become knowledge and knowledge will become known. (Krama Strotra)”
Free Write: How do you walk from object to God in your practice?