Welcome to a great adventure in Self-
Discovery. The Self is a complex
concept. There is a higher Self, and
then there is this relative self. The
higher Self is the formless one which has manifested in the
formed one. We are concerned in this book with the manifested
aspect of our self, because the unmanifested aspect is incomprehensible.
It is God. It has no shortcomings whatsoever. But the
manifested part has a lot of imperfections.
The Secret Sounds and other tools in this book will enable
you to create positive, powerful changes for yourself. You may
use these to benefit yourself or others.
Until now, I have never made a serious attempt to publish
my writings. There were times in the past when I was asked to
meet with attorneys to sign a contract for book deals; and at one
time my editor even took an advance, which she returned after
six months since I would not cooperate to write the book.
Many people judged me according to their own perceptions
of reality. Some said I was lazy, unreliable, and irresponsible.
Others who a were little kinder to me said, “No doubt, Sri Siva
is a rare enlightened being, but that doesn’t exempt him from
being accountable.”
But nothing of what others thought of me mattered, for I
was and continue to be in my own ivory tower which often
collapses, and like the phoenix, reemerge instantaneously. My
unwillingness to publish was not a self-determined one. In my
world there is nothing that is permanent. Everything arises and falls. I have always been a witness to everything that goes on.
I must tell you if this book finally gets written and published
it is not my wish. It is the wish of the Divine to make these
secrets available to you.
In this connection, I remember an anecdote in the life of Sri
Ramana Maharishi, a fully enlightened being from
Triuvannamali (southern India) who left his body in 1950. His
example taught me many things as we shall see later.
Ramana Maharishi attracted many important people from
the West including Paul Brenton, Somerset Maugham, Carl
Jung, and others. It was Carl Jung who said that Ramana
Maharishi was the “whitest spot in the white sky.” Ramana
Maharishi left home when he was 14 or younger and meditated
all his long life.
Even after his enlightenment, and even though there was a
coterie of wealthy people who would do anything for him, Sri
Ramana never had an ashram built for himself, not even a
simple home. In fact, once when a European devotee presented
him with a Mercedes Benz, he refused to accept it. Ramana
Maharishi told the devotee, “I don’t know how to take care of
this cart [meaning body], and I don’t need another one!”
However, one day after his walk, Sri Ramana Maharishi sat
on the ground and would not get up. He said that he wanted to
construct an ashram there and that the desire was not his, but
God’s. I think I can relate to his statement.
This book, too, is God’s wish. I totally claim no credit for it.
If I happen to misrepresent anything, that, too, is God’s fault
and not mine. I am in one sense rejoicing very much, for I have
been able to bring out to the world the most precious teachings
of the enlightened Tamil Siddhas.
In many respects the Tamil Siddhas teachings are similar to
the teachings of Einstein, although the Siddhas were practical
and Einstein more theoretical.
In fact, someone told me, or I heard it somewhere, that Einstein in his previous birth was Bogar, a Tamil Siddha.
Whatever may be the truth of the statement, I personally believe
it to be true because Bogar was also a mathematician; there are
unmistakable parallels. Einstein was painfully aware of the limitation
of his work and the purely theoretical nature of physics
and mathematics.
Einstein wrote, “Mathematics deals exclusively with the
relations of concepts to each other without consideration of
their relation to experience.” The world still follows Newtonian
laws and the Einstenian universe of relativity is considered only
theoretically true. When they will become true is the day when
we begin to live the concepts or when the concepts become
experiential realities.
Wayne Dyer in his best-selling book, Manifest Your Destiny,
expresses this idea: “Unfortunately, the people of the world have
yet to apply this hologrammatic understanding to their living.
Seeing ourselves as connected to all of humanity is an idea
whose time will come, and it will not be stopped.”
When Wayne Dyer and I met at Ed Marzec’s home in
Beverly Hills, I asked Wayne Dyer what he wanted in life. I
remember him replying, “I want to disappear.” I knew that he
had disappeared before in his previous life times. That is why he
speaks about Castaneda’s teachings from Don Juan many times,
as they contain the idea of disappearing into another world.
Disappearing with the body is realizing E=mc2 in an experiential
way. The Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Jnanasambanda,
Appar, Sundarar, Manikavacakar, and a host of Tamil Siddhas
all disappeared. None among the list of ascended masters was a
scientist, but then they had access to a higher science in which
energy and matter are experientially interchangeable.
In Einsteinian terms these masters converted their mass m
(representing their body) to the speed of light (about 183,000
miles per second) which is represented by the c2 in the equation.
All that we need to know is that our physical body is
11
Section solidified light; and that it can be transformed back into light
particles again at will.
I want the readers of this book to know that before time in memoriam,
Tamil Siddhas had bridged the gap between physical laws and real
life experience—the problem as Einstein saw it. For instance, the
Siddhas saw the five elements as much in the physical environment as
in the body/mind and sense perceptions of life. Space, air, fire, water
and earth, all elements of nature, transform themselves into vata
(space and air), pitta (fire) and kapha (water and earth). I hope to share
more about these Siddha secrets later.
Birth and Childhood
I was born February 1, 1949 on a small island named
Rameswaram in southern India. Rameswaram is near the
southern-most tip of the Indian subcontinent and is only a few
miles away from Sri Lanka. In mythical times Lord Rama had
ordained this island as the perfect geographical space to remove
the most sinful karma. In Rama’s own case he had to get rid of
his karma for having killed his rival in battle, the demonic
Ravana. Although Ravana was an evil person and deserved
death, killing someone in and of itself has its own consequences,
and Rama needed to pay for this karma.
Rama established a shrine for Lord Siva and ordained that
whosoever had done terrible karma could come to this shrine
and wash their sins in the temple. The tradition is still followed
in the temple. Pilgrims go to the temple and take a dip in the
waters from 20 or more wells that surround the temple. With
wet clothes, the pilgrims then walk into the sanctum sanctorum.
Because of this custom the temple floor is always wet. If
water can purify sins, it is truer in this temple than anywhere
else.
Until recently I had no clear idea of why I reincarnated in
Rameswaram. Kakabhusunda, the immortal yogi of all times, in
a vision revealed to me the purpose of my birth at Rameswaram.
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Life I needed to breathe and later master the spiritual energy that
dissolves terrible karma of people so that I can help them to
diffuse their karma. This vision made perfect sense to me
because, until I was 18 years old, I never left the island, so I was
soaking in the aura of Rameswaram very deeply.
I remember as a boy I used to go to the temple every single
day. My greatest attraction in the temple was not the main
deity, but a beautiful shrine of Siva Nataraj (the dancing form of
Lord Siva) which is situated in the outer corridor of the temple.
I was attracted to this spot over and over again, and I spent all
my free time sitting there. I told my family that on my birthday
we needed to do special food offering to the dancing Siva, a
practice that went on for a while.
Even after I went to college, I came back to this shrine. But
this time I had a little more understanding. I had learned that
below the statue was the tomb of the Siddha Patanjali, the
enlightened master who is the author of the Yoga Sutras. The
Siddhas do not die. Some of them walk into a small enclosure
and turn into a Siva Linga (a holy object symbolizing Siva).
My father was a painter and sculptor. He was a good one,
although with the indifference that goes along with artists in
general. The burden of raising five boys naturally fell on my
mother who made sure that everyone had the right education
and did not become an artist!
However, I was the most beloved and problematic boy for
my mom. She loved me because I was the most intelligent of all
her kids and stood first in the class, but she hated me because I
kept her up in the night. She thought that I had insomnia and
took me to the doctor who, after examining me, concluded that
there was nothing wrong physically or mentally, although he
could not figure out why I could not fall asleep. During the
night I used to move from one bedroom to another, and my
mother had a hard time finding me out. Although my sleeplessness
has continued to this day, I have greater understanding about sleep now.
When I was 10, I started to meditate on my own. I
remember lighting a candle in front of a small picture of the
Buddha and meditating. I liked the Buddha because he taught
nonviolence and compassion. Even at a very young age, my
emotions were very stable.
When I was twelve, my father died of cancer, and I hardly
cried or was visibly moved. My relatives thought I was weird,
and they gave up on me when I protested against some of the
traditional funeral rites and rituals. Looking back, I now understand
that my strange behavior was my protest against death
which I now clearly know is life’s slap on our face.
In 1991 my mother died and I was in the U.S., and again, I
hardly cried, but by then my understanding on this point was
much more mature. I even knew in advance that my mother
was going to die, for she had been bedridden for long time. A
few days before her death, I had Shridi Baba come to me in my
meditation. Shridi Baba was a Siddha who lived in central India
in the later part of the nineteenth century and died in the early
part of the twentieth century.
Shridi Baba told me that my mother was going through a lot
of pain and that I should give permission for her to make the
transition through the death process. My mother had been my
first meditation student, a fact that I had always been proud of.
I wanted to give her what Sri Ramana Maharishi gave to his
mother. When Ramana’s mother was dying he put his hand on
the chest where the spiritual heart is and disbursed her karma.
The woman died, and Ramana declared that she would not
come back again. This is what I did for my mother, though
from a long distance. My mother cooperated with me. She said
that she had no desire to come back to the earth-plane and was
happy to be liberated from the cycle of birth and death.
My college life was nothing spiritually significant, and I did
what other college kids did. I got out of college with a bachelor’s degree in English Literature. I wanted to do my Masters immediately,
but I was not accepted that year.
What followed was an intense period of soul-searching experience.
My uncle who was a Vedic astrologer predicted a few
things which turned out to be true in spite of my attempts to
challenge them. It was my first serious attempt to look into
destiny, karma and astrology. I began to raise questions like why
someone was born rich, and someone else did not even have
food to eat; why someone despite being very intelligent could
not even get a job, while some idiot became the CEO of a
company.
I began to look for answers to these questions in Vedic
astrology which in India is a science that explains the karma of
individuals. Vedic astrology became almost an obsession in my
life during this time, and I collected about 1,000 horoscopes of
people belonging to various vocations in order to do an empirical
study.
My mother was getting annoyed about my interest in
astrology and metaphysics. She wanted me to be a normal
person and pursue the common pleasures or agony of human
life, including getting a job and getting married and begetting a
bunch of kids. Her greatest dissatisfaction was my spending all
my time studying Vedic astrology, because in India it is believed
that you should not mess with one’s future, for it is the realm of
the Divine. One day when I was away my mother pitched out
all my Vedic astrology books and notes and when I returned,
she threw a tantrum to underline her point. But, by this time I
was so deeply involved in the metaphysical areas of life that it
was impossible for me to lead a normal life, although during
this time I had earned my Masters degree in English Literature.
It was during this time that I met a famous man who had
influence in my life, Dr. Meenakshi Sundaram. He was a man
of great accomplishment and an internationally renowned
academician. He introduced me to Transcendental Meditation as taught by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I could not wait to
become a TM teacher. TM teacher training, which took about
four months full-time to complete, was a God-given opportunity.
I take this opportunity to publicly thank Sri Guru Dev
(Maharishi’s guru) and the Maharishi himself for that wonderful
learning opportunity, for after the training, I was never the same
person.
I came home, and my mother was my first meditation
student. I initiated her on Ganesha’s birthday. After teaching
TM for a while, I went to Rishikesh in the Himalayas to do the
TM-Siddhi training program. Being in the Himalayas widened
my interest in spirituality, and after that I returned to the
Himalayas for many meditation experiences, visiting my home
only a few times.
Again, my mother got annoyed over my spiritual inclinations,
and she came up with a plot of a marriage proposal for
me and threatened that she would kill herself if I would not
accept the proposal. Indian mothers are such good adepts in
blackmailing their children, and I fell a victim. But I was clever,
too. I told my mom that I needed to go to the Himalayas for
three more months, and after that I would marry the girl.
The girl is my wife Vasantha whom I only got a glimpse of
in one of the arranged marriage interviews, traditionally set up
according to certain conventions. Vasantha was shy to look at
my face, although I was least worried about her looks, for in my
mind, my conspiracy was to please my mom temporarily and
get back to the Himalayas. I told the bride’s people that I would
come back after three months and marry her. I did not show up
for a year intentionally. Once you are not around for such a
long time, the bride’s people look for another groom. But, as
fate would have its way, I came back, and Vasantha was not still
married. I married her on September 16, 1977, again on
Ganesha’s birthday.
To me being married mostly meant being stuck at one geographical location, something which I never understood,
much less could actually live in this lifetime. I took a research
scholar’s position at the University of Madurai in the
Department of English and Comparative Literature. The
University provided me with staff quarters near the mountains,
and I spent two wonderful years in that secluded place.
My academic project was to find out the paradox that John
Donne (a famous English metaphysical poet) had faced between
God and sex. I wrote what I considered, at the time, a brilliant
dissertation on the sacred nature of carnality which paved my
way to the University of Pittsburgh where I expanded my
studies for my Ph.D. However, I don’t intend to discuss my
academic life too much, for now I think such endeavors,
although not entirely meaningless, are nevertheless useless at
this point in my life.
What was very important during my university time at
Madurai was my meeting with Sri Dhandapani Desikar, my
guru who introduced me to the practice of Sri Vidya. Sri Vidya
is the most esoteric practice of meditation that only a few adept
teachers have the ability to teach.
The practice involves the worship of the goddess Lalita
Tripurasundari with the help of the mandala called Sri Chakra
or Sri Yantra. In recent times, the greatest exponent of Sri Vidya
was Swami Brahamanada Saraswati, Mahesh Yogi’s guru. Swami
Rama writes in his book, Living with the Himalayan Masters,
that during his days with the Himalayan master, Swami
Brahamanda Saraswati, the master had shown him a Sri Chakra
which he worshipped made out of ruby. Also, Swami Rama
writes that if he had any spiritual powers at all, they came from
Sri Vidya.
My Practice of Sri Vidya
My guru Sri Dhandapanis Desikar was a very remarkable
man. He had no formal education, yet was a professor of Tamilology at the university. Every university in the state recognized
his scholarship. In his long life of 85 years, Sri Desikar
had written about 180 books in all. Meeting with Sri Desikar
was a Divinely inspired event. We could not resist each other,
and Sri Desikar agreed to teach me Sri Vidya.
I went through the regular guru-disciple routine. I was literally
his personal attendant helping him with all daily spiritual
and religious rituals. My day would start at 4:00 a.m. I needed
to go to the flower garden and pluck the flowers, chanting
mantras as I did the chore. Then I had to help him bathe,
soaping his body, etc. At 7:00 a.m., he would start his puja for
Lord Siva for about an hour. At 9:00 a.m., his wife would serve
us a massive lunch which often made me uncomfortable in the
beginning, to be served so much food.
During this time Sri Desikar taught me many things of
which the most important was the worship of the goddess with
her special 16 mantras. The day Sri Desikar initiated me into
the mantras, I had a profound experience. I was initiated in the
morning. He told me there was no fee for the service, but I
needed to take some ghee (clarified butter) for the lamps to the
temple of goddess Meenakshi (who is considered a form of
Parvati, Lord Siva’s wife). I sincerely carried out his instruction
and went home in the evening.
Around midnight, I was awakened from a very vivid dream.
I saw the goddess, but she was in her ferocious form. She carried
a trident and seemed as though she wanted to kill me with it. I
screamed and woke up. My wife heard my cry, and she woke up
too. The image of the goddess began to haunt me. Everywhere I
went, I saw her constantly in front of me, though she was not
pointing her trident towards me any more. But I was still scared
and did not want to do anything with her.
I stopped visiting my guru for a couple of days. Sri Desikar
apparently knew exactly what was happening to me and sent for
me. I went and saw him and confessed what had happened. Sri
18
Life Desikar said what had taken place was remarkable. He said the
goddess was responding to my prayer, and on my request, he
changed my vision of the goddess into a pleasant one.
Since then the goddess has been with me doing many, many
miracles in my personal life, except for a few years when she left
me for some reasons that I can’t discuss here at this time.
Some Miracles with the Goddess
For the worshippers of Sri Vidya, the goddess in general
appears in two ways. One form is as a light being visible to the
eyes, but not tangible. This form is rare, but then, it is the most
powerful appearance of the goddess. In Sanskrit this phenomenon
is called darshan (sacred seeing) of the goddess. I have had
many such experiences of the goddess and could call her at any
time. I have also been able to show her to other people who are
worthy of the darshan.
The other form that the goddess appears is in the form of
human females. In the sacred literature of the goddess, it is
stated very clearly that the woman and the goddess are the same
expression of the Great Archetypal Female. This is the reason
why that my charitable organization, Tripura Foundation, and
other enterprises are run mostly by women. In fact, the Tripura
Foundation was started with a donation of $18,000 given by a
woman who wanted to remain anonymous. She never has said
anything to anyone about her donation. Since then many
women have served the organization selflessly.
The most important help I received from the goddess was
during the time I was doing my Ph.D. program. I started out
late and knew too much about life, which was actually a
hindrance for a student. I never kept my appointments with my
examiners; I saw them very seldom and never did anything on
time, despite their expectations.
Not that I was irresponsible, but I was responsive to the
moment. I was trying to find out how the moment existed in time and space. I did at least explain this to one examiner who
was willing to be my student. He told me that he understood
my problems, but insisted that I should be functional in a world
of cause and effect, a problem that I may never be able to solve.
During this time the goddess’s help was very practical. She
knew that I could not read everything in the many, many
textbooks that I was expected to read. She was very sharp and to
the point. She provided me with the ability to know the
questions beforehand so that I prepared answers only for those
questions. I know every student who reads this would be
envious of me and want to develop a relationship with the
goddess! But I must tell you that the grace of the goddess is the
result of spiritual work done in many life times. Shankara, the
Einstein of Indian mysticism, after his hair-splitting encounters
with intellectuals, came to the goddess for his liberation and
happiness.
I must also tell you that the most powerful way of invoking
a divine entity is to use the mandala for that being. Within the
goddess tradition, the most powerful tool used in her invocation
is the Sri Yantra (also called Sri Chakra). Sri Yantra or Sri
Chakra is a formation of 43 triangles transposed in a certain
geometrical pattern within concentric circles enclosed by
squares.
Sacred geometry belongs to the language of the divine. It is
such a powerful tool that the Divine lets only certain individuals
who have transcended their ego-self know its secrets. Everything
from attracting a woman or a man you want, or incredible
wealth, or talking to dead people, to harming your enemies, can
be accomplished through the use of the mandalas. In other
words, mandalas are the DNA codings of a universal energy
system. The Tamil Siddhas are quite adept in this esoteric
system.
Another major gift that I received from Sri Desikar was initiation
into the five important mantras representing the five faces of Lord Siva. The five faces of Siva (Isana, Tatpurasha, Aghora,
Vama and Sadhyojata) are five parts of the human brain. The
initiation was so powerful that revelations about the five parts of
the brain keep coming to me in an unending way. The initiation
was in 1981, and in a prestigious conference presided by
Nobel Laureate Eugene Wigner, I presented the correlation
between the five faces of Lord Siva and the human brain. At
some point in my life, it is my destiny to reveal the secrets of
awakening the five faces of Siva. This book is to begin preparing
people, so I do hope many of you will actually practice some of
the techniques I give here, so later I can share more with you.
You must begin preparations now.
Without much further ado, I want to dwell on some of my
enlightenment experiences, just a few, and I am deeply indebted
here to two great spiritual masters of the last century who I
never physically met: Bhagavan Rajneesh (also known as Osho)
and J. Krishnamurti.
I have read almost every piece of Sri Rajneesh’s writings and
experimented with most of the techniques advocated by him. It
was during one of the dance meditations called Nataraj that I
fell down and was in Samadhi for 12 hours. Since then, there
was a great shift in my consciousness which got intensified in
my attempt to understand time.
One day I was reading J. Krishnamurti’s excellent, although
somewhat advanced book, Ending Time. The book is a very
intense conversation between Dr. David Bohm and J.
Krishnamurti. Dr. Bohm in that book pushes Krishnamurti to
explain thought and time. As I was reading this book, my mind
blanked and experienced no time. This was the scariest experience
that I ever had. I felt that the Divine was giving me a
choice to be here in the mind or be totally mindless. I thought
that I had almost lost my sanity and wouldn’t be able to come
back to the normal world. With tremendous effort, I came
back; and I am glad that I did, for I never wanted to be a yogi in a coma.
Recently during a public gathering, I said that I knew the
ugliness of silence, and this is a commentary about the Divine
coma stage. I must add also I had an extended trance experience
practicing a light technique described in the book, The Secrets of
the Golden Flower.
During my long search for enlightenment, I have had the
grace of several gurus, Siddhas and Divine beings, and I am
grateful to all of them. I have learned something from every one
of them. My ultimate encounter with enlightenment was due to
the infinite Grace of the Dancing Siva at Chidambaram in
India. I have had a very long term relationship with Him in
many, many births. His guiding hand leads me every minute of
my life. Some day He will, through me, reveal the secrets of the
five letters NA MA SI VA YA which is the answer to the
mystery of the universe. Every master comes to the earth-plane
with a mission and his own idiosyncratic version of enlightenment.
It is so beautiful to see so many blossoms from God with
such miraculous colors.
It does not make sense to me that the truth is
one/none/many. To me, celebration is the only Truth there is.
This is the secret of the dancing Siva at Chidambaram. Lord
Siva is the eternal dancer who lives both stillness and dance
simultaneously. This is the meaning of the marvelous sculpture
of the dancing Siva Nataraj which has attracted the attention of
the entire world.
During my long path of inquiry through several of my
births, I have found that Truth is open-ended, and even the
Absolute is Relative, as time causes evolution. As digital science
begins to understand the nuances of light and sound waves,
there will be an outburst of wisdom that will bring heaven on
earth. This will be my mission in the years to come. But for
now, I wish to open up the world of secret sounds (mantras)
and other tools.Some of you may find it helpful to use the book in accompaniment
with some of my CD’s and videotapes as I cannot put
everything into just a book! But hopefully, you will find some
things here that are useful to you.
Currently, I have the following websites, and more are in
development:
www.srisiva.com
www.vaaaksounds.com
www.tripurafoundation.org
www.astroved.com.
This is my first book. And as I stated earlier, it is not from
“me,” but it is the will of the Divine for you to have this information
now
