Sada SHIVA INVOCATION
Sadashiva Samarambham Shankaracharya Madhyamam
Asmad Acharya Paryantam Vande Guru Paramparam.
Ishwaro Gururatmeti Murti Bheda Vibhagine,
Vyomavad Vyapta Dehaya Dakshinamurataye Namah.
Sarva Vedanta Siddhanta Gocaram Tam Agocaram
Govindam Paramanandam Sadgurum Pranato’ smyaham.
Om Sri Krishna Govinda Narayana.
Beginning with the all-pervasive Shiva consciousness, to Adi Shankaracharya and all those teachers up to my own Guru, I bow with reverence to the entire Guru Parampara (tradition of teachers).
There is no difference between the Guru, the Self and God. Obeisance to Lord Dakshinamurthy, who is the personification of the Supreme Self that permeates through space.[1]
My salutation to Sri Sadguru Govinda who is of the nature of Bliss Absolute, who can be known only through the import of the essence of Vedanta and who is beyond the reach of the known instruments of perception.[2]
transcription from james swartz teaching[3]
It’s a tradition to make an invocation of the lineage. The lineage means this teaching that’s handed down from one generation to another, with the basic knowledge unchanged. The reason it’s not a philosophy or a religion is because it doesn’t change. The same knowledge we are hearing today, was given thousands of years ago. We want to invoke that tradition that has handed the knowledges down and to show our respect to that tradition and benefit from the invocation.
An invocation means that we are serving notice to God who gave us this knowledge. We’re invoking that God, that power of consciousness that gave this knowledge in the beginning, who is also here now. Its not that the knowledge was given, and then was lost, and we are remembering it. We’re invoking that power that revealed the knowledge to those Rishis thousands of years ago, right now, with these words.
These words are intended to wake up God to our presence. If we don’t invoke God, God doesn’t even know we are here. God’s not interested. But it’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease. So, we are telling the Lord, God, Ishwara, that here we are, and we want You on our side. God’s impartial and likes ignorant people and un-ignorant people. God likes everything. God is everything. God likes all people. God doesn’t have any discrimination at all. So, unless we tell God what we want God’s not going to give us any special treatment. By invoking God with these words, that part of ourselves that is God, hears what we are saying and will function through this teaching and the teacher to give us what we want. It’s a straightforward literal statement. God is Consciousness plus Maya, the material principle, God becomes a teacher, and a teaching and God can communicate with Itself in the form of us, devotees of God. A devotee is somebody who understands that we are dependent upon God, that everything that we as people have depends on God: our bodies, our hearts, feelings, minds, sun, moon, stars…everything single thing that we are dependent on as people. So, we acknowledge our dependency, our vulnerability, our ignorance. We are saying: we don’t know what we truly are; we want to know it. Please teach us through this vehicle of Vedanta. Vedanta is a means of Self knowledge.
Sadashiva Samarambham
In the beginning was Consciousness. Sada Shiva means what’s always good, what never changes what’s always true, real and good, which is always available, and which is always satisfying to know. Samarambham means “in the beginning”, which means before the world is created. The world began and the world will end, but before the world began, the world began in something and whatever that something was, that spiritual principle, (it) is here now and we want to contact it. We want to draw its attention to us because It has the power to know. It doesn’t need to know anything, but with the material principle, the Maya principle, then It’s capable of knowing.
In fact that original Consciousness principle is the only knower. Even when you think you don’t know it, it’s really the one that knows whatever is know all the time.
In the beginning was the Consciousness/Existence principle. It’s eternal. It’s here before time. When the world came, time came. When the world ends, time goes. We are talking about something that is beyond time. Time means mortality, change, things being born and things dying, something other than our bodies and minds.
Shankaracharya Madhyamam
Madhyaman means in the middle with reference to the beginning and to now. So in the middle between now and the beginning of time, this person (Shankaracharya) came along and re-energised, redefined, reorganised and reclarified this whole teaching and reduced this teaching to a simple straightforward formula: “Brahma Satyam Jagad Mithya Jivo Brahmaiva na parah”. The whole essence of Vedanta was refined to this one statement. And that statement revived this knowledge which was being lost because the world was becoming more and more materialistic. This happens all the time. The forces of materialism, darkness, greed, fear and desire are working against the truth. This means that those parts of myself, those greedy, fearful materialistic parts, are working against my understanding. So constantly this (knowledge) needs to be clarified in every age and every time. There is always tension between truth and ignorance which needs to be resolved. So, it (Self knowledge) stays alive in the human mind by this small group of people who keep the truth alive and who have disproportionate influence with reference to the whole. So in the middle of this great teaching tradition was Shankara.
Asmad Acharya Paryantam
And at the bottom, now, is my teacher (acharya).
Vande Guru Paramparam
Vande means I respect, I worship, I surrender, I bow to this flow of knowledge from the higher to the lower, from God in the beginning down to the present moment.
Another meaning of Upanishad is “near, below, sit”. Shad mean sit. I need to sit near a teacher/teaching, below a teacher and teaching with a humble open mind, and that knowledge, like water, flows from higher to lower. It’s another symbolic meaning of Upanishad. So it indicates the lineage, tradition and eternal perennial flow of knowledge that we are placing ourselves in.
Guru means “that which removes ignorance”. It is the scripture, this knowledge that removes ignorance.
Paramparam means this lineage.
Ishwaro Gururatmeti
Who or what is that knowledge? It’s Ishwara. Ishwaro means the ruler, the controller, the governor, the Guru. It is the Atman, my innermost Self.
Atmeti means “my Atman, my Self, my innermost Self”. So that is where this knowledge is coming from. It is not coming from human beings. This is a very important point. This is why if you have any argument don’t argue with me, because I am not taking responsibility for this. I didn’t invent it. If I am the author of this knowledge, then you can fight with me and you can argue with me, but I didn’t invent it. It came to me, I heard it. It made perfect sense. So I accepted it. I can’t defend it because it isn’t mine. Which means either you understand it, or you don’t. It’s totally pointless to argue as it (Self knowledge) doesn’t belong to us in the first place. It came to us from the Creator, the Source, from God.
Who is that Creator?
Murti bheda Vibhagine
Murti is beyond all forms.
Vibhagine means “other than form and difference”. Something other than duality.
Bheda means duality, difference.
Abheda means non-duality, non-difference.
So this Self is a non-dual Self, there is not two of them, there’s no second Self, third Self, fourth Self etc. And it (Self) is beyond form. It has no form. Everything here has a form, a name and a form. This Self, this Ishwaro, this God that we’re talking about, doesn’t have any name or form.
Vyomavad vyapta dehaya
Vyoma means “beyond earth, beyond matter”. Earth is a symbol for matter. Beyond time, space, and the earth.
Dehaya means it’s clear, like the sky. It has no impurities in it. Sky is not blue, isn’t it? Sky is clear, but the sky looks blue. So the problem with this knowledge is that we can’t see the world as ourselves, can we? It looks like forms and names and those forms and names look like they’re different from us. So we think that because we trust these forms and these names to be real and to be actually there, we think they are all different from us. That’s called bheda, duality. So it (this knowledge) is something beyond duality and beyond forms and names.
Dakshinamurataye Namah
Dakshinamurthy is a name for the Self, Shiva, that sits in the north and looks out at the south. Murthy means a form. This knowledge takes the form of this icon or deity who sits in the north and looks at the south. What does that mean? Do things change in the north, relatively speaking? No, they’re frozen. What does frozen mean? It’s a symbol. Of course things change but they don’t with reference to the south. In the south everything is swampy, fetid, moving and changing and decaying, but with reference to the north pole, nothing changes, it’s just ice. So ice, or frozen, means the Self, which doesn’t move. The Self/ Ishwara /God is immovable. It doesn’t change. So what does it do? It looks south. It observes what’s changing. We call that the world, Jagad. Jagad (is related to) the word juggler which comes from that Sanskrit word Jagad, meaning what’s always changing. So this principle, this Self, is an emotionless immovable principle around which all the world and planets spin in which all these changes are constantly taking place. Which is just a description of me and my relationship to objects. I, Consciousness, am still, aware alert and I don’t change. My thoughts feelings emotions and experiences do change. I just watch them.
Namah means that “I bow, I surrender, I worship, I appreciate, I understand that that’s who I am”. And that this Upanishad delivers to me that knowledge of who I am.
Sarva Vedanta Siddhanta
We are now talking about Vedanta because Vedanta is the means for delivering this knowledge. Knowledge doesn’t happen on its own. I need a meansfor knowledge. If you want to see my body, you need eyes. If you want to hear my words, you need ears. If you want to touch me, you need skin, and so forth. Those are means for objects. But this knowledge is not an object. It has no name and no form. So I need a means of knowledge that will show me something that I can’t directly see. I need inference.
Vedanta is an inferential means of knowledge that gives us direct knowledge of what we want, of our immortality. It gives us knowledge of our mortality – we know that, so I don’t need to worry about knowledge of our mortality. What we don’t know is that we are immortal. We don’t change, we weren’t born, and we don’t die. We don’t know that. We know very well that we are mortal, so we need Vedanta to teach us that we are immortal.
Siddhanta means “the meaning, the import, the purpose of what Vedanta is teaching”. The meaning of all the teachings of Vedanta.
What is the meaning or purpose of this teaching?
Gocaram tam agocaram
This is the essential teaching.
Gocaram means its “beyond what you can see and experience directly with your senses”. And beyond what you can infer with your intellect.
Agocaram means “beyond what you see and what you can’t see”. The meaning of Vedanta is beyond both.
Tam means “other than”, so it’s (referring to) something other than what we know and what we don’t know. What we need to know (the Self) is that which is beyond what’s known and what’s unknown. What does that mean? The things we know and the things we don’t know seem to be the only two categories in existence? No, there is something else – there’s one more thing that we don’t know – that we do know but we don’t know. If we didn’t know it, we couldn’t teach you it, but you don’t know that you know it. So we need to teach you what it is.
Gocaram means “what you can see with your senses” – direct experience. I can see this paper- I can see with my eyes, I can touch it, I can hear it crinkle, so I know there’s paper here. So, this Self is not something you can touch or smell or taste or feel, like you can an object. This is an essential point.
And it (the Self) is not something that you can infer either. These are our only two means of knowledge available to us as human beings. Obviously, we are not talking to the Self here, we are talking to the Self that thinks it’s a human being. You are the Self, but you think you’re a human being. You think that with the means of knowledge that you’ve been given by God, you’re going to get to know the Self? No you’re not, although yes you are! It’s not an either/or, it’s always a both/and. Now one means of knowledge is what I can see with my senses – I can see objects with my senses. That’s not a problem. But is that the only means of knowledge I have? What if I need to see, touch, taste, smell the Self? What does Consciousness feel like? I want to know what it feels like to be Consciousness. Well, it doesn’t feel like anything because it’s not an object that you can feel. What does the Self taste like? You can’t taste it! What does it smell like? You can’t smell it, taste it, touch it or feel it. It’s not an object. With your organs of perception you can know objects, but this (Consciousness) isn’t an object, so how are you going to know it? How are you going to experience it?
I hate to be cranky, but these modern teachers that tell you that you can directly experience Consciousness – they’re ignorant, I’m sorry to say. Most of them are good people too and are not trying to fool you, but they actually think that you can directly experience Consciousness. But you can’t directly experience Consciousness because Consciousness isn’t an object that you can directly experience. It is not going to happen and never will happen. It is impossible. So that whole teaching that you can directly experience Consciousness is incorrect. You can experience a state of mind that looks like Consciousness – we call it reflected Consciousness or sattva guna. But you are being fooled by a facsimile. You are not actually experiencing Consciousness itself; you are experiencing a reflection of Consciousness as Consciousness reflects in a particular state of mind. This is why you can’t maintain that state of Consciousness because that state of Consciousness comes and goes. Then you’re only enlightened when you have that particular state of mind!. Which is no enlightenment at all.
Now inference is a valid means of knowledge. You need to understand this. And don’t say you don’t use inference. You use inference as much or more than you use direct perception, at least as much, but probably more because you draw conclusions on the basis of what you experience.
The detective story
Now here, what do these detectives have to do? They aren’t there to experience the crime, are they? The detective comes after the crime, The crime is already over. He wants to know who did it. He’s got to figure out who did it! How does he figure it out? He can’t directly perceive who did it. He has to look at clues. He has to reason from something he can see to something he can’t see – it’s called circumstantial evidence. You can convict someone on the basis of circumstantial evidence. It is better to have the testimony of a competent witness, so you are always looking for somebody who saw the crime. But in this case, there was nobody to see it, because there weren’t any people around to see when you got to be ignorant. That’s the crime. The crime is that you believe you are limited, inadequate and incomplete. There was no-one there to see that because that happened before you were a person. So how are you going to see it? You are not going to see it directly. Mind you, I am warning the fake “Neo-advaita” people, you are committing a crime by telling people that they can experience Consciousenss, the Self, directly. It cannot be experienced directly because reality is non-dual, which means that there are not two principles operating. You can know it indirectly and that indirect knowledge will remove your ignorance, in which case you will discover that you ARE IT. You cannot experience what you are because you are what you are. It is hard to understand because we are all just so totally body-oriented and experience-oriented and we use direct perception to gain knowledge and we use inference to gain knowledge, but this thing is Gocaram tam Agocaram.
Agocaram – means inference, reasoning thinking from the information I gathered with my senses to bring knowledge to remove ignorance. So a good detective can remove his ignorance of who the culprit/murder was by reasoning.
Gocaram means sense organ information.
So this Ishwara-knowledge, this God-knowledge is beyond inference and perception.
What is that thing, (which is not a thing), which is beyond inference and direct perception? Govindam Paramanandam.
Govindam Paramanandam
Govindam means the light of Consciousness, the place where the light comes in – the keeper of the light, the abode of the light. What does that symbol mean? It means you are Awareness[4]. Awareness supplies the light for everything doesn’t it? Can you have knowledge or ignorance unless Awareness is present? No you can’t. So what? So Awareness/Consciousness is Govindam.
Did anyone every tell you that you are aware? No. Why not? Because it’s obvious! If it wasn’t obvious, someone would need to tell me. Did your Mom ever tell you that you were aware? She told you to button your shirt and tie your shoes, eat your vegetables, go to school, get a job etc, but she never told you that you were aware. Neither did your Pop nor did anyone in school ever tell you you were aware. Not anyone anywhere. Why? Because you don’t need to be told that you’re aware. It’s self-evident. It’s obvious.
This Thing that is beyond perception and inference is Awareness. And that Awareness is your BEING. Did anyone ever tell you that you ARE? That you EXIST? Who told you that? Nobody! Isn’t it interesting that the most important facts about yourself no-one ever told you? Which means that you already know them so you don’t have to be told.
The next factor you do need to be told. What is that next factor? Paramanandam. That Consciousness Existence that you are – what is it? Paramanandam. Limitless bliss. That’s something that I don’t know. How do we know that we don’t know it? Because we are always seeking it. If you knew you were it, you wouldn’t be seeking to feel good, would you? You wouldn’t be trying to feel good, and you wouldn’t be always thinking: What can I do to feel better, to feel more, better, different, to get the big hit, the big experiential joy/bliss? So obviously I don’t know that I AM limitless bliss. So that’s what I need to tell you, that’s what Vedanta says. We don’t just tell you that, because that would be the same as the Neo’s telling you that you’re enlightened. So we have to prove to you that you are bliss because I don’t believe it. The very fact that I am pursuing bliss proves that you don’t believe it. Isn’t that behind everything that you do? Isn’t that the ultimate motivation for every single thing that you do is to get rid of this feeling of smallness, incompleteness and separation and inadequacy? Every minute of the day I want to get rid of the feeling of limitation that’s imposed upon me by ignorance of my nature as existence/consciousness/bliss.
The mosquito itch
I often use the example of a mosquito bite. A mosquito bite is hardly suffering, but it is suffering, isn’t it? Because if there wasn’t suffering involved in a mosquito bite, you wouldn’t scratch it would you? But you do. You take your fingernail, and scratch in a very small little action, then suffering goes away. That’s why you do it. The problem is that the suffering comes right back, so you have to scratch it again. Isn’t that what we do all day long every day – scratching itches? Emotional itches, physical itches, intellectual itches. Every possible kind of itches. Life is an eternal itch, and we are eternally scratching because we don’t know we are free of the itch, so I need to be told. Govindam Paramanandam – and that’s what this teaching is – you are bliss, full and complete. And nothing you can do is going to add anything to you, and conversely getting rid of something that’s causing problems isn’t going to solve the problem either. Nothing you can obtain or lose is going to change the fact that your nature is bliss. It means that you’re full and complete. Therefore you don’t need to worry about the virus, which isn’t even an itch until you get, but it certainly itches your mind. And I don’t want an itchy mind! Fear and desire are endless problems or itches for me, and I don’t need to worry about it, because I am Paramanandam.
Sadgurum Pranato’ smyaham
Pranato’ smyaham means I bow, surrender to that SadGuru, Light, Awareness, Truth that removes my ignorance.
Sad means reality or truth.
Guru means the one who removes my ignorance. So the Guru is not a person. Guru is the awareness or Ishwara in the form of the teachings of Vedanta. Guru means the one that takes away the darkness. Gu means “darkness”, a symbol for a cave and Ru means “remove the darkness”. Whatever that reality is that removes my ignorance, I bow, I worship.
So when I make that invocation, that chant, I am invoking all that knowledge, the Self. I’m invoking the Tradition and I am putting myself there in that place of bliss, peace and satisfaction. I am setting myself free by doing this. I am taking refuge (as Buddha said) in the Buddha, the Dharma the Sangha. So we chant this first.
[1] from the Manasollasa, a commentary to Sri Sankaracharya’s Sri Dakshinamurti stotram.
[2] Vivekacudamani, v 1, Sri Adi Sankaracarya, translated by Swami Chinmayananda
[3] Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtHexWbk4w0. Secondary source where additional clarity was needed for some definitions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dl-XU5fxymQ
[4] Awareness and Consciousness are the same.
