In this spiritual discourse, the speaker recounts a scriptural story of a Shiva yogi who, despite suffering epileptic seizures, temporarily transfers his affliction onto a pillar to meet an important visitor, then re‑absorbs it afterward. The narrative raises the question of how a saint can both experience suffering and exercise such control. The talk then explains the first Shiva sutra, which instructs that the fourth state of consciousness—Turiya or Samadhi, a divine blissful awareness—must be cultivated and merged with the three ordinary states: waking (awareness of the outer world), dreaming (awareness of the inner world), and deep sleep (sushupti, a state of no awareness). Using the metaphor of oil poured into water, the speaker illustrates how this transcendental state should permeate the other three, despite the world’s Maya that keeps most people asleep and unaware. The discourse emphasizes the need to develop Samadhi and integrate it to transcend Maya and achieve clarity and bliss.
Chapters
I would like to share a story with you, a story from our great scriptures. The story goes that once a great Shiva yogi saint, he was suffering from epileptical attacks. And he was suffering a lot. He was sitting under a tree and he was having an epileptic attack, and he was moving and his hands were moving. And if anybody would see him, they would feel pity for him because visually he doesn't look That's fantastic, and it looks as if he's suffering a lot. But then slowly, one disciple of him went to him and said that, Guruji, dear saint, that important person that you wanted to meet, he's about to come and meet you. So could you please, for 2 minutes, Stop this and meet the person. So immediately the Guruji took his disease, or that suffering, that, that shaking of the body, that epileptical attack, and he put it on a pillar. Then the story goes that the pillar started to shake. And then the Guruji went, met the important person, and was very happy. The conversation was done, everything was fine, and he went back. He touched the pillar, he took that thing back on him, and he started suffering again. The story, when I heard it, I was very confused because I thought that, Babaji, how can a saint be in a state of suffering yet has the power to control in which state he has to be? It took me many years to understand this story and the sutras of Shiva that we will discuss today. Are really going to help us. In the first sutra, Lord Shiva says that the fourth state of awareness should be taken and merged with the other three states of awareness, just like oil is merged in a substance. So when Lord Shiva is saying the fourth should be merged with the three other states of awareness, we have to understand the fourth state that he's talking about is the state of Samadhi, a state of divine bliss, what we call Shiv Yoga, Samadhi. And in the scripture, he explains it as Turiya, a divine awareness. And he says that this state of divine awareness should merge with the other three states, the three states that I discussed with you during the start of January. The state of, the state of being awake, The state of being asleep. And what is awake? Awake is when you are aware of the outer world. Asleep is when you are awake of the inner world. And then there is the sushupti state in which you are not aware of anything. You are like a zombie. And Lord Shiva says that the fourth state, the transcendental state, the divine state, the meditative state, The Samadhi state, it should be developed and it should be poured onto the other 3 states just like you pour oil. And now here also he's brilliantly using his words because point number 1, oil generally doesn't mix with things that well. If you take oil and you pour it on water, what will happen? The oil will float. There will always be a distinct between this is the oil and this is the water. And Lord Shiva brilliantly states that this world in which we are living, it is a world of Maya, and most of the people living in this world are unaware, they are asleep. They do not understand what is happening, and in a state of confusion, they survive.
