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138 Saiva Philosophy in some Important Texts [ch. beard and nails and hair uncut, and when he does not follow habits of cleanliness, he is naturally regarded as an outcast. This leads him further on the path towards disinclination, and the insults he bears meekly make him advanced spiritually.
When a person is firm in yama and niyama practices, and meekly suffers the indignities and abuses showered on him by other people, he is well established in the path of asceticism.
Throughout the whole of the fourth chapter of the Pāśupatasūtras the pāśupata-vrata is described as a course of conduct in which the ascetic behaves or should behave as a lunatic, ignorant, epileptic, dull, a man of bad character, and the like, so that abuses may be heaped on him by the unknowing public. This will enliven his disinclination to all worldly fame, honours, and the like, and the fact the people had unknowingly abused him would raise him in the path of virtue. When by such a course of action and by yoga one attains the proximity of the great Lord, one never returns again. India is supposed to have performed the pāśupata-vrata in the earliest time.
In the fifth chapter the process of pāśupata-yoga is more elaborately discussed. The supreme Lord is referred to by many names, but they all refer to the same being, the supreme Lord, and yoga means a steady union of the soul with Him. For this purpose the person should be completely detached from all objects, present, past and future, and be emotionally attached to Mahesvara?. The union of the self with Siva must be so intimate that no physical sounds and disturbances should lead the person away. In the first stages the attachment with Siva takes place by the withdrawal of the mind from other objects, and making it settle on the Lord; then the association becomes continuous.
The soul or the Atman is defined as the being that is responsible for all sense cognitions, all actions, and all attachments to objects. The constant or continuous contact of the self with the supreme Lord constitute its eternity. We can infer the existence of the self from the experiences of pleasure, pain, desire, antipathy, and consciousness. The self is regarded as unborn in the sense that it is not born anew along with the chain of sensations and other activities of the mind, or in other words it remains the same
1 evam maheśvare bhāvasthis tadasangitvam ity arthaḥ. Pāśupata-sūtras V. I (commentary).
