Aloha Everyone, I was fortunate enough to visit my favorite Hindu Monastery last
week here on Kauai. As you can imagine, it was uppermost in my mind to be
able to tour the new, hand-carved white granite and, gold-leafed domes of The
Iraivan Temple, but due to some “resource challenges” (lack of enough parking)
the monastery cannot legally state that this new shrine is officially open. I had
heard however, that the monks can spontaneously decide to conduct a tour, and,
yahoo(!), the stars and planets somehow aligned and there I was watching as one
of the monks opened the gate to the trail which had been closed for 33 years
while the temple was being built and sculpted by hand.
The new Iraivan Temple is lower in elevation as contrasted to the familiar
Kadavul Temple so the path that the group walked sloped gently downhill and
was lined with tropical plants; some blooming and fragrant, from all over the
world. The path took a slight curve to the left and suddenly the temple came into
full view (see top photo). As you can see, this temple is truly magnificent. No
power tools or machines have ever touched this structure.
This is the crown jewel of Kauai’s Hindu Monastery, constructed first and
foremost as a pilgrimage for devotees. It was built according to ancient Agamic
mystical injunctions to connect the Divine and the material and the material with
the spirit and the body, and Heaven and Earth. Devotees revere this consecrated
edifice, not only as a temple but as the very body of God. So when you walk into
the temple, you are meant to feel that you are walking directly into God (and
therefore you yourself are God/Goddess moving into God). It is a sublime
experience, I haven’t experienced anything like it.
The photo below shows the entrance to the temple.It is interesting that recent literature
does not discuss this but what is held in the temple is a 700 pound (although the
account below says 500, I found a lot of other references that indicated 700 pounds)
rare crystal. It is hard to find details about this crystal but I found this in Hinduism
Today:
“It was fifteen years ago that Jimmy Coleman, quartz miner, first trained his lightbeam
on an astonishing crystal. He was 65-feet deep, having just dug into a cavern “pocket”
inside his mine in the granite mountains of Arkansas state, southern U.S. An ancient
earthquake had dislodged and exposed what he considers to be the rarest crystal in
the world. It was perfectly formed, milky white, standing 3′ 3″, weighing some 500
pounds. Sensing a mysterious destiny, Coleman wrested it to the surface and stored it.
Only he and his brother knew about it.
Fifteen years later, in July, 1987, the crystal’s destiny became apparent. Almitra Zion,
acting as a scout for Saiva Siddhanta Church, had gone to Arkansas looking for a large
crystal she had seen in a vision. She found it at Coleman’s mine – the same beauty he
had stored and told no one about. Coleman sold it and on August 12th, the crystal
arrived on Kauai, Hawaii. It is to be installed as a swayambhu (natural) Siva Lingam at
the Church’s Iraivan Temple on Kauai. Hindu scripture rates crystal as the highest form
of Siva Lingam.
The crystal is known as an Earthkeeper. Earthkeepers are a special species. That a
single crystal would grow so large in the pressure furnaces under the planet’s crust is
wonderous enough. They are thermally passive, radiating coolness on blistering hot
days. They can trap and splinter light in a dazzling display. But their lore is even more
remarkable. They have only been reconnecting with man since 1986. But the
Earthkeepers’ association with man stretches back in time way past the lesser and
greater ice ages to nearly 2 million years ago – correlating to the Sat and Treta Yuga
periods – in Lemuria, a vast continent now mostly under the Pacific and Indian
Oceans. It is said that these crystals served as planetary knowledge storage devices,
psychic power generators and as microcosmic homes for deva-beings, even Gods,
living in interior universes to ours. Today that knowledge is reawakening.
Presently, the Earthkeeper Siva Lingam of Saiva Siddhanta Church is being
temporarily installed in Kadavul Hindu Temple, where a ruby-red, low-power laser
beam will illumine it. In the future it will be permanently installed as the main icon in the
Iraivan Temple at the San Marga (Straight Path to God) Sanctuary founded by
Gurudeva, Sivaya Subramuniyaswami. Sail Marga, a panoramic 10-acre property
adjacent to the Church’s monastery, is dedicated to all sincere followers and admirers
of the Hindu dharma. When fully unfolded, it will depict through landscape and
architecture every soul’s journey to enlightenment.”