[Today is Mahashivaratri, literally: 'a night of nameless ecstasies' and shared here below is an article on Shiva, the other but peaceful manifestation of Hindu trinity: Brahma, Vishnu and Maheshwar. One of the interpretations of the word “Shiva” can be “that which is not” also. Shiva is not a Vedic god himself. 'The vast empty space is referred to as Shiva. Everything comes from Shiva and goes back to Shiva.' Be it as it may. And posted also is a video in which the narrator says,"...where Hinduism meets the future". - The Blogger.]
Who is Shiva?
Sadhguru:
When we say “Shiva,” there are two fundamental aspects that we are referring
to. The word “Shiva” means literally, “that which is not.” Today, modern
science is proving to us that everything comes from nothing and goes back to
nothing. The basis of existence and the fundamental quality of the cosmos is
vast nothingness. The galaxies are just a small happening – a sprinkling. The
rest is all vast empty space, which is referred to as Shiva. That is the womb
from which everything is born, and that is the oblivion into which everything
is sucked back. Everything comes from Shiva and goes back to Shiva.
The word
“Shiva” means literally, “that which is not.” On another level, when we say
“Shiva,” we are referring to a certain yogi, the Adiyogi or the first yogi, and
also the Adi Guru, the first Guru.
So Shiva
is described as a non-being, not as a being. Shiva is not described as light,
but as darkness. Humanity has gone about eulogizing light only because of the
nature of the visual apparatus that they carry. Otherwise, the only thing that
is always, is darkness. Light is a limited happening in the sense that any
source of light – whether a light bulb or the sun – will eventually lose its
ability to give out light. Light is not eternal. It is always a limited
possibility because it happens and it ends. Darkness is a much bigger
possibility than light. Nothing needs to burn, it is always – it is eternal.
Darkness is everywhere. It is the only thing that is all pervading.
But if I
say “divine darkness,” people think I am a devil worshiper or something. In
fact, in some places in the West it is being propagated that Shiva is a demon!
But if you look at it as a concept, there isn’t a more intelligent concept on
the planet about the whole process of creation and how it has happened. I have
been talking about this in scientific terms without using the word “Shiva” to
scientists around the world, and they are amazed, “Is this so? This was known?
When?” We have known this for thousands of years. Almost every peasant in India
knows about it unconsciously. He talks about it without even knowing the
science behind it.
The First Yogi
On another
level, when we say “Shiva,” we are referring to a certain yogi, the Adiyogi or
the first yogi, and also the Adi Guru, the first Guru, who is the basis of what
we know as the yogic science today. Yoga does not mean standing on your head or
holding your breath. Yoga is the science and technology to know the essential
nature of how this life is created and how it can be taken to its ultimate
possibility.
This first
transmission of yogic sciences happened on the banks of Kanti Sarovar, a
glacial lake a few miles beyond Kedarnath in the Himalayas, where Adiyogi began
a systematic exposition of this inner technology to his first seven disciples,
celebrated today as the Sapta Rishis. This predates all religion. Before people
devised divisive ways of fracturing humanity to a point where it seems almost
impossible to fix, the most powerful tools necessary to raise human
consciousness were realized and propagated.
One and the Same
So “Shiva”
refers to both “that which is not,” and Adiyogi, because in many ways, they are
synonymous. This being, who is a yogi, and that non-being, which is the basis
of the existence, are the same, because to call someone a yogi means he has
experienced the existence as himself. If you have to contain the existence
within you even for a moment as an experience, you have to be that nothingness.
Only nothingness can hold everything. Something can never hold everything. A
vessel cannot hold an ocean. This planet can hold an ocean, but it cannot hold
the solar system. The solar system can hold these few planets and the sun, but
it cannot hold the rest of the galaxy. If you go progressively like this,
ultimately you will see it is only nothingness that can hold everything. The
word “yoga” means “union.” A yogi is one who has experienced the union. That
means, at least for one moment, he has been absolute nothingness.
When we
talk about Shiva as “that which is not,” and Shiva as a yogi, in a way they are
synonymous, yet they are two different aspects. Because India is a dialectical
culture, we shift from this to that and that to this effortlessly. One moment
we talk about Shiva as the ultimate, the next moment we talk about Shiva as the
man who gave us this whole process of yoga.
Who Shiva is Not!
Unfortunately,
most people today have been introduced to Shiva only through Indian calendar
art. They have made him a chubby-cheeked, blue-colored man because the calendar
artist has only one face. If you ask for Krishna, he will put a flute in his
hand. If you ask for Rama, he will put a bow in his hand. If you ask for Shiva,
he will put a moon on his head, and that’s it!
Every time
I see these calendars, I always decide to never ever sit in front of a painter.
Photographs are all right – they capture you whichever way you are. If you look
like a devil, you look like a devil. Why would a yogi like Shiva look
chubby-cheeked? If you showed him skinny it would be okay, but a chubby-cheek
Shiva – how is that?
In the
yogic culture, Shiva is not seen as a God. He was a being who walked this land
and lived in the Himalayan region. As the very source of the yogic traditions,
his contribution in the making of human consciousness is too phenomenal to be
ignored. Every possible way in which you could approach and transform the human
mechanism into an ultimate possibility was explored thousands years ago. The
sophistication of it is unbelievable. The question of whether people were so
sophisticated at that time is irrelevant because this did not come from a
certain civilization or thought process. This came from an inner realization.
This had nothing to do with what was happening around him. It was just an
outpouring of himself. In great detail, he gave a meaning and a possibility of
what you could do with every point in the human mechanism. You cannot change a
single thing even today because he said everything that could be said in such
beautiful and intelligent ways. You can only spend your lifetime trying to
decipher it.
Shiva & Shakti shrines from 8-12 century
AD
In this
country, in ancient times, temples were built mostly for Shiva, no one else. It
was only in the last 1000 or so years that other temples came up. The word
“Shiva” literally means “that which is not.” So the temple was built for “that
which is not.” “That which is” is physical manifestation; “that which is not”
is that which is beyond the physical. A temple is a hole through which you
enter into a space which is not. There are thousands of Shiva temples in the
country, and most of them don’t have any form as such. They just have a
representative form and generally it is a linga.