Who is Shiva: Man, Myth or Divine?
Who is Shiva? Many stories and legends surround this most
prominent figure of Indian spiritual traditions. Is he a god? Or a myth
constructed from Hindu culture’s collective imagination? Or is there a
deeper meaning to Shiva, revealed only to those who seek?
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.
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.
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