Om Namashivaya
This is part VIII of Shiva the Supreme. The main difference between a yogi and a person like us is that yogi can commune with Shiva in all the three stages viz. awake, dream and deep sleep. Such a commune is established by a yogi through his spine. But the yogi has to be ever alert to receive His commune. But in our case, if we are sincere in seeking Him, He communes with us only in our dreams. The difference is due to the fact that the yogi has become Shiva Himself and we are yet to seek Him within. We are not willing to come out of the clutches of mundane rituals. As I have been saying repeatedly rituals are only the first step of a ladder. Shiva is beyond the last step of the ladder. If we are stranded in the first step, how we can reach the last step. Yogi can skip several meals continuously, but we cannot even skip a single meal. Our mind is not conditioned not to think about hunger or not to feel the hunger. As long as we have attachments to worldly things, our mind cannot be tuned to a higher frequency. Let us discuss about the reality that exists in our life. Most of us are involved in family life and have duties and responsibilities. How then we can realise Shiva? Is that possible? These questions always loom large in our mind without an answer. Lord Krishna answers this question in Gita. He says ‘do your duty and leave the result either good or bad to me’. So our duty is to attend to our responsibilities in right earnest. Suppose you have achieved something which others cannot accomplish, you take credit for that achievement. But who has made you to achieve that? So, forgetting your creator and misguided by maya, your ego raises its ugly head and you end up saying I did this. When this is the reality why should we think about a yogi in last step of the ladder? Let us first go to the second step, third step and gradually reach the last step. Without making sincere attempt, what right do we have in blaming Shiva? We need to tune our anthakkarana i.e. mind, intellect and ego to realise Shiva. We have discussed at length about 24 and 36 tatwas. Tatwas are used in identification and elimination process.
Let us take the example of ego. Unless we know what is ego, we cannot determine whether it is good or bad. Great saints have given interpretations about ego. A number of books discuss about ego. With the help of these we know that ego is bad. Why and how and to what extent it is bad is to be experienced. Unless you walk in the scorching sun, you cannot feel what the heat is. In the same way, these tatwas are to be realised. But ultimately, they are to be eliminated. The question is how to eliminate them? Your neighbour tunes his audio system to the highest volume. The sound is blaring. You have limited options now. Either you request your neighbour to tune down the volume or ignore the sound. Ignoring the sound is elimination and requesting your neighbour is ego. Why it is ego? Because, you (I) do not like that noise. You manifest that your ears are not listening to the blaring sound. Over a period of time, your ears will be tuned in such a way that you not hear the blaring sound at all, in spite of your neighbour tuning to the peak volume. This is how every tatwa is to be dissolved and eliminated. When you are able to eliminate all the tatwas, what else remains? Nothing but Shiva as Shiva exists everywhere. The ultimate result of this experience is, that the jiva within you forgets its mundane nature and gets transformed into divine in nature. It stops distinguishing between poor and rich, young and old, beauty and ugly. Since the jiva feels the experience of the divine, its ‘I’ consciousness merges with the universal consciousness. In the next stage it realizes that there is no distinction between I consciousness and universal consciousness. Finally it realises that there is only one stage called Shiva consciousness. In fact this stage should not be called as Shiva consciousness. It should be called Shivam, which is attained first by transition and finally by transformation. When jiva reaches this stage it has no more births, since it has become Shiva the Supreme OM NAMASHIVAYA
Vijayalakshmi Natarajan
May 07, 2009 02:07 PM
A wonderful series on Shiva and the concluding chapter is a real gem. It induces us to to practice the ways suggested.
well done
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