SHIVA
Shiva, who makes his presence felt most strongly in the dark of a moonless night…
ahh, don’t you feel it somewhere deep and intimate? At least once a year, you might
want to stay up all night and welcome him into that intimate union… it puts a different
spin on the phrase, “the dark night of the soul,” doesn’t it? The enigma of Shiva: for
swooning and dissolving into, not the dour self-flagellation of the usual “dark night of
the soul”.
Auspicious, Dangerous and Enigmatic
Most deities, in any tradition, are revered in full light, or at full moon, while Shiva is
venerated in the dark of the moon. Is it rash to say that most deities have a fairly
uncomplicated set of attributes which their devotees promulgate? Good bad, we’re
right, you’re wrong?
Not so simple with Shiva. He is the Auspicious One who brings his blessings freely
and will even whisper into the ear of the dying, to help ease their passage. He is the
handsome, desirable husband of the beautiful Parvati, and in ancient myth found a
home for himself and her in the garden paradise of Kashi, the City of Light in the Forest
of Bliss – his home which persists to this day as Varanasi, though the forests and lakes
are gone. He is also the Destroyer, who knocks down the structures we build, whether
in brick or as the fantasies of our personality. His favourite haunt is the cremation
ground. He is the vigour of the world, and he is symbolised as the phallus. Yet he is
androgynous, and his feminine counterpart is his very self. One expression of his
feminine self, as Kali, tramples on his masculine form, reducing him to the ranks of
the vanquished under her unremitting obliteration of all that is vain, egotistic, phoney
and adharmic. Her tongue drips blood as she goes about her work. Yet she is he.
Baffles the mind
Contemplating Shiva baffles the mind until it finally gives up its desire to control and
run the world. He is Mahadeva, the God of Gods. As there can be no second to the
One, he becomes all there is. He is the divine of all divinity, the Being of all beings,
and you yourself are one of his forms. So look all around – what you see is Shiva. Even
in the mirror you see Shiva. The person you like least, who has given you so much
suffering, he or she is Shiva, too. You can try promoting your ego to “I am Shiva”, and
he will not argue with you – but watch out for Kali. She will see through your vainglory
and swing her bloody hatchet at your ambition. And yet she is Shiva and you are Shiva.
Broadens your perspective
Contemplating Shiva as the One pushes against the mind’s tendency to see only
diversity. Eventually, it becomes apparent that the “I” or ego-self is the source of the
diversity, because it posits itself as the centre of the multitude. And its most
compulsive tendency is to suppose that its egocentric viewpoint is the means by which
reality orders itself. It takes on itself the role of the great Adjudicator, and never
notices its absurd pomposity in doing so. Until you come to contemplating Shiva. The
One being, having become all, judges nothing; only the small I, born of neurons
flashing, does it and never lets up – until “Shiva”.
A different sort of god
This Shiva, the Auspicious, the Destroyer, the unstoppable creative, is totally engaged
in his creations. Unlike other deistic creators, Shiva is never unhappy with his creation
or his creatures. They are himself, after all. They are his infinite pleasure of self-
expression. He can never look down on them from afar, he is hidden in plain sight in
daily life. Look at the person beside you and you will find him. He is not the distant
non-person of the Vedic Brahma, and he is not a jealous god, either. If you prefer Allah
or Yahweh, he is equally pleased and revels in the tensions that play out from it all. It’s
more fun than the Goodies and Baddies of TV and film.
Neither is he meek and mild – he is as much at home in the roaring cylone and the
adrenalin of war as he is disporting with Parvati in the Forest of Bliss or whispering
gentle promises into the ears of the dying in Kashi. He is the whole of you and all you
are capable of. Actually, you are always capable of more than your mind allows,
because when you forget you are Shiva, you limit yourself to a personality that has
been conditioned and socialised to such small aspiration. Yet Shiva never forgets that
he is you. It just doesn’t bother him that you, his avatar-form, have forgotten
him. One fine day he will remind you.
Twist in the tale
Ah, but then there is a further surprise in store. Shiva is all that is non-being, too. So
if your mind likes the ego stroking of “I am Shiva”, try it out on “I have no being” or
“I Am-Not”. Hahahaha… that puts paid to its little trip. In fact, the mind cannot
contemplate its non-existence, that is an oxymoron… and yet non-being is a true
description of the personal self and its world view… ooohhh, mind-boggling….
Want to escape?
Well, you might like to escape from all this by saying, “Oh, I don’t believe any of
that!” But one might say to you, “Who cares? I don’t believe either. Beliefs are just a
bunch of neurons firing off, in your head or mine.” No, the only question of concern
is, What is your experience? Is it narrow and repetitive, or do you find yourself
stepping foot onto the vast, mysterious plains of reality that certainly can’t be
contained in a pattern of neuronal activity?
Escape from what you can – but not from Shiva
And that brings us to Shivaratri – at least once a year in the dark of the moon, try
sitting in the experience of Being that is also Non-Being, that shatters the habitual way
our minds conjure up the same egocentric view of what reality is and what self is, day
after day after month after year after decade, till the whole lifespan is exhausted in
minutiae and trivia.
You might sit up all night, allowing the presence of Shiva, and allowing the mysterious,
and allowing the greatness of that which the bundles of neurons in my head are not
able to grasp. Perhaps you too will find Shiva intimate and extraordinary and your
consciousness might expand to spaces that your thinking can’t take you to.
And perhaps you will find that Shiva indeed is none other than all you are and all you
see, and you will weep for the intimacy of his love that has been there all the time, all
through the long years of your arrogant, needy, isolated ego.
Ah, Rumi, you could have gone further
Rumi has been known to talk about the light of the Sun as the rationalising mind. He
says, turn away from the Sun and seek the Moon – by which he means the numinous,
the ineffable, that which can only be dimly perceived, and then by feeling and
awareness, not by intellectualising.
Shivaratri – traditionally in February, but why not on any “dark of the moon”? -
however, invites you to go further – further from the Sun, further from its reflected
light in the Moon, in to utter darkness – and find there, brilliance and power and a
playful creativity that is full of love. To get it though, you have to give up control and
judgment, so thoroughly that you as the I-self is totally in the dark and oblivious.
