The word "Shiva" in Sanskrit means highest good

The word "Shiva" in Sanskrit means highest good

The very purpose of murti puja (idol-worship) in Indian Culture is to enable the masses to access and imbibe the teachings and inspirations of divine emanations. Every idol, every symbol of God’s manifestation represented here is indicative of some important teaching related to the spiritual evolution of human consciousness. Today, I gave you the example of Shankar (Shiva) in this context and tried to explain the principles, the occult implications of His worship and devotion. Unfortunately, we often get engrossed in worshipping the gross form – the idol of God and consider the performance of some customary rituals, chanting of some prayers etc as all that is required for His devotion. Even if we have read or heard about the occult significance of the symbols of divine manifestations, we don’t seem to remember anything. We just want to take shortcuts and regard ourselves great devotees simply by symbolic worship.

The word "Shiva" in Sanskrit means highest good. Lord Shiva (Shiva) is the presiding Deity of eternal, auspicious well-being of all creation. But we, the so-called worshippers of Shiva never even think of global good. (Forget about global, we don’t even attempt to expand the narrow domain of our selfish interests and engage ourselves in altruistic service and upliftment of the needy around us). We keep chanting "Om Namah Shivaya" but don’t bother to know its meaning; in reality, Shiva (Shiva) is far away from our lives. We don’t even know what is the true well-being of our soul or our own life and how to attain it? The japa (rhythmic chanting) of Shiva’s name will be beatifying if "Shiva" (Highest Good) is embodied in our attitude, aspirations, thoughts and deeds. It is time we realize that worshipping only the external, gross form is no better than not doing anything at all.

Om Namah Shivay