Who Is Shiva?
Transcendent God: Shiva is the timeless God of the universe.Before even the creation of our world, He alone exists; as existence itself,and can be understood as the ultimate transcendence,the supreme being..Personal God
This supreme being,wants to become something,So, He manifests the world as we know it,with himself the projector,but alongside all that he creates,he enters the project as an embodiment,much like the director taking a role in his own play!He now involves himself in meditating and re-connecting with his transcendent Godness,Such connecting is termed as “yoga”,and so, shiva the yogi, is replete with divine knowledge and power.Shiva constantly deploys his powers and wisdom, his godhood,to uplift all his children , In this,he is goodness personified,and many who have faith in his immanence, worship him as their personal god.
Why then is Shiva known as the destroyer? Hinduism believes that the processes of God are principally threefold: creation,preservation,and destruction. It further believes,that God optimizes his attributes in a particular manifestation to enable the execution of a specific process with the greatest efficacy,Thus Brahma is the creator of the world, Vishnu incarnates time and again , for he is it’s preserver.Which , in some thinking leaves Shiva as the destroyer at the end of a world cycle.However, this is one view. Those who know Shiva better (the shaivites), see His role in a different way.In a world full of changes, something must mark the parameter of permanence, and that permanent principle is Shiva. Shaivites prefer to understand Him as the”Re-absorber”. Their view is :
The Shaivite Belief :Shiva is one of four main Gods of Hinduism, the other three being Brahma, Vishnu andDevi, Shiva’s consort Herself.In the beginning, only Shiva is. He is endowed with immense power,Shakti,which is none other thanDevi,the eternal consort. The two are inseparable, like any one thing and its inherent nature: God, and Mother Nature “In-here” in each other as one. They create Brahma and Vishnu. Brahma creates the world,and enters it, so does Vishnu,and,yes, So do shiva and devi. Most of us know Shiva from here,in his popular depiction as Shiva, the yogi. He is dhyanastha,meditative,mindful,beneficent, always immersed in transmitting spiritual guidance,sharing many methods of attainment. Ultimately, all is absorbed back to him,but,those are lucky, who get absorbed in godheadin their current birth, whilst retaining their body,that is, before dying .This is attainment. So,to one who wants to learn of shiva’s mysticism, destruction does not mean ‘finishing of the world’, It rather connotes the ending of ignorance and falsehood,the ending of identifying too much with the finites. Shiva guides us to higher wisdom by the ‘taking away’ of junk messages that haveaccumulated in our minds through ages,and have resulted not only in personal misery,but also creating chaos and disharmony when we come together in collective soceities.Foremost amongst our errant conditionings, is:We think we are distant from god.Shiva ends the delusion that we are only body and mind,distant from god.Ending of delusion,ends limitation. So if there is something shiva does destroy,its your limitation.‘Verily’,teaches Shiva, ‘god is nearer to you than your very breath’for simply understood,is not god the breath in you?And thus, Shiva begins to remind us of where it all began….Shiva teaches that we, in fact, are made of the same shivashakti principle that began the world.All creation is from one source and that there are no two different origins.This makes him the teacher divine, Shiva dakshinamurti. He who taught without taking a fee.
~ Shail Gulhati is the author of
