INFINITE AND ETERNAL

SHIVA REPRESENTS THE WHOLE UNIVERSE. HE IS CALLED RUDRA IN THE VEDAS, THE MAKER OF SOUND AND THUNDER, BUT HE IS ALSO SOMA, THE NECTAR OF IMMORTALITY, WITH WHICH RUDRA ARE OFTEN COMBINED

Shiva Mahadev, perhaps the most enduring Hindu Devata, is difficult for many people, particularly in the Western world, to imagine, much less to understand. The reality of Shiva is hidden in mystery, transcendence, enigma and paradox that cannot be confined to definitions, ideologies or beliefs. Shiva presents to us a vast yet indefinable reality beyond the mind and its limited perspectives of time, place and person. Shiva's complex symbolism, and the depths of Shaivite psychology and philosophy is meant to break down the hubris of the dualistic mind and the conflicts it has created in its efforts to control the world.

Shiva has a multidimensional existence at all levels of the universe, from our dense physical world to all the lokas of the cosmos and ultimately to the supreme Brahman beyond all possible manifestations. Everything in essence is pervaded by Shiva, who is like boundless space and light.

Today, under the domination of the machine, our thinking and perception is becoming ever more linear, superficial and lacking in depth perception, trapped inside the screen of our shifting thoughts and biased opinions. This makes Shiva even harder for us to perceive and we tend to reduce him to one level only, as if He were but a physical form or mental image. Yet Shiva remains as the inscrutable power to take us beyond our preconceptions, conditioning and expectations. We live in the immutable reality of Shiva but with our inner eye closed as if we were our own reality, when we are but a transient play of artificial desires and borrowed imaginations, not seeing the real universe in which we truly live, which is full of the wonder of Shiva.

MAHAYOGI SHIVA