I am Shiva. Before anyone starts gathering flowers or sitting on their trishuls, let me elaborate. The chant Aum Namah Shivayah and Aum Shantihi Aum essentially means I Am Shiva and I Am Peace. This very simple and profound statement of one's own divinity has now been buried under so many layers of complicated interpretations and linguistic changes that it has now gone beyond the understanding of most people.
When I say that I am Shiva, it also infers that I am Jehovah, Allah and Jove. This is because these names are the linguistic transformations of the same word according to the language and culture of the people who used these names and the places where they lived in the past. I am Brahma, Vishnu, Ra, Osiris, Zeus, Buddha, Dionysus, the gods of the Mayans and Aztecs, and the gods of all the other religions and cultures of the world. Now this may get a lot of people all over the world picking up their guns, battle axes, swords, bows and arrows, spears, trucks, etc and spitting blood. Wait a bit...
If you are getting worked up then you are possibly a believer in god and not an atheist. If so, then you will understand that there was and will be numerous periods of time when only the creator exists, in a formless state, as it was at the beginning and it will be at the end of the life cycle of this universe. If you acknowledge this, then you will probably understand that for the creator to create he has to do so from a part of himself . Creation is made by the creator from the creator's own self i.e. creation and creator are one and the same. Now if you think that creation is not made from a part of the creator's self, rather it is from some material external to the creator, then you have created a duality, eroding the infinite, all pervasive, nature of the creator. The question that then arises will be - who or what is the unifying common factor between this creator and the external material that makes up his creation? It implies that you need to move to another level of abstraction, and keep doing so, until you find the common ground from where both creator and creation emerges, the unity, and give it the label of god. As you can see, an approach where creator and creation are not made of the same material is ultimately untenable.Whenever you find the common ground then it will be clear to you again that I am the creator and I am his creation. Yes, that makes me the destroyer too and all that comes in between creation and destruction.
Now, all of the above hairsplitting in masculine terms might start to get the female principle of the universe offended. Well, I am female as well as male. I am Shakti, Devi, Venus, Isis, etc, in addition to being all of the above masculine entities. My father and my mother molded my physical body and mind through their equal contributions making me what I am i.e. both male and female. Looking beyond the reproduction system within my body, the unifying nature of who I am goes beyond the duality of male and female. The basic essence that I am made of, the universal spirit, is androgynous Ardhanareshwara. Yin and yang...
Well, to speak like this I must surely be evil. Yes, I am the devil that you see through the duality of your mind. The term 'devil' is used to denote a negative force that is a hurdle to what one desires to achieve. It has been called Saturn or Shani and other names to denote malevolent energy. This has then conveniently morphed in the cultural mind over time in some places to become Satan with, what else - the trident, tail and forked tongue (equated with Shiva in various instances and the basis of some of the dread that certain cultures hold of him). The evil force has been called the Serpent, Dragon, Goat, etc. To a given culture the divine forms of another culture are often viewed as evil. Hence the serpent, dragon and Shiva representing divine energy in the East is viewed as evil in the West. The underlying fear and animosity towards these images could be because the cultures, to which these imagery belonged, represented a hurdle or threat to the growth and prosperity of the culture with the negative view. This relative view of good and bad again draws from the narrow minded and short term memory perspectives of people, who see only their own cultures as valid and superior. So my culture's god became your culture's devil and vice versa. I am however all the gods and all the devils of all cultures since the underlying ultimate source from which all cultures, gods and demons emerged is one, the world of ideas, the universal mind, and it is the same source from which I came.
I am the Great Spirit of the native Americans, the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost or Ruha of the various religions. The soul or prana, embodied as me, is my spirit form, the same universal, eternal spirit into which my soul merges when I give up the body. This spirit form is the same formless unity from which all forms in the visible universe have emerged and into which all forms will dissolve..and rise again...and fall..and so on.
I am Jesus, Guru Nanak, Sai Baba, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, Rama... The one factor uniting all these entities was that they all understood their divinity and the unity of all things. The truth they espoused was that the body is the temple of the divine and that you are the divine. Krishna spoke in the first person as the supreme spirit in the dialogues of the Bhagwad Gita. The audience has however mostly failed to understand that what Krishna spoke was the universal truth which applied to all and could be uttered by anyone. All one needed to do was to recognize the divinity within oneself. Many of us have, instead, put these awakened individuals up on pedestals, mummified them into statues, creating an illusory class of beings who are something unattainable. We have conveniently forgotten or misread their key messages, and distanced ourselves and our behaviors from them. We have created a near insurmountable separation between us and them in our minds and continue to behave like half wits, absolving ourselves of all our actions, in the name of devotion to their names and their power to absolve us of all our misdeeds.
Yes Communists, evolutionary biologists, physicists, scientists, cultists, rationalists and atheists, I am Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Che Guevara as well. Oh yes and Jim Morrison and Bob Marley and all other humans that there was, is and will be (and therefore our ancestors the chimpanzees and apes as well). I am all animals (including the snake), all plants (including the ganja plant, my personal favorite), all insects, birds, bacteria, viruses, etc i.e. I am all life. Scientifically my evolutionary path can be traced back in time from where I am now to the first life form. Being that common source, and by evolving through the branching out of these paths, I am all the paths. Examine me closely and you will find everything within me. I am all inorganic things i.e the elements, sun, moon, stars, forces of nature, space, time, galaxies, black holes, quasars, quarks, gravity, Higg's Boson particle, dark energy, carbon, the first element hydrogen, everything. If you are a believer in the Big Bang then you know that I must have been a part of the singularity before the Big Bang and therefore I am a part of everything that subsequently followed and everything is a part of me.
You may ask if that is all I have to say? If I leave it here, then I would have spoken only half of what needs to be said and half truths are the root of all ignorance and delusion in this world. If you read only this much and understand only this much then it is like understanding a half-truth. You are likely to have feelings of wanting to impale, crucify, shoot or burn me at the stake, dissect me or do something similar to yourself and to anyone or everyone you can lay your hands on while the urge lasts. But then, remember, climbing up to the top of the mountain is only half the journey. Coming back to the bottom is the other half of the journey, as the mountain man says..
What is the other half of the above stated truth which makes it complete? This other half is the absolute fact that all that I have said above applies as much to you and every other aspect of reality as it applies to me. THAT is the complete truth. Aham brahmasmi...tat tvam asi. I am all that I have stated above and, equally importantly, not more, not less, YOU are all that which is stated above too. This most important other half of the story has been omitted in many circumstances, even if the first half has been said, which is itself rare. In some cases, the second half has been stated but has not registered or it has been forgotten. The seeds are cast everywhere. Some fall on fallow ground and fail to germinate. Others fall on hard surfaces and are eaten up by the birds and other animals. Only a few seeds fall on fertile soil and germinate to become the plant of eternal life..
This half or fractional view of the truth is the chief cause for the subdivisions, blood boiling, blood curdling, blood excreting and blood spilling that we have been seeing over the years and are still seeing these days. Through not seeing the whole truth we have:
The result of this is that we take a form or affiliation and associate with that form or affiliation, thinking it is eternal, only to find that it is true, if at all, only for a finite amount of time. After that time passes, clinging to it only results in rigidity and stagnation of the mind and its subsequent disease and death. For an optimum functioning and to experience the richness, diversity and beauty of this great mystery called existence, and to be in union at all times with the eternal spirit, called yoga by some, the holy communion by others, nirvana by still others, it is important to inclusively expand our consciousness as we go along, recognizing the places where we create the boundaries of me and you, within and outside ourselves, and to dissolve the boundaries as we come across them. I think this is best done with love, peace and compassion rather than with hate, anger, jealousy or violence. The ultimate rock solid foundation of the balanced and centered state of mind is the clear understanding and recognition of the unity of all aspects of reality..
Yes I am death and so are you...aham brahmasmi..tat tvam asi..i am..so are you...
When I say that I am Shiva, it also infers that I am Jehovah, Allah and Jove. This is because these names are the linguistic transformations of the same word according to the language and culture of the people who used these names and the places where they lived in the past. I am Brahma, Vishnu, Ra, Osiris, Zeus, Buddha, Dionysus, the gods of the Mayans and Aztecs, and the gods of all the other religions and cultures of the world. Now this may get a lot of people all over the world picking up their guns, battle axes, swords, bows and arrows, spears, trucks, etc and spitting blood. Wait a bit...
If you are getting worked up then you are possibly a believer in god and not an atheist. If so, then you will understand that there was and will be numerous periods of time when only the creator exists, in a formless state, as it was at the beginning and it will be at the end of the life cycle of this universe. If you acknowledge this, then you will probably understand that for the creator to create he has to do so from a part of himself . Creation is made by the creator from the creator's own self i.e. creation and creator are one and the same. Now if you think that creation is not made from a part of the creator's self, rather it is from some material external to the creator, then you have created a duality, eroding the infinite, all pervasive, nature of the creator. The question that then arises will be - who or what is the unifying common factor between this creator and the external material that makes up his creation? It implies that you need to move to another level of abstraction, and keep doing so, until you find the common ground from where both creator and creation emerges, the unity, and give it the label of god. As you can see, an approach where creator and creation are not made of the same material is ultimately untenable.Whenever you find the common ground then it will be clear to you again that I am the creator and I am his creation. Yes, that makes me the destroyer too and all that comes in between creation and destruction.
Now, all of the above hairsplitting in masculine terms might start to get the female principle of the universe offended. Well, I am female as well as male. I am Shakti, Devi, Venus, Isis, etc, in addition to being all of the above masculine entities. My father and my mother molded my physical body and mind through their equal contributions making me what I am i.e. both male and female. Looking beyond the reproduction system within my body, the unifying nature of who I am goes beyond the duality of male and female. The basic essence that I am made of, the universal spirit, is androgynous Ardhanareshwara. Yin and yang...
Well, to speak like this I must surely be evil. Yes, I am the devil that you see through the duality of your mind. The term 'devil' is used to denote a negative force that is a hurdle to what one desires to achieve. It has been called Saturn or Shani and other names to denote malevolent energy. This has then conveniently morphed in the cultural mind over time in some places to become Satan with, what else - the trident, tail and forked tongue (equated with Shiva in various instances and the basis of some of the dread that certain cultures hold of him). The evil force has been called the Serpent, Dragon, Goat, etc. To a given culture the divine forms of another culture are often viewed as evil. Hence the serpent, dragon and Shiva representing divine energy in the East is viewed as evil in the West. The underlying fear and animosity towards these images could be because the cultures, to which these imagery belonged, represented a hurdle or threat to the growth and prosperity of the culture with the negative view. This relative view of good and bad again draws from the narrow minded and short term memory perspectives of people, who see only their own cultures as valid and superior. So my culture's god became your culture's devil and vice versa. I am however all the gods and all the devils of all cultures since the underlying ultimate source from which all cultures, gods and demons emerged is one, the world of ideas, the universal mind, and it is the same source from which I came.
I am the Great Spirit of the native Americans, the Holy Spirit and the Holy Ghost or Ruha of the various religions. The soul or prana, embodied as me, is my spirit form, the same universal, eternal spirit into which my soul merges when I give up the body. This spirit form is the same formless unity from which all forms in the visible universe have emerged and into which all forms will dissolve..and rise again...and fall..and so on.
I am Jesus, Guru Nanak, Sai Baba, Mohammed, Buddha, Krishna, Rama... The one factor uniting all these entities was that they all understood their divinity and the unity of all things. The truth they espoused was that the body is the temple of the divine and that you are the divine. Krishna spoke in the first person as the supreme spirit in the dialogues of the Bhagwad Gita. The audience has however mostly failed to understand that what Krishna spoke was the universal truth which applied to all and could be uttered by anyone. All one needed to do was to recognize the divinity within oneself. Many of us have, instead, put these awakened individuals up on pedestals, mummified them into statues, creating an illusory class of beings who are something unattainable. We have conveniently forgotten or misread their key messages, and distanced ourselves and our behaviors from them. We have created a near insurmountable separation between us and them in our minds and continue to behave like half wits, absolving ourselves of all our actions, in the name of devotion to their names and their power to absolve us of all our misdeeds.
Yes Communists, evolutionary biologists, physicists, scientists, cultists, rationalists and atheists, I am Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Che Guevara as well. Oh yes and Jim Morrison and Bob Marley and all other humans that there was, is and will be (and therefore our ancestors the chimpanzees and apes as well). I am all animals (including the snake), all plants (including the ganja plant, my personal favorite), all insects, birds, bacteria, viruses, etc i.e. I am all life. Scientifically my evolutionary path can be traced back in time from where I am now to the first life form. Being that common source, and by evolving through the branching out of these paths, I am all the paths. Examine me closely and you will find everything within me. I am all inorganic things i.e the elements, sun, moon, stars, forces of nature, space, time, galaxies, black holes, quasars, quarks, gravity, Higg's Boson particle, dark energy, carbon, the first element hydrogen, everything. If you are a believer in the Big Bang then you know that I must have been a part of the singularity before the Big Bang and therefore I am a part of everything that subsequently followed and everything is a part of me.
You may ask if that is all I have to say? If I leave it here, then I would have spoken only half of what needs to be said and half truths are the root of all ignorance and delusion in this world. If you read only this much and understand only this much then it is like understanding a half-truth. You are likely to have feelings of wanting to impale, crucify, shoot or burn me at the stake, dissect me or do something similar to yourself and to anyone or everyone you can lay your hands on while the urge lasts. But then, remember, climbing up to the top of the mountain is only half the journey. Coming back to the bottom is the other half of the journey, as the mountain man says..
What is the other half of the above stated truth which makes it complete? This other half is the absolute fact that all that I have said above applies as much to you and every other aspect of reality as it applies to me. THAT is the complete truth. Aham brahmasmi...tat tvam asi. I am all that I have stated above and, equally importantly, not more, not less, YOU are all that which is stated above too. This most important other half of the story has been omitted in many circumstances, even if the first half has been said, which is itself rare. In some cases, the second half has been stated but has not registered or it has been forgotten. The seeds are cast everywhere. Some fall on fallow ground and fail to germinate. Others fall on hard surfaces and are eaten up by the birds and other animals. Only a few seeds fall on fertile soil and germinate to become the plant of eternal life..
This half or fractional view of the truth is the chief cause for the subdivisions, blood boiling, blood curdling, blood excreting and blood spilling that we have been seeing over the years and are still seeing these days. Through not seeing the whole truth we have:
- seen ourselves as separate from divinity and forgotten the divine within ourselves i.e. we have created a world of separation between god and man
- seen ourselves as separate from others and forgotten the divinity within each of them i.e we have created a world of us and them
- seen the world in various fragmented ways and associated ourselves with certain fragments believing that only our fragments are relevant..my team versus your team
- opened ourselves up to be exploited by all kinds of forces in the name of ideologies, leaders and gurus who leverage our half knowledge to control us
The result of this is that we take a form or affiliation and associate with that form or affiliation, thinking it is eternal, only to find that it is true, if at all, only for a finite amount of time. After that time passes, clinging to it only results in rigidity and stagnation of the mind and its subsequent disease and death. For an optimum functioning and to experience the richness, diversity and beauty of this great mystery called existence, and to be in union at all times with the eternal spirit, called yoga by some, the holy communion by others, nirvana by still others, it is important to inclusively expand our consciousness as we go along, recognizing the places where we create the boundaries of me and you, within and outside ourselves, and to dissolve the boundaries as we come across them. I think this is best done with love, peace and compassion rather than with hate, anger, jealousy or violence. The ultimate rock solid foundation of the balanced and centered state of mind is the clear understanding and recognition of the unity of all aspects of reality..
Yes I am death and so are you...aham brahmasmi..tat tvam asi..i am..so are you...