Everything has a point of origin, a source; nothing is without a source. [The waves that cause] all feelings and sensations, crude, subtle or causal, start from some source and proceed towards the infinite. From the very moment a feeling or sensation originates, it begins to stir the human mind and to make the soul surge with bliss. The farther it [the wave] travels from the source, the less power it has to stir and to saturate with bliss. Lord Sadáshiva, the central figure of universal humanity, appeared around 7500 years ago. It is not that He sat in just one particular place and created ideational waves; riding on his yak, He travelled all over the world and propagated the keynote of humanism. Though the keynote of this humanism has Parama Puruśa as its goal, this movement towards Parama Puruśa is multi-staged, is prolonged in manifold directions, and experiences myriad flows of sweetness, before it reaches its single goal.

For their survival, human beings have to make constant efforts (sádhaná) not only in body but also in mind and spirit. And the seed of escaping the monotony of existence has to be kept embedded in their constant onward march itself. Without that, life becomes unbearable. The subtler pulsations of humanity are the means to keep human life enlivened with this aesthetic flow. Those subtler pulsations contain within them literature, art and various sweeter and sweeter humanistic and spiritual expressions. This was what beloved Shiva gave to the world.

Shiva appeared after the influx of the Aryans into India. During that conflict-ridden period, Shiva was ekamevádvitiiyam [“one without a second”] – the singular ideal of humanity. If the highly-aesthetic expressions of Ráŕh are anything to go by, it will not be wrong to say that the soil of Ráŕh was blessed by Shiva’s holy footsteps. And it was from this starting-point that Ráŕh assimilated all subtle and aesthetic manifestations of humanism and then diffused them into every atom of the air, the sky and every pulsation of existence. A poet says:

Tomár parash chaŕáye rekhecha
Bhúloke dyuloke goloke
Sattár prati palake;

[You have spread your touch in all places
In human and divine worlds, in paradise
Everywhere, in every blink of existence.]

Herein lies the superiority of Ráŕh – the virtuosity of Ráŕh’s vitality.