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SHIVOKTI 1
Shiva was the loving guide for all living beings in their journey through life, in all the aspirations of their hearts, in all their creations. In His benevolent judgment, in His loving eyes, nobody was negligible, nobody was abominable. All had special value in their respective structures. All were indispensable parts of the relativity of time, space and person.
Those who come in the flow of creation are vibrated by the vast Cosmic Mind to move along their path. Emerging from the seed of creation, and merging in the limitlessness of infinity – having made themselves significant for eternity – they depart.
Their coming and going is not an absolute truth, nor does it lead to supreme fulfilment. They are footballs in the eternal game of Parama Puruśa, and their immeasurable value lies in their being His playthings. Everything is coming from the world beyond the scope of knowledge, and everything is going back to the world beyond the scope of knowledge, and the transitory state of knowablity is the present. The past is beyond reach; only the present is within the scope of measurement by the time factor.
Mobility means movement from one point of time to another point of time. Judged in this light, the past is decidedly a relative truth. And the future is also certainly a relative truth. But what is the present?
The present is too brief to be subdivided into fractions of any significance or permanence. That portion of the past which people can associate with the future according to their understanding, we call “the present”. In the absence of correct understanding about the fragmentary nature of time, some philosophers ignore this world and the present and paint a rainbow image of the future, and make people rush toward that mirage of the rainbow, forgetting the present. They do not deeply consider how little is the existential significance of a rainbow!
Historians often give more importance to the human aspect of history than to its application in the present. As a result, the past is detached from the present. While such historians glorify the past, they completely neglect the present. And if history is detached from the present, people cannot realize its significance and value. Consequently human life becomes one-sided.
There are some people who are inclined to accept this ever-changing present as absolute and supreme. Considering insensate and inert matter to be the original source of all and the most important factor of existence, they thereby block the path of human wisdom. These materialists lose their natural human values; they think, “This material enjoyment is the absolute and supreme fulfilment.”
In His thoughts and ideas, actions and expressions, Shiva did not give indulgence to any of these three defects(1) regarding past, present and future. He said, “You are living in the present. Utilize your past in building your present. Plan for the future in such a way that all human wealth is consolidated and radiates tremendous energy.” Shiva has instructed in clear language: Varttamáneśu vartteta [“Live in the present”].
SHIVOKTI 2
Karmańa baddhate jiivah vidyayá tu pramucyate [“People bound by karma(2) are liberated by self-knowledge”]. When people work without applying knowledge, they become entrapped in the bondages of action and finally end up in a state of crudity. When someone is working continuously like a machine, without any support of intellect, it should be understood that that mechanical action is the expression of a crude force. You may hear some people say, “Keep working, keep working.” Surely you will work, but you must not work without intellect. When a machine works, there is an intellectual entity controlling its operations. If a machine is permitted to work without any control, it is bound to cause catastrophe. So it has been said, Vidyayá tu pramucyate [“Knowledge leads to liberation”]. I have said in my book The Liberation of Intellect: Neohumanism:(3) read as much as you can, cultivate the faculty of knowledge, and accept only those things which are worthy of acceptance after rational thinking. The mind discharges two main functions – thinking and recollecting. People generally do not – and do not want to – utilize these mental faculties.
Perception, inference and authority are the valid sources of knowledge. People generally ignore inference; they are chiefly concerned with perception and authority. As they do not cultivate much the habit of thinking and recollecting, oftentimes they tend to give more weight to authority than to perception. Often they reject perception irrationally under the pressure of authority.
I would not say, nor will anyone say, that perception is altogether free from defects. Nonetheless it is generally recognized as a valid source of knowledge, but people often disregard its value under the pressure of authority.
For example, some say that the moon was split by the incantation of mantras. Others say that someone put black spots on the moon. Others say that an old woman is sitting on the moon spinning yarn – that is why the moon has black spots. Still others say that the black spots are there because a hare is sitting on the moon’s lap – and so one name of the moon is Shasháuṋka.(4) Those who accept these stories as authoritative and propagate these ideas, disregard even their own eyes. And thus finally they end up becoming the slaves of dogma. Those slaves of dogma, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowingly, submerge themselves in the mire of falsehood. They create obstacles to the spread of knowledge, and may even destroy the spirit of inquiry in others.
The influence of so-called authority exercises a greater spell on those who are averse to study, those who are disinclined to increase their rationalistic outlook, and those who have put a seal on their innate faculties of thinking and recollection. It is true that authority has to be accepted, as I have already said, but nothing in this world of relativity should be given undue importance or accepted as revelation or as unalterable, unquestionable truth.
Moreover, there is a still-greater defect in authority as a source of information. Apart from defects due to ignorance and defects due to changes in time, the person who is accepted as the source of authority may indeed be motivated by sub-human propensities. For instance, there may be dishonest persons who have exercised a tremendous influence over a particular community which has accepted them as authorities. In that event, such dishonest persons may do enormous harm to that community by imposing their capricious and defective mentality and other harmful tendencies on them. They may trample and crush those innocent, credulous people and fling them into the darkest dungeons.
By glorifying an irrational doctrine which has been created by personal caprice, like a red balloon of imagination flying in the sky, and then imposing that doctrine on millions of people, they destroy the universal values of human beings. By declaring inert and insensate matter – which is actually the slave of humanity – to be the supreme and absolute goal of worship, they cause the decay of all human treasure and spiritual wealth, and thus throw individuals and collectivity into an eternal whirlpool of lamentation.
Regarding the rather foolish proponents and followers of these doctrines, Shiva warned that they not only lead the people to ruin in the mundane sphere and cast them into the darkness of frustration in the spiritual sphere, in the psychic sphere also they inject severe mental diseases – and thus fill the entire existence of humanity with anguished suffering. On the path before humanity stretches a murky fog, as dreadful as death. Shiva has strongly denounced them saying, “They are lokavyámohakárakáh” [“Their only work is to inject disease into human life”].
SHIVOKTI 3
Just as the living world is divided into two categories – those who live in groups and those who live alone – similarly regarding family life, all creatures are divided into two broad classes: creatures with family ties (for example, elephants, lions and pigeons) and those without any family ties (for instance, tigers, dogs, cats, goats, etc.).
At the beginning of evolution, humans used to lead libertine lives without any consideration for family obligations, but they gradually developed a family instinct. However, that family instinct was no different from that of the elephants, lions, pigeons, etc. Due to this inborn instinct, males and females arrived at a loose but workable compromise regarding family life. But in that there was no sense of responsibility born out of a developed conscience; rather, due to their loose relationships with each other, one person used to desert another and go anywhere he or she liked. The number of such libertines was very high, and they used to disturb the peace and harmony of the so-called family members and become the cause of many serious quarrels.
The male libertines would not take responsibility for their offspring. They used to wander freely, and as a result, the entire responsibility for raising the children in their infancy would devolve on the mothers. But it was not possible for the mothers alone to bear the responsibility of maintaining the children, as a result of which many children died in early infancy. Those who survived felt themselves to be in a sea of troubles after they were weaned from their mother’s breast milk. Then they would be deprived of their mother’s love, since she had to take care of the next baby. Those were the days of the prehistoric humans. One should remember that even in those prehistoric days, some portion of the Vedas was composed, chiefly by the so-called family people. The life of the libertines was just like that of the animals.
Everything in this universe is moving. Scene after scene is changing, and those scenes of the remote past are gradually receding from people’s minds. The people of the present-day world have now forgotten those ancient libertines… they have also forgotten those so-called family people who in reality barely tolerated any family tie. And the great personality on account of whose solitary contribution these things have faded into the past is Shiva, Shiva the Omniscient, Shiva Táraka Brahma. He noticed that human beings were endowed with sharp intellect and creative potential. So why should they remain in this condition? Why should they neglect their future descendants and abandon them to a life of degradation forever? Why should they not offer them a glorious ideology shining with purity and virtue? Shiva further declared that those who wanted to shoulder a greater responsibility out of the dictates of a noble and great ideology, and found it impossible to accept the bondages of family life, should remain single. But those persons must not be libertine; they should be celibate. Others would have to become disciplined family people by fully accepting their responsibilities; they could not be family people without accepting family commitments. Shiva made the rule that regardless of whether women were capable or incapable of earning a livelihood, men would have to take on the responsibility of supporting them; thus the Sanskrit word for “husband” is bharttá. The word bharttá is derived from the root verb bhr + suffix trń; the root bhr means “to support” and bharttá (in the first case-ending) means “one who supports someone”.
As a result of this arrangement, it became easier for the women to maintain the children, since they were relieved of the onerous responsibility of providing their food and clothing. Not only that, when the children became a bit older the direct responsibility for their maintenance shifted from the mother to the father.
It was not easy to know the fathers of children even in the case of the so-called householders, far less in that of the libertines. Children would know only their mothers. And after they were weaned, they would forget their mothers also. Thus being deprived of motherly love and affection at a very early age, they had no opportunity to develop the sweeter and finer sensibilities of the human mind. The human mind, the human intellect, was nipped in the bud; those people had no opportunity to blossom, to gladden the heart of the world with their sweet joy. By declaring the males to be bharttá [husbands] Shiva fulfilled a major portion of His task for human society.
But Shiva did more than that: He declared that women must be kalatra, which means that women must discharge their obligations to their husbands and their children in such a way that the latter will not have the least difficulty.
Those who accepted this new arrangement were declared married, and the other members of their society would be witnesses to the marriage ceremony, to bless the newly-married couple and pledge their cooperation to them. The Sanskrit equivalent for marriage is viváha (vi – vah + ghaiṋ): it means, after the ceremony, the man and woman can no longer live as libertines or as irresponsible so-called family people. They have to discharge their full obligations as bharttá and kalatra, responsible husband and responsible wife.
Another Sanskrit equivalent for “woman” is nárii, which is feminine gender. But Shiva used the term kalatra, in the neuter; for to her husband a woman is a wife, but to her children and other members of the society, she is as dignified as her male counterpart. So by declaring a married lady to be kalatra, Shiva gave her special status, and addressed her in neuter terms.
The liberal meaning of the term viváha is “live one’s life in a new way with a special type of responsibility”. This is the underlying significance of the Shaeva system of marriage.
In His life, Shiva Himself married with this commitment. We can say without the least hesitation that Shiva was the first person in this world to marry in the proper sense of the term. He was eager to see that the married women did their duties properly towards their husbands, that is, that they always took care to remove the difficulties of their husbands.
Thus it was His strict instruction, Yad bharttureva hitamicchati tad kalatram [“If in the mind of the wife, there is the sincere desire for the welfare of her husband, the family will be blissful and a thatched house will become a golden home”].
SHIVOKTI 4
It is said, Pratikulavedaniiyaḿ duhkham [“The mental experience of coming into contact with antipathetic waves is duhkham, pain”]. Living beings, particularly human beings, form their individual saḿskáras [mental reactive momenta] depending on the environment in which they freely let their minds flow, whether or not they initially like that environment. Habit turns into nature, and at that stage even unpleasant feelings may change into congenial ones. If you hurt someone’s inner feelings arising from his or her innate tendencies, that is, if you inflict a blow on a person, then the reaction that is emitted from those wounded feelings is known as anger. (The Sanskrit equivalent of “anger” is krodha. Krudh + al = krodha. Some people mistakenly use the suffix ghaiṋ instead of al.)
When this anger creates its own vibrations in the mind, it exerts a tremendous influence on the nerve cells in a very short time, and causes disarray in the thinking process. The restlessness of the nerve cells causes a violent vibrational agitation in the nerve fibres, and as a result, the whole body starts trembling; the flow of blood to some parts of the body increases, and the functioning of the heart is disturbed. There is a tremendous deterioration of health. Such a person is easily defeated in any fight. Anger leads to premature death.
This is not all. During anger the power of one’s thinking is impaired. Even long after the anger subsides, this state continues, and the constant brooding of the mind disturbs one’s spiritual sádhaná.
So we see that the vrtti [propensity] of anger harms the body and stuns the mind and creates obstacles for spiritual progress. Shiva, the great yogi, was well aware of this truth, and thus He clearly stated, Krodha eva mahán shatruh [“Anger is a great enemy”].
Footnotes
(1) That is, the defects of the philosophers, historians and materialists. –Trans.
(2) Action or work, which, if done with the idea that the finite self is doing the action, will necessitate reaction. –Trans.
(3) Shrii Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar, The Liberation of Intellect: Neohumanism, 1982. –Trans.
(4) Shasha means “hare” and auṋka means “lap”. –Trans.