When un-manifest energy begins to manifest itself, the first form is always the Linga. The word Linga means the form. The word "Shiva" literally means "that which is not." That means nothing. "That which is not" is that which is beyond the physical.
Why we are referring to it as the form is: the first form in the existence is always a Linga. Linga means a perfect ellipsoid. The first form of creation is an ellipsoid. Today modern cosmologists are saying that the core of every galaxy is in the form of an ellipsoid.
The first form is a Linga. The final form before dissolution is also a Linga. So a Linga is held as a doorway to the beyond, whether you go this way or that way. Both ways, before dissolving into nothingness, the final form is always a perfect ellipsoid. The science of Linga-making is based on this. Scientifically, this shape is the only shape that can serve as a perennial storehouse of energy
The science of Linga making is a huge experiential possibility, and has been there for thousands of years, but in the last eight or nine hundred years, especially when the bhakthi movement swept the country, the science of building a temple got washed away. For a bhaktha, for a devotee, nothing is important except his emotion. His path is emotion. It is only from the strength of his emotion that he does everything. So they just kept the science aside and started building temples whichever way they liked.
When a person comes to a deep state of meditativeness within himself, his or her energies naturally take the form of a linga. It is with this understanding that lingas came to be revered and worshipped in India.
[Jaggi]
In South India, five temples were built for each of the five elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. These are the Pancha Bhuta Sthalas. Geographically, they are all within the Deccan Plateau – four in Tamil Nadu and one in Andhra Pradesh. The temple for water is in Thiruvanaikaval, fire is Thiruvannamalai, Kalahasti is air and Kanchipuram is earth. The temple for space is in Chidambaram.
The Chidambaram temple is an incredible space. The newer part of the temple is around a thousand years old but no one knows how old the older part of the temple is. People say it is 3,500 years or more. This is how Indian culture has been. Even in ancient times, just look at the kind of temples they built. Whether you see the Rameshwaram Temple, the Chidambaram Temple, or the Madurai Temple, these are all colossal establishments and they were created a thousand years ago. At that time, almost every human being except the king lived in shacks. There was no machinery, trucks or cranes, but they worked for a couple of generations on these temples with a single-minded purpose. These people dedicated their whole life, they lived and died to create these temples because it meant so much to them.
Just the buildings of the Chidambaram temple cover around thirty-five acres. They are built completely of stone and are magnificent. Apart from this, hundreds of acres of lands were attached to it, alongwith jewelry to maintain the vast temple. But during the British era, they took over many temples because of the enormous amount of wealth attached to them and all the jewelry has completely disappeared today. They say that a huge amount of the British funding for World War II came from Indian temples. Lands were also taken over and distributed, so the temple has become poor and unmanageable now.
Being around a consecrated space is going to make a phenomenal difference in your life. With this understanding, in Indian culture, they built human habitations like this: if there are 25 houses, there must be one temple. Whether you go there or not, whether you pray or not, whether you know the mantra or not is not the point. You must be in a consecrated space every moment of your life.
An enormous amount of knowledge about this dimension of life was perpetuated particularly in this culture, and this was held as the most important thing. Because it doesn’t matter what you are eating, how you are or how long you live, at some point, a need will come that you want to get in touch with the source of Creation. If that possibility is not created across the planet and is not available to every human being who seeks, then society has failed to provide true wellbeing for a human being.
[Jaggi] http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/yoga-meditation/science-of-temples/chidambaram-temple/
Natesha or Nataraja, Shiva as the Lord of Dance, is one of the most significant forms of Shiva. When I visited CERN in Switzerland, which is the physics laboratory on the planet, where all the atom-smashing takes place, I saw that there is a Nataraja statue in front of the entrance, because they identified that there is nothing in human culture which is closer to what they are doing right now.
The Nataraja form represents the exuberance and dance of creation which self-created itself from eternal stillness. Nataraja standing in the Chidambaram temple is very symbolic because what you call Chidambaram is just absolute stillness. That is what is enshrined in the form of this temple. The classical arts are to bring this absolute stillness into a human being. Without stillness, true art cannot come.
[Jaggi]
If the inner masculine and feminine meet, you are in a perpetual state of ecstasy. If you try to do it on the outside, it never lasts, and all the troubles that come with that are an ongoing drama. Masculine and feminine does not mean male and female. These are certain qualities. Essentially, it is not two people longing to meet, it is two dimensions of life longing to meet – outside as well as inside. If you achieve it inside, the outside will happen 100% by choice. Otherwise, the outside will be a terrible compulsion.
This is a symbolism to show that if you evolve in your ultimate context, you will be half a man and half a woman – not a neuter – a full-fledged man and a full-fledged woman. That is when you are a full-blown human being.
[Jaggi]
In the yogic tradition, Shiva is not worshiped as a God. He is the Adiyogi, the first Yogi, and Adi Guru, the First Guru from whom the yogic sciences originated. The first full moon of Dakshinayana is Guru Purnima, when Adiyogi began the transmission of these sciences to the Saptarishis, his first seven disciples.
This predates all religion. Before people devised divisive ways of fracturing humanity, the most powerful tools necessary to raise human consciousness were realized and propagated. The sophistication of it is unbelievable. The question of whether people were so sophisticated at that time is irrelevant because this did not come from a certain civilization or thought process. This came from an inner realization. It was just an outpouring of himself. You cannot change a single thing even today because he said everything that could be said in such beautiful and intelligent ways. You can only spend your lifetime trying to decipher it.
[Jaggi]
Shiva has always been referred to as Triambaka because he has a third eye. A third eye does not mean a crack in the forehead. It simply means that his perception has reached its ultimate possibility. The third eye is the eye of vision. The two physical eyes are just sensory organs. They feed the mind with all kinds of nonsense because what you see is not the truth. You see this person or that person and you think something about him, but you are not able to see the Shiva in him. So, another eye, an eye of deeper penetration, has to be opened up.
Any amount of thinking and philosophizing will never bring clarity into your mind. Anyone can distort the logical clarity that you create; difficult situations can completely put it into turmoil. Only when vision opens up, only when you have an inner vision, will there be perfect clarity.
[Jaggi]
When un-manifest energy begins to manifest itself, the first form is always the Linga. The word Linga means the form. The word "Shiva" literally means "that which is not." That means nothing. "That which is not" is that which is beyond the physical.
Why we are referring to it as the form is: the first form in the existence is always a Linga. Linga means a perfect ellipsoid. The first form of creation is an ellipsoid. Today modern cosmologists are saying that the core of every galaxy is in the form of an ellipsoid.
The first form is a Linga. The final form before dissolution is also a Linga. So a Linga is held as a doorway to the beyond, whether you go this way or that way. Both ways, before dissolving into nothingness, the final form is always a perfect ellipsoid. The science of Linga-making is based on this. Scientifically, this shape is the only shape that can serve as a perennial storehouse of energy
The science of Linga making is a huge experiential possibility, and has been there for thousands of years, but in the last eight or nine hundred years, especially when the bhakthi movement swept the country, the science of building a temple got washed away. For a bhaktha, for a devotee, nothing is important except his emotion. His path is emotion. It is only from the strength of his emotion that he does everything. So they just kept the science aside and started building temples whichever way they liked.
When a person comes to a deep state of meditativeness within himself, his or her energies naturally take the form of a linga. It is with this understanding that lingas came to be revered and worshipped in India.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
In South India, five temples were built for each of the five elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space. These are the Pancha Bhuta Sthalas. Geographically, they are all within the Deccan Plateau – four in Tamil Nadu and one in Andhra Pradesh. The temple for water is in Thiruvanaikaval, fire is Thiruvannamalai, Kalahasti is air and Kanchipuram is earth. The temple for space is in Chidambaram.
The Chidambaram temple is an incredible space. The newer part of the temple is around a thousand years old but no one knows how old the older part of the temple is. People say it is 3,500 years or more. This is how Indian culture has been. Even in ancient times, just look at the kind of temples they built. Whether you see the Rameshwaram Temple, the Chidambaram Temple, or the Madurai Temple, these are all colossal establishments and they were created a thousand years ago. At that time, almost every human being except the king lived in shacks. There was no machinery, trucks or cranes, but they worked for a couple of generations on these temples with a single-minded purpose. These people dedicated their whole life, they lived and died to create these temples because it meant so much to them.
Just the buildings of the Chidambaram temple cover around thirty-five acres. They are built completely of stone and are magnificent. Apart from this, hundreds of acres of lands were attached to it, alongwith jewelry to maintain the vast temple. But during the British era, they took over many temples because of the enormous amount of wealth attached to them and all the jewelry has completely disappeared today. They say that a huge amount of the British funding for World War II came from Indian temples. Lands were also taken over and distributed, so the temple has become poor and unmanageable now.
Being around a consecrated space is going to make a phenomenal difference in your life. With this understanding, in Indian culture, they built human habitations like this: if there are 25 houses, there must be one temple. Whether you go there or not, whether you pray or not, whether you know the mantra or not is not the point. You must be in a consecrated space every moment of your life.
An enormous amount of knowledge about this dimension of life was perpetuated particularly in this culture, and this was held as the most important thing. Because it doesn’t matter what you are eating, how you are or how long you live, at some point, a need will come that you want to get in touch with the source of Creation. If that possibility is not created across the planet and is not available to every human being who seeks, then society has failed to provide true wellbeing for a human being.
[Jaggi]
http://isha.sadhguru.org/blog/yoga-meditation/science-of-temples/chidambaram-temple/
^ Top
Natesha or Nataraja, Shiva as the Lord of Dance, is one of the most significant forms of Shiva. When I visited CERN in Switzerland, which is the physics laboratory on the planet, where all the atom-smashing takes place, I saw that there is a Nataraja statue in front of the entrance, because they identified that there is nothing in human culture which is closer to what they are doing right now.
The Nataraja form represents the exuberance and dance of creation which self-created itself from eternal stillness. Nataraja standing in the Chidambaram temple is very symbolic because what you call Chidambaram is just absolute stillness. That is what is enshrined in the form of this temple. The classical arts are to bring this absolute stillness into a human being. Without stillness, true art cannot come.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
If the inner masculine and feminine meet, you are in a perpetual state of ecstasy. If you try to do it on the outside, it never lasts, and all the troubles that come with that are an ongoing drama. Masculine and feminine does not mean male and female. These are certain qualities. Essentially, it is not two people longing to meet, it is two dimensions of life longing to meet – outside as well as inside. If you achieve it inside, the outside will happen 100% by choice. Otherwise, the outside will be a terrible compulsion.
This is a symbolism to show that if you evolve in your ultimate context, you will be half a man and half a woman – not a neuter – a full-fledged man and a full-fledged woman. That is when you are a full-blown human being.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
In the yogic tradition, Shiva is not worshiped as a God. He is the Adiyogi, the first Yogi, and Adi Guru, the First Guru from whom the yogic sciences originated. The first full moon of Dakshinayana is Guru Purnima, when Adiyogi began the transmission of these sciences to the Saptarishis, his first seven disciples.
This predates all religion. Before people devised divisive ways of fracturing humanity, the most powerful tools necessary to raise human consciousness were realized and propagated. The sophistication of it is unbelievable. The question of whether people were so sophisticated at that time is irrelevant because this did not come from a certain civilization or thought process. This came from an inner realization. It was just an outpouring of himself. You cannot change a single thing even today because he said everything that could be said in such beautiful and intelligent ways. You can only spend your lifetime trying to decipher it.
[Jaggi]
^ Top
Shiva has always been referred to as Triambaka because he has a third eye. A third eye does not mean a crack in the forehead. It simply means that his perception has reached its ultimate possibility. The third eye is the eye of vision. The two physical eyes are just sensory organs. They feed the mind with all kinds of nonsense because what you see is not the truth. You see this person or that person and you think something about him, but you are not able to see the Shiva in him. So, another eye, an eye of deeper penetration, has to be opened up.
Any amount of thinking and philosophizing will never bring clarity into your mind. Anyone can distort the logical clarity that you create; difficult situations can completely put it into turmoil. Only when vision opens up, only when you have an inner vision, will there be perfect clarity.
[Jaggi]
^ Top