Shiva
Why is Shiva sometimes depicted as sitting in the smashana or cremation ground? Sadhguru looks at the symbolism behind this representation and explores some fundamental aspects of life and death.
Sadhguru: The only problem that I have with people is that they lack the needed intensity. If they were intense enough, we would not have to work towards the ultimate for a lifetime – today, the work could be done. The moment of death or the possibility of death is the most intense experience in most human beings’ lives. Most of them would have never touched that level of intensity throughout their lives. In their love, in their laughter, in their joy, in their ecstasy, in their misery – nowhere else do they touch that level of intensity – only in death.
Because of that, Shiva went and sat in the cremation ground or kayanta,waiting. Kaya means “body,” anta means “ending.” Kayanta means “where the body ends” – not “where life ends.” It is a kayanta, not ajeevanta. All that you picked up on the planet, you have to leave behind. If you have lived in such a way that your body is all you know, then the moment when you have to shed it becomes the most intense moment of your life. If you know something beyond the body, it is not of great significance. For one who has realized the nature of who he is and what he is, kayanta is not such a great moment. It is just one more moment, that’s all. But for those who lived just as a physical body, when the time to part with all that you know as yourself comes, it is going to be a very intense moment.
Immortality is a natural state for everybody. Mortality is a mistake that you have made. It is a wrong perception of life. As for the physical body, kayanta, the end of the body, will definitely come. But if instead of being just a kaya, you become a jeeva, if you are not just a living body but a living being, then immortality is a natural state for you. Whether you are mortal or immortal is only a question of perception – no existential change is needed.
That is why enlightenment is referred to as realization, not as an accomplishment or achievement. If you see it, it is there for you. If you do not see it, it is not there for you. It is only a question of perception – no fundamental, existential change. If you are equipped, not with the senses, but with your pragna, then you know not only the kaya but the jeeva, and you are naturally immortal. You do not have to work towards your immortality. You just have to realize that this is the way it is.
So, Shiva shifted his residence to kayanta or shmashan. Shmarefers to shava or corpse, shanrefers to shanya or bed. Where the dead bodies lie, that is where he resides, because he realized working with living people is a waste of time. You cannot get them to the pitch of intensity that is needed. You have to do so many tricks to make people a little intense.
Intensity does not arise because you have made the instinct of survival the biggest thing within you. There are two fundamental forces in this living body. One is the instinct of survival – another is the longing to expand limitlessly. If you empower the instinct of survival, it always tries to play low, because survival means playing safe. If you empower the longing to become limitless, if you are seeking limitless expansion, if that is what all your energy is focused on, then there will be full intensity of life.
The instinct of survival is dominant in every other creature. With the phase of evolution where we have become human, a higher level of awareness and intelligence has entered into our lives – this is the time where the instinct of survival can be kept down and the longing to expand should be fired up. Out of these two forces, one is always trying to fuel the intensity in you, the other is always trying to keep you at a simmer. You may have to save resources that are scarce, but life is not scarce.
Shiva sits at the shmashan, bored with you and your play, bored because the whole drama all over town is absolutely stupid. The only real thing happens at the cremation ground. Maybe at the moment of birth and the moment of death, something is happening. Maternity homes and cremation grounds are the only two sensible places, though maternity is happening a little too much.
Shiva is sitting at a place where life makes utmost sense. But if you are fearful, if you are on survival or self-preservation mode, this will not make sense to you. Only if you are longing to expand and touch the ultimate, it will make sense to you. He is not interested in those who want to survive. To survive, you just need four limbs and a few working brain cells. Whether they are earthworms, grasshoppers, or any other creature – they are all surviving, doing fine. That is all the brain you need to survive. So if you are in survival mode, if self-preservation is the most dominant thing in you, he is bored with you – he is waiting for you to die.
He is referred to as the destroyer not because he wants to destroy you. He is waiting at the cremation ground so that the body is destroyed, because until the body is destroyed, even people around do not realize what death is. You may have seen that when someone dear to them dies, people will fall all over the dead body, hug it, kiss it, try to bring it back to life – many things. But once you set fire to the body, no one ever goes and hugs the flames. Their instinct of self-preservation tells them this is not it.
This is not a question of right and wrong but of limited sense versus ultimate sense. Is it wrong to be limited? No. But it is painful to be limited. Is it wrong to be in pain? No. If you enjoy it, what is my problem? I am not against anything. The only thing that I do not like is if you want to go in one direction, but you are going in the opposite direction.
Senselessness is the only thing that I am against, because the essence of human life is that you have much more sense than any other creature – or you are supposed to, but a whole lot of people are trying to disprove that. Creation means intelligence. The Creator means ultimate intelligence. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are in all kinds of mess talk about God, and most people only talk about God when they are in a mess. If you have a nice, warm shower, you will sing a cinema song. If we put you in the cold theerthakund – “Shiva! Shiva!” The moment there is difficulty, Shiva comes to your mind. When life is going the way you want it, you will think of all kinds of people and all kinds of things. If someone puts a gun to your head – “Shiva! Shiva!” He is the wrong guy to call. He is waiting at the cremation ground. If someone puts a gun to your head, and you call Shiva to save you – he will not.
Trying to turn it backward is the one thing that will not work with life. If you run forward, whichever direction you go, whatever you want to do – you sing, you dance, you meditate, you cry, you laugh – as long as it takes you towards a higher level of intensity, it will all work. If you try to roll it back, it does not work. Most human beings you do not have to poke with a dagger to make them miserable. If you simply leave them alone, they will become miserable. Their instinct of self-preservation has crossed reasonable limits and is trying to curtail life and turn it backward. Sitting in the cremation ground, this is Shiva’s message: even if you die, it will work, but if you curtail life, it will not work. The question whether you curtail life or allow life to happen does not depend upon what you do and what you do not do, but upon how effervescent and how intense this life process is right now.
It is not a question of whether what you do is useful or not. If you can bring intensity into useless things, it will still work. But you need meaning for everything that you do. Unless it is meaningful, unless it is useful, you cannot throw yourself into it. In that context, meaningfulness and usefulness are important. Otherwise, meaningfulness and usefulness are essentially psychological. They are an inspiration, not an end in themselves.
Shiva sits at the shmashan, bored with you and your play, bored because the whole drama all over town is absolutely stupid. The only real thing happens at the cremation ground.
In yoga, Shiva is not seen as a God, but as the first yogi, Adiyogi, and the first Guru, the Adi Guru. Sadhguru looks at Adiyogi’s contribution to humanity and speaks of the importance in ensuring that his impact is recognized around the world.
Questioner: Namaskaram, Sadhguru. I heard you are planning to create 21-feet Adiyogi statues across the globe. What is the significance of this? I saw one coming up in front of the Adiyogi Alayam at the Isha Yoga Center.
Sadhguru: About manifesting Adiyogi in many parts of the world – I have already spoken to some extent about how the Saptarishis wentaround the world. We have compiled a huge amount of research information on how 8000 to 12,000 years ago, there was linga worship in South America, Turkey, and North Africa, and snake worship all over the world – there is archeological proof for that. Only over the last maybe 20 centuries, this has been demolished and lost in most parts of the world, but originally, the Saptarishis’ influence spread across the planet. There is no culture that did not benefit from Adiyogi’s science of yoga. Yoga went everywhere – not as a religion, belief system, or philosophy, but as methods. Over a period of time, there have been distortions, but still, unknowingly, millions of people across the planet are doing some yogic practice. This is the only thing in the history of humanity that has lived for so long without ever being forced upon people.
No one ever put a sword to anyone’s throat and said “Do yoga! Otherwise, we will behead you.” No force has ever been exerted to impose it, but still yoga has lived for over 15,000 to 20,000 years, and there has been no single authority to propagate it – simply because the process is so effective. It has had its highs and lows, but it is once again coming back in a big way. However, there are sources today that question the origin of yoga. Some even claim that the yoga that is being taught today was extracted from a European exercise system. There are attempts to deny the acknowledgement of a certain culture and of the one who has made the most significant contribution to human consciousness ever.
Before I fall dead, I want to see that Adiyogi is sufficiently acknowledged. These 21-foot-tall statues of Adiyogi are part of this effort. After working on it for over 2-1/2 years, we arrived at an image that we are generally happy with. Now we are in the process of manifesting that image. Each of these Adiyogi statues will come with a structure of 111 feet by 111 feet and a 2-1/2-feet tall consecrated linga. These will be powerful energy spaces for meditation. The first ones are coming up in North America – one near the US Tennessee ashram [the Isha Institute of Inner-sciences in McMinnville], one near San Jose, one in Seattle, one in Toronto. Many other cities are examining this possibility too. Our idea is to set up 50 in the United States – one for each state.
Adiyogi Statues in India
In India, such spaces will come up wherever someone takes the initiative to make it happen. A few people are also working towards establishing 112-feet-tall Adiyogi statues in four corners of India. The government of Arunachal Pradesh has invited us to establish one in their state, which is the first part of the country to be touched by the rising sun. It is my desire that the first sunlight in India should fall on his face. Irrespective of caste, religion, and gender, people should celebrate him for the contribution that he has made to humanity – not as a god but as a man who rose beyond all limitations – he was everything that a man can be and everything that a man cannot be. He was the one who opened up this possibility for humanity for the first time. He not only spoke about it – he gave specific methods as to how to do it. No one else before him or after him has made a greater contribution to human consciousness.
Out of the other three 112-feet-tall Adiyogi statues, we want one to come up in Uttarakhand, on the way to Hardwar; one near Kanyakumari, and another one in Rajasthan, near the border. In four corners of the country, there will be large, iconic Adiyogi statues that people cannot ignore. We are also coming up with a book on Adiyogi. It is very important to see him as a man – only then, there will be a possibility of you striving to be like him. Whether it is Krishna, Rama, Jesus, or someone else – the moment you look at them as gods, you don’t strive to be like them – that is the problem. I want to constantly remind everyone that Adiyogi was more than a man, but still very much a man. Every human being is capable of this irrespective of the backgrounds they come from, what they know, and what they do not know. If they are willing to do certain things, transcendence is a possibility in everyone’s life. To make this a bigstatement and acknowledge him as the one who offered the science of yoga, we are thinking of setting up four big statues in the country and in between as many 21-foot statues as we can.
Yoga is the Only Way
Everything that I am is only because of this particular science being available to us freely. If, when I was young, they had imposed a restriction – let’s say “If you want to do yoga, you must do Guru Pooja” – I would have gotten up and left. If they had told me to bow down or light a lamp, I would have left. There were no such restrictions. There were just instructions on what to do, and it worked. I would not be who I am without the science that Adiyogi has offered, which is 100% irreligious. He predates all religion. Yoga is something so precious for the modern world, because we are stuck with the intellect. The problem I had in my youth – that I couldn’t light a lamp, I couldn’t bow down, I couldn’t enter a temple; if someone said one mantra, I would go away – is a problem of the intellect.
The more the intellect is emphasized, the more people will have this problem. When this problem arises, yoga as a scientific approach is the only way. Everything else will only divide people. And that time is not far away for humanity. Before that time comes, I want to see that Adiyogi’s name is uttered everywhere and everyone knows that this science of yoga is available. These statues will be 112 feet tall because Adiyogi gave 112 ways a human being can attain to the Ultimate. We want to simplify this and offer you 112 things that you can do. Out of this, you just have to do one thing. This will transform your life in the simplest possible way.
Everyone who comes to an Adiyogi space can pick from these 112 options the one thing they want to do and start with a three-minute sadhana. Everyone can invest three minutes. If it works for them, they can gradually increase the duration to 6, 12, or 24 minutes. We want to establish this within the next decade that irrespective of caste, religion, gender, or physical condition – everyone will have a simple spiritual process in their lives.
Whoever wants to stand up and make this happen, please stand with us, because bringing a spiritual process into people’s lives is one of the most important contributions that we can make to humanity.
I want to see that Adiyogi’s name is uttered everywhere. Everyone who comes to an Adiyogi space can pick from 112 options the one thing they want to do and start with a three-minute sadhana.
There is no culture that did not benefit from Adiyogi’s science of yoga. There are attempts to deny the acknowledgement of a certain culture and of the one who has made the most significant contribution to human consciousness ever.
Why is Shiva sometimes depicted as sitting in the smashana or cremation ground? Sadhguru looks at the symbolism behind this representation and explores some fundamental aspects of life and death.
Sadhguru: The only problem that I have with people is that they lack the needed intensity. If they were intense enough, we would not have to work towards the ultimate for a lifetime – today, the work could be done. The moment of death or the possibility of death is the most intense experience in most human beings’ lives. Most of them would have never touched that level of intensity throughout their lives. In their love, in their laughter, in their joy, in their ecstasy, in their misery – nowhere else do they touch that level of intensity – only in death.
Because of that, Shiva went and sat in the cremation ground or kayanta,waiting. Kaya means “body,” anta means “ending.” Kayanta means “where the body ends” – not “where life ends.” It is a kayanta, not ajeevanta. All that you picked up on the planet, you have to leave behind. If you have lived in such a way that your body is all you know, then the moment when you have to shed it becomes the most intense moment of your life. If you know something beyond the body, it is not of great significance. For one who has realized the nature of who he is and what he is, kayanta is not such a great moment. It is just one more moment, that’s all. But for those who lived just as a physical body, when the time to part with all that you know as yourself comes, it is going to be a very intense moment.
Immortality is a natural state for everybody. Mortality is a mistake that you have made. It is a wrong perception of life. As for the physical body, kayanta, the end of the body, will definitely come. But if instead of being just a kaya, you become a jeeva, if you are not just a living body but a living being, then immortality is a natural state for you. Whether you are mortal or immortal is only a question of perception – no existential change is needed.
That is why enlightenment is referred to as realization, not as an accomplishment or achievement. If you see it, it is there for you. If you do not see it, it is not there for you. It is only a question of perception – no fundamental, existential change. If you are equipped, not with the senses, but with your pragna, then you know not only the kaya but the jeeva, and you are naturally immortal. You do not have to work towards your immortality. You just have to realize that this is the way it is.
So, Shiva shifted his residence to kayanta or shmashan. Shmarefers to shava or corpse, shanrefers to shanya or bed. Where the dead bodies lie, that is where he resides, because he realized working with living people is a waste of time. You cannot get them to the pitch of intensity that is needed. You have to do so many tricks to make people a little intense.
Intensity does not arise because you have made the instinct of survival the biggest thing within you. There are two fundamental forces in this living body. One is the instinct of survival – another is the longing to expand limitlessly. If you empower the instinct of survival, it always tries to play low, because survival means playing safe. If you empower the longing to become limitless, if you are seeking limitless expansion, if that is what all your energy is focused on, then there will be full intensity of life.
The instinct of survival is dominant in every other creature. With the phase of evolution where we have become human, a higher level of awareness and intelligence has entered into our lives – this is the time where the instinct of survival can be kept down and the longing to expand should be fired up. Out of these two forces, one is always trying to fuel the intensity in you, the other is always trying to keep you at a simmer. You may have to save resources that are scarce, but life is not scarce.
Shiva sits at the shmashan, bored with you and your play, bored because the whole drama all over town is absolutely stupid. The only real thing happens at the cremation ground. Maybe at the moment of birth and the moment of death, something is happening. Maternity homes and cremation grounds are the only two sensible places, though maternity is happening a little too much.
Shiva is sitting at a place where life makes utmost sense. But if you are fearful, if you are on survival or self-preservation mode, this will not make sense to you. Only if you are longing to expand and touch the ultimate, it will make sense to you. He is not interested in those who want to survive. To survive, you just need four limbs and a few working brain cells. Whether they are earthworms, grasshoppers, or any other creature – they are all surviving, doing fine. That is all the brain you need to survive. So if you are in survival mode, if self-preservation is the most dominant thing in you, he is bored with you – he is waiting for you to die.
He is referred to as the destroyer not because he wants to destroy you. He is waiting at the cremation ground so that the body is destroyed, because until the body is destroyed, even people around do not realize what death is. You may have seen that when someone dear to them dies, people will fall all over the dead body, hug it, kiss it, try to bring it back to life – many things. But once you set fire to the body, no one ever goes and hugs the flames. Their instinct of self-preservation tells them this is not it.
This is not a question of right and wrong but of limited sense versus ultimate sense. Is it wrong to be limited? No. But it is painful to be limited. Is it wrong to be in pain? No. If you enjoy it, what is my problem? I am not against anything. The only thing that I do not like is if you want to go in one direction, but you are going in the opposite direction.
Senselessness is the only thing that I am against, because the essence of human life is that you have much more sense than any other creature – or you are supposed to, but a whole lot of people are trying to disprove that. Creation means intelligence. The Creator means ultimate intelligence. Unfortunately, a lot of people who are in all kinds of mess talk about God, and most people only talk about God when they are in a mess. If you have a nice, warm shower, you will sing a cinema song. If we put you in the cold theerthakund – “Shiva! Shiva!” The moment there is difficulty, Shiva comes to your mind. When life is going the way you want it, you will think of all kinds of people and all kinds of things. If someone puts a gun to your head – “Shiva! Shiva!” He is the wrong guy to call. He is waiting at the cremation ground. If someone puts a gun to your head, and you call Shiva to save you – he will not.
Trying to turn it backward is the one thing that will not work with life. If you run forward, whichever direction you go, whatever you want to do – you sing, you dance, you meditate, you cry, you laugh – as long as it takes you towards a higher level of intensity, it will all work. If you try to roll it back, it does not work. Most human beings you do not have to poke with a dagger to make them miserable. If you simply leave them alone, they will become miserable. Their instinct of self-preservation has crossed reasonable limits and is trying to curtail life and turn it backward. Sitting in the cremation ground, this is Shiva’s message: even if you die, it will work, but if you curtail life, it will not work. The question whether you curtail life or allow life to happen does not depend upon what you do and what you do not do, but upon how effervescent and how intense this life process is right now.
It is not a question of whether what you do is useful or not. If you can bring intensity into useless things, it will still work. But you need meaning for everything that you do. Unless it is meaningful, unless it is useful, you cannot throw yourself into it. In that context, meaningfulness and usefulness are important. Otherwise, meaningfulness and usefulness are essentially psychological. They are an inspiration, not an end in themselves.
Shiva sits at the shmashan, bored with you and your play, bored because the whole drama all over town is absolutely stupid. The only real thing happens at the cremation ground.