Today we are here to celebrate Mahashivaratri. It’s a very great privilege for all of us to understand about Shri Mahadeva. Unless and until you have got your Self-realisation, you cannot understand what is the great personality, the character and the powers of Shri Mahadeva. It’s not easy to conceive, also to reach the depth of his greatness, unless and until we are humble. We have to be very humble to reach at the lotus feet of Shri Mahadeva. As you have seen that one has to cross even the Sahastrara to be at the lotus feet of this great personality. 

He is beyond, beyond our conception but he resides in our heart as the spirit and is reflected very well when you get your realisation. But still one has to understand the powers of Shri Mahadeva, which is not very easy to describe about this great God in little words.

But the first power he himself has [is] that he is a very forgiving God. He forgives. He forgives us so many of our sins, so many of our destructive activities, our horrible mind, which tries to create problems for everyone, up to a point!

But he has the greatest power to destroy. His destruction comes so suddenly because he rules all the elements. All the elements he rules. He rules the Mother Earth and he rules all other elements. Through their causal, he rules. And he can destroy everything that he wants to, if he finds there is [any] problem. ... ...

In the nature, it is his rule that works. And they are so systematic. They live with understanding of each other. For example, if you go in the jungle and it is absolutely quiet, you don’t hear even the birds twittering, then you should know there is a tiger sitting somewhere because he is the king. They know they have to obey.

And when the king is there, his protocol - They know automatically what is the protocol of the king. Nobody would be even moving, if he is there. He sits in his majesty.

Then in one week, or maybe fifteen days, he’ll kill one animal. He has to eat [so] he kills one animal. Then he and his family, they eat first. He waits for some time, of course, for the blood to ooze out, then the whole family comes and eats. Then he leaves the body there.

Then by gradation, one by one, all kinds of animals come and eat it as a prasad. And the last are the crows who come and eat that animal. Such discipline, such understanding of the protocol - I’m amazed how animals are managed by Shiva.

We never hear that animals are having a strike or animals are having a big underworld [of] animals! You don’t hear that these animals are stealing things.  I mean, just imagine - We are coming from that animal life but we are worse than them! How are we going to rise, if we have all such funny ideas of behaving in such a manner, of fighting. On any small little excuse they’ll fight. They start fighting. Animals also fight a little bit among themselves but not in a collective way. They don’t do it in a collective way as we do it here and we do not - It’s really at a slightest provocation, we get into groups and start fighting. They get into groups but they don’t fight.

What is the thing among them? Everything is so much, so much understood by animals. Why not for us also to understand the law of nature? It is Mahadeva who manages that all the nature’s laws are to be obeyed.  Even the Mother Earth, the sky, everything is looked after by him. He does nice, nice, beautiful things for us. With the changing of the seasons, he creates these beautiful flowers. He creates all that is soothing and joy-giving and beautiful, he looks after. He gives us to see what nature has given us and tries to please us, keep us happy, entertain, like an innocent child.

But while we are, in our arrogance, we have our reactions to everything! You see a carpet and you will say: “I don’t like it!” Especially in the West, it is a common thing to say: “I don’t like it!”