Om Namah Sivaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Sivanandaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Chidanandaya!
Om Namo Bhagavate Krishnanandaya!

Namaste!

Sivaratri – A Celebration of Transcendence
by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Glory to God Who Alone can be regarded as glorious, Whose glory is reflected in the glory of this world, and the shadow of Whose glory is the magnificence of all this Earthly pageantry. To that great Lord Who is amusing Himself with a play of hide and seek under our very nose here, Who instructs us and teaches us, at the same time teasing us, as it were, to that Father and Mother of the universe, to that great Friend of all beings, to that Eternal Companion of every soul be our humble salutation and prostration at this moment on this holy day, at this holy spot on the bank of sacred Ganga.

This is holy Sivaratri. It is celebrated everywhere in the country as the date sacred to Lord Siva, an ideal of divinity, a great ideal of perfection which mankind has placed before itself in its principle occupation called the awakening into the religious consciousness.

The ideals of life, whatever they be, as long as they are ideals – we have to mark the word ‘ideal’ in its proper connotation – are values which are not necessarily visible to the eyes, and yet they rule the world. So long as these super-sensible ideals and values reign supreme in the life of mankind, it is to be considered as established once and for all that man does not live only for the sake of this Earthly sojourn, a little span of his life. If life on Earth was all-in-all and there was nothing more than that, there would be no such thing as an ideal. The ideal is an aspiration of mankind’s internal secret, the hidden potentiality of an endless longing which is the reason behind a perpetual restlessness discoverable in the minds of all people in the world, irrespective of the large quantum of possessions and Earthly riches. The realities of life do not satisfy man; therefore, he reaches his consciousness to ideals which are transcendent to the realities of life.

We have to think a little cautiously and precisely here in the understanding of this circumstance in human nature. The ideal is not the real. The real is that which is tangible, concrete, substantial, sensible, graspable, and that which can be possessed, but the ideal is not necessarily an accessible, concrete, substantial, tangible something. It is an ‘ought’, a thing that must be, though it is not there. The thing that is does not satisfy and, therefore, we place before ourselves a norm called ‘the ought’. The ought is what we call the ideal, and inasmuch as the ideal remains as an ought, it is not an ‘is’; it is not the prevalent condition of life. If our ideals are identical with the existent state of affairs, if we are realising our ideals in our day-to-day existence, there would be no ideals because they become directly practical realities of our personal experience. We would not think of any such thing as an ideal if it does not remain as an ought, and if it is not in some way isolated from the prevalent conditions, our existent state of affairs, and our present possessions and satisfactions.

Our wealth, our riches, our status, our joys, the heights that we might have reached in social existence and in our personal lives are our realities. If these realities could exhaust all that our innermost being longs for, there would be no ideals in life, because an ideal is something which is placed as a norm in front of our mental eye which we would like to make a reality of day-to-day experience. In other words, we set up a standard of perfection before ourselves, and there would be no point in setting up a standard of perfection if it were already there prevailing in this world. So willy-nilly, knowingly or unknowingly, we are demonstrating by our acceptance of the necessity for an ideal in life a dissatisfaction with everything that is in this world, which cannot arise in the soul of any person unless there is the possibility of the realisation of that which is now remaining as merely an ideal or an ought.

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February 21, is the holy celebration of Mahasivaratri. There are several articles on our website on the significance of this festival. They are:

1. Shivaratri by Sri Swami Sivananda
2. Siva: The Mystic Night by Swami Krishnananda

The Spiritual Calendar for 2020/2021 has been updated and the same may be downloaded in PDF as well.

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The following article has been posted at Sri Swami Krishnanandaji's site:

• Swami Krishnananda in Conversation - 19: The Path of Glory

 

Yours in the service of Gurudev,

Pannirselvam

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BOOK SYNOPSIS

Lord Siva and His Worship
By Swami Sivananda

This is a most valuable and instructive book for the aspirants, particularly for the devotees of Lord Siva. It is full of instructions on practical Sadhana for attaining Siva-Tattva or God-realisation.

The secrets of Siva Tandava, Sakti Yoga, etc., are very nicely presented. The translation of the Saiva Upanishads is a beautiful addition. The lives of Siva Acharyas, the Bhaktas and the Nayanars are inspiring and soul-stirring. A study of their lives will make one's life sublime and holy.

Up to this time there has been no such presentation on this subject. The philosophical portion is highly illuminating and helpful to the readers. The book contains the essence of all Saiva Puranas. The book is written in a very lucid and clear style. It must be studied by all religious-minded persons as it is of solid worth from the spiritual point of view.

For more information, please see: Lord Siva and His Worship

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40% Special Discount on the following Pictorial Volumes of Worshipful Gurudev Sri Swami Sivanandaji and Worshipful Sri Swami Chidanandaji:

1. ES8 Glorious Vision                Rs. 650
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3. EC70 Ultimate Journey           Rs. 500
4. EC71 Divine Vision                 Rs. 300

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DIVINE VISION: Once, in the course of a casual chat with one of his intimate disciples, the Master explained why he spent much time in the toilet every morning.

“First, I bow to the Ganges through the window, then I salute the Himalayas. I salute the door, the window and the commode,” he told a stunned Swami Krishnananda, the then general secretary of the Ashram.

The Master went on to recite stanza after stanza of Sanskrit verses in praise of the numerous Deities beloved of the devout Hindu, saying that all these hymns he recited whilst in the toilet.

A direct result of this habit of seeing God in everything was that the Master could not suffer to see even an insect injured. While he was bathing in the Ganges, if an insect came floating by, struggling for life, he would at once take it onto his palm and leave it on the bank. He revealed to his disciples, without the least trace of repugnance on his face, “If a worm or an insect was struggling for life in faecal matter, I would remove and protect it.”

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“It is very interesting if we think of the goodness of God and the kindness with which He looks upon devotees. We are always made to feel again and again the great saying that God’s love for man is much more than man’s love for God. It is also said that if you take one step towards God, God takes a hundred steps towards you. He comes running. While you are only walking towards Him, He comes running to you. He wants you much more than you want Him. That is the characteristic of all perfected forms of goodness, because the highest goodness is in God. The logical perfection of goodness can be seen only in God, in godliness.” – Swami Krishnananda

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