Sivaratri Message

By

Sri Swami Sivananda

Taken from Divine Life Magazine 1948

Sivaratri is the “Blessed Night”, the “Night of Siva”. It is one of the memorable days of the year. It is an occasion for disciplining ourselves, for restraining the objective tendencies of the mind. Life on earth is the stepping stone to Infinite Existence. It is attained through the negation of individual separateness and through the affirmation of the Divine Unity. In view of the fact that the only meaning of life is this effort towards spiritual realisation, it goes without saying that every moment of our life should be utilised for that noble purpose. But there are certain times in the year when the universal forces move towards the inner Reality, when the conscious struggle of the individual to achieve Self-realisation is helped by the external powers also. Ordinarily, everyone has to swim against the current of Maya, the Creative Power of Existence, and face terrible oppositions from cosmic forces. But the spiritual effort or Sadhana is given a further impetus to enhance the vigour of its spiritual march and lessen the power of its obstructing factors, when divine forces manifest themselves on the terrestrial plane.

This spiritual manifestation of the Transcendental Divinity upon earth is of two varieties—embodied and disembodied, concrete and abstract. Embodied Divine manifestations are seen in personalities like Sri Krishna etc., when the action of the Divine can be clearly seen with the eyes. But the abstract manifestations cannot be seen by the physical sense, but can only be felt by the inner soul. Universal Forces reveal themselves to rectify certain defects in any part of the Universe. Epidemics, earth-quakes and the like are such universal happenings. Sudden uplift of certain parts of the world are some of the constructive aspects of the universe. Spiritual forces sweep away evil, at times even without human awareness. The Kalki Avatara and the beginning of Krita Yuga is an example. In Sivaratri, we find one such disembodied manifestation of spiritual forces and the suppression of undivine powers.

In Northern India, devotees believe that Sivaratri is the day of the marriage of Siva with Parvati. This has got a very deep significance. The marriage of Siva and Shakti is the starting point of the union between them. Siva is the Truth of Unity or Absoluteness. Shakti is the creative diversifying force presenting the phenomenon of the world, and its marriage with the Absolute signifies the merging of separative consciousness in Absolute Oneness. This sums up the process of the entire Sadhana of the spiritual aspirant. His whole struggle is to merge in Absoluteness. The cosmic event of the marriage between the universal beings, Siva and Shakti, has got a direct bearing upon the life of every individual, for the whole universe is the expression of Siva and Shakti. The psychological change that occurs during a cosmic event is felt in every creature of the universe, because the beings of the world are parts of the one Whole Existence. Whatever the Universal Being (Brahma, Vishnu or Siva with their Shaktis) does, the individuals also must react to in proportion to the subtlety of the condition of their mental being, because the people of the world are only the productions or children or aspects of such a Being. Hence the marriage between Siva and Shakti, the symbol of the dissolution of diversity in Pure Absolute Consciousness, has got its yearly recurring psychological counter-part in the eternal passage of Time, and that is Sivaratri. This is the day when it is easiest for all beings to move towards the Eternal Reality or Brahman, for they all have got the help of the Universal Power at that time.

Fasting and vigil are two of the striking observances during Sivaratri, the day of the “Peaceful Spirit”. Man is a Triune: body, mind and soul. The  soul need not be meddled with. For, it is the changeless Noumenon. It is the body and the mind that have to be disciplined and moulded. Fasting is the denial of the demand of the body and vigil is the negation of the requirement of the mind. The externalisation of the physical and the mental forces is blocked and turned inward through worship, Kirtan, Japa and meditation. Fast and vigil are the negative withdrawal from worldly impulses, and practical Sadhana is the positive spiritualization of the personality. This is a necessary auxiliary of every true Sadhana for the Divinisation of man.

The main characteristic of the being of Lord Siva is “renunciation” and “meditation”. He embodies in Himself the Ideal of Asceticism and Supreme Contemplation of Truth. These two are the faces of Integral Sadhana—the negative “denial” and the positive “assertion”. The beauty of the Hindu conception of Spiritual Attainment and the means thereof is that it discards no fundamental aspect of transformation. The observance of Sivaratri is a living of the Life of Siva, a state of being lifted up from the attractions of phenomenal diversity to the Essential Condition of the Spiritual Reality. All methods of approach to Divinity and all attempts to undermine selfishness and disintegrate it into God-being practised on such an occasion will be crowned with undoubted success.