THE SENSUOUS YOGI

Lord Shiva - The Sensuous Yogi

Lord Shiva (or Siva) is considered as the destroyer and the restorer of the worl
d.
Shiva is one of the most popular gods of the Hindu religion. Lord Shiva forms
the part of the Trimurti (Trinity), the other being Brahma, the creator and
Vishnu, the preserver. Shiva is known for the complexity of his nature,
representing contradictory qualities. He is the destroyer and the restorer, the
great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the kind herdsman of souls and a
wrathful avenger. Lord Shiva is a God for our time, for today's human
behaviour, free and disconnected from established old beliefs.
There once dwelt in a dense forest a community of hermits engaged in
meditation and applying the most difficult of austerities. The hermitage had a
large number of knowledgeable and mighty sages, but they were for the most
part ritualists, more involved in the actual process rather than appreciating th
e
symbolic significance behind the liturgies they performed.
Lord Shiva in his role of an ascetic mendicant once approached this community
of recluses to beg for alms. The force of the Lord Shiva's tapas or meditations
glowed forth from his auric body. Combined with the spectacular flicker in his
eyes, it presented him as extraordinarily handsome. This comely young ascetic,
his naked body smeared with ashes, exerted a powerful influence upon the
womenfolk of the hermitage. The wives and daughters of the sages rushed out to
greet the naked yogi. The hermits were utterly shocked at the sight of this nake
d
monk who drove their well-born wives and mothers to a demented level of
desire. The women came with offerings of fruits and flowers. When they
approached the Lord Shiva the sensuous yogi, they shed all restraint, taking hol
d
of his hands, pleading for his attentions. They shed away their inhibitions, the
ir
ornaments, their clothes, and embraced the naked stranger with the skull in his
hands.
The saints were left speechless. Their years of solitude and penance and the har
d
monastic life were all repudiated by the inexplicable aberrations of their noble

wives. Confused, pained, bewildered and also very angry, the sages asked the
stranger for his name and identity. Lord Shiva greeted their queries with a
silence. Driven to a level of frenzy the same as their chaste women, these sages

in their uncontrolled outrage tore off Shiva's organ of generation from his body
.
But Lord Shiva, the first amongst yogis, remained supremely unaffected both by
the women's adoration and the sages' anger.
As soon as Lord Shiva's organ fell to the ground it assumed a gigantic
proportion, making everyone aware of the divine status of this handsome
ascetic. Thus is said to have originated the emblematic worship of Lord Shiva's
organ, popularly known as the Shiva linga.
The rapture of love, the moment of euphoria in which we forget everything else
(reason, wisdom, prudence, social rules, human interests etc), is but an image o
f
the mystical bliss. The lover ceases to be himself and becomes one with the
object of his/her desire. Indeed, for an instant, he/she ceases to exist as an
individual, merging with the other being in totality. The sole reality at that
defining moment is the voluptuousness of desire that unites them:
"Just as in the embrace of his beloved, a man forgets the entire world, all
that exists within himself and without, so in union with the Being of
knowledge, he no longer knows anything, either within or without"