Shiva means your very self, the purest Self, your innermost core. Shiva means good or benevolent. The word ratri in Sanskrit means that which relieves you from three types of agony ethereal, mental and material. At night everything becomes quiet and peaceful. The body gets tired and goes to sleep. Shivaratri literally means that night which infuses the Shiva tatva or the transcendental principle to the three instruments: the body, mind and speech.


Shivaratri is a night of deep rest. It is the night that takes you into its lap, comforts you and gives rest. When the mind rests on the lap of the Divine, thats real rest. Like the mind, memory and intellect , Shiva is also a tatva or principle in us. Shivaratri is when the Shiva tatva and Shakti become one.


The jagran in Shivaratri staying awake all night is not just forcing oneself to be awake or sing devotional songs. It is about being consciously aware of the inner rest that sleep brings everyday. When you surpass a certain layer of sleep, samadhi happens. Samadhi is often referred to as Shiva Sayujya, the presence of Shiva, a state of deep rest with alertness, which brings freedom from all identities. Kabir Das calls it koti kalpa vishram a billion years of rest consolidated in a moment. When you come out of it, you experience certain pleasantness and reduced entropy , which brings an unusual freshness to the mind and senses.


The linga in Shiva temples symbolises identification or sign through which you identify someone as being male, female or neutral. The Divine is beyond the three genders; hence the Divine is called Ekalinga, or unigender. What is that one gender The Self, the Atma. The Self is beyond body, mind or intellect; it is beyond likes and dislikes. Ekalinga is the Lord of the Self.


On Shivaratri, the Shiva Shakti merges into the whole universe. Shiva has been associated with destruction; but transformation , new beginning for the better, can only happen when something is destroyed. Shiva is the factor of transformation. Sham means peace and good and kara means one who does that. Shankara means one who gives peace and does good.


The whole of Creation is the dance or play of Shiva, the tandav or dance of one consciousness, one seed, which manifested into a million species in the world. The whole world moving in an auspicious rhythm of innocence and intelligence is Shiva. Shiva is the permanent and eternal source of energy the one and only eternal state of Being. There is a story related to Shivaratri, about the union of Shiva and Shakti. The primordial and dynamic energy is wedded to the transcendental. Shiva is the silent witness and Shakti is chitti or chidvilasa, the energy that plays and displays in infinite space. Shiva is the formless Being; Shakti is manifestation in the field. This is the recognition of the dual aspect of matter and energy, prakriti and purusha, the dravya and guna substance and its qualities. Recognising the underlying non-dual nature of Brahmn is Shivaratri.


It is only wakefulness that brings out this knowledge in our consciousness and Shivaratri is the night to celebrate the wakefulness of one universal consciousness without falling into the unconscious sleep state. Breaking the pattern of unconscious sleep gives you a glimpse that you are not a mechanical apparatus but a legend in Creation. To recognise the Shiva tatva, you have to be awake.

When we are afflicted with a disease like malaria, we dont treat each symptom like fever, pain and shivering , one by one. We just treat the disease and the symptoms automatically vanish. So deal directly with the mind and symptoms like stress and strain will disappear. Vishvas meditation is mind management.

There is no attempt, however, to control the mind; the idea is to go beyond it. The mind is compared to a monkey drunk with the wine of desire, stung by the scorpion of jealousy and possessed with the demon of pride. Lust, greed, jealousy, anger, ego, tensions, reactions , grudges, depression, stress and strain are, however, the symptoms and not the disease.

The common misconception is that meditation is concentration of mind and various techniques are taught to achieve this. Meditation has got no technique. There are techniques for concentration. Concentration is a mental exercise between the mind and the object of attention. But meditation is neither a mental exercise nor a practice. Meditation is a direct and natural process beyond the mind itself. Meditation is not concentration; it is the mother of concentration.Remember, concentration is where one tries to control thoughts, where thoughts get dissolved naturally, enhancing your powers of concentration, memory, will, right thinking and fitness.

When your thought current is interrupted which means that all thoughts are fixed on one object it is concentration. But when the flow is uninterrupted, that is meditation. This is when the thought is not fixed on any one object, rather we just remain a non-doer and directly watch thoughts as a neutral energy without any judgment, analyzes, participation , visualisation, imagination, contemplation , suppression, repression, condemnation or concentration. Meditation is a non-doing entity where you are simply a seer, witness, you are an observer of the minds happenings. To watch is our true nature. It is a natural, nondoing state. No effort is required to watch. We all have full potential to look within directly as we all are blessed with the Third Eye .

Meditation is mind management. It is not forcing the mind to be quiet. It is to find the quiet that is there already. We are children of bliss. We suffer from stress and strain because we gave all the powers to the mind and made it our master. Not only that, we consider ourselves nothing but the mind. Mind is matter. It has no power of its own. It is useful in the external world but in the spiritual, internal world, it has to be overcome. Otherwise we will be the victims of mental and physical diseases. Meditation is seeing the mind as a witness, a neutral energy. It is not interfering with the intricacies and doings of mind. Just be a seer, be a witness. We just stay in our own source, in our true nature: All-bliss .

We are happy when the mind is cheerful. We are depressed when the mind is gloomy. We are at the mercy of the mind that waxes and wanes. We consider ourselves nothing but mind. It is blasphemy to consider ourselves as victims of an unforeseen incident when the unending Bliss is flowing within all of us. Meditation is mind management. Meditation is homecoming.