INSIGHTS – Surge 99 
Form to the Formless
February 27, 2014
If we examine the structure of our thoughts, it consists of some form or other. When we think of a flower, for example, our thought takes the form of the flower. We may have at another time a thought of the form of a pot. Even emotions like anger and desire have their own distinctive forms. Otherwise we would not be able to distinguish anger from desire.
The Kaivalya Upanishad (mantra 7) asks us to meditate on the form of Lord Shiva. “If you turn inward and become contemplative (muni), and if you meditate upon Shiva, the Supreme Lord with three eyes, with His neck turned blue, having Divine Mother Uma next to Him and very serene, you will reach the state beyond darkness. You are then one with the Source of all creation, witnessing everything.”
How do we understand this? How can long meditation of Lord Shiva’s form lead to our rising to a higher state of consciousness?
This is where the Upanishads are indeed mystical. They are secret teachings. They hold the key to resolving certain fundamental puzzles of human life. We are generally held in captivity by our own thought processes, which constantly move from one form to another. As we fix our mind in Lord Shiva’s form (blue-necked, three-eyed etc.), our mind undergoes a change. Countless names and forms (nama-roopa) that had held our mind hostage all this time loosen their grip over our mind. We find great inner space when these thoughts leave us. As thought subsides, we discover an entirely new dimension of our own existence. That is it. We as ‘existence free of thought and its modifications’ are right away the Self, Atma.
Images are formed on fountain water by certain projection processes these days, and those images look so real. Our ego is like that. Thoughts, especially memories, provide the images and we are generally drowned in concepts, ideas, notions and judgments. Who are we really? The Upanishads answer this existential question. “Tat tvam asi,” roars the Chandogya Upanishad, by which it means we are Pure Awareness with no boundaries. To realize this, a combination of “receiving insights” and “staying in quiet observation” is required.
Shivaratri is the night where Lord Shiva’s grace becomes all the more abundantly available to us. The Shiva Linga, of the form of an ellipse, represents infinity. Every point in an ellipse is a beginning; every point may be considered an end too. Alternatively the ellipse may be looked at as a figure with no (particular) beginning or end. While ‘thought’ has a beginning and an end, ‘Awareness’ has no beginning and no end.
To help us stay with the insight that we are actually Pure Awareness, meditation upon the form of Lord Shiva is prescribed. At the right time, we would drop the support of the divine form, and merge in the Reality, the formless one.
May Shiva the Auspicious shower His grace upon you.
Swami Chidananda
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