Lord Shiva and His Creation

Siddhi B. Ranjitkar


Hindus all over the world celebrate the birthday of Lord Shiva on the fourteenth night of the dark fortnight of the Falgun month (Feb-March) every year following the Nepalese calendar called Nepal Sambat. This night is called Maha-shiva-ratri means the great night of Lord Shiva. Devotees visit the temples to Lord Shiva elsewhere throughout the Hindu world on this night and next day. Hundreds of thousands of Hindu devotees visit Lord Pashupati: another name of Lord Shiva in Kathmandu a few days before and after this night.

Lord Shiva is a super soul, and prevails in everything and everywhere. The word “Shiva” stands for the universe, and for the super soul in the Hindu world. Hindus believe in super soul from which other souls come into beings. After the completion of the life cycle of human beings, these souls move on to take the forms of other living beings before returning back to the super soul, and merge with it depending upon the deeds of living beings and merits they have accumulated over their lifetime. Thus, the super soul is in everything and everywhere. In other words, the super soul is the source of divine power, all living and non-living beings. Hence, Lord Shiva is formless and infinite, and represents the universe of the Hindu world.

Lord Shiva also represents the life cycle, and five life-supporting elements, and has a form of five faces representing the five elements. The life cycle represents the creation of life from five elements such as earth, water, fire, air and ether, then the continuation of the life, and the completion of life that is death, which means separating the physical body from the soul. The physical dead body disintegrates into five elements, four return to their original elementary forms, and the fifth returns to Lord Shiva. Lord Shiva is depicted as a five human-faced form to represent these five elements that support life on earth. Each face has three eyes, which also represents birth, continuation of life and death.

Lord Shiva is also called “Om” which represents the five elements of the process of a life cycle. “Om” has three sound elements that give sounds of vowels such as “A”, “Ou”, “Ma” and two physical elements such as a dot and a crescent. The first sound “A” represents birth, the second “Ou” continuation of life, the third “Ma” death, the fourth a “dot” represents disintegration of physical body into the original four elements, the fifth “ crescent” represents the soul moving to the another physical body or returning to merge with the super soul. Each element of this life-cycle process also represents one face each of the five faces of Lord Shiva in the human form. Therefore, “Om” also stands for Lord Shiva, and denotes the universe in the Hindu world.

Lord Shiva also appears as a luminous “Lingam”. Although it is of a special form, Lingam is considered as a formless and an infinite object representing Lord Shiva as a universe. The base of Lingam represents “Ou”. A set of lingam standing on the base of “Ou” is considered to be the “Om” that depicts Lord Shiva and a universe.  Such a set is worshipped as Lord Shiva everywhere in the Hindu world. Lingam also is believed to have five faces, four faces are usually carved into Lingam on all four directions, and the fifth face not carved is believed to be facing upward.

Lord Shiva in a human form is called Lord Mahesvore. He is depicted as a half-naked human donning a tiger skin. His head is decorated with a crescent and the River Ganga; his limbs and neck wear live-serpents; his right hand holds a trident, and the body is smeared with ashes. These are all symbolic languages that convey the message of Lord Shiva. The trident he holds, symbolizes the trinity called Brahma, Vishnu, and Rudra of the Hindu world. The Ganga and the crescent indicate that Lord Shiva is as clear as Ganaga, and also as cool as the crescent. Serpents represent anger and threat. He has the serpents under his arms and around his neck means, he has control over anger and he is fearless even at the risk of having serpents around his neck. He wears a tiger skin around his waist and below means the ferocious animal power also is also under his control. He rubs ashes on his body means all living beings are subject to death. Thus, this human look is unique, and conveys the message of Lord Shiva to the Hindu world.

Lord Shiva becoming Lord Mahesvore in the human form, first created Lord Vishnu, the most beautiful divinity with a radiant head and four limbs holding four different things, and assigned him to create the cosmos, and a cosmic world. As wished by Lord Mahesvore, Lord Vishnu created various stars, planets, cosmos and a cosmic world. After arduous job of creation, Lord Vishnu rested on the cushion of plaited serpents floating on ocean in the cosmic world. Hence, he is also called Narayan, the name derived from the waters on which he floated in the cosmic world.

Seeing Lord Vishnu being tired of performing the job of creation, to relieve him from the burden of further creation, Lord Mahesvore gave birth to Lord Brahma with four faces, and placed him on the lotus grown out of the navel of Lord Vishnu laying on his back and floating on the ocean of the cosmic world. Lord Mahesvore gave Lord Brahma four faces to enable him to see at all four directions simultaneously. This was done to expedite the creation of the Hindu world.

Lord Brahma with the power and authority given by Lord Mahesvore began giving birth to one thing or another. He first created five life-supporting elements such as earth, water, air, fire and ether. Then, he created mountains, hills, lands, rivers, and so on. Thereafter, he gave birth to holy men, and named them differently and assigned them with various duties. However, he found it was the never-ending process of creation. Therefore, he saw the need for a biological process of creation for sustaining life on earth. However, he could not think of how to do it. Therefore, he began meditating on Lord Mahesvore for gaining knowledge of the process of creating a biological life on earth.

Lord Mahesvore appeared in a half male and a half female human form called Ardha-Naresvore in front of the meditating Lord Brahma. As soon as, Lord Brahma opened his eyes Ardha-Naresvore split into a male human and a female human. Thus, Lord Brahman gained the knowledge of male and female of all sorts of creatures for the biological process of creation on earth.

Lord Brahma created numerous-life forms through the biological process on earth. As the biological process of creaiton went on, it became clear to Lord Brahma that there should be a life cycle rather than never-ending creation of lives by biological means. Therefore, Lord Brahman requested Lord Mahesvore to develop a process that would complete the life cycle of living beings on the earth.

As requested by Lord Brahma, Lord Mahesvore created another divine spirit called Lord Rudra to complete the life cycle of living beings developed by Lord Brahma. Thus, Lord Rudra becomes the symbol of completion of the life cycle of the living beings; in other words, Lord Rudra represented the death or the end of life.

Lord Mahesvore created three divine spirits representing birth, continuation of life, and death. Lord Brahman becomes a symbol of birth; Lord Vishnu becomes a symbol of continuation of life on earth. Lord Rudra became synonymous with death. Here, death should be understood as the completion of the life cycle, and as the splitting of the physical body into the spirit called a soul and a physical dead body called a corpse.

Lord Mahesvore gave birth to the multi-limbed goddess Durga, and equipped her hands with various sorts of weapons, and empowered her to finish off the different evil spirits that appeared in the Hindu world.  He also enabled goddess Durga to take different names and different forms at various times to eliminate evils called demons. Her main manifestations are nine different Durgas called Nava Durga, and eight mother goddesses called Astramatrikas.

Lord Mahesvore created one abode called Kailash for himself, and another called Baikuntha for Lord Vishnu beyond the universe of the Hindu world because the universe follows the life cycle, and one day it will come to an end, which means extinction of the universe of the present form.  Therefore, Kailash and Baikuntha are two eternal and permanent abodes and beyond the network of life cycle of the universe. No births and deaths occur in those two abodes. Therefore, Hindus tend to perform meritorious acts on this earth to enable their souls after death to travel to Kailash or Baikuntha, and live there permanently.

Lord Mahesvore took different incarnations such as Mahankal, Kalbhairav, and nine male forms of Nava Durga to eliminate evil spirits, and give a peaceful life to his devotees in the Hindu world. Therefore, there are as many other forms of Bhairavas as of Lord Mahesvore in different names.

Lord Mahesvore is also famous by the name of Pashupati. The word “Pashupati” is believed to be derived from two words such as “Pashu” and Pass”. Pashu means all living beings and pass means chains that bind them to the world. Pashupati means the divine spirit that liberates all living beings from the chains of the world. Thus, Lord Pashupati is the divine that liberates humans from rebirth, and makes available a peaceful life after death, and merges their souls with the super soul Lord Shiva.

Thus, Lord Shiva is the source of all living beings and non-living too in the Hindu world. He is everywhere and in everything at all times.  All Hindus go back to Lord Shiva after completing the life cycle on this earth. Therefore, our duty is to complete the present life cycle as peacefully and meaningfully as possible so that Lord Shiva will be happy with us all and embrace us again into his super soul.

This year, Maha-shiva-ratri is on March 02, 2011

February 27, 2011

My email address is siddhiranjit@gmail.com for anybody willing to contact me.