Shivaratri: The Blissful Night For Evolution

Shivaratri is a blissful night for devotees. On this night, Shiv bestows His grace through the cosmic dance of fusion — Shiv with Shakti – leading to evolution and transformation.
Shiv is the primal atman — omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent. Shiv means that which is auspicious, propitious, gracious, benign, kind, benevolent, and friendly. His common epithets are Shambhu meaning benign; Shankar — beneficent; Maheshwar — great Lord; and Mahadev – great God. Shiv is represented in a variety of forms: as the cosmic dancer Nataraj; as a naked ascetic; a mendicant beggar; Adiyogi; and as Ardhanareshwar — an androgynous union of half male and half female. Shakti paired with Him is the embodiment of power and manifestations of Uma, Sati, Parvati, Durga, and Kali.
According to Kashmir Shaivism, Paramshiv is Parabrahmn, the ultimate reality, the one form wherefrom everything emerges. Paramshiv manifests himself by a process of descent, from Paramshiv to jiva, through 36 tattvas. The vibrant creative energy of Paramshiv known as spanda, moves him to manifest these 36 tattvas as lila, divine play, on Shivaratri.
Shiv-Shakti — consciousness and awareness of light — are venerated and worshipped on this day. Their dimensions, the five pure tattvas of universal experience, are: the initial, creative, motionless Absolute; the energy, Bindu tattva, that polarises consciousness ‘I’ and ‘this’, subject and object; the Sadakhya tattva that is responsible for the appearance of aham, self; the Ishvara tattva in which you realise, ‘this universe is my own expansion’; and the fifth, Sadvidya when puru?ha actually realises his own nature, and yet this realisation is in motion. Sometimes you realise it, sometimes you forget it.
Seven pure-impure tattvas act as instruments that assist the soul in liberation. These are purusha and maya tattvas, the five kanchukas, cloaks, that block the subject from recognising the divine nature of the Universe: time, knowledge, desire, causality, and being limited.
Twenty-four impure tattvas are: purusha and prakriti tattva; satva, tamas and rajas tattvas; five senses organs; five karmendriya, motor organs; five sensations; and five physical elements.
The buddhi is the first to evolute from prakriti. It descends into ahamkara. The external sense of self is then experienced through the manas, sensory mind, which evolves to the lowest tattva.
Vijay Hashia

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