For those of you who have had a chance to listen to the magnanimous discourses of
" Shree UmaMaheshwara Vaibhawam ", rendered by sathguru Shree ChaganTi gaaru several years ago, the importance of MahaaShivaraatri, Lingoadbhavakaala RudraabhiSheakam / aaradhana, significance of Lingoadbhavamoorti, MahaaShivaraatri jaagarana, would be a feast to listen to and save them in our hearts for continuous smarana manana nidhidhyaasanam for all the blessings they grant upon us......
The phrase " JanmaanikokkaShivaraatri "
describes the importance of Parameshwara Lingaarchana and Jaagarana on the day of Maagha Bahula Chaturdashi.....
As described by sathguru Shree ChaaganTi gaaru, the meta-phrase " Leeyatay Gamyatay iti Lingam " describes a ShivaLingam as an entity from which everything emanates and in to which everything gets merged in to....
What can be an entity that can literally suit the above explanation other than the mighty universe which seems to be some sort of a known entity though it actually always remains an unknown or more precisely a " can never be a completely comprehensible entity ".....
So, a devotee is ought to believe a ShivaLingam being worshipped by him or her as a compacted spiritual representation of the aforementioned " can never be a completely comprehensible entity " in-order to raise our intellectual strata from the all obvious mediocre realm to a proportionally incremental superior intellectual strata in accordance to our worship or more precisely to the intensity of our devotion and belief in the worship......
Hence a ShivaLingam is essentially a ShivaShaktyaatmaka swaroopam signifying the embodiment of every known and unknown entity in the universe....
Are we saying....
" I am pouring some water and milk on a ShivaLingam....."
or are we saying...
" I am performing RudraabhiShaykam by believing in the panchaakshari mahaamantram "OmNamahShivaaya" as a means to uplift my wisdom quotient to greater and newer heights with each and every progressive day's knowledge accumulation..."
matters to define the magnitude of the blessings being conferred by the worship...
There are various vegetables ( & fruits, pulses, cereals, grains etc...) with different names and forms and each of them have a specific nature, taste, color, odour, etc yet all of them are considered under the category of vegetables ( & fruits, pulses, cereals, grains etc...)
Quite similarly, there are various names for lord Parameshwara and various types of ShivaLingams across umpteen temples all over the world... each of it being associated with a specific trait and magnanimity......
While the names of the lord Shiva are associated with a puranic legend / incident occurred at a given place.....the forms/types of the ShivaLingam are associated with the categories listed by the SanaatanaDharma scriptures attributing a specific type of blessing for every given type of ShivaLingam...
A sand ShivaLingam...
A silver ShivaLingam...
A golden ShivaLingam...
A marble stone ShivaLingam...
A precious stone ShivaLingam...
A rock sculpted ShivaLingam with a specific mark known as Brahmasutram engraved on it....
A naturally available (across specific river waters) ShivaLingam known as BaanaLingam which resembles the form of a 'mini universe display' in an oval shaped smooth and radiant pebble stone....
A quartz ShivaLingam...
(Shree Chandramouleeshwara ShivaLingam brought down to planet earth from the abodes of ShreeKailaasam by HH Shree AadiShankaraachaarya)
A naturally manifested ShivaLingam...
(the 12 Jyotirlingams)
A mountain as a ShivaLingam....
(The Arunaachalam mountain)
and so on and so forth......
this world continues to recieve various kinds of blessings from various ShivaLingams being worshipped across thousands and thousands of temples all over the world.....
As a matter of fact, the holy stone held by the city of ----- too is a ShivaLingam..!
As per our Puranic statements, lord Shiva is considered as "LayaKartha..."
with Brahma being ShrushTikarta and ShreeMahaaVishnu being Sthitikarta....
Let's understand the phenomenon of "Layam" in the right context.....
Layam or more precisely Pralayam is not just about subsuming everything in to waters at the end of the world
( i.e., during "Yugaantam" as per the Sanaatana Dharma terminology) or determining when a person should merge in to him when the time is ripe for a natural demise.....
as understood in general.....
While the above-mentioned long term Layam is termed as "Aatyantika Pralayam" / "Dheerghakaalika Pralayam", the regular night's peaceful sleep process is termed as "Swalpakaalika Layam"....
It is in this Swalpakaalika Layam a human body regains all the strength lost during the day's activities and gets subjected to a natural self healing / self repair / self rejuvenation processes....
Scientists may have gone to the extent of inventing / creating tablets/pills/medicines to replace natural food in the name of vitamin/nutrient supplements and other capsules...
However no scientist can ever invent / create tablets/pills/medicines to replace the natural sleep process without which no human can live....
As a matter of fact, sleep is more important than food for a body to growth healthier and stronger....
Now let's come to the point of the Mahaa ShivaRaatri festivel getting celebrated during midnight in the name of LingoadbhavaKaala pooja/abhiSheakam....
[ Apart from the well known legends of Lingoadbhavakaala Moorthi asking Brahma and Vishnu to find the whereabouts of an immeasurable self manifested light ray Lingam's start and end points....
Lord Vishnu taking the form of AadiVaraahamoorty to travel towards the bottom portion to find it's end point.....
Brahma travelling upwards on his mount Swan to find it's starting point.....
Brahma coming across a cow and Mogalipuvvu / MogaliFlower(fragrant screwpine) and asking them to endorse his false statement of witnessing the starting point of the immeasurable Jyotirlingam Lingam.....
While Lord Vishnu accepts the truth of his inability to find out the end point of the immeasurable Jyotirlingam Lingam infront of Lord Rudra, Lord Brahma lies about witnessing the starting point and asks the cow and Mogali flower to endorse his false statement.....
The holy cow though conveys a forceful TRUE with it's head to lord Brahma's ask, it knows the omniscient existence and universal power of Lord Rudra and thus conveys a FALSE with it's tail thus conveying the truth as well.....
Lord Rudra gets angry on lord Brahma and his supporters the Cow and the MogaliFlower for their false statements and curses the cow saying that it's head will not be worshiped for it's false statement and it's tail will be worshipped instead for conveying the truth.....
and curses the MogaliFlower saying it shall not be used for his worship hereafter for it's false statement...... ]
The magnanimity / blessings of LayaKartha can be observed and understood only when a devotee can raise his/her consciousness to the level of making themselves a witness to how the process of a regular sleep happens via an interlinked chain reaction of....
...all the sensory organs getting subsumed
into Manasu.... followed by
Manasu getting subsumed into Buddhi.....
followed by
Buddhi getting subsumed into Aatma.....
and thus a human consciousness traversing from the Jaagrat Avastha to Swapna Avastha and finally into Sushupti Avastha....
Once the human consciousness enters the vegetative state of Sushupti Avastha the otherwise active consciousness is now dormant towards the regular world and is existing in a different 'unknown universal realm' typically termed as 'deep sleep' from where it is drawing that power of rejuvenating it's Buddhi / Manasu / Indriyaalu (sensory organs) and thus energizing the entire body in it's blissful state......
This entire drama of the 14 entities namely....
5 Karmendriyaalu.., 5 Jnyaanendriyaalu..,
Manasu, Buddhi, Aatma, Chittamu......
and their sequentially cascaded phase over in to each other to enter the Sushupti avastha / state to draw that universal rejuvenation power from the almighty, becomes a self witnessing process in accordance to a devotee's intensity of his/her worship during the Maagha Bahula Chaturdashi, the 14th tithi of the lunar waning phase in the month of Maagham by the blessings of lord Rudra during this MahaaShivaraatri festivel's abhiShaykam / ablution process......
The latter part of the mighty Shree Rudra ChamakaPrashnam's recital during the RudraabhiShekam as stated below....
āyu̍rya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā-mprā̠ṇō ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatām apā̠nō ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā̠ṃ vyā̠nō ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā̠-ñchakṣu̍rya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā̠g̠ śrōtra̍ṃ ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā̠-mmanō̍ ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatā̠ṃ vāgya̠jñēna̍ kalpatāmā̠tmā ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatāṃ ya̠jñō ya̠jñēna̍ kalpatām ॥ 10 ॥
conveys the fact about the aforementioned phenomenon by terming the same as a "Yagnyam" which essentially means not only just the physical Yagnya ritual observed in the temples but also the internal maanasika aaradhana of Lord Parameshwara via the consciously meditative state..
Now let's talk about the magnanimity of the RudraabhiShekam in terms of both performing and witnessing the same......
A careful observation of the Shree Rudram lyrics used in the ablution ritual reveals the fact that......
every entity and every phenomenon is being termed as Rudra and he is being offered a Namaskaaram for all that he is in becoming Rudra..... and thus a devotee too is being termed as Rudra by the phrase
" Naa Rudro Rudramarchayeat...."
By offering various sattwa gunaatmaka ingredients mentioned by the sanaatana dhaarma Saastram during the ablution process, each of which is said to bestow a devotee with a specific kind of blessing, a devotee gets equipped with the ability to witness the universal phenomenon of Parameshwara Pralaya Prakriya when the same gets performed in a meditative state....
The meditative state / Dhyaanasthiti is something that can not be exactly quantified in terms of it's state transitional magnitudes for that it takes a great amount of penance for a saadhaka to attain various supreme states of bliss based on the intensity of the adhyaatma saadhana performed over several years of time holding the key to peep in to the universal chain reaction of
" PinDaanDa BrahmaanDa samanvayam "
right from it's most possible microscopic to the most possible macroscopic realms.....
When a devotee is blessed by Lord Parameshwara to attain such a supreme state, he/she would be elevated to a state of
" sarvasaakshittwam " that lets them to be a part of the universal drama being witnessed by them and also to remain like an audience towards the same at every given point in time.....
To explain the same in simpler terms,
for those whose remember our good old golden childhood days of watching the
" Shaktimaan " weekly serial,
one must have seen a few episodes where-in Mr. Gangadhara Shastri ji is a part of a particular wordly situation and at the same time his elevated consciousness of Mr. Shaktimaan is watching the same situation in his supra consciousness to arrive at certain metrics.....
And thus, in such a supreme state of transitioning all the obvious wordly mortal barriers, Shree AadiShankaraachaarya has blessed the mankind with the mighty NiravanaShaktkam that states......
अहं निर्विकल्पॊ निराकार रूपॊ विभुत्वाच्च सर्वत्र सर्वेन्द्रियाणाम्
न चासंगतं नैव मुक्तिर्न मेय: चिदानन्द रूप: शिवोऽहम् शिवोऽहम् ॥6॥
[ मैं निर्विकल्प हूं, निराकार हूं मैं चैतन्य के रूप में सब जगह व्याप्त हूं, सभी इन्द्रियों में हूं, न मुझे किसी चीज में आसक्ति है, न ही मैं उससे मुक्त हूं, मैं तो शुद्ध चेतना हूं, अनादि, अनंत शिव हूं। ]
Wishing one and all a very happy MahaaShivaraatri 2023 festival celebrations.....💐☺️
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