Updated: August 24, 2024
Shiva Sutras continued Śivatulyo jāyate Śivatulyo jāyate This is the direct translation: to the extent that you know Shiva of pure consciousness, or divine undifferentiated consciousness, to the extent that you know Shiva, you become Shiva. To the extent that you know the divine, you become the divine. That's the original rough translation from Lakshmanjoo, but also from other commentators. So as I continue these Sutras with you, I want to remind you that I generally speaking, do not stick with the exact translations or the exact commentaries. And that any scholar looking at my interpretation of the Shiva Sutras will actually find them inaccurate from a scholarly point of view, may find may presumptuous for taking for broadcasting and sharing my own interpretation and may find me ignorant as well of the deeper significance of these Sutras. Having said that I practice a lot of meditation and I do a lot of inquiry and reflection both in my meditation or before my meditation, sometimes in meditation, what is called contemplative self inquiry and also have learned how to do inquiry in dream states and deep sleep states.
So when I read a sutra thoughts are triggered and I start to shoot the breeze and that's what you get: my shooting the breeze. Thoughts triggered by these Shiva Sutras. Sometimes I feel that, you know, interpretations recycled over eons of time, even though they are very profound, they become cliches and the profundity is lost at this moment. I feel actually that both the spirituality and particularly New age spirituality needs a reformation because most of New Age spirituality and even what I see coming from, you know, traditional gurus is basically psychological and emotional support, very little to do with the reality or liberation or understanding our true identity. And so I think spirituality needs a reformation.
And I think also that science needs a reformation which goes beyond subject-object split. And I understand that science also occurs in consciousness. So with those caveats, let me share with you the deeper meaning of this particular sutra to the extent that you become to know Shiva, you become Shiva. Now, if Shiva's divine awareness, then you become omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. How is that even possible? How is that even possible? So first, before we address that, let's once again address the limitations of human knowing. So the first limitation is that what we call the physical world is a construct or interpretation of a narrow band of perceptual activity, the visual spectrum for example, is 390 to 750 nanometers. OK. Outside of that, we have no access to even the expressed forms of reality. And because we don't have the sensory apparatus, although we can actually create sensory apparatus to look at the world with infrared or ultrasound or even other bandwidths. But in everyday experience of the physical world, we are only accessing a narrow band of perceptual activity.
Number one limitation. Number two limitation is that nothingness or formlessness is impossible to imagine even though it is the source of all form and phenomena. So, of course, in quantum physics, there's the idea of nothingness being dynamic, the quantum field, for example, and from the quantum field, virtual particles are impermanent, representations of nothingness, they pop in and out of existence as determined by the uncertainty principle. However, perceptually or cognitively, it is impossible to conceptualize or visualize or imagine that which is formless. Number three, nonexistence is not and cannot be an experience. Even as we imagine death, we survive as the observer. So what is it that survives as the observer even in the process of death? Number four, our range of perceptions of objects and movements of objects is in what is frequently referred to as the Savannah range where we have supposedly evolved in Africa, Eastern Southern Africa.
And so our range of perception is determined by everything that occurred in the Savannah range in the ecosystem of predators and and the victims of those predators, the food chain. And so very large objects or very rapid movements, very small objects and very very, very small movements, infinitesimal movements are incomprehensible to us. The very large and the very small. And number five time remains a mystery according to experts that are mathematics to show that the arrow of time is a human construct as well. So all that limits our knowing. So how can we become omnipresent, omnipotent and omniscient? So let's talk about just first omniscience which means infinite knowing or infinite knowledge. So when we speak about infinite knowing or infinite knowledge based on Vedanta, Shiva Sutras, Kashmir Shaivism, that omniscience is not like the Encyclopedia Britannica Chat GPT or any other source of information, reliable or unreliable. We're not talking about that kind of omniscience. Omniscience here simply means that the knowingness of your own evolution and spontaneous, right knowing, which is called spontaneous, right thinking or intention, which is called and spontaneous right action without Karmic bondage, which is called the right response to every situation as it occurs.
Then you don't need chat GPT or encyclopedia Britannica Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia is the worst source of information if you really want good information go to other sources. OK. So, omniscient from a point of view is not bits and pieces of sensory perception which gives rise to bits and pieces of knowledge. No, it is all knowingness which comes to us as intuition OK. And also creativity and symbolic or representational archetypal awareness. What about omnipotence? Can you have the strength of an elephant? or can you have the lightness of a hummingbird or can you experience the lightness of a honey bee? And the answer is yes. Even through bits and pieces of sensory information and interpretation, we can harness fragmented laws of nature and create jet planes and helicopters and intergalactic probes and create a transport plane that carries 100 elephants or 1000 elephants.
So you can assume power, lightness through the use of fragmented laws of nature, not whole laws of nature. OK. Whole laws of nature actually give you the access to the fragmented laws of nature. So that's omnipotence. And then what about omnipresence, as well as nonlocal being and as a nonlocal correlation or entanglement, or what we might call you know, very fundamental acausal nonlocal, quantum mechanical, inter relatedness. We can experience our entanglement and our presence in all that exists. So that is the meaning of that Sutra, to the extent you know, Shiva, you become Shiva. Now I'll end it with just one simple which is the last yama in yoga sutra potentially. And the last yama is is surrender to divine mystery. Why? Because the divine mystery is intellectually incomprehensible, divine mystery is without form without borders infinite, without cause spaceless, timeless, and the source of all experience even though the experience appears in space time, even that's an illusion.
Overall experience is an awareness, therefore not in space time. But ultimately, with all our math, with all our science, with all our inquiry, the limitations of the human nervous system and our current evolution does not allow us to intellectually understand the divine mystery. So at some point, we surrender to it with humility, we exchange our cleverness for bewilderment as Rumi said. And in that bewilderment, there is awe, there is deep humility, there is wonder, those are the ultimate divine emotions because without humility, without wonder, without awe, we will remain limited.
But as soon as we have that wonder of your existence and the awareness of your existence, then the keys to the divine, the keys to the divine. open. OK. That's it for today. And I hope you understand that these interpretations are also not really academic, scholastic or or traditional..
