"Shiva's Reality"

OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Why this question? You can also ask this question, but it will not carry the same meaning. So try to understand why Devi asks, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? Devi is in deep love. When you are in deep love, for the first time you encounter the inner reality. Then Shiva is not the form, then Shiva is not the body. When you are in love, the body of the beloved falls away, disappears. The form is no more and the formless is revealed. You are facing an abyss. That is why we are so afraid of love. We can face a body, we can face a face, we can face a form, but we are afraid of facing an abyss.

If you love someone, if you really love, his body is bound to disappear. In some moments of climax, of peak, the form will dissolve, and through the beloved you will enter the formless. That is why we are afraid – it is falling into a bottomless abyss. So this question is not just a simple curiosity: OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?

Devi must have fallen in love with the form. Things start that way. She must have loved this man as a man, and now when the love has come of age, when the love has flowered, this man has disappeared. He has become formless. Now he is to be found nowhere. OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? It is a question asked in a very intense love moment. And when questions are raised, they become different according to the mind in which they are asked.

So create the situation, the milieu of the question in your mind. Devi must be at a loss – Shiva has disappeared. When love reaches its peak the lover disappears. Why does this happen? This happens because really, everyone is formless. You are not a body. You move as a body, you live as a body, but you are not a body. When we see someone from the outside, he is a body. Love penetrates within. Then we are not seeing the person from the outside. Love can see a person as the person can see himself from within. Then the form disappears.

A Zen monk, Rinzai, attained his enlightenment, and the first thing he asked was, ”Where is my body? Where has my body gone?” And he began to search. He called his disciples and said, ”Go and find out where my body is. I have lost my body.”

He had entered the formless. You are also a formless existence, but you know yourself not directly, but from others’ eyes. You know through the mirror. Sometime, while looking in the mirror, close your eyes and then think, meditate: if there was no mirror, how could you have known your face? If there was no mirror, there would have been no face. You do not have a face; mirrors give you faces. Think of a world where there are no mirrors. You are alone – no mirror at all, not even others’ eyes working as mirrors. You are alone on a lonely island; nothing can mirror you. Then will you have any face? Or will you have any body? You cannot have one. You do not have one at all. We know ourselves only through others, and the others can only know the outer form. That is why we become identified with it.

Another Zen mystic, Hui-Hai used to say to his disciples, ”When you have lost your head meditating, come immediately to me. When you lose your head, come immediately to me. When you begin to feel there is no head, do not be afraid; come immediately to me. This is the right moment. Now something can be taught to you.” With a head, no teaching is possible. The head always comes in between.

Devi asks Shiva, OH SHIVA, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY? – who are you? The form has disappeared; hence the question. In love you enter the other as himself. It is not you answering. You become one, and for the first time you know an abyss – a formless presence. 

That is why for centuries together, centuries and centuries, we were not making any sculptures, any pictures of Shiva. We were only making SHIVALINGA – the symbol. The Shivalinga is just a formless form. When you love someone, when you enter someone, he becomes just a luminous presence. The Shivalinga is just a luminous presence, just an aura of light. 

That is why Devi asks, WHAT IS YOUR REALITY?