Shiva – or Adiyogi, as Sadhguru prefers
to call him (in accordance with
the yogic tradition to which
he is heir) – has been seen as the Ur-divinity of the world:
wild, pagan, indefinable. He is apparently older than Apollo, the Olympian god of the Greeks,
with whom he shares
several characteristics as healer, archer,
figure of beauty, harmony
and light, symbolic
of the sun,
contemplation and introversion. He seems older
too than
Dionysus, the other Greek deity who shares many of his characteristics as the god of ecstatic delirium, dance, libido, intoxication, dissolution, protector of the freedoms of the unconventional, divine conduit between
the living and the dead. Shiva has been seen as supreme godhead,
folk hero, benevolent boon-bestower, shape- shifter, trickster, hunter,
hermit, cosmic dancer,
creator, destroyer. The epithets
are endless.
There is no dearth of literature on Shiva.
He has been the subject
of passionate paeans by the saint poets
of India down
the centuries. He has been
the subject of esoteric texts
and metaphysical treatises all over the subcontinent. In recent times, he has been fictionalized, re-mythicized,
sometimes bowdlerized, New-Agey- fied. But,
oddly enough, he seems
more in vogue
than ever.
Far too elemental to be domesticated, he’s more emblem than god, more primordial energy
than man. Pan- Indian calendar art continues to paint
him in the language of hectic
devotion and lurid
cliché: blue-throated, snake-festooned, clad in animal
skin, a crescent moon on his head. Sometimes he is presented in a cosy picture as a beaming
family man with wife and children, all of whom stand aureoled in a giant
lemon of a halo.
While this pop idiom is not without
its own charm,
everyone, including the average
Indian, is aware
that there is more
to Shiva than that.
No one can quite
define who or what he is. But we all instinctively know him as the feral, tempestuous presence that has blown through
the annals of sacred myth since time out of mind. Philosophers, poets, mythologists, historians, novelists, Indologists, archaeologists have all contributed to the avalanche
of Shiva literature down the centuries. It is a literary inheritance of considerable magnitude and no mean import.
Immense. Powerful. Turbulent. And more than a little terrifying. I confess that’s how I’ve always seen him.
Sadhguru, however, is neither metaphysician nor mythologist. And that, I believe, is what makes this document distinct. Sadhguru’s take on Shiva is a yogi’s take on the progenitor of yoga. This is the portrait of the world’s first guru by a living guru, a chronicle of the source of mysticism by a mystic.
Immense. Powerful. Turbulent. And more than a little terrifying. I confess that’s how I’ve always seen him.
Sadhguru, however, is neither metaphysician nor mythologist. And that, I believe, is what makes this document distinct. Sadhguru’s take on Shiva is a yogi’s take on the progenitor of yoga. This is the portrait of the world’s first guru by a living guru, a chronicle of the source of mysticism by a mystic.
That makes this a far more unpredictable enterprise than I had anticipated. To be present
during the making of this book was somewhat bewildering. It is true that I oscillated between interlocutor and editor-
archivist, snipping and suturing, tweaking and fine-tuning accounts from Sadhguru’s many conversations and discourses. But for the large
part, I was
eavesdropper, my ear
pressed to the narrative, as Sadhguru expounded a tale
that was ancient and
alive all at once.
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