Reviving Hinduism III: Shiva - The column of fire

A story that is prevalent in Hindu mythology is that Vishnu and Brahma were having a huge dispute regarding something trivial and it later blew up into a full-fledged fight, and the universe was about to collapse due to its intensity.

Shiva, sensing the same, comes to save the event by converting himself into a column of light and lets both of them know that this column is the ultimate truth and asks them to explore either side and find their ends.

Vishnu goes down, and Brahma up the column of light for millennia, yugas, manvantaras and kalpas (just expressions to portray a vast amount of contemplation), and finally Vishnu comes back to accept defeat and let Shiva know that he could not find the end of absolute truth. Brahma on the other hand lies to Shiva that he did see the end and asks a Ketaki flower to act as a witness for what he was claiming.

Shiva, furious with Brahma’s lie, lays a curse on him that even though Brahma has the equal status of godhood as himself and Vishnu; he would not be respected, prayed to, or built temples for and also curses the Ketaki flower that the particular flower would not be used for any holy rituals or poojas.

At this moment, we, therefore, see that there are no Brahma temples in India or the world, and Brahma is never talked about, remembered, or prayed to.

Again, an anomaly exists to prove the absolute truth time and again, and manifests as the existence of a single Brahma temple that is located in Pushkar, Rajasthan.

We find that in mythology that Anantha does his penance at specific holy places and Pushkara is included in the list and he does these specific tapas pilgrimages to ask for a boon from Brahma to be able to reign his mind in control always. Brahma grants the wish with the condition that Anantha would have to bear the weight of the universe and it gets gracefully accepted.

This story again can be looked at from an angle where the creator wanting to control the monkey-mind and having to bear the weight of knowing the infinite depth of the absolute truth in the process of doing so, is the price paid for mindfulness.

When we think of just the column of fire story, it seems like a moral to just teach the importance and gravity of truth as a concept itself, but when we try dwelling deeper we can interpret that Brahma, the creator, who lied to have seen the end of the truth with a flower acting as witness, can directly correlate to how Brahma must have simply had a thought while exploring the nature of ultimate truth that he did see its end and therefore it manifested in reality as a flower which stood as a witness for the thought’s happening.

More than the importance of the ultimate truth, which anyway stands as tent-pole and primal at any instance of a present moment, the fact that having a thought can lead to a devastating amount of chaos for the creator is also what can be seen from this particular story.

The aftermath of the story goes on to explain that this column of fire got split into 12 and they now constitute the holy Jyotirlingas; some narratives also claim that they got split into 64 in number.

What this meant in Hindu belief for the people following the truth of this story and moral, is that it is believed that this event took place at Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, where a Shiva temple is located and is also part of the Panchabhoota Shiva linga system (5 temples located in South India which metaphorically represent the primordial earth elements) and represents the “fire” element, showing consistency with elemental and fundamental structures from the story that is being passed on.

People who have been to the temple also claim that inside the garbagriha (or the center of the temple where the deity is located), it is always very hot and one cannot stand inside for a long time due to the same reason.

The particular revered location is one of the oldest known holy sites. Most temples are placed in magnetically relevant locations and specific geometry techniques are also incorporated in their construction, for elevating the consciousness of individuals who are coming to pray.

Let’s talk meta on a fundamental level to understand why this is done.

Thoughts, or action signals that happen in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves all around the body happen due to the varying electric potentials and chemicals (neurotransmitters) that are involved in carrying information in the form of electricity.

So, for fun, let’s just assume that thoughts are electric discharges across space, which are moving faster than light, and emotions are the magnetic field thus created by this particular fast moving-electric projection; our physical body subtle system can be seen as the arena where this interplay happens and these fields are getting constantly getting created and resolved along with breathing. [Metaphor co-created with Neeraj Menon]

Considering the above; circumambulation as a process when done around the garbagriha or the center of a temple which is constructed at specific magnetically relevant places on Earth, is supposed to raise the energy of one’s consciousness.

An example of how the ancients knew the magnetic coordinates can be inspected by taking the example of the Panchaboota shiva linga temples and we find that they fall on the same longitude even though they are located at different places.

Thus, Girivalam is a popular pilgrimage event that is performed, where a believer circumambulates the mountain of Thiruvannamalai on full moon nights, as it is believed to be the highest form of magnetic elevation that can be done considering the age of the location and how its story is relevant in Hinduism.

The moon plays a relevant role in astrology and directly represents the human mind, thus we see that the auspiciousness factor of a full moon day ritual is again merely a reminder of how the mind has to be fully aware to elevate one’s consciousness intent.

Shiva or the column of absolute truth can be seen as pure nothingness, the dark matter that constitutes the universe, the singular supermassive void, or pure and primal wave energy which is tending to a 0 Hz frequency; like the absolute zero in Chemistry where at 0 Kelvin matter ceases to exist, at 0Hz, EVERYTHING seems to cease.

It is believed that everything in the universe tends to Shiva and everything arises from there as well and that it is THE point of singularity where the universe collapses/dissolves/originates, and where all the infinite information that is spread out finally falls into itself to get dispersed and ordered again in a continuous cyclic manner.