Om Namah Shivay from devotional album Shiva’s Ecstasy by
Anandmurti Gurumaa.
Invocation (Namami shamishaan stotra) is dedicated to the
worship of Saguna Shiva. His beauty, grace, and peaceful demeanor is
celebrated; His compassion for all sentient beings is glorified. He is seated
on a deer skin i.e. mind, snakes are around his neck, and poison in his throat.
But He is ever blissful, ever compassionate. Ganges i.e. awakened kundalini is
seated in his matted hair. Adi Shankaracharya’s immortal composition of
‘Aatamashtak’ celebrates Nirguna Shiva, the eternal cosmic existence. Layers of
ignorance are peeled off one by one: ‘I am not body, senses, mind, and
intellect. I am the truth, I am.’ Shiva is the ultimate truth which dawns in
higher stages of meditation. Truth is beyond senses and the mind; thus we
cannot use these mediums to understand what Truth is. Virtue, evil, birth and
death – dualities exist in the mind and True self is beyond. Attachment, greed,
lust, ego are bondages of mind, not of the self, and the self is purest of
pure. Self is like the sky, vast, beyond horizon, without boundaries. Knowing
this fundamental reality redeems us from all pain, all anguish, all anxieties.
Realization of this knowledge brings us to the stage where each and everything
seems null and void – what remains is pure emptiness. This world seems to be a
dance of illusionary images – just like a dream where everything is real but
the moment sleep is broken, all is gone. ‘Shivoham’ is the starting point, not
the end – from here, one begins to know that you and I are both illusions and
changeable but truth is neither me nor you. ‘Om Namah Shivay’ mesmerizes – just
sway with it and experience the joy. ‘Shivoham’ is a melodious sortie of bliss.
Beautiful sound of chorus, flute and Gurumaa’s voice weaves the ultimate magic.
Shiva’s Ecstasy is a soothing, cool, hypnotic score. Listen
to it with shut eyes and share an experience. ‘Shiva’s Ecstasy’ is dedicated to
all Shiva devotees, sadhus and ascetics living in this world in which Lord
Shiva can be seen living immortally.
