Key of Knowledge

SR No.: 006702
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Champat Rai Jain
Publisher: ZZZ Unknown
Publication Year: 1919
Total Pages: 1204
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE,
of its most abstruse doctrines. We shall here deal with a few more of these mythological conceptions to illustrate our point.
Shiva is the third member of the Hindu Trinity, and is represented as a being with matted hair, and with serpents entwined round his person. He takes swallowwort and other intoxicating and poisonous things, and wears a garland of skulls. His consort is Parvati, the daughter of Himalayas, who also assumes various other forms, such as Durga, Kali, and the like. His most popular name is Bholanath; he is easily pleased, and grants boons to his worshippers readily, and, at times, even foolishly.
Now, Shiva represents Will inclined to Vairagya (renunciation), which, as such, is free from formal sophistry. On account of his freedom from worldly wisdom, he is called the Simple-minded--the Un-worldly, or Unsophisticated--and because he knows no trickery, he is the Bhola (innocent, guileless) Nath (Lord).
The intoxication of Shiva is due to the nature of Will which is the pure emotion of Self-feeling. It is this emotion of Self-feeling that constitutes the mystic's joy, which no wine can produce, and for which those who have experienced it renounce the world and become Self-centred. This comes only from Self-contemplation, or samadhi of Yoga, in which Will, finding itself free from the thraldom of desire, feels its own inherent Joy. We feel truly free in this state of extreme Self-centredness in the course of whose attainment the energy of life, which was being dissipated all round, is wound up, as it were, into an indivisible impulse of