By Sadhguru – Founder, Isha Foundation

In the Indian culture, at one time, there used to be 365 festivals in a year. In other words, they just needed an excuse to celebrate every day of the year. These 365 days were ascribed to different reasons and different purposes of life. There were various festivals to celebrate various historical events, victories or certain situations in life like planting, harvesting and reaping. But Mahashivarathri is of  a different significance.

When we say Shiva, most people look at him as some kind of a God who is beyond everything. But if you look at the Shiva Purana, his life was this — he went through everything any human being would go through. He is many things at the same time. He is the most beautiful and he is also the ugliest. He is a great ascetic and also a family person. He is the most disciplined and also a drunkard and a drug addict. He is a dancer and he is also absolutely still. Gods, demons and all kind of creatures in the world worship him.

One reason why it has been made this way is, if you can accept this man who is a complex formation of every quality that you can find in this universe — beautiful, ugly, great, low, heaven and hell ­— then you have crossed life itself. If you can accept this man who is the most beautiful and the most horrible at the same time, then you have passed life very easily. The whole struggle is because we are always trying to pick out what is beautiful, what is not, what is good and what is bad. Shiva is a terrible combination of everything put together.

Mahashivarathri is very significant for people who are on the spiritual process, for people who are in family situations and also for the ambitious in the world. For people who live in family situations, Mahashivarathri is celebrated as Shiva’s wedding anniversary. For the ascetics, this is the day when he became one with Kailash — he became like a mountain, absolutely still. After millenniums in meditation, one day, all movement in him stopped and he became utterly still. So ascetics see Mahashivarathri as the day of stillness. And for the ambitious, this is a day when Shiva conquered all his enemies. So whatever the legends, the significance of Mahashivarathri is that on this day, there is a natural upsurge of energies in the human body.

The Puranas say blessed are those whose spines are erect. If you were still a creature whose spine was horizontal, you could not make use of it. But blessed are those who have an erect spine. They can move their energies heavenward, effortlessly. So this night we are supposed to spend awake, aware, with our spines erect, so that whatever sadhana we are doing, there is a great assistance from nature on this day so that the natural upward movement happens.

All evolution in a human being is fundamentally an upward movement of energy. Every practice, every sadhana that a spiritual person does is only to move his energies upward. From being just a biological entity to become a spiritual process, what is needed is an upward movement of energy. When we exist here, catering only to a certain aspect of nature which is our body — the physical body is just one aspect of nature — we will be just survival and procreation. The physical dimension of the existence really has no other purpose than this. If you look at every creature on this planet, you will see everything is constantly aspiring to survive and to procreate so that life just goes on.

But once you have become human, you know that life just going on is not sufficient for you anymore. So this day, this Mahashivarathri is an opportunity to go beyond the physical dimensions of life and experience the Divine within you.

[Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, a yogi, is a visionary, humanitarian and a prominent spiritual leader. An author, poet and internationally-renowned speaker, Sadhguru’s wit and piercing logic provoke and widen our perception of life. www.ishafoundation.org]