Good morning, I'm Dr. Jay Mehta, I would like to present a topic which is very
near and dear to me. This is about mythology of ancient India and how it
relates to the modern world. There are thousands of immigrants from India in
United Kingdom, USA, the children and grandchildren
do not understand some of the mythology, so this mythology may look like just a
fiction or imaginary story, but to me, a mythology is more than just an
imagination or a fiction, it has a deeper, symbolic meaning that conveys the
cultural, social and a group psychology that is being presented in the form of a
beautiful story or a beautiful work of art, and that's what I would like to
present today. Now Joseph Campbell would say that a mythology is a reflection of
collective unconscious or collective subconscious of a particular group of
human race, human culture, sociology, and I would like to point out that this
mythological ancient stories, even though they may look very difficult to
understand, there are some common themes and common messages, the how human beings
deal with anger and anxiety and inner emotions and how the good wins over the
evil. That message has been conveyed to the masses or millions of people over
centuries. We need to understand that these ancient stories are being told by
sages or scholars to the common person who cannot read or write, and to convey
this apparently difficult subjects to a lot of
people and modified over the years, and yet people would remember it in a
collective memory is a fascinating phenomena that has been going on
both in Eastern culture and the Western culture. To give an example, the
theory of creation in Greek mythology, where the geo or the mother earth
marries the sky and then produces Cronus or Titan guards of Titans and Olympia.
Now if you really put a common-sense question, how can worth marry sky and
produce children, that's not the really material or a biological sense
question, really it's a mythological concept that the creation
came from earth, sky, light, space, water, the essential elements that were present
at the time of creation, so with anybody who takes this mythological stories only
at its word value or as it is written or told is missing the boat.
There's a hidden message that lot of people already understood but it was not
spelled out, so let me start with an interesting statue here in front of
me which shows the creation mythology and dissolution mythology of Hindu
tradition. This is a replica of a ninth century Shiva. Shiva is one of the three
important gods of hindu faith, the Brahma, the god of creation, Vishnu is a
god of power that sustains life and protects human race and shiva is
considered a god of dissolution or god destruction. Now you would think that the
god of destruction is a negative god but Hindus look at it as a dissolution to
prepare the universe for the new creation, so he's not necessarily a bad
god. There comes a time, and usually he was considered every 4.3 billion years,
interestingly they thought that the time on the planet is different than the time
of the Creator Brahma, so one day of Brahma is approximately 4.3 billion
years on planet Earth. This god then breaks up. The matter turns into life and
then when he sleeps, the life turns into the matter having almost like a DNA
becoming alive and DNA becoming dead but it is actually meant to be a
consciousness of the supreme divine universal entity that converts the
portion of his consciousness and injects into the force of life. Now this statue,
here Shiva is also a god of dance, it performs a beautiful dance and you can
see that around this circle, these are all planets burning, believe it or not
these are represented multiple planets in the galaxy, and Shiva is performing
his beautiful dance of dissolution at the end of every cycle of creation and
dissolution. In his hand, there is light, but this is called, a mudra like this
it's called abhayamudra. Abhaya means "fear not" even though he is preparing
resolution of the whole universe, there is no anger or there is no frustration
on his face, in fact there's a gentle smile, he's saying don't be afraid, this
dissolution is the beginning of recreation, and this is a cyclic
concept of of Hindu creation and destruction, but a beautiful position, for
example, to be able to bend the knee and still keep a balance requires a
tremendous control of dancing position. Now guess what this is. This is the dwarf
of ego, so now let us go to the deeper meaning of this. When the ego is totally
surrendered, the inner consciousness is fully awakened. It is through the inner
consciousness that you look at the life in a new creation form, you are able to
dissolve or destroy your negative energy, that is anger, greed, lust and lot of
negative emotions to other life forms, once you are fully awakened, the pure
consciousness of love and kindness wakes up. Now if you can see here, there's a
drum, it's almost like a big bang when Shiva removes a drum in one direction, the
first sound appears, Hindus call it om, modern scientists will call it maybe big
bang or bang theory, but first there was a sound and the sound is the first
energy that comes out from nothingness at the beginning of the existence before
the existence existed, and then his drum or the sound converts, or begins to
convert the matter into life and vice-versa, so this is a beautiful statue
of Shiva and his dance is called tandava, or dance of dissolution, but it is also a
dance of recreation. Now philosophically as Kumar Swami says, this dance occurs in
Chidambaram, supreme mind of the god and his consciousness,
so actually the initial energy of the universe is the everlasting energy of
supreme consciousness, which is the root source of energy for creation of our
galaxy or the planet, and these are various planets around him and after
certain million or billions years, the, this creator god and the resolution god
decides it's time to level everything off and start all over again,
so this statue on one hand could be worshiping Lord Shiva, but it has a deeper
meaning of what Hindu sages and people of India believed about creation and
dissolution and the cycle of creation of the galaxies and the life forms over
many, many centuries, perhaps many, many billions of years, but the beautiful
thing I want to point out is even though there's a dissolution, the Shiva is not
doing this with anger. He has a sense of kindness it is time to go, and
this is true with our life. You enjoy the life, ultimately you face the death, but
instead of fear, and he says fear not by putting his hand like this, that you are
going to a journey that is going to be new beginning, so if you want to apply to
individual life fully conscious, you're realized person, you no longer will have
the fear of death and you are ready to continue the cycle of reincarnation, so
this is the statue of Shiva and his dance.