Sadhguru: And the marriage was fixed.
She is a princess, a huge wedding was set up.
Everybody in that region, whoever is ‘who and who’… ‘who is who’ of the region,
everybody assembled.
In India, this is a tradition, the bridegroom will come with his party.
Usually you will see today he will come riding a horse and you know big…
they will show off their wealth and their… the bridegroom’s people will come in full attire showing off,
how they are better than the bride’s people.
But here Shiva came dreadlocked, matted hair, smeared from head to toe in ash, wearing the
skin of an elephant which has just been slain, fresh skin, bleeding, you know, dripping blood
and he came fully inebriated, completely stoned out, like that (Few laugh).
And all his people, they are all demented and distorted beings, they are not in human form
and they are making some… nobody can understand the kind of noises, among themselves
a language that nobody can understand.
And Meera , Parvati’s mother looked at this groom and she again Uma-ed.
‘Oh, no,’ and she fainted (Laughter).
Then Parvati went and begged Shiva, ‘For my mother’s sake put on a little better…
I don’t mind the way you are, I just don’t mind how you are, all you want…
all I want is you, the way you are but for my mother’s sake, just show a little more pleasant self.’
He said, ‘Okay,’ and he put on a very beautiful form, attired himself well
and then he came and then the people said he is a Sundaramurty that means
he is the most beautiful human being they’d ever seen; he was nine feet tall.
They say when he stood, he was level with the horse’s head; this description is there
in many scriptures.
When he came down South, they said he was twice the height of an average woman.
Generally in South India, now it’s all mixed up, otherwise southern Indian people… women
were generally four-and-a-half to five feet, less than five feet.
So they said he is twice that of an average woman, that’s how they described here.
There they said he was level with the horse’s head.
So approximately nine-feet-tall man, the most beautiful man and everybody was awestruck
by his presence.
Then he came and sat down, marriage has to happen.
When marriage has to happen in India especially in this kind of weddings, the antecedents
of the bride and the groom are spoken with great pride, you know, the ancestry, where
they come from, how pure their blood is and all that stuff.
So for the bride, glorious things were said.
Her father is the mountain king and many things were said about her.
Now they asked, ‘What about the groom?’
He simply sat quietly.
He said nothing.
And there were none of his relatives who could speak any language.
All these other creatures who were with him, they made cacophonic noises.
Then the bride’s father was disgraced by this ‘A man without antecedents.
How will he marry my daughter?
Nobody knows where he comes from, who his parents are, what is his lineage,
how can I give my daughter to this man?’
He rose up in anger.
Then there was a sage Narada, who had a single-stringed instrument called ektara.
He just did tangg, tangg, tangg.
The king got even more angry.
‘What are you doing ektara for’ (Laughter)?
Narada said, ‘This is his antecedence.
He has no father; he has no mother.
‘Then what’s his basis?’
Tangg…
(Few Laugh).
‘His basis is sound, reverberation; he is just born out of a reverberation.
He has no parentage, no antecedents, no lineage.’
Then the king was freaking but the wedding happened.