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A Series of Lessons on the Inner Teachings of the Philosophies and Religions of India1328
having Yoga tendencies. Instead of the horrible skulls and instruments of
vengeance and death, Shiva is represented as a venerable Yogi Ascetic,
wrapped in profound meditation and in the Samadhi ecstatic stage,
representing the highest Yogi ideal—Transcendental Consciousness through
Meditation and Concentration. To these sects Shiva represents renunciation
and unworldliness, and a complete manifestation of the Yoga Stages as
recommended by Patanjali. And this is why Shaiva is the “god of the Yogis,”
when they seek an outward, or personified form for the Supreme Being
with whom they desire Union. And to such, Shaiva is the “god of the Yoga
Powers,” that is, of the superhuman powers and qualities claimed by the
Yoga school for their advanced teachers and students—the Deity of High
Magic and Psychic Power.
So, you see, there are two entirely distinct and opposite conceptions
and aspects of Shaivaism—the extremely high, and the extremely low. And,
back of all is the Shiva of the transcendental philosopher, or metaphysician,
who, divesting Shiva of all human attributes or qualities, thinks of him as
identical with Brahman, The Absolute, or that—the One, without attributes
or qualities—the Abstraction of Reality. Such is the variety and quality of
the Hindu religious and philosophical mind. And, after all, the West offers
a correspondence in the varying conceptions of Deity, as witness the
difference between the conception which pictures Deity as a “tribal-god,”
or “war-god” accompanying the armies of a favored nation, helping them to
victory, and destroying their enemies (and this is common to many modern
nations in time of war, nearly all of whom claim that “God is on our side”);
and the other conception of Him as the God of Love and Peace, abhorring
strife and bloodshed; and the third conception of Him as an abstract,
impersonal Being, beyond human thought and imagination—all of these
conceptions exist side-by-side among the Western people of the same faith.
Let us remember this when we wonder at the “paradoxes” of Hindu religious
conception and worship. We have but to compare the conception of Deity
held by “the earlier writers of the Old Testament (which many moderns still