Greatness of Shiva

Mark Dyczkowski: I was invited a couple of years ago to a World Yoga Conference that was down at Satyananda ashram, in Bihar. So there was a crowd of about 15 000 people sitting there. They have all been taught, talked to by so many people, sannyasins, gurus, the Guru himself, and then they said it was my time to speak. Well I don’t really …. my tradition is from my Guru, each one of us have their way, and in our tradition, we do not have all this sannyasins and all that, and the guru doesn’t wave his finger at students all the time telling them that they should be better sannyasins or good sannyasins, be more disciplined or things like that, which is what they were being told for the previous three days. So I sat down, and I thought to myself, it is not in my nature to speak in that way, and then very nervously and tentatively I looked around - the gurus sitting there, and they sort of nodded at me to go ahead, and I said: “You know, when I look at you,” and suddenly I was very moved, I suddenly felt those 15 000 Lord Shivas sitting there, Shivas inside, you know, I got this profound feeling, I felt sort of great love for them all, in that moment, and I said, “You think how humble Lord Shiva is, how great He is, because of His humility, that He becomes so imperfect, so impure, so lost, in such pain, so completely undisciplined, that he becomes every one of us. We are all Lord Shiva, and His greatness is in His humility to be you and me.” Or something like that. And I looked around and at the Guru, and I thought - I hope I made sense with that… But you know, a silence fell that astonished me, and it lasted for what seemed a whole minute, and then everybody just clapped. So I thought - good, that went the right way!