Namah Shiváya Shántáya, Chpt 1: An Introduction to Shiva

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Shrii Shrii Ánandamúrti, the founder and preceptor of Ananda Marga, has said that human culture and civilization would not exist as we know them – perhaps would hardly exist at all – had it not been for Shiva. Shiva played a crucial role in propelling human society on a forward path in education, medicine, social code, music, dance, phonetics and, of course, intuitional science. And yet Shivaʼs stature is such that “Shiva can stand very well, shining in His own glory, quite apart from human culture and civilization.”
In the human civilization that Shiva founded, Shivaʼs name lives on. It permeates the waking hours, from earliest infancy up until the final curtain, of nearly a fourth of the earthʼs human population. Yet the actual life of this great personality has long been lost to view, hidden under layer upon layer of myth. Many, for example, worship Shiva as a god, but fail to recognize Shiva as an historical person.
The author of Namah Shiváya Shántáya (“Salutations to Shiva the Tranquil”) removes the veils of seven thousand years of history, to reveal Shiva the great spiritualist, Shiva the humanitarian, Shiva the pioneer of arts and science.
He felt great compassion for those afflicted people and, making them sit beside Him, advised them how to solve their physical, psychic and spiritual problems. Shiva used to live on a hill, and all kinds of people from far and near would flock to Him. He would call them with… His viśáńa, His long horn…
Of the twenty discourses that constitute Namah Shiváya Shántáya, the first eight were given by the author in Calcutta as pravacans, or speeches (mostly at weekly intervals), in April and May, 1982. These eight were recorded on tape. The series (sometimes referred to by the author as a work of “Shivology”) then resumed in Patna in the form of dictations given throughout June and July. The concluding dictation was given in Kashi, adjoining Benares, on August 13. All the speeches and dictations were given in Bengali.
The first editions of Namah Shiváya Shántáya, both in Bengali and in English, came out in 1982. The English Second Edition, in 1985, was a reprint of the English First Edition. In 1993, Discourse 1 and parts of Discourses 2, 4 and 5-8 were retranslated, closely following the 1982 translation, by Ácárya Vijayánanda Avadhúta and Ácárya Acyutánanda Avadhúta, for the English book Discourses on Tantra Volume One. In a similar way, the present Third Edition closely follows the 1982 or, where applicable, the 1993 translation. (Discourse 15 appears just as in the 1982 translation, and Discourse 1 just as in the 1993 translation.)