When we say Shiva, most people look at him as some kind of a God who is beyond everything. But if you look at the Shiva Purana, his life was such that he went through everything any human being would go through. He is many things at the same time — he is the most beautiful and also the ugliest; he is a great ascetic but also a family person; he is the most disciplined and also the most drunk. Be it gods or demons, all kinds of creatures in the world worship him.

If you can accept Shiva, who is a complex formation of every quality that you can find in the universe, you have crossed life itself. Lord Shiva is a combination of everything put together.

The word “Shivaratri” means Shiva’s nig-ht. Shiva-ratri is the day before the amava-sya or the no-moon day. There are 12 Shiva-ratris in a year. Of these, the Shivaratri that falls in the month of February-March, known as Magha in the lunar calendar, is known as the Maha Shivaratri. On this day, in the northern hemisphere of our planet, there is a particular pull upward so that every human being experiences a certain upsurge of energies within oneself. This upsurge of energies can be truly made use of only by those who have their spine erect.

Our good fortune of being human is that we are the only species that have graduated to that level of an erect spine. So we are supposed to spend this night awake, aware and with our spines erect because there is a great assistance from nature for whatever sadhana we are doing.

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev can be contacted at www.ishafoundation.org