By Gurudevi Nirmalananda

The four-fold model of Consciousness details how the One, being formless, manifests into form. As one of his honored names, Shiva is called jagat-sharira, universe-bodied.

Like water becomes ice, yet is still water, Shiva becomes the universe. But he is not limited by it. Nor is he limited to the universe, for he is beyond the universe as well as being in it and being it. You are a form of the formless as am I and everyone you know.

Shiva is also being everyone you don’t know, as well as being everything that exists. Shiva is also everything that doesn’t exist, for if you can think of it, your thought is made of Shiva.

How does this come to be? He coalesces into physical matter through four dimensions. We look at this because my Baba urged us to understand the physical and subtle principles from Shiva to the earth. This gives you mastery over the world as well as a pathway to follow inward.

Shunya — the Void is Shiva’s way of hiding from himself. Since he is Beingness-Itself, he masquerades as Nothingness. In the vastness of his own being, he appears as non-being, like a vacuum. Yet when you experience the void, you are…