Measuring the immeasurable?

Photo: Geoffrey Dunn

I invoke you Shiva

as the Destroyer of Time

whose matted hair is flung across the cosmos

who fills the universe with abandon

who is without beginning or end, immeasurable

and who liberates us from all attachments.

-Sivashtakam (a traditional invocation to Shiva)

Measurement is a strange addiction—it provides an illusion of control and understanding especially in times when Reality is fast eluding the usual paradigms of conquest of our minds.

Most spiritual philosophies accept that the Divine, such as it is possible to describe, is immeasurable. However most spiritual approaches advocate measurement in the form of set practices—chanting a mantra a thousand times, repeating a ritual, progressively mastering a technique and the like. Of course there are benefits to a disciplined routine in that it does allow the mind to function efficiently in the daily tasks of life.

But is this the same as experiencing complete presence in the totality of Reality? Is Reality just the schedules our minds have created as life? If so, why do we yearn for something beyond this mechanistic routine? And why, especially in the times we live in, we repeatedly experience the truth that Reality cannot be conquered by our centuries old mechanistic methods?

Measurement attempts to tame the ferocious energy of Reality, its matted locks flung across the cosmos, its wild and unpredictable dance and the awe-inspiring beauty of its unleashed infinity. None of this is measurable or even knowable by the mind.

Is it possible to approach Reality mentally? In ancient dance, Shiva is the movement of mental consciousness that moves into the fullness of its energy and meets the energy of Reality. There is incredible mental energy dissipated in our delusional attempts to make Reality bite-sized techniques. Shiva is the unleashing of that energy which happens in the instant we step into the “I don’t know” state of being or Yagna.

Then the dance happens, and we are guided in ways beyond the wildest imagination of our mental consciousness.