Why Hindus Worship The Shiv Ling By Kartik Mohan A guy named Philip asked me on this forum to explain

why it is that Hindus worship the Shiv Ling. I am very glad that he did , not only because it gives me an opportunity to explain, but to expose the truth of what so called "Christian ethics" are all about. Christianity, after all, is hardly a religion - it has always been exactly what it started out as, a political agenda in spiritual guise. Its ends are the imperialistic subjugation of non-Christians, and to achieve them it has relied consistently on the propogation of lies and the falsification of history- not to mention the manipulation of our very notions of what is right and wrong. Unfortunately, Christianity is so widely followed in the world today that these manipulations have even permeated the ethics of non-Christians. Brother Hindus, we had better beware of this, because in surrendering to it we are undermining the worldwide spiritual legacy of an ancient civilised era of which we are the last surviving inheritors. First, to answer the question. Philip asks, why is it that we worship the Shiv Ling- isn't it Shiva's penis? My reply to that is yes, and that is exactly the reason. The Shiv Ling, depicted in consummate union with the Yoni ( vulva ) of Shakti, is representative of the most wonderful and miraculous feature of life itself. What distinguishes life from nonlife, after all? Above all else, the ability to reproduce its own kind. If we are to revere the concept that life itself is sacred- which even the Christians claim to believe- why is the most characteristic feature of life, the act of progenition, any less sacred? It is not only sex we are talking about here. It is the consummation of the vast and different energies of the male and female universal prerogative, of which the Shiv Ling in union is a symbolcelebrating the fact that humankind has two sexes, each with its unique attributes and qualities, and when they come together, they produce a synergy, they create MORE life, they become more than the sum of their individual parts. Many ancient civilisations recognized the wonder of this concept- including the Chinese, who represent it somewhat more abstractly in the symbol of Yin and Yang. It is a tribute to these ancient and wise people that they were able to perceive true miracles, true wonderment, in the very features of life which surround us in our everyday existence. They did not need to have some man walk upon water to see a miracle, nor see crippled people cured instantaneously- or, worse yet, read about it in some book and call their blind adherence to such beliefs "faith". Now. My friend Philip was actually horrified, appalled, revolted by the very idea that we heathens could worship something such as a penis. The REALLY interesting question is, WHY? Have you ever really thought about the assumptions that cause us to think of sex as something "unclean"? Have you ever wondered why a joke about sex, in the English language, is referred to as a "dirty" joke? Why is a picture of the human body in its natural state thought of as a "dirty" picture? Why do thousands of teenagers, non Christian and Christian alike, go through entirely unnecessary agonies of guilt , bound by the belief that masturbation is a sin? Why does such painful ignorance manifest itself generation after generation, all over the world? The answer is, because we have been conditioned to think of it that way- and here is the pervasiveness of manipulative Christian "ethics" I talked about earlier. When Christians start schools, it is not because they want to teach us, it is because they want to teach us their lies. And the lie that sex is evil, sex is unclean, sex is inherently in and of itself immoral - the lie that is brainwashed into us in spite of our knowing better since childhood- is perhaps Christianity's oldest lie of all. And like all of its lies, it was meant, at the time of its invention, to serve a political agenda in a spiritual guise. The Bible never says, in so many words, that sex is a sin. In Genesis, though, it contends that Adam and Eve were cast out from the Garden of Eden for committing between them the "Original Sin"- and then shortly thereafter they had a son. Later, in the New Testament, it is one of the cardinal principles of Christianity that "Virgin Mary" was more virtuous than any other human being, because she was "without sin"- i.e., she was allegedly still a "virgin" when she gave birth to the alleged "Jesus". Add to this the superstition that the entire Christian world associates with sex, the way in which Puritanism reviles sex, the sheer guilt that Christianity associates with anything viscerally pleasurable ( because "Jesus died on the cross for their sins" )- and the conclusion is obvious. The Bible may not ever have spelled out that sex is a sin, but most of the Christian world, including my dear Philip, are hidebound to view it that way. So that today, life is sacred but the creation of life is a sin. A thirteen year old girl who becomes pregnant because she is too young to know any better, is reviled by Christians as having committed the Original Sin. Yet, if she has an

abortion rather than bring a child she cannot care for into the world, they will revile her doubly as a murderer. This is the hypocrisy of which Christianity consists to its very core. And it all exists for a reason, as I shall proceed to explain. More than 4000 years ago, civilised human beings all over the world were essentially polytheistic, essentially tolerant people. The centre of their godhood, though, their primary deity, in almost all cases was not male. She was the Mother Goddess, in one or another of her manifestations. She was the Bounteous Earth, the giver of fertility and nurturance and sustenance to all her children without asking anything in return, the source of all life when it is created and the receiver of all things back into her womb when they die. She was an extremely natural deity to worship- when people had no hangups about procreation being part of the wonder of life. She had female attributes, the wife, the mother, the giver of unconditional love, the bearer of and caretaker of children. Her fertility was what allowed the circle of life to go on, and it was only natural that humans all around the world worship this. And they did. We in India knew the Mother Goddess - there are representations of her dating back to the Indus Valley Civilisation. Hindus know her as Shakti, and in her manifestations as Durga / Kali / Parvati. In the civilisation of Persia, they knew her as Ishtar. In Babylonia and Egypt, as Astarte. In ancient Greece, as Hecate or Demeter. In Rome, as Vesta. Even in the New World, despite no evidence of any contact between Eurasian and American civilisations of that era- there are temples and representations of a Mother Goddess- it is obvious there would be, because she is the natural object for humanity to worship. Not, however, for a tribe of desert barbarians 4000 years ago called the Israelites. They had a different kind of god altogether. A Male God, with a Capital G. They called him Yahweh, and he is the direct antecedent of the " Lord Our God " of the Christians, and of Allah of the Muslims. He was not about fertility and caring at all. He was a wrathful, vengeful, jealous , angry god, full of violent hatred and intolerance. He spoke out of a "burning bush" and instructed Moses , saying " I Am That I Am "- if this is unbelievable to you, don't read the Bible, watch The Ten Commandments by Cecil B DeMille, it really is more entertaining. He told Moses, among other things, that his followers must not worship False Gods, that HE was the One True God, and then asked Moses to go with his staff and smite another people who believed in false gods, the Egyptians, with the full force of His power. And there began the first of the imperialism that Christianity embodies today. A belief, stronger than any other, that the nonbeliever is a lesser human being than a Christian, because he is going to hell, and if he cannot be "saved" by being converted to Christianity, he should be killed before he spreads his views any further. A political agenda truly unprecedented. Go forth and multiply, and kill whatever stands in your way, because I Am That I Am and I am on Your Side. The Jews never went about converting people with the rabid fervour of Christians, but they had a political agenda, certainly. To that end, it was necessary to revile and discredit other peoples, the neighbouring civilisations of Egypt and Babylon , and part of this was achieved by discrediting their principal deity- who was, of course, the Mother Goddess. How was this achieved? Through effecting a remarkable paradigm shift. If men, physically stronger, could be made to despise and subjugate women rather than treat them as equals- that would put an end to the worship of any Goddess . If fertility, and procreation itself, could be defamed as not miraculous but sinful things- though this went against all the natural instincts human beings had followed so far- if people could be made to feel unclean for worshipping these things, they would reject the Mother Goddess, because she stood for fertility and the miracle of life. Hence, sex is the Original Sin. Hence, the human body in its natural state is dirty. Hence, Philip is horrified when we worship the act of procreation. How was this paradigm shift effected? Very slowly, but with the bitter doggedness of true fanatics. It began with the murder of Queen Jezebel as described in the Old Testament. It began with the razing of the Temple to Astarte in Jerusalem , and the building of a Temple to Yahweh by King David in its place. It carried on for thousands of years, hand in glove with more overt political actions, such as the conversion of Roman Emperor Constantine I to Christianity in AD ca. 300. It was at this time that what we know as the Bible today, was compiled and written- with a very hardcore political agenda already in place laying its foundations. The fall of Rome followed, and was followed by the Dark Ages, which were followed by the Crusades, which were followed by Colonialism and the Inquisition. The faith that had sprung from the Israelites spread like a metastizing cancer over the face of the earth. And it holds most of the earth in its poisonous grasp today. And still, the denigration of women in society that took hold as a result of this agenda continues. Till early this century, Christian countries did not give women the right to vote. Even now, in Islamic countries- where a monotheistic , intolerant God descended from Yahweh holds sway in his most perverse

caricature- well, we know how they treat their women. Brothers, we all knew the Mother Goddess once. We Hindus still know her as Shakti today. We are the only ones who are so lucky as to have survived. Persia, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Americas- all fell to the brutal viciousness of the Christian onslaught...and later, parts of Asia to the Islamic onslaught. They were tolerant, civilised people, just as we are today. That was why they could be wiped out and replaced by Christians. But we have survived. We are heirs to the true legacy of humanism, and we must never forget this. We must recognize the lies of the Christians for what they are, we must recognize their activities of conversion for the imperialist evil they represent, and we must fight these things with all our efforts to the bitter end. One day, Christianity's mighty edifice will fall under the weight of its own contradictions . Till then, we must bear the torch of the legacy of pagan humanism that will ultimately prevail. ________________________________________________________________________________ Taken from yahoo answers: Shiva (Sanskrit: Auspicious One), or Siva, is one of the main Deities of Hinduism, worshipped as the paramount lord by the Saivite sects of India. Shiva is one of the most complex gods of India, embodying seemingly contradictory qualities. He is the destroyer and the restorer, the great ascetic and the symbol of sensuality, the benevolent herdsman of souls and the wrathful avenger. Shiva was originally known as Rudra, a minor deity addressed only three times in the Rig Veda. He gained importance after absorbing some of the characteristics of an earlier fertility god and became Shiva, part of the trinity, or trimurti, with Vishnu and Brahma.

Shiva is represented in a variety of forms. One such form is as a lingam. The ovoid shape is a representation of the absolute perfection of Lord Shiva - if that which is beyond form had to be given form, the lingam would be the closest form to the mystical experience of the absolute perfection of Shiva. The Story of the Shiva Lingam: Shiva saw not sense in the transitory pleasures of life, so he rejected samsara, smeared his body with ash, closed his eyes and performed austerities. Shiva's tapas generated so much heat that his body transformed into a pillar of fire - a blazing lingam that threatened to destroy the whole world. The gods did not know how to control Shiva's fire. Suddenly there appeared a yoni - the divine vessel of the mother-goddess. It caught the fiery lingam and contained its heat, thus saving the cosmos from untimely destruction. Shiva is often pictured in a pacific mood with his consort Parvati, as the cosmic dancer Nataraja, as a naked ascetic, as a mendicant beggar, as a yogi Dhakshinamurthy, and as the androgynous union of Shiva and Parvati in one body (Ardhanarisvara). http://o3.indiatimes.com/kashmir_seh_chi ________________________________________________________________________________ Shiva Linga is a wide spread Indian Phallic figure. It consists of a feminine base Yoni or vagina and a rising masculine portion the Phallus or penis. The Linga artifacts, dating from the first century BC to the third century AD, are shaped like realistic Phalli. Thereafter the shape becomes progressively more abstract. By medieval times, its observable portion, rising from the Yoni, forms a round block with domed apex. Shiva, the lord of erect Phallus (urdhvalinga), is traced to the ithyphallic figure of Indus Valley civilization or to the

phallic images found more generally in prehistoric India. The epics and Puranas tell how a great fire appeared from the cosmic waters, and from this flame Linga Shiva emerged to claim supremacy and worship over Brahma and Vishnu, when he was castrated because he seduced sages wives in the pine forests of Himalayas. He castrated himself because no one could castrate the Supreme Lord. Thus fallen phallus of the Supreme Lord destroyed all the worlds until it reached the Yoni of Uma/Parvati and cooled down. All procreation of worlds started after the worship of Yoni-Linga was restored and all Gods, including Vishnu and Brahma accepted supremacy of Lord Shiva. Lord Shivas other form is Ardhanariswara, half man and half woman. Lord Shiva, with his consort Parvati, is always in a celestial dance of procreation and destruction of the worlds. He is not only the embodiment of Kama (the sexual lust, desire or pleasure, the force that is the basis for the evolution of diverse life forms and Humans on earth) in the forms of Phallus and androgynous Ardhanarishwara, but also the destroyer of Kama when he destroyed Kamadeva only to restore his life at the request of Kamas wife Rati, the coitus or the sexual intercourse. Without the sexual desire (Kama) there is no sexual intercourse (Rati) and no procreation. Lord Shivas manifestations are memorialized in the local texts of great shrines ranging from temple complexes of Khajuraho in the north to Madhurai in the south. Shiva mythology, in fact, is a rich source of Indian thinking about sexuality, social relations, ritual, cosmic process, and metaphysics. The Male-Female union in the form of Phallus or Shiva Linga or Yoni-Linga or the Ardhanarishwara may be visualized as a parallel to the Chinese philosophy of Yin-Yang or the Male-Female. Metaphysically, it also is the most scientific philosophy that explains fundamentals of existence through positive and negative or male and female aspects of matter and life. Moksha is only after Kama, of the four principles of lifeDharma, Ardha, Kama, and Moksha. Kama is a sacred duty of men and women. Unfortunately, some of us are ashamed of it because of Christian and Islamic influences. It was unacceptable, shameful and sinful to the Christians. They denounced it without understanding the culture, wrote demeaning articles, made laws and were able to influence the population to some extent. Their purpose was to teach us (the cultures which consider sex as sacred) the true path to God, the Christianity that considers sex as sin and purification of which is attained only by the blood of Jesus, the savior. Victorian Christians had the same kind of shock when they colonized Polynesian islands, for those islanders were sexually explicit in their lifestyle. The shocked Christian missionaries vowed and succeeded to eradicate the satanic culture by converting them to Christianity! Fortunately, in the Indian continent non-Christians and non-Muslims still survive and continue age-old practices of respect for nature, animals and recognize the sacred aspect of sex. That is why we are considered an old and continuing civilization without any break, while our brethren in Europe lost their religion and culture totally to Christianity. The Indian reformers, with the British influence and help, got rid of some oppressive customs like Devdasi, Basivi, Sati etc., that forced women into prostitution and self-immolation in the name of religion. Ironically, today the Indian society looks down upon the west as a promiscuous society, and attempts to protect itself from the western vulgarity, indiscrimination and extramarital sex by censorship, a legacy of puritanical Christian and Islamic influence, while maintaining the sacred sensuality in the religion and within the marriage. Source(s): http://www.vepachedu.org/linga.htm ________________________________________________________________________________ Linga means "sign, mark, or symbol". It also refers to a digging implement or plough. Since the plough readies the earth for insemination, the word linga is also applied to the phallus, particularly as the phallic emblem of Shiva. Though Shiva is considered the destroyer (Trimurti) according to Hindu belief, creation (Srishti) follows destruction. The linga is therefore associated with the sexual union of Shiva and Parvati, which results in creation. It is a symbol of the procreative power of the universe. Linga is derived from the Sanskrit word lingam, which comes from li meaning, "to dissolve" and gam "to move on". This refers to the belief that one appears as a being in the world and then dissolves back into the universe. A Shivalinga is phallus-shaped and fixed on a base, which is shaped like a yoni. The structure symbolises the supreme creative energy. It is usually made of stone but can also be of wood, metal, crystal, and soapstone.

There are various explanations as to why the linga represents Shiva. According to the Vamana Purana, after Sati's death, Shiva went to mourn in the forest. Seeing the virile god, the wives of the sages living in the forest were enamoured and followed Shiva around. Enraged, the sages cursed Shiva, causing his phallus to fall off. The moment it touched the ground, his phallus started growing. Soon the earth, unable to support its weight, began quivering. When Brahma and Vishnu realised why the earth was shaking, they requested Shiva to take back his phallus. Shiva consented to do so on the condition that the sages worshipped his phallus. He pronounced that nothing would be impossible for one who worshipped the Shivalinga. The Linga Purana says that Brahma and Vishnu were once arguing over who was the supreme being. Suddenly, there appeared Sivalinga before them a huge column of fire. Both of them decided to find one end each. Whoever returned first would be acknowledged as supreme. Vishnu assumed the form of a boar and dug into the earth. Brahma, in the form of a swan, flew upwards. They searched for days but in vain. Then Shiva appeared in the fiery column. Brahma and Vishnu realised their mistake and acknowledged Shiva as the Supreme Being. The Shivalinga represents that column of fire Jyotirlinga The phallic cult appears to have been prevalent in India since the Indus Valley Civilisation (c. 3000 BC - 700 BC). Emblems resembling the linga and yoni have been discovered in excavations of ancient cities. Although the Vedas are contemptuous of the linga because of its association with the phallus, later literature like the Puranas and tantric texts laud phallic worship. According to these texts, Brahma, Vishnu and other gods live at the site where Shiva exists in the form of a linga. The Vamana Purana says that during Chaturmasya, Shiva sleeps in all lingas. Therefore, praying at any linga during this time is considered especially auspicious. It is believed that the land within 100 cubits (about 160 ft) of a linga is very sacred and called Shivasthala. There are approximately 30 million lingas in temples and shrines all over India. Most of them are named after the place where they are located or after the person who established them there. Lingas fall into three categories. The first are the Anadi or Svayambhu, or self-generated lingas. They are believed to be the most sacred and are said to have fallen from heaven. Next are the Sithavara, or fixed lingas. These are crafted and then, after an initiation ceremony done according to Puranic rites, installed at a sacred location. It is believed that once a linga is installed, it should never be moved as that would result in a calamity. The third category of lingas are the Jangam, or movable lingas. These are the miniature lingas, which are made of stone, clay, metal, or other material. They are worn as amulets and necklaces, or worshipped in the homes of Shiva's devotees. The actual worship of the Shivalinga begins with bathing it, first with water mixed with earth, and then with water mixed with the Panchagavya. The linga is then smeared with sandalwood paste. Next, flowers and leaves are offered especially bel leaves. Next comes the arati, followed by the devotee's prayer. Shiva is believed to be very hottempered: bathing the linga and applying sandalwood paste are believed to soothe him.