On Shiva – The Adiyogi or the first Yogi

In Yogic culture, Shiva is Adiyogi or the originator of Yoga. Sadhguru Shares his wisdom about Shiva, the originator of Yoga in this article in the Huffington Post.

According to the yogic lore, over fifteen thousand years ago, Shiva attained to his full enlightenment and abandoned himself in an intense ecstatic dance upon the Himalayas. When his ecstasy allowed him some movement, he danced wildly. When it became beyond movement, he became utterly still.

People saw that he was experiencing something that nobody had known before, something they were unable to fathom. Interest developed and people came wanting to know what this was. They came, they waited and they left because the man was oblivious to their presence. He was either in intense dance or absolute stillness, completely uncaring of what was happening around him. Soon, everyone left...Except for seven men. 

These seven people were insistent that they must learn what this man had in him, but Shiva ignored them. They pleaded and begged him, "Please, we want to know what you know." Shiva dismissed them and said, "You fools. The way you are, you are not going to know in a million years. There is a tremendous amount of preparation needed for this. This is not entertainment."

So they started preparing. Day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, they prepared. Shiva just chose to ignore them. But on a full moon day, after many years of preparation, when the solstice had shifted from the summer solstice to the winter solstice - which in this tradition is known as Dakshinayana - the Adiyogi looked at these seven people and saw that they had become shining receptacles of knowing. They were absolutely ripe to receive. He could not ignore them anymore. They grabbed his attention. 

He watched them closely for the next few days and when the next full moon rose, he decided to become a Guru. The Adiyogi transformed himself into the "Adi Guru" or the "first guru." The first Guru was born on that day which is today known as Guru Pournami. On the banks of Kanti Sarovar, a lake that lies a few kilometers above Kedarnath in the Himalayas, Shiva turned South to shed his grace upon the human race, and the transmission of the yogic science to these seven people began.