I often reflect on how ancient traditions expressed the unexplainable through symbols and metaphors. In fact, I used the same technique in my own book. One such symbol is Lord Shiva, the destroyer of ignorance and transformer of conciousness. The one beyond duality and oneness. Unlike traditional deities whose beginnings are inscribed in genealogies, Shiva’s existence resists narrative. He is never born and he never dies.

The story told in the Puranas of Brahma and Vishnu disputing who is more supreme, only to be silenced by Shiva’s manifestation as an infinite column of light, is not just a myth. It is a mirror of our own inquiry. How do I know this? Because I’ve experienced it myself. It is through the method of Hermeticism, when a student or inquirer studies the scriptures while also experiencing the same truths directly, verifying their authenticity. The endless light is consciousness itself: limitless, timeless, and self-manifested. When the mind stretches beyond duality, beyond beginning and end, it touches that same light. Therefore, the subtitle of my book, Through the Symbolism of the Wheel, is no accident; the wheel perfectly symbolizes these principles.

In my own journeys, when asking the Supreme Self what it is, the answer often returned was love: the force that creates, sustains, and dissolves. Or light, which is the destroyer of illusion, the transformer of the self. Shiva, as the cosmic fire or flame, is indistinguishable from this principle: Sat-Chit-Ananda: truth, consciousness, bliss.

What is interesting is how the legend of Shiva resonates with Hermetic wisdom: “Like is known by like.” To see the infinite, we must grow infinite within. To grasp the light, we must become light. Shiva’s pillar is not outside us, but through us, as us.

This is not mythology to be believed; it is divine design to be experienced. Just as in design thinking we imagine futures into being, so in self-inquiry we dissolve identities until only the radiance remains. We ask: Who am I? Not the name, not the body, not the mind. And in the silence of negation, Shiva’s light shines.

It is not called Enlightenment because one becomes something supreme. It is called Enlightenment because the mind shines its own light upon itself, revealing what has always been the Ultimate Truth.

The mystery of Shiva’s origin, then, is the same as our own. Neither his beginning nor ours can be located (the symbolism of the wheel makes this clear) because both are eternal. What remains is the invitation: to live as that light, to embody love, and to recognize that in destroying illusion, we do not end life, we transform it. As I wrote in my book:

The ever-lasting, omnipresent existence, consciousness, bliss;
The Spirit beyond duality and oneness;
The no-one, yet the absolute;

– I am.

Om Namah Shivaya. All consciousness is One.