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Articles: Festivals | Maha Sivaratri
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Lord Siva is easily pleased. He is called Asutosh. Asutosh means 'easily pleased'. He is not a difficult Person. You can quickly please Lord Siva. If you call Him, He will come. Sometimes He is also called 'Bhole Baba', very simple, not a complicated Person. He comes to help you even unasked. He did help the Pandavas. The Pandava brothers were in war with the Kauravas in the battle in the Mahabharata. And Lord Siva helped them without their knowing that the help was being offered. Lord Siva helped the Pandavas invisibly and why not He help us? He helps all those who tread the righteous path. So let us tread the path of righteousness and be recipients of Divine Grace.
We may look at the whole thing from another angle of vision. The Sanskrit word Sivaratri means 'the night of Siva'. On this holy day we are to fast during the day and keep vigil during the night. You may be wondering why Siva is connected with the night and not with the day, in which case we can observe vigil during day-time and fast during the night! Instead of that why the whole thing has been put topsy-turvy! Siva being connected with night has a highly spiritual and mystical connotation. It is not that divinity as manifest in the form of Lord Siva has any special connection with the period we call night.
If you study deeply the Upanishads and such mystical texts of high spiritual significance, you will realise that the Supreme Being, the Absolute, is designated in its primordial condition as a supreme Darkness due to excess of light. This adjective or qualification 'due to excess of light' must be added. It is darkness because of the excess of light. When you look at the sun for a few minutes with open eyes and then look elsewhere, you will see only darkness.
The sun has dazzled you to such an extent that all appear as darkness. It is said in the Mahabharata that when Lord Sri Krishna showed the Cosmic Form in the court of the Kauravas, everything was dark, as it were. The intensity of the light was such that it looked like darkness to the eyes of man. So, in one of the famous creation-hymns of the Rigveda we have a similar reference made to the original condition of creation. There is the hymn of the Veda called the Nasadiya Sukta, wherein it is said: Tama asit tamasa gudhamagre-'Darkness there was; at first concealed in darkness.' According to us, light is perception of objects, and therefore non-perception of objects is regarded by us as night.
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