Merging with Lord Shiva
Merging with Siva is all about liberation, the earning of freedom from the body, mind and emotions through union with the Divine, ultimately in total inextricable merger of the soul in God. Having lived many lives, each soul seeks release from mortality, experiences the Divine directly through Self Realization and ultimately attains moksha, liberation from the round of births and deaths.
Scripture tells us this evolution culminates in Self Realization, which, once sufficient karma is resolved, confers moksha, release from the cycle of birth and death. Moksha,from the root much or moksh, has many denotations: to loose, to free, release, let loose, let go and thus also to spare, to let live, to allow to depart, to dispatch, to dismiss and even to relax, to spend, bestow, give away and open. Thus it means "release from worldly existence or transmigration; final or eternal emancipation."
Moksha is not a state of extinction of the soul, nor of nonexistence, nor of nonconsciousness. It is perfect freedom, an indescribable state of nondifferentiation, a proximity to the Divine within. Moksha marks an end to the Earthly sojourn, but it may also be understood as a beginning, not unlike graduation from the university. Kaivalya is another apt term for this ineffable condition of perfect detachment, freedom and oneness.
To reach this emancipation beyond all joy and sorrow, all difference and decay, the soul must remove, in order, the three fetters: karma, which is "the power of cause and effect, action and reaction;" maya, which is "the power of manifestation" sometimes called illusion; and anava, "the power of egoity or veil of duality." Once freed by God's grace from these bonds -- which do not cease to exist, but no longer have the power to bind -- the soul experiences nirvikalpa samadhi. This is the realization of the Self, Atattva Parabrahman -- timeless, formless, spaceless -- a oneness beyond all change or diversity. Self Realization is man's natural state, which each soul eventually comes to. While the ultimate goal of earthly life is the experience (or more precisely the nonexperience) of Self Realization, the by-product of that realization is moksha. These two are not synonymous.
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