There is a moment in the Himalayan tradition that is considered the most important moment in the entire history of human consciousness. It did not happen in a great city. It did not happen in a magnificent temple. It happened on the banks of the sacred Kantisarovar lake in the high Himalayas, at a gathering so small that only seven people were present. And those seven people received from one extraordinary teacher a transmission of knowledge so vast and so complete that it has been feeding all of humanity’s spiritual seeking for over fifteen thousand years.
The teacher was Shiva. The seven students were the Saptarishis — the seven great sages. And what Shiva gave them that day was yoga. Not yoga as we commonly understand it — not only the physical postures that have spread across the modern world. But yoga in its full and original sense — the complete science of inner transformation. Every method by which a human being can move from confusion to clarity, from suffering to freedom, from the experience of being a small and separate self to the direct knowing of what one truly is.
The story of how this transmission came to happen begins long before that gathering on the banks of the lake.
After Shiva had performed His own inner work — after He had sat in meditation so deep and so still that the universe had reorganised itself around His stillness — something began to happen in His face that had never happened before. Tears began to flow from His eyes. Not tears of grief. Not tears of joy as we ordinarily know it. But the tears that flow when something so large and so beautiful has been understood that the body cannot contain it in any other way.
A group of sages noticed Shiva sitting in this extraordinary state. They came closer. They felt something emanating from Him — a presence, a clarity, a peace so profound that simply being near Him changed something in them. They sat near Him for days and weeks and months, unable to leave, not fully understanding what they were receiving but knowing with absolute certainty that they were in the presence of something they had spent lifetimes searching for.
But the knowledge did not transfer. Shiva sat in His own bliss, complete and self-sufficient, apparently unaware of the hungry seekers around Him. The sages grew impatient. One by one they left — until only seven remained. Seven who were willing to wait with absolute patience for as long as it took.
Shiva’s eyes opened. He looked at those seven. And He saw in them what He had been waiting to see. He saw readiness. Not intellectual readiness — they were already great scholars. He saw the readiness of people who had been emptied completely by their seeking. Who had arrived at the one place where real transmission becomes possible — the place of not knowing, of complete openness, of having let go of every idea about what they were about to receive.
Yogeshwar
He smiled. He turned to face the south — the direction of the innermost — and He began to teach.
This is why Shiva as the original teacher of yoga is called Dakshinamurti — the one who faces south — as well as Adiyogi — the first yogi. And it is why He is Yogeshwar — the lord of all yoga. Yoga means union. Ishwar means lord. Yogeshwar is the lord of union itself — the one who has achieved the most complete union possible, the union of individual consciousness with the infinite, and who then turned around and gave the entire map of that journey to humanity as a free gift.
What is extraordinary about Shiva as Yogeshwar is that He did not discover yoga for others. He discovered it for Himself. He sat because He needed to sit. He went inward because the inward was calling Him. He found what He found not as a teacher preparing a curriculum but as an explorer genuinely exploring. And when He found it — when He came back from the depths of His own inner universe — He looked at the seven patient sages and gave them everything. Every method. Every path. Every doorway through which a human being can walk toward their own liberation.
When you chant Jai Yogeshwar today you are not just celebrating a divine title. You are celebrating the most generous act of teaching in the history of consciousness. You are saying — I see what You discovered, I see what You gave, and I am celebrating it with everything I have.
Whether you practise yoga on a mat, whether you chant mantras, whether you sit in meditation, whether you simply pause for one conscious breath in the middle of a busy day — all of it flows from that morning on the banks of Kantisarovar when Shiva turned to face the south and began to speak. All of it is Yogeshwar’s gift.
Chant Jai Yogeshwar today — and if you can, take one conscious breath before you chant it. That breath is your participation in the oldest yoga class ever held. Har Har Mahadev! 🙏
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