Why Does Lord Shiv have three eyes? What is the symbolism of the third eye?

The Lord to worship in the evening is Lord Shiv. Darshan of Lord Shiv in the evening destroys sins from the past seven lives.

Etāni jyotirlingāni sāyaṁ prātaḥ pathenara, sapta janma kṛtam pāpam smaraṇena vinaṣyati

Remembering Lord Shiv destroys sins from the past seven lives. If you worship Lord Shiv daily in the morning and evening, then all sins will be destroyed.

Look, no sin has the power to sustain in front of God’s name. Continuously saying, “I am a sinner, I will not attain emancipation, my life is ruined,” means you trust the power of sins more. Instead you should trust the power of God’s name more.

Nām sankirtanayasyā sarva pāp pranāśanam, pranāmo dukh śamanaḥ tam namāmi hariṃ param.

Light can enter where there is darkness but can darkness enter where there is light? So who is more powerful? Light.

Thus, we must trust God’s name. Faith in God’s name and the guidance from sant (spiritual leaders) manifests such a positive energy in life that all negativities are destroyed.

Understand that Lord Shiv’s third eye has opened. When His third eye opens, fire emanates. Lord Shiv has 3 eyes. What are these three eyes? The sun, moon and fire. The third eye is fire. When it opens, that which deserves to burn will burn.  Negativities and sins must be destroyed.

Thereafter, Lord Shiv spread the ashes produced on His body. This symbolises that in the evening when you worship Lord Shiv and you may have performed some tasks during the day that were not right or developed ill feelings, these accumulated bad deeds must be burnt.

Why should we store unnecessary things or luggage belonging to someone else in our house? This creates lots of problems. Remove them. Even your mobile phone has a delete button with which you delete unnecessary things. Thus, we should have a delete button within us also. However, what do we do? Rather than deleting, we remember the inappropriate words someone spoke to us or their behaviour towards us. We keep mulling this. Remembering all this means you are agreeing to rent someone you do not like in your house. In fact, it’s not even an agreement. They don’t want to stay but we are forcing them to!

So, Mahadev, whose action is to destroy, is worshipped because the unworthy must be destroyed. Forgetting the unworthy is a blessing. Remember what is worthy of remembering.