WHERE DID THE ELIXIR OF LIFE COME FROM ?

Amrita, the nectar of life !

Amrita ( the elixir of life ) is what you take if you want to live forever, and poison is what destructs life, the two extremes of life itself , one which sustains life forever , the other brings it to a grinding halt within seconds !

Now here's the story behind Amrita , the nectar of life and how it came about ! It was one fine dat that both the Demons and the Devtas, wanted to have the amrit, the nectar that would make one live long avoiding death. The amrit was however in the waters of the great ocean and could only be procured by churning the huge ocean to get out the nectar. Both the demons and the devta gods got together to collectively churn the big ocean.

They started the churning of the ocean with mandhara mountain as the stem and serpent vasuki as the rope, and in the entire process, due to the pain that the serpent vasuki felt, it emitted the poison hala which was very destructive. At the same time due to the churning process yet another poison came out from the ocean .Now both these poisons put together became a disastrous poison that threatened the very existence of all including the devta gods, demons and the lives of all others in the area.

What was to be done under such dire circumstances ? Lord Vishnu made his best efforts to stop the poisons but his body turned blue, and he just could not stop it despite his best efforts. Being scared of the destroying power of the poison, all of them sought the help of Lord Shiva, And here is the flip side , when it came to the Amrit , all these people never thought of offering it first to Lord Shiva, it was only the poisons that were offered to Him !

The Graceful God took the poison as if it is a fruit in the hand. Asked all of them, what He should do with that. They pleaded that the poison would annihilate them all if He left it off. Lord smilingly put it into His mouth ! But isn't all the worlds very much inside the God ? Though it will not affect the Lord, but the worlds would be again affected by the poison, Goddess Shakti, the mother of all creatures, stopped the poison in His throat by putting her hand in His throat. The poison stayed there as a small black (blue) stain. Hence the Lord is called NiIlakanthar .

Now with the blessings of God, the divines continued to churn the ocean and got the amriit. God gave the amrita to the devta gods, but had only the poison. Remember, it is Lord Shiva, who remains Eternal and does not ever need to imbibe the nectar of life , he is therefore the greatest nectar of life !