There are many names for Shiva. One name that is very commonly used is Soma or Somasundara. Soma could literally mean the moon, but soma essentially means inebriation or intoxication. If one does not get inebriated, not with outside substances but with the life process itself, the simple process of waking up in the morning, attending to your body’s needs, eating, earning your living, protecting yourself from all the predators around you and going back to bed every day can take such a big toll. That’s all that is happening to most human beings right now. The simple process of life has turned into a hell. This is simply because they are just trying to live life without drinking from it.
The moon is referred to as soma, which means the source of intoxication. If you have gone out on a moonlit night somewhere where there are no electric lights, or if you just look at the moonlight, slowly, you will get lightheaded. Have you noticed this? We can do it without the moonlight also, but moonlight does it very well! It is because of this quality that the moon is referred to as the source of intoxication.
Shiva uses the moon as a decoration because he is a great yogi who is intoxicated all the time, but he sits in great alertness. To enjoy the intoxication, you must be alert. Even when you drink, you try to stay awake and enjoy the intoxication. And that is how yogis are – totally drunk, but fully alert.
The science of yoga gives this pleasure to you to be internally drunk all the time. Yogis are not against pleasure. It is just that they are unwilling to settle for little pleasures. They are greedy. They know if you drink a glass of wine it just gets you a little buzz, and tomorrow morning, you get a headache and the works. They are not willing to settle for that. With yoga, they can be totally drunk all the time, but one hundred percent stable and alert. This cannot happen by drinking something or taking in a chemical. This can happen only if you are producing and consuming your own narcotic! And nature has given you this possibility.
There has been a lot of research in the last couple of decades, and a particular scientist found that in the human brain, there are millions of cannabis receptors. If you simply keep your body in a certain way, the body will produce its own narcotic, and the brain is waiting to receive it. It is only because the human body produces its own narcotic that feelings of peace, pleasure and joy can happen within you without any stimulus from outside.
When the scientist wanted to give this chemical an appropriate name, he went through various scriptures around the world and could not find anything that he was satisfied with. Then he came down to India and found the word ananda, or bliss. So he called it Anandamide. If you generate a sufficient amount of Anandamide in your system, then you can be drunk all the time, but fully awake, wide awake.