Navaratri (“nine nights”), Nava means “nine”
and Ratri means “night”. The Lord in the
form of the Mother Goddess is worshipped in Her various forms as Durga, Lakshmi
and Saraswati. Though the Goddess is one, She is represented and worshipped in
three different aspects. On the first three nights of the festival, Durga is
worshipped. On the following three, Lakshmi and then Saraswati Devi on the last
three nights. The following tenth day is called Vijayadasami. Vijaya means
“victory”, the victory over our own minds that can come only when we have
worshipped these three: Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati.
Durga Devi Havana (sacrifice), we invoke that Divine Power within us to destroy
our decadent tendencies.
The nine days of the festival also
represent the three stages. During the first three days, The Mother is
worshipped in her powerful, destructive, terrifying aspect. First three days, the devotee prays to the
Mother to use her destructive power to destroy their
imperfections and their faults. We prays
for Her to make us pure enough to receive the divine energy. Thus, the first three days of Navratri are
devoted to annihilating the negative tendencies of our minds and hearts. Shakti is the
energy of the Lord. Without the divine
Shakti, (MA DURGA or MA KALI) even God is powerless. Additionally, everything for which we pray –
knowledge, prosperity, and love – is
manifest in the Divine Feminine. Maha
Laxmi is the Goddess of prosperity. Goddess Saraswati is the Goddess of
knowledge.
This shows that without the Divine
Mother, our prayers would be in worthless. Navaratri is the time of worship of
the Divine Mother. Beautiful pujas, Havans, and Aartis are performed for Her.
Through singing Her glories, we pray that She will purify our lives and bring
us health, happiness, peace, and prosperity. During Navratri, some devotees
of Durga or kali, observe a fast and
prayers are offered for the protection of health and prosperity. A period of
introspection and purification, Navratri is traditionally an auspicious and
religious time for starting new ventures.
Navratri is celebrated as
the time that Goddess Durga (Shakti) conquered the evil demon, Mahishasura, It
is said that Mahishasura was dominion horror over the world and nobody was
capable to destroy him. Thus, all God
approached Goddess Durga – also known as Shakti – together and gave Her their
weapons. Thus armed with Divine Shakti and
the most powerful weapons, She conquered the demon. She was most capable but
she got the help from all. She had fighting for nine straight nights. On the tenth day, Vijaya Dasami, the demons
was destroyed or kill. “Mahisha” meaning “buffalo.” Isn’t there a
buffalo in our minds as well? The buffalo stands for Tamo-guna, the quality of laziness, darkness, ignorance
and inertia. We have these qualities too. We love
to sleep. Although we may have a lot of energy and potential inside us, we
prefer to do nothing - just like the buffalo that likes to lie in pools of
water and we sit with computer, IPod.. etc. In the Puraanic story, Durga Devi’s
killing of the Mahisha demon is, symbolically, the destruction of the Tamo-guna
within us that is very difficult to destroy.
Goddess Durga wears red, which
symbolizes divine action. The Goddess is
never idle. She is always busy in the
destruction of evil in the world. As we
vow to remove the evil from our own hearts and our own lives. Our worship of
Sakthi reconfirms the scientific theory that energy is constant and imperishable.
It is always in one form and it cannot be created or destroyed. Hinduism is the
only religion in the world, which gives so much importance to the mother aspect
of God because we believe that the mother is the creative aspect of the
absolute.
The second three days of
Navaratri are days in which the Mother is worshipped in her
prosperity-bestowing form. Once the
negative tendencies have been annihilated, one is ready to begin developing a
positive, spiritual personality. These are
the days that positive attributes replace the negative attributes, which were
removed. These days are the worship of
Maha Lakshmi, they frequently pray for material wealth or prosperity.
They pray for success in their
life and for the removal of
obstructions in their path. The
prosperity Maha Laxmi bestows is not
only for the material prosperity, but it is also for the– calmness, peace,
generosity, compassion, and love. For knowledge to dawn within us, we
have to prepare our minds. The mind must be pure, concentrated, and
single-pointed; this purification of the mind is obtained through the worship
of Lakshmi Devi. In our society today, however, when we think of “Lakshmi”, we think only counting dollar bills..and gold! Everybody likes
Lakshmi Puja (Lakshmi worship) because they think she represents material
wealth. But what is real wealth? Even if we have material wealth but no
self-discipline or self-control, nor the values of love, kindness, respect and
sincerity, all our material wealth will be lost or destroyed. The real wealth
is the inner wealth of spiritual values that we practice in our lives, by which
our minds become purified. Only when we have
these noble values, we will be able to preserve our material wealth and
make good use of it. Otherwise, money itself becomes a problem.
In Taittriya Upanishad, They first asked
to have all the noble virtues fully developed in them because in the absence of
right values and good qualities, all our money will be wasted, and there are
countless examples of this in the world around us. Our wealth of virtues is our
true Lakshmi. Its importance is shown by the fact that Adi Shankaracharya
himself, in Vivekachudamani, describes that sat
sampati, or six forms of wealth (calmness of mind, self-control, self
withdrawal, forbearance, faith and single-pointedness) that are to be
cultivated to attain wisdom. These virtues are important because
our goal is victory over the mind. The victory such that we do not get
disturbed by every change that takes place in our lives. This victory comes
only when the mind is prepared, and this mental preparation is the symbolism of
the Lakshmi Puja.
During the last three days,
Goddess Saraswati is worshipped as of true wisdom and understanding. Once the devotee has been purified by Ma Durga
and once he has had the spiritual wealth of inner peace, calmness, compassion,
and love bestowed upon him by Maha Laxmi, then he is ready to receive the true
light of understanding. This wisdom cannot come unless the devotee has passed
through the first two stages.
Just as one would not pour divine nectar into an unclean, broken, and
impure cup, one can similarly not expect to have divine wisdom granted unless
the vessel has been purified and made divine.
Frequently on the spiritual path, seekers wish to attain divine
knowledge without first purifying themselves and attaining positive qualities. Victory over the mind can be gained only
through knowledge, through understanding; and it is Goddess Saraswati who
represents this highest knowledge of the Self. Although there are many kinds of
knowledge of Science, Engineering.. etc.. but the real, knowledge is in the spiritual
knowledge. Lord Krishna himself says in the Bhagavad Gita: “The knowledge of
the Self is the knowledge”; and He adds, “It is my vibhuti, my glory.” In other
words, we may have knowledge of many other subjects and sciences but if we do
not know OUR OWN SELF, then that is the
greatest loss. Therefore, the supreme knowledge is the knowledge of the Self
that is represented by Goddess Saraswati.
Thus, at Navaratri, Goddess Durga is invoked
first to remove impurities from the mind. The Goddess Lakshmi is invoked to
cultivate the noble values and qualities. Finally, Saraswati is invoked for
gaining the highest knowledge of the Self. This is the significance of the
three sets of three nights when all these three are gained subjectively, and
then there will be Vijayadasami, the day of true victory!
At Navaratri time, the Rasa
dance of Sri Krishna and the Gopis is also performed. As the mind becomes
purer, calmer quieter, and more cheerful and greater understanding is gained,
do we not feel happier? Similarly, the Rasa dance is the dance of joy and
realization. However, now a day, the theme of the Rasa seems to have been lost
in our society. The true meaning and purpose of the ritual is often forgotten,
as more importance is given to other types of dancing.
Navaratri festival celebrated
at Nighttime generally, the time when we go to sleep, so the spiritual message
is, “You have lived long enough in the sleepy ignorance of Tamo-guna. It is
time to wake up now. Please wake up!” For a puja, unfortunately, we are never
willing to stay up late and so we ask, “What time will it end?” For a party, we
never ask this question. If the party ends at 1.00 A.M., we say “What! The
party is finished?! What kind of a party is that?!” Yet we find it difficult to
stay awake for a puja!
The Importance of NAVRATRI Ritual :
Not everyone, it is true,
will be of the intellectual type to appreciate everything philosophically.
Therefore, philosophy or spiritual truth must be demonstrated visually in some
ritualistic form. In this way, when
children are first introduced to it, they enjoy a dance or a festival, and then
later begin to question, “What is this dance? Why are we doing this Puja? What
is the meaning of Navaratri?” So the purpose of the concretized ritual is
fulfilled when these questions begin to arise in the children’s minds. Unfortunately,
when we take our children to functions at the temples and they begin to ask
questions about what they see, we cannot answer them. Yet when the children revolt later as
teenagers, we say, “What happened to the children? These kids are terrible. We
never used to question our religion!”
We take pride in the fact that
we never used to question anything, but it would have been better if we had
asked questions and found out. Why did we not ask? Because of intellectual
inertia. Inertia is of different kinds. Physical inertia is not as bad because
it is usually temporary. There are also mental or emotional stupors that some
people remain in, but the intellectual inertia is the worst kind because under
its influence, we do not want to think at all. It is said that people can live
without air for two minutes, without water for a few days, without food for a
month or so, and without thinking for generations! Some people just do not want
to think. This is our inner Mahisha (the lazy buffalo), and our spiritual
Mahisha is that we do not want to wake up from this sleep of ignorance.
As we can see, the theme
of the entire Vedas is reflected in the Navaratri festival: Purify the mind and
remove all negativities; cultivate positive virtues; gain spiritual knowledge
and transcend limitations. This is the real victory - the dance of joy -
ritualistically performed at night, as it is also on Shivaratri (auspicious
night), to signify our spiritual awakening. The true light of Divine Wisdom can only be bestowed once the
seeker has annihilated his negative tendencies and begun to develop a positive,
spiritual attitude. Therefore, Navaratri should be a time of not only
celebrating Goddess Durga’s triumph over the evil demon, but rather it should
also be a time of praying to Goddess Durga to remove the evil from within us.
We
must pray to her to annihilate our inner enemies – our ego, our greed, our
anger – just as she vanquished the evil demon.
These traits inside us are just as powerful, just as dangerous, and just
as deadly as any of the Rakshasas.
HAPPY NAVRATRI Rita Sheth
