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| By ShotgunMavericks - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62881400 |
The Navaratris have begun. The auspicious nine-day pujas kickstart the festival season in north India that will culminate in Diwali, with Dussehra as a marker in between. Restaurants offer “fast” food in deference to devotees, while newspapers billow out with advertisements and shopping centres load up with attractive discounts. This is, literally, the month that the Indian economy counts on to see it through till the next year.
Fasting and shopping apart, what is the significance of the Navaratri festival and its modalities? Let us try to look beyond the traditions as explained to us normally. Read on with an open mind. You are most welcome to disagree.
Navratri consists of the worship of Durga in myriad forms. Durga is believed to represent the feminine aspect of the Divine, the absolute supreme god. Nine forms of Durga are worshipped in the Navaratris - Shailaputri (Parvati), Brahmacharini, Chandraghanta, Kushmanda (symbolising Lakshmi), Skandamata, Katyayani, Kalaratri, Mahagauri and Sidhidatri (Saraswati).
According to traditions in some southern states, three forms of the primary goddess are worshipped for three nights each - Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati.
Two sets of Navaratris are popularly celebrated - one in March-April, the Spring, and one in September-October, the Autumn. The first is tailored around the birth of Sri Rama, while the post-monsoon festival is around Rama’s victory over Ravana. It is interesting to note that these dates can be somewhat correlated to the equinoxes that fell on March 20 and September 23 this year.
Interestingly, too, the Jewish New Year of Rosh Hashanah, or Yom Teruah, falls on the first day of the post-monsoon Navaratris. It is the first of the Ten High Holy Days in Judaism, known as the Yamim Noraim. There are more parallels, but let us just acknowledge them and move on.
According to Indian spiritual tradition, a human being is the lowest manifestation of the divine being we describe as Soul, who arises from the absolute supreme god or Paramatma. The child of god, called Atma, manifests itself as a being through what is described as Jivatma, the soul incarnate. The purpose of the human life is to gather experiences and then unite with the Jivatma, and then to the Atma.
This is easier said than done, for the agent of the Soul Incarnate, the personality, which resides in the body, falls in love with all the aspects of incarnation, broadly called Maya. It forgets the original plan of reporting back to its Master (something like what has happened to the Vikram Lander!).
Spiritual practice, regardless of the school of thought, is broadly tied to reuniting the human being with the soul and eventually, to God. The techniques, broadly, are twofold: purification and meditation.
Religion as laid down in the ancient texts tries to do this on the scale of the masses, subtly, without letting on that the masses are being shepherded towards god.
So, several times during the year, in the observance of festivals, they are made to undertake precisely the same techniques - purification through fasting, and meditation in the form of puja, during which a lot of shlokas are chanted by well-meaning and properly detached pujari. The effect? Read on…
The earnest devotee among the masses, not entangled with worldly affairs and generally worshipful, would get the full benefit of the occasion, and experience what the saints call celestial marriage, the uniting of the ego with the Soul. This is symbolised variously as the marriage of Shiva with Parvathi, Rama with Sita et al. Let us try to keep the religious tradition separate from the underlying spiritual teachings. Shiva the god and Shiva the tattva (form of energy) are distinctly different.
The ardent devotee, during the Navaratris, practises purification by proper fasting. The casual devotee goes easy on heavy food and sticks to the prescribed food such as fruits and nuts. Such people, too, would benefit from the high energy of the occasion, albeit to a lesser degree.
Then of course, there is the rebel, who has a blast stuffing themselves in proud defiance of traditions and horrified elders. Interestingly enough, they too get a bit of the energetic prasad. Not as much as the others, but nobody gets left out.
At the end of each of the nine days, there is puja. The Devi is worshipped. The custom has come to embrace loud public broadcasts of the puja in each locality. So regardless of whether one is devout or disinterested, one receives a dollop of divinity, by the earful.
The result is, to say the least, interesting. The Devout experiences something akin to inner peace and silence amid the raucous service. The casual devotee has a picnic, while the rebel is subject to nine nights of cacophonic nightmare. Just points of view.
The tenth day is Vijayadashami. The day celebrates the victory of Durga over the demon Mahishasura, as well as the victory of Rama over Ravana. Overall, truth slays evil. Something like that.
Herein lies another hidden gem: the significance of nine plus one. Rama, it may be recalled, travelled all the way beyond the country, crossed the ocean to take on the mighty Ravana.
Nine symbolises the energy centres of the body, the chakras, that the soul, represented by Rama, has to cross to get to the imprisoned Sita. When the dots are connected, the nine chakras describe the path through which the energy travels south.
On the tenth day, he defeats Ravana, a mighty triumph, and reunites with his beloved Sita.
Rama then establishes the rule of Dharma in the kingdom of Lanka, installs Ravana’s brother Vibheeshana as king, and returns to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshmana. This return is celebrated as the festival Diwali, with lamps and fireworks, and burning the effigies of Ravana et al.
Sadly, this is not a one-time operation, and we have to repeat every year ad infinitum. As the dark protagonist played by Arjun Rampal in Shahrukh Khan's Ra One observes, "Tum har saal Ravana ko is liye maarte ho, kyun ki tum jaante ho ki woh kabhi nahi marta (you kill Ravana every year, because you KNOW that he never dies)."
The lamps and fireworks signify the inner explosion that takes place when “reason returns to her throne”, in a manner of speaking (reason having been kidnapped by glamour and held hostage by Power), or when “the lights are all on upstairs” as the English idiom puts it - the experience of spiritual illumination of a devotee or of a spiritual practitioner/yogi/sadhaka/disciple.
As you wend your way through myriad Pujo Pandals, remember, there is much happening behind the scenes.
Have a great festive season.
