The lessons to be learnt in celebrating Navarathri

Navarathri – 3 to 12 October

Saraswati Pooja – 10 October

Durga Ashtami – 11 October

Durga Naumee – 11 October

Vijay Dashmi – 12 October

Dr Roshan Singh – Jyotishacharya Shastri Pundit

The festival of Navaratri is a glorious time of the year, filled with joy, celebration, and also with great lessons for our lives. Navaratri means “nine nights.”  It is not just a time for one to be engaged in ritualistic methods of worship but to take stock  ones lives, to destroy the demons of anger, lust, greed, hatred and jealousy within ones self. It is only then that one can achieve the blessings of Mother Durga. On one hand people fast and make elaborate offerings of prashad and dhaar to the Mother but no sooner that the festival is over they resort to their bad habits which nullify all the pooja’s that are carried out by them. It is therefore a time of cleansing the body, mind and spirit allowing the Mother to shower Her abundant grace and blessings upon the aspirant. The warden of the prison house (Durg) can only grant parole to that individual who has repented and vowed to lead a good and clean life from now onwards.

This festival occurs twice a year, at the change from winter to summer in the Spring, and again at the change from summer to winter in the Autumn. The Autumn festival is celebrated from the first day to the ninth day of the bright half of Ashvina/Aswayuja (September-October), while the Spring Festival is celebrated in Chaitra (April – May).  The two Navaratri celebrations are known as Rama-Navaratri in Chaitra and Durga Navaratri in Ashvina. The celebration of Navaratri is in honor of the great Mother Goddess. The festival lasts for nine days, signifying the nine glorious aspects of the Divine Mother.

Who is Mother Durga

Śrī brahma-saṁhitā 5.44

sṛṣṭi-sthiti-pralaya-sādhana-śaktir ekā
chāyeva yasya bhuvanāni bibharti durgā
icchānurūpam api yasya ca ceṣṭate sā
govindam ādi-puruṣaṁ tam ahaṁ bhajāmi

Synonyms

sṛṣṭi — creation; sthiti — preservation; pralaya — and destruction; sādhana — the agency; śaktiḥ — potency; ekā — one; chāyā — the shadow; iva — like; yasya — of whom; bhuvanāni — the mundane world; bibharti — maintains; durgā — Durgā; icchā — the will; anurūpam — in accordance with; api — certainly; yasya — of whom; ca — and; ceṣṭate — conducts herself; sā — she; govindam — Govinda; ādi–puruṣam — the original person; tam — Him; aham — I; bhajāmi — worship.

Translation

The external potency Māyā who is of the nature of the shadow of the cit potency, is worshiped by all people as Durgā, the creating, preserving and destroying agency of this mundane world. I adore the primeval Lord Govinda in accordance with whose will Durgā conducts herself.

Purport

(The aforesaid presiding deity of Devī-dhāma is being described.) The world, in which Brahmā takes his stand and hymns the Lord of Goloka, is Devī-dhāma consisting of the fourteen worlds and Durgā is its presiding deity. She is ten-armed, representing the tenfold fruitive activities. She rides on the lion, representing her heroic prowess. She tramples down Mahīṣāsura, representing the subduer of vices. She is the mother of two sons, Kārttikeya and Gaṇeśa, representing beauty and success. She is placed between Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī, representing mundane opulence and mundane knowledge. She is armed with the twenty weapons, representing the various pious activities enjoined by the Vedas for suppression of vices. She holds the snake, representing the beauty of destructive time. Such is Durgā possessing all these manifold forms. Durgā is possessed of durga, which means a prison house. When jīvas begotten of the marginal potency (taṭasthā śakti) forget the service of Kṛṣṇa they are confined in the mundane prison house, the citadel of Durgā. The wheel of karma is the instrument of punishment at this place. The work of purifying these penalized jīvas is the duty devolved upon Durgā. She is incessantly engaged in discharging the same by the will of Govinda. When, luckily. the forgetfulness of Govinda on the part of imprisoned jīvas is remarked by them by coming in contact with self-realized souls and their natural aptitude for the loving service of Kṛṣṇa is aroused, Durgā herself then becomes the agency of their deliverance by the will of Govinda. So it behooves everybody to obtain the guileless grace of Durgā, the mistress of this prison house, by propitiating her with the selfless service of Kṛṣṇa. The boons received from Durgā in the shape of wealth, property, recovery from illness, of wife and sons, should be realized as the deluding kindness of Durgā. The mundane psychical jubilations of daśa-mahā-vidyā, the ten goddesses or forms of Durgā, are elaborated for the delusion of the fettered souls of this world. Jīva is a spiritual atomic part of Kṛṣṇa. When he forgets his service of Kṛṣṇa he is at once deflected by the attracting power of Māyā in this world, who throws him into the whirlpool of mundane fruitive activity (karma) by confining him in a gross body constituted by the five material elements, their five attributes and eleven senses, resembling the garb of a prisoner. In this whirlpool jīva has experience of happiness and miseries, heaven and hell. Besides this, there is a subtle body. consisting of the mind, intelligence and ego, inside the gross body. By means of the subtle body. the jīva forsakes one gross body and takes recourse to another. The jīva cannot get rid of the subtle body. full of nescience and evil desires, unless and until he is liberated. On getting rid of the subtle body he bathes in the Virajā and goes up to Hari-dhāma. Such are the duties performed by Durgā in accordance with the will of Govinda. In the Bhāgavata śloka, vilajyamānayā… durdhiyaḥ—the relationship between Durgā and the conditioned souls has been described.

Durgā, worshiped by the people of this mundane world, is the Durgā described above. But the spiritual Durgā, mentioned in the mantra which is the outer covering of the spiritual realm of the Supreme Lord, is the eternal maidservant of Kṛṣṇa and is, therefore, the transcendental reality whose shadow, the Durgā of this world, functions in this mundane world as her maidservant. (Vide the purport of śloka 3.)

The nine days of worship

There are different pujas and ceremonies performed on each of the nine days, most notably is fasting on the eighth day and then the immersion of Goddess Durga’s image in holy rivers on Dusshera, which falls on the day right after Navratri ends (the 10th day).

Indian tradition is one of the few traditions in which the Feminine aspect of the divine is worshipped with as much reverence as the Masculine aspect. Throughout India you will see thousands of temples dedicated to various manifestations of the Divine Mother. You will find hundreds of thousands of people who are “Shakti worshippers.”

Shakti is the energy of the Lord. Without the divine Shakti, even God is powerless. The creative aspect (Lord Brahma), the sustaining aspect (Lord Vishnu) and the destructive aspect (Lord Shiva) all have their respective Shaktis who provide the cosmic energy and omnipotent power needed for these great feats.

Additionally, everything for which we pray – knowledge, prosperity, love – these are all manifest in the Divine Feminine. Goddess Saraswati is the Goddess of knowledge. Maha Laxmi is the Goddess of prosperity. This shows that without the Divine Mother, our prayers would be in vain, and our wishes would go unanswered.

So, 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.

Navratri is celebrated as the time that Goddess Durga (Shakti) conquered the evil demon, Mahishasura, thereby saving the world from his vicious tyranny. It is said that Mahishasura was reigning terror over the world and none of the gods was able to destroy him. Thus, they all approached Goddess Durga, Shakti, together and gave Her their weapons. Thus armed with Divine Shakti and the most powerful weapons, She conquered the demon and ended his tyranny after fighting for nine straight nights. On the tenth day, Vijaya Dasami, the demon was slaughtered.

This victory, and other beautiful stories associated with Goddess Durga, are celebrated with great fervor throughout different parts of India.  Shakti puja is performed in elaborate and lavish ways.

The nine days of the festival also represent the three stages through which one passes on the spiritual path. During the first three days, the Mother is worshipped in her powerful, destructive, terrifying aspect. Many people, when beginning the spiritual path, have an inherent fear of God; therefore this first phase of Navaratri represents the first stage of a spiritual path. During these three days, the devotee prays to the Mother to use Her destructive power to destroy his imperfections and his faults. He prays for Her to make him pure enough to receive the divine energy. Additionally, this terrifying aspect of the Divine is the one who protects the new spiritual seeker on his path.

Thus, the first three days of Navratri are devoted to annihilating the negative tendencies of our minds and hearts.

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, the bestower of prosperity.  On the spiritual path, after people overcome the fear of God, they frequently pray for material wealth or external prosperity. They pray for success in their ventures and for the removal of obstructions in their path. The prosperity Maha Laxmi bestows is not merely material prosperity, but it is also all of the qualities which a sincere spiritual seeker craves – calmness, peace, equanimity, compassion, love.

During the last three days, Goddess Saraswati is worshipped as the bestower of true wisdom and understanding. Once the devotee has been purified by Goddess Durga and has had his vices annihilated, 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. This is impossible, however. 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, Navarati 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, not only the evil in the external world. 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 insidious, and just as deadly as any of the asuras or Rakshasas.

Let us note also that 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, we must be just as vigilant, just as active and just as conscientious.   We must never become complacent; for anger, greed, ego, and lust are always present, always lurking, and always ready to make home in welcoming hearts.

Jai Sri Durge

Dr Roshan Singh – Pundit Roshan Singh