Devi Mahatmyam

 ======================================================================== ========================================================================= Saturday, August  13,  2022. 07:40.  Essence of Devi Mahatmyam ========================================================================= FIFTH NIGHT - 20. A Stern Warning. ======================================================================= 20. A Stern Warning : Similarly, in the individual’s spiritual life, however much it may be true in the ultimate reaches of realisation that he is not this physical body, he is Pure Atman which is beyond body and mind, yet we find that if the aspirant is foolish enough to start with this basis in his life of practical spiritual Sadhana he will come to grief very soon. For the law of this physical world is very exacting and a transgression in this law will at once claim its price. Thus, if one flies away into a Vedantic attitude and neglects his physical body and does not care to mai...

 ========================================================================= ========================================================================= Thursday, June  23,  2022. 6:00. AM. Essence of Devi Mahatmyam ========================================================================= FIFTH NIGHT - 19. The Foremost Duty of National Leaders ========================================================================= It will do well for all the leaders of men in whichever country or nation they may be and to all social leaders and administrators, to bear in mind that the increase and the preservation of these aspects of Lakshmi in society is not only one of the primary concerns and duties, but also to preserve and increase all these factors contained in it the seeds of enduring welfare and happiness of all people.  Thus, as long as man was still conscious of the reality of this world, as long as he felt the reality of these external things, it was his duty to see that he ...

 ================================================================ ================================================================ Thursday, June  09,  2022. 6:00. AM. Essence of Devi Mahatmyam ================================================================ FIFTH NIGHT -18 18.THE PATH OF PROSPERITY: =============================================================== Divine Mother, the life of our lives, the sole support of our existence, the very essence of our being, the inmost core of our consciousness, the goal and ultimate destination of our life, the glorious fruition of our Yoga Sadhana, the Pure Existence-Knowledge and Bliss. We bow to Her again and again as Mother Durga, Lakshmi, and Saraswati. May Her Grace be upon us all. Mother in Her aspect as Lakshmi is the one great Power upon earth that makes life possible and bearable here. Were it not for blessed Mother Lakshmi, life upon earth would be a journey of sorrows and pain. It will be a vale of tears; for due to th...

 ============================================================== ============================================================ Monday, April  18,  2022. 6:00. AM. Essence of Devi Mahatmyam 17.The Sadhak’s Attitude to Lakshmi  ============================================================= Thus it is that to the devout Hindu the aspect of the Motherhood as a material power, a power which sustains life upon this physical world is an important aspect of divinity in so far as his material life is concerned and here we have to note that the Hindu shows himself as a sane realist. He realises and accepts the importance and value of the divine power as it is manifest upon the material world in the form of these helpful factors that go to sustain and preserve life for him upon earth in a prosperous and happy state.  While we thus recognise his realistic attitude towards the good things of this world, here it will be interesting to note that the Eternal Quest for the Absolute...

 ================================================================ ============================================================== Sunday, March 06, 2 10, 2022. 6:00. AM. Essence of Devi Mahatmyam 16. The Evolution of Man to Godhead ============================================================== But, as it has been said in the Gita:  to the man of the spirit everything operates in exactly the opposite direction as it does to the man of the world who is immersed in matter. That which is day to the man of the world is night to the man of the spirit and to those things to which the man of the world is awake as it were in his perception the man of the spirit is asleep and does not recognise them. To those things to which the man of the world is asleep in his perception to all those higher things of the spirit, the man of God is fully awake.  What the worldly man perceives the Yogi turns away from and does not perceive; what the worldly man fails to perceive the Yogi perceives in...

 ================================================= ================================================== Monday, January 10, 2022. 6:00. AM. 13. Saptashati’s Lesson 14. FOURTH NIGHT : Lakshmi: The Supreme Sustainer  =============================== ================== Next, we have to transcend even the human nature with all its wrong conceptions and with its ego-sense, if we are to reach the higher divine consciousness. This process of overcoming even the human side of the aspirant’s consciousness is symbolised by human sacrifice or Narabali. The arrangement of the Saptashati in the three aspects of first the killing of Madhu-Kaitabha, secondly the killing of Mahishasura, and thirdly the killing of the brothers Shumbha and Nishumbha with their host of demons, symbolises the different stages of Sadhana. Madhu and Kaitabha represent the gross form of the lower nature of man. Mahishasura represents the next stage, the annihilation of the Rajo-Guna aspect. When we come to the third pa...

 ====================================================================== ========================================= Monday, November-15, 2021. 6:00. AM. #GOD AS MOTHER : Essence of Devi Mahatmyam 13. Manifestations of Durga in Spiritual Sadhana. - Swami Chidananda. ======================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mother Durga thus manifests Herself in and through the form of the Guru, in the form of an aspirant in the aspirant himself to rise to a higher plane, in the form of a ruthless self-criticism and a self-examination; and when this analysis reveals to the seeker the picture of his lower animalistic self in all its detail then the Mother has to be invoked by him as a strong resolution and a strong determination to completely root out these evil tendencies because this aspect of the Mother is absolutely necessary if one has to start pr...