'Celebrating Vijayadashmi'

The festivals of Navaratri and Dussehra celebrated in the month of Ashwin, have several characteristics in common. Durga slays the buffalo-demon Mahishasura after nine days of pitched battle with his evil forces. Rama annihilates the ten-headed Ravana, also after nine days of protracted war with Ravana’s elusive powers.

On the tenth day, both victories are celebrated as Vijayadashami.

It is said that on Brahma’s advice, celestial deities pray to Adi Shakti Durga, the multi-armed manifestation of Shiva, to end Mahishasura’s menace on earth. Also, on Brahma’s advice, Rama first worships Supreme Soul Shiva and then Devi Durga, before setting out to vanquish Ravana.

Both adopt similar strategy of winning the war. In both the situations, adharma, negative energies represented by demons, are at the peak. Devi Shakti or positive powers of dharma are invoked to finish the evil.

Nava Durgas
The depiction of female deities as Nava Durgas — nine female deities — is not to be understood in their mere physical forms only but in terms of spiritual qualities like purity, austerity, calmness, courage, creativity, divinity, dispassion, contentment and benevolence, which they respectively represent as Parvati, Brahmacharini, Chandraghanta, Kushmanda, Skandamata, Katyayani, Kaalratri, Mahagauri and Sidhidatri devis.

Further, the eight hands of Devi Durga holding eight weapons allegorically allude to eight saatvic powers of assimilation, coordination, detachment, discrimination, decisiveness, endurance, resourcefulness, and troubleshooting to overcome tamasic and evil proclivities of inertia, lust, desires, gluttony, anger, attachment and allurements which Mahishasura symbolises.

These epic battles between good and evil are symbolic of internal conflicts that constantly trouble our mind and intellect. Internal feuds make our mind tense and intellect unstable. Our nature and behaviour become noble and virtuous when positive personality traits called good samskaras take precedence over negative or vicious thoughts and tendencies.

Negative nature often surfaces in the form of five major vices — ego, lust, anger, avarice and attachment. These are found in varying degrees as ten vices, five each in man and woman, symbolised by the ten heads of Ravana who was ruining peace and happiness in every hearth and home.

To wipe out these ten vices from every family, like Rama vanquished the ten-headed Ravana, we need to invoke our innate Devi Shakti — divine virtues such as purity, peace, love, happiness, harmony and inner power — by regularly practising soul-consciousness in intellectual communion with the Supreme Soul Shiva.

Gross body-consciousness gives rise to vices, tamasic traits and demonic dispositions which have been symbolically depicted in the mythological characters of Mahishasura and Ravana. These evil forces are our internal enemies, subtle, deceptive, diabolical and delusive in nature. Like Durga and Rama, we need subtle weapons of spiritual wisdom, eternal vigilance, divine meditation, deity virtues and saatvic lifestyle to sublimate these impure, impulsive and devilish tendencies.

Shiva Shakti
Through constant consciousness of the divine light image of soul, its innate positive qualities and spiritual powers, combined with loving remembrance of Supreme Spiritual Light, Shiva who is the eternal source and ocean of cosmic powers and divine virtues, we can become Shiva Shaktis, spiritually empowered companions of Shiva — to carry forward his divine task of cleansing and purging our minds.

Vijayadashami, every year, is an occasion that reminds us to make a paradigm shift from body-consciousness to spiritual consciousness, to let pure and noble intentions prevail; to let truth and righteousness triumph. ■

The author is chief of Brahma Kumaris Organisation