30/03/2025
Navaratri: The Worship of Mahadevi
by Swami Krishnananda
"....Shakti worship—Devi worship, Durga Puja—is not a female deity's worship, as some people wrongly imagine. Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati are not females like women that we see in the world. We would describe this very Shakti as is portrayed to us in the Devi Mahatmya: Narasimhi, Rudrani, Kumari, and all sorts of names. She appeared as Skanda with spear in hand, as Narasimha with a roaring lion's mouth, as Vishnu with Sudarshana in hand, as Rudra with Pasupata in hand. Can we call that great being a woman? A man has always counterposed before him this difficulty of having something opposed to him, and so is the case with a woman also. This idea has to be shed before we become true worshippers of this great divinity. Otherwise it becomes a kind of ta***ic cult and a ritual which may take us to any place, like a firecracker that bursts during Diwali. It may burst in the sky, or may burst our face; anything can happen.
Ta**ra, which is at the back of Navaratri Puja, is not a cult by itself. It is the basic explanation behind every activity that takes place in this universe. Even the littlest activity of ours is explicable only in terms of what ta**ra describes as the meaning of life; but we are not supposed to understand this meaning merely by snapping our fingers. Dynamite is a powerful force. It can burst open rocks and mountains, and it can also burst open our own heads if we do not handle it properly. It will turn upon us.
Therefore, this is a very, very meaningful and highly significant spiritual occasion provided to us, and not merely religious in the ordinary sense of the term, where we rise to the occasion of contemplating God as all His power in any form whatsoever in which it reveals itself and whatever form it takes—as beauty to the eyes, sonorous music to the ears, fragrance to the nose, sweetness to the tongue, softness to the touch, and intellectual exaltation for a literary genius; all this is Shakti operating. Therefore, during this Navaratri occasion it is imperative on the part of an ardent seeker and worshipper of the divinity to be benefited by this worship and not merely pass through it as a kind of routine for nine days. “It has been done for so many years and now, this year, we will also do it, and make a noise, and then the whole thing ends.” That is not so. Religious observances have their spiritual import, as we know very well. They are deeply significant as divine occasions provided for us to rise to that occasion now and then for the purpose of accelerating the progress of our soul towards its destination...."
https://www.swami-krishnananda.org/disc/disc_108.html
