Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals

by Swami Krishnananda

So, when the forces of darkness began to assault the angels, the Purana tells us that the forces were threefold. They are named, in the Skanda Purana, as Surapadma, Simhamukha and Taraka; and in the Mahabharata as Duryodhana, Kama and Duhsasana. No one, however virtuous and good he may be, could stand these forces. These demoniacal forces were too much for all the angels put together. The gods were trembling in fear, just as virtuous men in this world tremble in the presence of the evil dacoits and the unscrupulous thugs, who attack people inwardly as well as outwardly. Virtue seems to have no place in this world. Angels were driven out, the gods ran away from heaven and evil reigned supreme. What is the solution? Not mere goodness, not mere virtue, not a little charity, not a little sweet speech – none of these can stand their onslaught. These things will not cut ice in this evil world. Angels are good enough and they are far superior to humans in virtue, in goodness, in knowledge and in everything conceivable. But they could not stand this vicious force. They had to invoke God Himself. And I may tell you that the solution for all the evils of the world today is God only and not anything that man can do. Not I, not you, not anyone can solve the mystery of the evils of the world. Unless God is invoked, there is no hope. Lord Siva, the great Master of Yoga who was immersed in Samadhi, the abysmal universality of experience, was the only succour and the source of hope to the gods and angels, in the war depicted in the Skanda Purana. When this triple force, Surapadma, Simhamukha and Tarakasura, attacked the celestials from all sides, they did not know whom to appeal for help. They ran to Brahma, the Creator. He said, "There is only one solution, which is difficult to conceive, but there is no other alternative. The force, the energy, the militant expression of Lord Siva is the only answer to this problem of yours." When God becomes militant, nobody can stand before Him. When the lion stands up, you know that there can be none who can face it. God always keeps quiet. He is always in a state of Samadhi, as it were. He gives a long rope to everyone and never interferes with anybody's affairs. You may do anything that you like, you can hang yourself if you like and God is not bothered about it. But, when things become too bad and intolerable, when the whole world begins to cry, these great incarnations take place. If you or I cry individually in a corner, that may not be sufficient to bring down the Incarnations. God tolerates when one man cries or two people cry, because many others are happy. But when everyone starts crying, He cannot bear it anymore. This was the condition before the birth of Skanda. The whole world was in a state of travail, turmoil and agitation. The birth of the War-god Kumarasambhava, as Kalidasa puts it, is the story behind this religious festival called Skanda Shashthi.

Without going into the details of the whole story here, I would like to pinpoint only the significance of the occasion, viz., the impossibility to confront evil without the help of God, the power of Divinity. No one can face the world except with the help of God. Armaments, military and police are nothing before the evil of the world. No one can overcome it, and it shall continue. So, the Skanda Purana says that the War-god was born from the universal contemplation of the great Creator Himself. The Samadhi-Bhuta Sakti or the energy born out of the great Samadhi of Lord Siva, whom we call Skanda, is the answer for all the evils of the world. The force of cosmic desire became a cumulative focussing weapon, as it were, and with a sixfold face the divine energy began to confront the multifaceted dark forces. We have a sixfold psyche within us. The central, pivotal feature of it is the ego, as I called it, or we can say the mind, which expresses itself as the five senses. The five senses energised by the mind drive us outward in the direction of the objects of the world. You would have heard it said that the occasion for the birth of Skanda or the War-god was the stimulation by the god of Love, who darted his weapons towards the great Siva, who was then in a state of deep absorption, in Samadhi. These mysteries are difficult to understand. Ordinary minds are not made in such a way as to probe into these intricacies of Divine action. The energies that are required to face the evil of creation are potentially present inside us and they have to be worked up by a particular means. Desire is neither good nor bad. But, it can become bad or good according to the circumstances and the way in which it operates, under given conditions, in the history of creation. The birth of Skanda had to be occasioned by the activity of desire personified as Kama or Cupid, for the sake of overcoming the evils, one of which is desire itself, whose comrades are anger and other manifestations of egoism. The Bhagavadgita says, "Dharmaviruddho bhuteshu kamosmi." Here God refers to Himself as desire, bereft of or free from any contravention of Dharma. Here is a clue to the mystery of how it became necessary for the gods to employ Cupid as an instrument to rouse the divine desire in Siva for confronting the evil desire of the demons. Desire is like a diamond which cuts itself.

Religious adventure becomes more and more complicated as we proceed along with it further and further. In the earlier stages religion seems to be very simple, because it appears to be merely a question of going to the church or sitting before a deity in a temple or following a system of routine, a ritual, etc. But, when we enter into the heart of religion, it ceases to be any kind of routine. It becomes an inward adventure of the spirit. It is not a doing of something, but a complete reshuffling of one's personality and a transformation of oneself through a transvaluation of values, by a process in which we may have to submit to conscription the very same forces in the world which appear as our opponents at present. The world is an enemy and also a friend. The Bhagavadgita, again, gives an answer to this interesting question, how the same thing can be a friend and also an enemy. In the sixth chapter, we are told that the Self is the friend and the Self is also the enemy. Desire is a friend and also an enemy. The world is a friend and also an enemy. By means of the instrumentality of Kamadeva, the Divine Force of Siva was roused up into action, which is otherwise Omnipresent. In the Vedanta philosophy, a distinction is drawn between two types of consciousness, known as Sahaja-Jnana and Vritti-Jnana, which can be translated as a universally present impersonal, featureless consciousness and a directly operative consciousness acting in some given way, respectively. Or, to give a grosser example, the impersonal fire which is present in all the five elements around us, is to be distinguished from the concrete fire with which we cook our meal and light our lamp. Energy in action is the fire that is burning through the cooking stove, and the energy that is merely existing in an impersonal manner is like the fire present in all the five elements. So, the force of Siva was impersonal in the Samadhi state and it had no concern with good or bad, or anything that is taking place anywhere; but when it had to be employed as a weapon to counteract the evils of creation, it had to manifest itself and could not merely remain as an impersonal featureless Samadhi consciousness. So, the energy burst forth from Siva's third eye which is the power of Knowledge or Chit-Sakti. It is not a manipulated energy created through machines or through the energies of any kind of physical body or substance. Only the energy of Wisdom can counteract the evil of creation and not any other power, not anything that we do in the form of charity, goodness or our so-called religiosity.

So we have in this great epic of Skanda's incarnation, the 'Kumara Sambhava', the mighty portrayal of the adventure of the Spirit through the processes of Sadhana, spiritual practice, wherein we commune ourselves with the highest power that is conceivable, the energy of God Himself. We have to draw that energy forward and harness it to face this world. Then the power of externality gets transformed into the peace of universality. What happened to the Rakshasas – Surapadma, Simhamukha and Taraka? Those forces which were externalised and which were the desires impelling themselves outwardly in the direction of sense-objects, were transformed into the universal peace of creation. Peace reigned supreme. There is nothing called destruction anywhere. These demons were not destroyed in the ordinary sense of the term. You know the law of conservation of energy. Energy is never increasing or decreasing in creation. It is only concentrated in different forms and at different places. The concentrated form of it is what we call evil. So the very same energy which was in the form of these demoniacal elements was transformed by the Divine energy, which means to say, all that was impulsive in the direction of externality, space, time, causality and objectivity and desire of every kind, got withdrawn into the peace of the Absolute, and the Goal of life was reached. This is, in my humble opinion, the great spiritual significance behind the religious festival called the Skanda Shashthi, which falls on the sixth day of the bright fortnight in the month of Kartika (October-November). There are other meanings which are manifold and interesting. Out of all this variety, I have placed before you one feature for your contemplation.