The spiritual significance of Diwali.
Namaste! It is a very busy time for festive India! Starting last week with the first navratra, followed by another eight days and nights of prayer to Durga Ma, that make the total of nine navratri for her nine different forms. Temples are glowing with lights, satsangs are chirping in every locality, and there is a huge vibration of festivity.
And this is followed by Dussehra . I’m sure many of you must have accompanied your children to the Public grounds in your city, to watch Ravana and his team go up in flames.
And now, in this continuing celebration mood and mode, we look forward to the festival of festivals - Diwali!
If you ask your pundit, or look up religious books or even check the internet,you will find so many mythologies connected with this festival.
It is said, Lord Rama took about twenty days to return to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana, whereupon there was great rejoicing and the streets were lit up in warm welcome. So too, Diwali arrives approximately twenty days after Dusshera.
And the obvious message is the triumph of good over evil. It may interest you to know , that quite resonantly , the next Avatar, Krishna too defeated the demon Narakasura around the same calendar day.
An enigmatic and perhaps even older mythology links Diwali to Goddess Parvati playing dice with Shiva, and gambling during these days is actually supposed to get transformed into a holy act! Of course I talk of a little game of cards with the family at home and which is not to be mixed with the hazard of professional betting and abetting.
But Diwali is not limited to the plays of good and evil, it is a major festival to honour Lakshmi, Goddess of wealth,and till date indian housewives not only invoke the Goddess Dhanlakshmi by pious prayer,but also invoke their own privelege of buying gold and silver, and utensils to run a better home on Dhan Teras,and this is a great time to remind the husbands to have the house re painted!
All the shops wear a bright look and for the traders, this even used to mark the day to make new ledgers and accounts and yes, with some even starting new businesses! It isn’t rare to see actors and industrialists launching new projects on this day..
Did you know that Mahavir of the jains, Swami dayanand saraswati of the Arya samaj, and also Swami ramtirath all attained to samadhi on this day? and also ,that not only is Diwali the largest celebrated festival in India, but is enjoyed by millions in Nepal,Thailand, Kenya,Trinidad,Malaya and Siam ,apart from those countries that have significant numbers of indian settlers!
On this day, we all look forward to lighting lamps, bursting crackers, making and partaking sweets,wearing colourful clothes, buying all sorts of new things from toys to cars! Clearly, everybody is happy,as they wish each other Happy diwali.
And then?
Diwali will be over, and we will wait for next year to make festivity and light up our lives. But then, we may have missed the spiritual significance of the event, we may have eaten the husk instead of the rice. And this should not be, because Diwali has an enduring message,to understand the spiritual significance of which, we will have to first refer to the original name of the festival, which is "Deepavali".
It means"row of lights", and thats why we call it the festival of light.
Light is always the symbol of divinity,knowledge,and purity. By contrast, darkness is evil, sorrowful, ignorant.
When we are in a room that is not well lit, how easy it is to become depressed and low,while in a place which is well lit, how natural to feel bright and wonderful!
Saints have forever spoken to us of the inner light, they have always told us that the inner self has the ability to give us all happiness and health, joy and prosperity,
but more importantly it is our sure link with divinity, in fact, it is divinity itself residing in us.
It becomes an easy analogy, that if the inner room is lit, all dark things will disappear.
Do you remember a song from Sant Jnaneshwar, "jyot se jyot jagate chalo, prem ki ganga bahate chalo"?
or the fervent psalm 18 :28 of the Bible ‘The Lord will light my candle so,that it shall shine full bright;
The Lord my God will also make my darkness to be light.’
The same is recorded in the Upanishads as " Tamasso ma jyotir gamayo", from darkness, lead us to light.
The Buddha implored truth seekers to be a lamp unto themselves.
If you have been to Mcleodganj and heard the famous Tibetan buddhist mantra Om mani padme hum, it means the same thing, " The jewel is in the lotus "
And even the hath yogis only talk of lighting up the inner chakras one by one through austere effort,and invoking the inner shakti kundalini. But perhaps, the greatest allusion to light would be from the Gayatri mantra
Aum Bhur bhuva svaha …. which is in praise of the Sun as dispeller of darkness,
"We meditate on the creator of all the three worlds,who is worthy of praise, being Himself the perfect embodiment of light and knowledge, helping us to dispell the darkness from our little self, to merge into the very womb of great effulgence".
Returning to the subject of good and evil. The evil we must win over is within, the good that wins is also within,we must light up the good,we must light our own lamp, and then spread it around.
Interestingly, In diwali we are supposed to light one central candle/lamp first, Called the Atma jyoti, from which all the rest of the lamps are then lit,the significance is simple, we must first locate the inner self ,and then all our other faculties will be lit. We must know real happiness first, by knowing our Self, then only we can pass happiness to others.
This is important to note, very often we go about setting the world right, without first taking a deep look at ourselves, and that's how problems crop up, thats how Ravana and Kamsa go wrong.
Simply put, the spiritual significance of Diwali, is about spiritual homecoming. It is about an inner transformation that corresponds to the glory of Lord Rama returning to His Pristine kingdom as a ruler.
And there's another important lesson on endurance:
when we light the first candle, we take so much care that it should not get extinguished,
but sadly ,we dont take the same care to keep the very spirit of diwali glowing! thats how hundreds of diwalis come and go away ,only to find us plunged back in darker moods and negative tendencies , just like a power cut! till the holy season arrives again the next year , with the next Diwali..
Why keep the spirit of love and happiness just for a week , and wait for a full year to rekindle it again?
I leave you to meditate upon Gurudev Rabindranath Tagore’s beautiful lines on the significance of Diwali.
“The night is black kindle the lamp of love with thy life and devotion”
Happy Diwali!
Shail Gulhati is the author of the book SHIVA, The Ultimate Time Traveller. On Amazon https://www.amazon.in/dp/B017ECI6CU
