Africa-Press – Lesotho. Thanks to my friend Ram in Djakarta who sent me a post in which Shri Satpal Singh beautifully explains the symbolism of Divali in simple, clear language.
He asks: Do we know why Divali is celebrated on the darkest night of the year? He goes on to say that the story starts with the Ramayana, one of the greatest spiritual epics of all times.
It has many layers of meaning but at the core is every person’s struggles to know themselves. The message of Ramayana will help you to understand how to live a better life.
Divali.
Pic – Istock It is the story of the battle between Lord Ram and Raavan, king of Lanka. It is not just one that happened thousands of years ago. It is happening right now inside each one of us.
Lord Ram represents our Higher Self, our Divine soul, the infinite life force that lives inside everyone and in all places. Our soul lives in Ayodhya, the place of no conflict (Sanskrit yuddh means war, prefix a means opposite of i.
e. , no war): our soul therefore lives in peace. It isn’t concerned with trivial things like how do I look today, what do others think of me, how much money do I have, what’s my relationship status or my next career move.
In the story everything changes with the marriage of Ram and Sita, i. e. , the union between the body and the soul. As soon as that happens they are banished from Ayodhya; in our own lives whenever we focus our thoughts on our body more than on our soul we too lose our peace and are banished into the jungle of the world.
Even in the jungle Sita continues to meditate on Ram, but one day she sees a golden deer and gets totally enamoured by it, just like our eyes and senses are always distracted by worldly things.
When she stops meditating on Ram and goes after the deer, she is trapped by a demon called Raavan, who represents our ego. He is depicted as having ten faces and twenty arms – signifying that our ego is not so easy to identify, as it often comes in disguises in many different forms.
So the battle begins between Ram and Raavan, and eventually Ram is victorious. He manages to defeat Raavan and bring his soulmate Sita back home. The Spiritual Master Gurū Nānak, founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus, summarises the real struggle between our ego and our Divine Light as follows: in each and every heart is the unseen and infinite Ram.
When we kill our egos, only then will we unite with this invisible and infinite Truth. So why do we really celebrate Divali on the darkest night of the year? It’s so that we can remind ourselves to break free from our own dark habits, our worldly obsessions, egos, self-importance, insecurities and all our inner demons.
This year as well as lighting lamps and fireworks, let’s learn and share the deeper meaning of this celebration. Let us make this Divali a challenge for us all to let our own Divine nature shine as bright as possible so that we too can become a beacon of light and help those who are still in darkness.
What a profound message!
Isn’t this indeed a most profound message to every human being? In fact, all Hindu festivals, such as Durga Puja/Navratri, Ganesh Chaturthi, Cavadee, etc.
, are about how to overcome the ego-driven compulsions that tend to dominate our lives so as to discover our Inner Truth or Divine Light, allow ourselves to be illuminated by it so that we can live a life of purity and harmony, at peace with ourselves and with everybody else, with the world in fact.
Each festival lays emphasis on one of the paths that can lead us to this discovery: bhakti or devotion, karmayoga or selfless service, rajayoga or meditation/mind control, and jnanayoga or Self-knowledge.
Specifically, about Divali, which glorifies light, Sadhguru of Isha Foundation has equally elegantly elaborated on it. He writes: ‘. . . the celebration is not just about lighting lamps outside – an Inner Light has to come.
Light means clarity. Without clarity, every other quality that you possess will only become a detriment, not a gift, because confidence without clarity is a disaster. And today, too much action in the world is performed without clarity.
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