Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 10-6.

Chapter 10: The Esoteric Significance of the Devi Mahatmya - 6.

( A talk given on the 13th of October, 1972, during the Navaratri worship.)
By Swami Krishnananda


When we manage somehow to overcome this Madhu and Kaitabha, Kama and Krodha, we get into the clutches of Mahishasura and Raktabija.

They represent the Vikshepa Sakti, the tossing of the mind.

Every minute the mind changes its forms which multiply in millions.

You read in the Devi-Mahatmya, how Mahishasura changed his form.

Now he is an elephant, now he is a buffalo, now he is something else.

If you hit him in one form, he comes in another form.

And this is your inexhaustible opponent.

His energies are incapable of being exhausted.

However much you may try to oppose the Vikshepa Sakti, it will manifest in some form or other.

This is described in the form of the demon Raktabija, whose drops of blood were seeds of hundreds and thousands of demons like him coming up.

When the Devi severed the head of one Rakshasa, the blood fell on the ground profusely and from that blood, millions cropped up.

And when She killed them, again another million cropped up.

So there was no end to it.

Swami Krishnananda
To be continued  ...