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Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 13.8.

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24/03/2017.  Chapter 13 : Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy -8. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. The religious history of this event commences with a magnificent portrayal of the great God Siva absorbed in meditation and deeply immersed in Samadhi, oblivious of what we may call darkness, evil or the centrifugal forces. God's absorption in Himself in the 'I am that I am' is the total cosmic opposition to the multifarious dark activities of the urges in the direction of the senses whose leader is the ego and whose colleagues are desire and anger. The greatest forms which this impulse of externality can take in us are these three. The ego is the centrality of the urge, the central dynamo, as it were, which pumps the energy necessary for the movement of this impulse outwardly. And, desire and anger are like the two arms of this adamant centrality of individuals. So, in a way, we may say that there are only two forces,

Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 13.7.

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19/03/2017.  Chapter 13 : Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy -7. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. 1. The religious history of this event commences with a magnificent portrayal of the great God Siva absorbed in meditation and deeply immersed in Samadhi, oblivious of what we may call darkness, evil or the centrifugal forces. 2. God's absorption in Himself in the 'I am that I am' is the total cosmic opposition to the multifarious dark activities of the urges in the direction of the senses whose leader is the ego and whose colleagues are desire and anger. 3. The greatest forms which this impulse of externality can take in us are these three. The ego is the centrality of the urge, the central dynamo, as it were, which pumps the energy necessary for the movement of this impulse outwardly. 4. And, desire and anger are like the two arms of this adamantine centrality of individuals. So, in a way, we may say that there are on

Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 13.6.

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12/03/2017.  Chapter 13 : Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy -6. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. We have in India two great epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, and also eighteen Puranas, each one touching upon one aspect of this universal activity going on in the form of evolution and involution, the warfare between the divine and the un-divine forces. There is a perpetual conflict between god and devil, as the theologians sometimes tell us. The ruling divinity of the universe and the forces of darkness fight with each other. A noble and sublime instance of this epic event that is supposed to have taken place aeons back in the history of the cosmos, is the Skanda Shashthi Festival, which is observed for six days and which concludes and consummates on the sixth day, dedicated to Lord Skanda. The great hero of this cosmic drama which is described in the Skanda Purana, and in certain other scriptures like the Mahabharata, is S

Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals : 13.5.

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03/03/2017.  Chapter 13 : Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy -5.  Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. I. The epics and the Puranas, the great heroic poems, the Ramayana and the Mahabharata and the Puranas, or for that matter, Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, whatever be the name that we give to these epic approaches, all these are enrapturing, poetic exclamations of moments of rapture, when there was a flash of insight from the bottom of the soul of the poet concerned. II. These are the poems which we call the epics, and this is why we are moved when we read them. Our hair stands on end, our emotions begin to be in a state of turmoil and we begin to tremble and shake, and we are forced to assume the role of the personalities portrayed in the epics. III. We begin to move with those specimens of individuality which the epic poems describe. That is the power of the poet. IV. The greater is the force of poetry, the more