Bharatheeyam : ( 08/11/2012. )

18/04/2017. Chapter 17: Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy-13-11. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. 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 ans...

10/04/2017. Chapter 17: Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy-13-10. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. What is this mystery? The mystery is not known to many. The truth is that while virtue is generally understood as the opposite of vice, we forget the fact that it is also the counter-correlative of vice. So, it has not got the strength to confront the vice. Vice or evil can be overcome by a power which is transcendent and not merely ethical and moral. The evils of the world are not afraid of mere morality and ethics. Mere goodness will not do. There should be Divinity in our personality, and Divinity is far superior to mere goodness in the form of an ethical behaviour and a moral conduct. Divinity is an integrating force, while virtue is only a counter-correlative of vice. There cannot be virtue unless there is vice. Because, if there is no evil at all, there cannot be any such thing called goodness. But Divinity is a different thing altoget...

01/04/2017. Chapter 17: Lord Skanda – The Concentrated Divine Energy-13-9. Skanda-Shashthi message given on the 9th of November, 1980. I There cannot be so forceful an energy as desire, anywhere. Desire is the greatest power in the world. Of all the powers, desire is the strongest, because nothing can move without desire. Hence desire should be regarded as the impulse for any kind of movement, in any direction. II. The nature of desire is so complex that in a poem called the Kama Gita, in the Mahabharata, we are told that desire laughs at people who are trying to conquer it. Because, the attempt to conquer desire itself is a desire. This is the reason why it laughs. Sri Krishna sings this Kama Gita to illustrate the difficulty of conquering desire of any kind, unless proper means are employed. III. The gods were startled, and they were in a state of consternation when the demoniacal forces attacked them. The gods too had their own strength, no doubt. Virtue is sup...

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, ...

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...

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, ...

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...