Return to Observances Return to Navaratri
It is Vijaya Dasami. The tenth day of Victory. May you feel victorious over your inadequacies of any kind - physical, mental, spiritual. Just know that the Divine is milliard times more powerful than the undivine. And in the Name of this Divine, listen again and again to the Devi Mahatmayam. I cannot listen enough to it. Come. [Recitation of the Devi Mahatmayam follows]
[After the recitation, Valentina musingly] Om Sakti... It's a special place. It's a special time. It's a special Love here. And that's all I am going to tell you tonight...
***
[Following morning]
Student: It was such an immense experience, such a boon and privilege to watch You and to feel the flow of Your masterful recitation of the Devi Mahatmayam. Thank You very much.
Valentina: The pleasure is mine. [Smiling] Really, my joy when there is appreciation of that which should be appreciated. By the way, appreciation as well as gratitude are the two royal qualities.
Another student: I have some doubts.
Valentina: I hope I will be able to solve them for you! Go ahead and tell me.
Student; I read the Bible and try to understand. I was rather perplexed and wondered - how come we here in the Ashram were disobeying God's most important commandment - bowing - worshipping His force yes but in the form of gods and goddesses expressly as He said not to? He also expressly said, no work on the seventh day - and we work on that day. Over and over throughout the Book this injunction is repeated: no other God is to be worshipped except the Lord, and time and again the people revert back to idolatry. [Pause] It is so difficult to reconcile what is here and what is said in the Bible... and...
Valentina: [Gravely] Are you finished?!
Student: Well, as I thought and pondered and doubted and worried, mainly how to reconcile the Bible with Yoga, Your Yoga, I began to understand a little clearer. I saw that what You are teaching here is in no way related to this idolatry of the superstitious ones of that time - You are helping us to indeed expand our understanding of God.... [Pause]
Valentina: Are you finished now?!
Student, Yes, I guess.
Valentina: Thank you. Your opinions are indeed generous! Before I will answer them, I want to remind you not to forget what you received in the Vijaya Dasami and which is still in the air, - Vijaya Dasami, the day of victory over sin, stupidity and general ignorance...
It is good that you finally were able to "reconcile" but what a pity it required such humiliating and gross thoughts. Don't you think you ought to broaden your consciousness, or else you will always be confused! It is indeed somewhat embarrassing as well as sad that after so many years of attendance you still are of such limited consciousness! Don't you clearly see that idolatry forbidden by the Bible is also forbidden here?! Idolatry is to take an image or a concept and to divorce it from God, to put into it the human selfish and gross limitations. To forget the Supreme and to worship "graven images" is idolatry! A devotee, a mystic, a poet makes the image of God spiritual, in fact - makes even the material things spiritual! Whereas the curious materialistic man is ever busy making the most spiritual concepts material. If you want to know what is idolatry, it is making the gross out of the subtle; this is the veritable idolatry. Not to accept the Lord in His Divine Glory, in His Greatness, in His outer manifestations is bigotry, fanaticism, crass foolishness, and... I'll go farther, precisely is a form of idolatry, - a fool makes an idol out of his fanatic, unjust reprobations! Would it be an idolatry to enthusiastically Shout "Bravo" to the great soloists of the great orchestra?! Do you forget the conductor, let us say, Toscanini, when you applaud to, let us say, Horowitz, who plays piano solo in Toscanini's orchestra?! The three a's. - approbation, adoration, appreciation is not the idolatry! But confusion, alas, goes on and on... Poor bipeds! When will man develop into a true human being who is able to think, to discriminate, to feel and to have an insight, - simultaneously?! Only such human being will be able to approach the Divine rightly and to, eventually, fuse with the Divine.
Second student: How should we think of God?
Valentina: God the Absolute should be recognized as the root, as the source of gods, godlings, all creation, humans, subhumans and superhumans, everything. He should be worshipped in His own Name, for He is All in all. I am stressing this often enough with the hope that this should never skip or pass without notice the attention of the students. It is indeed a startling surprise that one can forget so easily the Teachings of the Bhagavad Gita or the integral Yoga of Sivananda on which my whole spiritual work is based! [Turning to the first student] Had you remembered my perpetual emphasis upon the One Power, you would never have the problem of "reconciling."' Really lamentable! It is most obvious that you are unable not only to "reconcile" but also to feel God as One, or else hardly would you present me with your... testimony!
...Even to the limited and limiting worshipers who forget Him behind His forces, the Lord in the Bhagavad Gita gave a hope! He graciously said:... "For verily even if they worship the godlings they in reality are worshipping only ME, for I am in everything... but they know not!" At another instance, didn't you hear me often stressing: the statements of Lord Krishna, that He is the Self seated in the hearts of all beings?! He is, verily, the beginning, the middle and also the end of all beings. But very few people are able to behold God as the Self of all and as the One without the second. Therefore, in the same Gita the Lord goes into the description of all His attributes, and (that I have been stressing often enough) that the devotee can superimpose the Lord upon any of His great manifestations. It is more comforting for the ordinary, unspiritual, still unregenerated mind of man to think of the Lord in His various forms and manifestations. Certainly that does not mean at all that you are worshipping the idol, the "clay." Don't you understand it? You are worshipping the Divine Vibration of God - through a symbol.
Third student: How is it that Krishna speaks about Himself as God?
Valentina: What is so puzzling about it?! Aren't you big enough to accept Him as the Highest, as Brahman Himself? He is referring to Himself as not the personality but as Consciousness, as Brahman Himself, for He realized Brahman and was incarnated as the full manifestation of God. It is the annoying limitation of sectarian human mind which either doubts, like you do, or else attributes to its own sect the whole Glory of God, like in the case of dogmatic Christianity. Didn't Christ say the very replica of what Krishna tells us - "Except through Me you cannot come to God." And what did the poor human mind make out of it?... We better stop here, for it will lead us into the debris of too well-known theology! Blessed are those who have the enlarged consciousness and who rejoice at every manifestation of the Divine. Yesterday was the Vijaya Dasami, the most auspicious day of the Glory of the Universal Mother; what greater spiritual glory can one imagine?! And in a week we shall worship God as Skanda - the Lord pointed out clearly that He is Skanda amongst the victorious conquerors. Turn to our Krishna Jayanti observance, relisten my words on the tape. Didn't I rejoice at the One Lord as also His own countless becomings? " Don't lock God into the one stuffy chamber of your limitations!... [Again turning to the first student] As to your remark, and now I am quoting you: "and we work that day" - don't you think that this remark is not befitting the aspirant?! I have often heard it from both Christian and Jewish bigots! Remember the classical answer of Christ to the hypocritical Pharisees who accused Him precisely in violation of the Sabbath?! "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees!" He warned. "You, the worst of all hypocrites! For you only observe the surface law yet omit the weightier matters of the law which are Justice, Mercy and Faith? This ought you have done and not to worry about the formal law being undone."
The Lord gravely condemned and ridiculed all such mechanical, evil-minded approaches to the given laws, which are subject to change, which are not to be understood literally or which are hiding the eternal Truth that has to be discovered by the follower of Right Conduct! Don't forget that in the times of Moses "His Children" were veritable brutes! (Not that they are much superior now.) It took Christ to heighten some concepts. Neither should you forget that Christ never opposed (or altered the Holy Bible as such; only did He attack the criminal abuses, bigotry and the mechanization of the law! It is ridiculous to try to"understand" with the surface, physical brain the holy scriptures. You never will. And you indeed totally misunderstand the work here if you are doubting its rightness "on the seventh day." What the Bible meant is to have rest once a week and to think about God on that day of leisure rather than be immersed in quarrels, selling, cheating or anything of that kind, which is always the main occupation of the brutal man! Instead, silly people think that all they have to do is to idly lounge around or have a "good time," but God forbid to perform some chore or even charity, or even the miracles which Jesus was performing on Sabbath. Oh, for shame! [Pause]
[Quietly] It is okay that you revealed your true nature, for it will serve as a warning to other wiseacres who might misread the scriptures! Do not read with too much sweat! Pray for more understanding, - for the RIGHT Understanding. Above all don't assume so glibly; it really is most unhumble and unspiritual. Think how much disharmony, hatred, criticism and intolerance spring up only because man misunderstands, not only the religion of his neighbour, but his own religion as well!