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There are six days in this Observance. Please choose the day you would like
to go to.
1, 2,
3, 4,
5, 6
[Asanas, pranayama]
Valentina: ...Om Skanda!... We start tonight the worship of this very auspicious Cosmic Force. Very few people know about the Lord Skanda, very few Hindu people know about it. It is a very esoteric observance and a rare privilege to partake of it. It is a Luminous Force of great Might and Valour, and to meditate upon His Glory is, not only inspiring (many poets get inspiration from such meditations), but it is purifying and enlightening. Of course, there must be two - God and you. If it is only God and no your effort, results are poor. So it is always like that: without God you cannot, and without you, He will not!...
Lord Skanda... In order to understand somewhat the glory of the Invisible, one has to get rid of the preconceived ideas. Usually people cannot understand the manifestation without making it physical. Lord Skanda was born, it is said in the Scriptures, through the mass of Light issuing forth from Siva. So He is the Son of Siva, it is a full Avatara who took birth in order to eternally help the Power of Goodness to win over the Power of Wickedness. And so six days, because of His six heads and six faces which has all the very deep mystical meaning, - the six days are dedicated to the worship, and the last day to the celebration of the Victory.
All the observances here are coming with the kaleidoscopical speed, and for the person who is not taking them seriously, they are entertaining; for the person who takes them seriously, they are tiring! Because it is... not tiresome, but it is tiring to partake of the spiritual disciplines very intensely. But for the person who takes it not only seriously, but also with inspiration and faith, it is not tiring, it is just very inspiring. Definitely the reaction comes in everybody, but then the Lord gives strength to overcome it quickly, if one puts some of the effort.
Concretely speaking, the six days should be a restraint from all the carnality and physicality. It is not a self-torture, but it is switching from indulgences to the, not necessarily austerities, but to the remembrance of the Glory of Skanda. I have many materials, and those who want to partake of it should everyday study a chapter or two from whatever is dedicated to Lord Skanda. And every night I shall be giving my own meditations, inspirations and ponderings upon this great Force.
Tonight we shall only love the Light in the form of that Avatara. You can meditate upon Skanda as Perfect Beauty also, everlastingly young. He is always depicted as never aging, never-ceasing-to-exist youth. He gives power, He helps, but He helps invisibly. Very few realize His Presence. His great devotee, Arunagiri, not only realized His Presence, but saw actually His Appearance. That also is registered in some of my writings and talks...
Skanda... Close your eyes and visualize the Mass of Light which surrounds you and protects you, and ii the midst of it is the six-headed Divinity. Every head stands for some Virtue and Power.
Om Sakti.... [Silence]
***
[Asanas, pranayama]
Valentina: ...Om Skanda!... It is the second night of the Sadhana dedicated to the Lord Subrahmania, or Skanda. It is a very serious observance. It is a purely inner endeavour. There is not much ritual here. It deals with spiritual experience, with very earnest dedication to the Force which combats the enemies of human Soul. By the Grace alone one can realize God, but the Grace never comes into the impure heart. That s the very interesting point to remember. Everyone is talking about the Grace - "Well, God is gracious. I ll receive His Grace." You will if you will make your own effort. Grace and effort are interrelated. The pure heart alone can reflect the Grace of God even as the clean mirror can reflect the object. The object is there all the time, but if the mirror is foggy and unclean, how can you see anything in it? Well, even so it is about the receiving of God s help, of God s Grace, of God s miracles. We have to make many efforts and purify our receptivity immensely in order that God can do His job. Otherwise there would be really no sense, because the sins will continue and the Lord will love the sinners and allow them to sin further? No! Christ said: "Go and sin no more!" "Go, yes, I give My Grace, I forgive, but don t sin any more..."
So Skanda is the Force which is no joke. It is a very, very great Force of God. It is an Incarnation of Siva s Light which is destroying the horrible dark, impudent, arrogant forces within the man as well as outside the man. The great Spear of Skanda, that miraculous Vel, alone can destroy the enemy, but we have to make our effort in order to let Him know that we are ready. "For if you do not want to," says the Lord, "I don t care! You can become an Asura, because I give you the free will." This world, my Children, would be saved long ago, - Christ walked on that Earth and Buddha did and so did many Avataras and many Celestials, but unless there is human will to submit to the Divine Will, there are no miracles and the Earth continues to be the way it was. However, if anyone on this Earth wants to be saved by the Light, it is always there, the salvation is always given. The salvation from what? From ignorance, because ignorance (as it is well-known, well explained by all the sages) is the root of all troubles, problems and sins.
Now, that second night of the Lord Skanda - even if you do not perform the Sadhana during the day, but are simply listening to me at night, even that helps very much to turn towards the Light. The second night of Skanda... there is so much around that extremely glorious Name. That is His second fight with the horrible diabolical forces which He pierces with His weapon, that miraculous Vel. And in proportion that we contemplate His Power, we are readily getting rid of some of our inner burdens. The most significant part of Skanda worshipping is the resolve to realize Him within our hearts. God is not to be defined, for He is Infinite, mysterious Power, but obviously this mysterious Power is very gracious and merciful, because It assumes the forms which can be worshipped, the Divine Perfections, and through these Divine Perfections, man can perfect himself. Even Guru, when the Guru speaks, not from his own intellect, but by the Grace, reflects the Wisdom of God, leads you to the realization of God within yourself. Guru is only the avenue which is directing the Soul towards God...
I was meditating, before I came to you here, on the prayer of Saint Arunagiri, the greatest, perhaps, worshipper and devotee of Lord Skanda. And this prayer goes like that; I think I was telling you about it previously also, but it always stirs me so deeply that I am never tired of repeating it, meditating upon it... "Lord, liberate me from three poverties - the poverty which is literal, physical, material poverty; the poverty which is the poverty of my morality, and the poverty which is the poverty of my Spirit. For these three poverties are making me the beggar of all beggars and throw me into the abyss of miseries - perpetually, endlessly."
There is nothing more objectionable than poverty. It is one thing to renounce the riches which you have and to practice the poverty of Saint Francis (which actually is no poverty, but is great wealth), and it is another thing to be impoverished. What do you have to renounce if you do not have anything? Saint Francis had everything and He said, "I embrace Sister Poverty," meaning humility, meaning submission to the Will of God, meaning indifference to carnality. Well, so we have to discriminate very much. On the other hand, Saint Arunagiri condemns poverty as the source of all miseries. He has a right to say so, because Arunagiri, prior to becoming a saint, was a sinner. He sank so low that it was impossible to sink any lower, and the Lord Skanda saved him from all these three poverties - from the poverty of material prosperity, from lack of morality and from spiritual ignorance, above all. If one gets rid of spiritual poverty, one gets rid of all poverties. Arunagiri was sinking and he was saved. He was, apparently, a devotee of Skanda in all his incarnations, and this song of the Soul, sooner or later, becomes heard by the poor, deluded intellect and man turns to God.
I have registered elsewhere the story of Arunagiri, and I advise everyone of you to hear it. We have our facilitation classes every night during these six nights and you please relisten. And you can write to me and ask me about it if you want to clarify certain points. But tonight I just want to stress this particular prayer - to be aware of our poverty. If you are literally poor and depend on others, aside of humiliation, it is just taking away all your mind and all you will - you are all the time aware that you have nothing and you have to survive, so you cannot think about God. You cannot live in charity if you do not have anything, you cannot help others, you cannot be gracious to others, so you have to combat that.
If you have no moral prosperity, as it were, if you are morally poor, you are separated from God, because you are a slave of your immorality, of your sensuality, of your cravings for the forbidden stuff, and you are very much separated from God. But, above all, if you are spiritually impoverished, you cannot have any aspiration to pray, to meditate, to love, to give of yourself, in other words, to be consciously striving to realize the alive God within yourself.
Now, the physical poverty can be removed by one s own efforts. One starts working and one gets the income - plain as it is. Or else some charitable man helps the poor one and also alleviates the problem. The moral poverty can be also removed through self-effort, through discipline and also through the help of a stronger morally and spiritually person. But the spiritual poverty can be removed only by God. Nobody can remove your spiritual poverty except God. God can do it through another man, but still it is God who is doing it, for there is no other way of removing spiritual ignorance. Spiritual ignorance is the greatest misery and the greatest handicap in human life, because the spiritual ignorance makes man mistake one thing for another thing. Even if man is no more suffering from the humiliation of the physical poverty and from the shame of moral poverty, he still is ignorant in that he can be holier-than-thou, thinking that he is very moral when he is really not (that is to say, if he has spiritual ignorance), and he can be not in discomfort and yet be very selfish, which is the case of many wealthy people. So apparently, without the removal of the spiritual ignorance, the two other poverties cannot be removed either.
So that was my meditation before I came to you. It is a great prayer: "Lord, remove the three poverties from my life." If you really contemplate it, you will be blessed. Om Skanda...
And I never forget to bow to Ganesha, another great Force of Cosmos, who is, as it is said, the other spiritual offshoot of Lord Siva and, therefore, the brother of Lord Skanda. He is the remover of the obstacles, so before one worships Skanda, one is usually bowing to this great Force.
I know that this observance is foreign to most people, not only in the West, but also in the East, because it is deeply esoteric and mystical, but everyone who even hears about it is blessed and raised from the mire of material life. Om Sakti... [Silence]
***
[Asanas, pranayama]
Valentina: ...The monstrous Asura, Surapadma, is a symbol of the eternal evil, very powerful and very malicious. Skanda is the Eternal, not symbol, but Eternal Truth, which is the only
Power. "Among the generals, I am Skanda!" that is to say the most powerful opposition of evil. An eternal panorama! The Evil opposes the Good, and the Good combats it. In the manifested world that goes forever. En miniature, this evil exists in individuals, just as the God- Power, Skanda, the Chief-General of the Celestials, also exists within everybody. To awaken that Power is the goal of our life.
You remember from my previous talks and writings that Surapadma took by force the kingdom of Indra, the Chief of the Devaloka. And there was no end to his impudence, to his trickery, to his hatred and to his triumph too. That s the most horrible thing. And nothing could defeat him, even the Celestials could not, but the Lord could with His invincible Vel - that piercing weapon of the Divine Righteousness.
Now, when we are confronted with the evil within ourselves and cannot do anything about it, the only way out of it is to believe in the Power of the ever-present Goodness of Skanda. Meditate upon His Vel, upon that Spear. One can make that Spear the point of contact with the Infinite. Spear stands for Knowledge, which destroys the ignorance of the Asuras. It stands for Power which is invincible; it stands for greatest Wisdom and immense Courage. So when we visualize that wonderful Weapon, long and strong, tall and sharp and with the broad top, which represents the vastness and the width of Intelligence, - when we adore it even as the very replica of the Lord Himself, we acquire quite a bit of strength and courage.
Again Arunagiri, of whom. I told you last night, was meditating upon the Lord ceaselessly after being saved by Him. And in one of his meditations he heard the Lord say, "I give you my last instruction, and it is Silence." And Arunagiri exclaims, "After this instruction, the world ceases to exist." Now that we have to ponder upon. There is that ultimate Silence which is known to every mystic, and this Silence is the language of God. There are so many languages, so many parlances, but the ultimate one is Silence. Only in this Silence you can meditate the Lord s Vel. You cannot meditate on that Vel through your intellect which is not silent.
Talking about languages - the grossest language is the physical language, the language of the body, the gestures. Then Comes a subtler language, the language of the silent mime. You know only too well that one can talk with the eyes very eloquently, especially if one is smart and sensitive. One can speak a lot with the eyes. And there is another language, a language of the mind. One can transmit the thoughts. There is a language of the heart, the language of love, which is a universal language. All the degrees of languages are leading to the ultimate language of God - Silence. Paradoxically enough, all the other languages are utterances, this way or that way, but the Lord said, "My last instruction is Silence." When we learn that Silence, we can commune with Skanda or with any other Avatara or God-Incarnation. Without the Silence we cannot.
Various disciplines - the silence of the body, through, for instance, this position [Upright, cross-legged position], where I sit down and do not move an inch, this way or that way. That is silencing the body. Then, when I will stop talking, it will be silence of speech, and then I will be transmitting to you by my vibrations. That s a subtle way of transmission. Then I will stop the vibration, - that will be Silence of the Soul then, which will be transmitting through its Silence, which is even above the powerful vibration. It is just special fluid, it is a special electricity, and then it is special quiet, absolute stillness, very rare condition. But towards it we are aiming, and then the Lord speaks and we listen, and this is the highest communion.
Third Night of Skanda... when He makes kaput to Surapadma, but not yet altogether. There is a great retinue of "Surapadma" - all his kinsmen, all the forces of evil are opposing that invincible Hero of God, Skanda. Six days and six nights, and on the sixth night, there is complete Victory. So may God bless you to meditate upon it, to carry it within you through the remaining three days.
Life is so packed with various vibrations, impressions, influences, that one does not think about God. When we come here together, you have an opportunity to reinforce yourself, to cleanse yourself, to remind yourself. The morning starts with its duties and influences, - everywhere is an influence. You speak to a stupid man, you become a little more stupid yourself. You speak to a clever man, you become a little bit more clever yourself. And, you are losing your identity, your identity which is your innermost quiet, your Soul. You forget about the main thing all the time. It is very difficult to remember God in the midst of life. One has to acquire a special talent for it. Without this talent, it is impossible to advance. Various ways lead to that development, but first of all one has to become subtle.
Humanity, really and truly, consists of the dense, denser, densest mentalities. It is extremely difficult for an average man to even think about the topics which I just offered to you. It bores them. It is foreign to human mind. Human mind is restless and want nothing but "bread and show." But then, when man, by the Grace of the Lord, awakens through a little discrimination and a little sensitivity, he becomes subtle, and then he become subtler, and then he becomes subtlest. That is the rarest condition when man can receive the Grace of God and can commune with God. On the way towards the subtlest, God bless you... [Silence]
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