On Dassera

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Why pray to Mother and not to some demi-God like Indra and others?

As stated in the question itself, such Gods are demi-Gods only. Praying to them will make us eligible to receive their grace and benefits ‘within their power’ only and at max ascend to their world and gain such of bodies as our ‘Ista Daivam’. That’s all!

But Mother is the Mother of all! She is ‘Maya’ – the Master Illusionist who is the Creator of this entire game. Only the creator knows and has power to destroy it! Forget about people who just ‘destroy’. I am not meaning ‘the power to destroy’ that way – I mean the negative way! What I mean is ‘if I create a computer programme (don’t say maam, good joke!!!) (it’s just an assumption)then only I would know to destroy it too!’

 A car builder is the one who creates ‘brakes’. Electrician who lights up your house is the same one who puts ‘fuse’ to protect you from that power.

(I hope it is clear!)

Since, she has created it she also knows how to cut through it and get us out of it. So, when we ‘surrender’ to Her, she lovingly ‘graces’ us and ‘frees’ us.

Maya is ignorance. It is darkness. Not knowing is darkness; Just as I can’t ‘see’ the ‘Truth’ in Ignorance. So too, she is ‘Black’ in colour – representing ‘ignorance and darkness’. And black is not a colour. It is ‘something’ that absorbs all colours and hence ‘no colour’ is noticed. Something that absorbs all colours except green reflects it and is called ‘green colour’. Actually it is not green. It hasn’t taken green. Even if you don’t understand this ‘science aspect’ leave it! She, like ‘black’ absorbs all our colours – like green (envy), red (anger) etc and frees us from our qualities of sattva, rajas and tamas and makes us ‘Gunatheetam’ i.e., above ‘gunas’ or qualities i.e., being ‘merged with the Divine’. (I know it is bit difficult to understand but.....).

‘Tamas’ or Tamoguna or the qualities of inertia, inaction is removed by the ‘upasana of Goddess Lakshmi – the first three days of Navarathri. These are the attitudes like ‘I want to enjoy’ (read with stress of enjoy) that means they want to do nothing and yet take the pleasures of this and other worlds. All that they think is ‘I deserve it’ and ‘others owe me this gift/duty/work etc’. This is rakshasa guna and this lower attitude is healed by upasana (devotion) to Mother Lakshmi in the first three days of Navarathri. She gives us ‘Ichcha Shakthi’.

Next, we do ‘pooja’ to Mother in Durga form and that is ‘kriya Shakthi’. Rajoguna are qualities of action and hence are egoistic in nature. For next three days, we pray to Mother as Durga Incarnate to win over our ‘Rajoguna’.

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