Navaratri: Nine Days of Collective Sadhana

Every year, for nine nights, homes and temples across India turn toward the Divine Mother. For Siddha Guru Pushkara Purvajna these are not only festival days. They are days of sadhana, and of a particular kind: practice that is done together.

Collective consciousness

Guruji speaks of Navaratri as a time of collective conscious meditation. One person practising alone is doing real work, but it is one person’s work. When many sit at the same time, in the same hall or in their own homes, the energy of their practice gathers. A hundred people practising together, he says, are not a hundred separate efforts. Their practice joins, and each of them is carried by it.

That is why these nine days matter. The practice itself is received properly, from the Guru, and then kept: a set time each day, in a quiet place, done with care. Practised this way, he says, the seeker begins to feel the shaktis of the Mother for themselves, and the inner state begins to change.

A clean nine days

What does a sadhaka actually do? Guruji’s answer is simple and demanding. Keep everything clean for nine days. Eat sattvic food. Keep your conduct sattvic. Keep the mind clear and free of criticism. Let your speech be pure, and let your actions be clean.

Then take a sankalpa, a resolve, and hold it. The difficulty, he says, is never the resolve. It is the second thought that follows it, the vikalpa: the doubt, the change of mind, the bargaining. A resolve held without vikalpa ripens. A resolve that is taken and then argued with does not.

Bring the family, gently

Guruji encourages families to practise together during these days, so the energy of the home is shared. If someone in the family cannot or will not join, he does not ask anyone to force them. Accept the situation with love. That acceptance, he says, is itself part of the practice.

The Mother who is gentle and fierce

Navaratri is also the season of the Durga Saptashati, the hymn of the Devi associated with the sage Markandeya. Guruji takes one verse from it and asks that it be lived, not only recited:

Atisaumyātiraudrāyai natāstasyai namo namaḥ. She is most gentle and most fierce. To her, our bows again and again.

The Mother is cool like moonlight, and she is terrible like Rudra. Life brings both. There are seasons that are soft and easy, and seasons that are intense and frightening. Sadhana does not ask you to choose only the gentle one. It asks you to meet both from the same steady place, which Guruji calls sahaja sthiti, the natural state.

The verse continues: namo jagatpratiṣṭhāyai devyai kṛtyai namo namaḥ, salutations to her who is the foundation of the world, to the Devi whose action is everything that is done. All that holds the world together, Guruji says, is her work.

What “namo namah” asks

We say namo namah easily. Guruji asks what it really means. It is not only folded hands. It is the full prostration, sashtanga pranama, and the inner meaning of that is acceptance: surrender to the Shakti exactly as she is arriving in your life.

He adds one more condition. Bow in the present. Not from the past, and not from worry about the future. When the mind is open, receptive and flexible, he says, the communication with her is clear, and her grace can flow without interruption. Without that grace, success and failure are both out of our hands.

Do not let the days pass

These nine days come once a year, and Guruji counts it great fortune to have them. His request is simple: don’t waste them. Practise with care, so that the deeper aim of the path, the recognition he points to with Aham Brahmasmi and Shivoham, comes a little closer.

This Navaratri at Spiritual Conscious, Sri Vidya Sadhana begins with Session 1 on Sunday, 18 October. You can also listen to Guruji’s bhajan Maa Amba Lalitha Devi.