The Festival of Lights

Sri Sathya Sai Baba gave the discourse below at the Prasanthi Nilayam ashram on Diwali [Festival of Lights] day, October 25, 1973. In the discourse, He explained how and why various Indian states celebrate Diwali. He also said, “You should not change the face of truth to please people; say what you have in mind, and act according to the words you utter.”

Legends

Some days in the year are marked out as holy days in the calendars of all human communities. They are distinguished by the greater attention paid to worshipping deities, propitiating the deceased, praying to the forces of nature, and engaging in similar elevating spiritual exercises. These occasions remind people of the God without and within. Such holy days are prescribed and observed in India also, along with some other festival days. One such festival is Diwali, the Festival of Lights, which people are celebrating today [this year it falls on November 12]. Diwali means “a garland or festoon of lights,” the most characteristic way with which the festival is observed by all.

Illumination, such as is done today, is a sign of victory, of triumph, over some foe or some impending obstacle to happy living. It is a way of expressing your joy and attracting the attention of others to your achievement of unexpected happiness. Festivals involving illumination are found among Parsis, Christians, and Muslims. They are thus celebrated in Malaysia, Nepal, Japan, and a host of other countries.

There are countless legends explaining the origins of Diwali. In northern India, people believe it to be the day when Rama was crowned emperor, after his return from exile. In Kerala, people think it is the day when the Emperor Bali’s grateful subjects welcome him home to his kingdom with illumination and fireworks. The Lord had trampled Bali down into the nether regions as a punishment for his egotistic, tyrannical expansive program of conquest. But He melted a little when Bali pleaded for mercy and allowed him to return to earth for just one day in the year.

The most widely current among the legends refers to the demon Narakaasura. Krishna, accompanied by His consort Satyabhama, or Satya, destroyed him in battle this day. Naraka was the son of mother earth. She asked for a boon from the Lord that this day should be observed in memory of this event as a day of light, joy, and sharing happiness.

Therefore, hundreds of tiny lamps are lit this evening and kept in rows in front of and within every home in India today. But few are the lamps lit in the cavity of the heart to destroy the darkness that lies thick within! Diwali is the day when you discard old clothes and wear new ones; when you sweep clean your home and its precincts, giving it a new look and making it appear fresh and fine. You arrange flowers in lovely designs in each room and in the courtyard, and festoons of green add charm to every door.

But even while doing all this, you have to pay attention to discarding  worn-out prejudices and predilections, adopting new habits of love and mutual respect, freshening your attitude toward your kith and kin and brothers and sisters of all creeds and castes, and hanging the festoons of friendship and fraternity over the doorsill of the heart. This will make the festival really meaningful and fruitful and save it from the calumny of being an occasion for pomp and barren hilarity.

Naraka

Who exactly is this Naraka, the demon Naraka-asura? He is described as a tyrant who had no reverence toward elders and saints, who was afflicted with a severe type of land hunger, who looted and plundered unchecked, who carried away princesses and damsels by the hundreds and threw them into prison without any compunction, and who never repented for any of his crimes and sins. When the good men of the world appealed to Krishna for succor, He invaded Naraka’s kingdom and laid siege to the demon’s capital city. After overwhelming Naraka’s forces, Krishna allowed His queen, Satya, to slay the demon on the battlefield.

This legend has a profound undercurrent of meaning that you should not miss. Naraka is a demonic person. His city is named Pragjyotishapura. Prag means “the previous”; jyoti means “light”; and sha means “forgetting” or “ignoring.” So, the name means, “the city of those who have laid aside the previous light”—that is to say, the city of those who are ignorant of spiritual splendor. No wonder they are demons! No wonder they were lustful and full of hatred, greed, envy, and egoism. They had become so lost in their sins that Krishna did not vouchsafe to give them the honor of being killed by His hands. He directed Satya to destroy them. Yes, ignorance so fundamental and so deep can be destroyed only by the flash of sathya, or “truth.”

Egoism is of the Earth, earthy—not of heaven, heavenly. So Naraka is the son of the Earth. And he is called Naraka; nara means “a person who knows his or her mind, who practices discriminating reflection on what he or she has heard and learned.” But, naraka, which also means “hell,” is the name appropriate for someone who believes he or she is the body and toils to cater to its needs and its clamor.

When a person grows in physical strength, economic power, mental alacrity, intellectual scholarship, and political authority and does not grow in spiritual riches, he or she becomes a danger to society and is a calamity to his or her own self. That person is a Naraka to neighbors and kin. He or she sees only the many, not the One, and is drawn in by the scintillating manifold into the downward path of perdition.

Asuras [demons] have another name in Sanskrit: Nakthancharas, “those who move about in the dark.” This is a fair description of their pathetic condition. They have no light to guide them; they do not recognize that they are in the dark; they do not call out for light; they are unaware of the light. Their intellect has become the bond slave of their passions and their senses instead of establishing itself as their master. When at last truth appears before them and overwhelms them, they recognize the One and merge happily in it.

The lamp

The lamp is not merely a symbol of the knowledge of truth. It is also the symbol of the One, the unseen basis that shines in and through all this multiplicity. Just as you can light a thousand lamps with one lamp and that one is as bright as ever in spite of the thousand deriving light from it, so, too, the unseen basis illumines all the individual souls and shines in and through them without undergoing any diminution in its splendor. It is the cause; all others are effects.

Naraka sought to act freely, as his emotions and passions dictated. But the Sanskrit word used for this kind of license, svaiccha, has another and deeper meaning: desire, the desire of the One, the Supreme Self. It desires, if at all, only for merger, for absorbing the sparks that have emanated from it, the waves that play upon its surface. The Upanishads call upon the human being to roam about in the jungle of life as king of the beasts, as the lion, not as a sheep panic-stricken, cowardly, ashamed to lift its head. Face the six foes that are ferociously gnawing at your heart—lust, anger, attachment, pride, hatred, greed—and be a nara, “a human,” not a naraka who cringes before these foes and tries to propitiate them by yielding to their demands. That is the lesson that Diwali teaches you.

Darkness

The Vedic prayer goes, Tamaso ma jyotir gamaya, “From darkness, lead me, O Lord, into light.” Lead me from the blindness of ignorance into the vision of the truth. Cleanse the mind, and the truth will be reflected therein. This process is not as difficult as some people imagine. The tiny ant can travel a hundred miles if only it puts its leg forward and starts. Faith and steadiness will achieve the rest of the journey. But if an airplane that can fly faster than sound does not rise from the tarmac, it can only stay where it is.

Each of you must first decide what is worth living for and striving for. To make this decision, you first have to meet and converse with elders who have traveled along the same route; you have to taste the bliss of the realization their lives express. And inspired by their example, you must practice what they prescribe with single-minded confidence.

When the human being fails to use his or her attainments for the welfare of others, he or she becomes a narakaasura, a hellish demon. And when in a competitive race for individual glory, the human community spends billions on getting to the moon and bringing back rocks from the crust instead of feeding the millions who starve down below and promoting the prosperity of backward nations, it is only condemning itself.

Even the best of things can be misused by wicked people. Ravana, Shishupala, Kamsa, and other demonic persons mentioned in the Indian scriptures and epics had vast scholarship, enormous economic and military power, and even immense yogic and occult skills won by years of austerity and disciplined living. But they could not earn one skill, the skill of suppressing the ego, and so they became too obstinate, too obstructive, and too dangerous to be allowed to live! The lesson taught by the careers of Naraka and Bali is that you should be master of your ego if you are to succeed in the art of successful living.

Riches

Diwali is also a day dedicated to the goddess of riches, Dhanalakshmi. People celebrate the day as Dhanalakshmi worship day in many states of India. Newspapers highlight the celebrations with big headlines. But when riches come to you, they have to be revered as something given in trust and must be used for the amelioration of society’s needs, not for personal aggrandizement. When people use it for parading their wealth, they become ludicrous specimens of humanity.

How can wealth and scholarship shine except against the background of virtue and humility? Riches may come or go; scholarship may or may not be acquired; even joy and grief may come or go. Whatever happens, you must be unmoved; you must not give up your equanimity. You must not swerve from the path you have chosen toward the goal.

There was a merchant once who, while walking through the streets of Benares [now Varanasi, city in northern India], was suddenly confronted by two sisters who were frantically quarrelling over the issue of who was fairer. They were none other than Dhanalakshmi [goddess of wealth] and her famous sister Daridralakshmi, goddess of poverty. They stopped the merchant and compelled him to agree to be the judge [of their beauty contest]; they asked him to pronounce who was the fairer of the two.

The merchant feared to say that Dhanalakshmi was fairer, for then the goddess of poverty might inflict her boons on him. He feared to declare that Daridralakshmi was the fairer, for then her sister, Dhanalakshmi, might deprive him of her favor. So he devised a stratagem to save his skin. He asked that the sisters walk a few steps forward and backward in front of him, and he stood silent for a while watching their slow deliberate comings and goings. Then he asked them to come near him to hear his judgment. He said, “Dhanalakshmi is fairer when she comes toward me; Daridralakshmi looks fairer when she goes away from me; how then can I give a definite verdict?”

This was a clever reply, framed to escape punishment. But you should not change the face of truth to please people. Say what you have in mind, and act according to the words you utter. That is the safest, the easiest, and the most correct procedure. That is how a self-respecting person should behave. Nothing is more right than truth. Do not play false to the God in you and be led into evil through fear or greed. March along, straight, never deviating toward falsehood or trickery. Do not be attracted away by the glamour of name and form; seek your innermost reality with one-pointed zeal. This is the message I give you on this festival of lights.

Source: Sanathana Sarathi, December 1973