As a born Christian I hardly dare say I am a ‘hindu’, though many say that a person who is living by the teachings of the Vedas can call her or himself a true hindu. I am living by the knowledge of the Vedas for many years now, I am practicing all elements of yoga, every morning I start my day with sadhana, I celebrate Hindu festivities, I do deep dhyana for many hours a day, I chant mantras and bhajans, I live in love and act with loving values, I do seva, I am learning Hindi and Sanskrit, I carry a new Sanskrit name given to me by my guru, I live strictly Brahmacharya, I read the Vedas and try to understand more and more of the Bhagavad Gita every day and I live an austere Sattvic Lifestyle. Many people are not doing any of these elements and even eat meat or drink alcohol and yet call themselves convincing ‘hindus’; but still I only dare say that I am a ‘student of Hinduism’ or ‘a student of Vedic Science’.
In great humbleness I’ll try to explain in my own words and experiences why Diwali or Deepavali can lead us to universal peace. Diwali is a very important hindu celebration that has an enormous deep and beautiful meaning. Because of my ‘yoga lifestyle’ as described above, I am very strongly connected to my inner self, my real self, the Soul or JivAtma. I live intuitively and therefor I can feel strongly what is going on in Cosmic Energy. We are all a form of energy and connected to the energy around us. All celestial bodies move around by these strong natural forces that unknowingly lead us forward in life. Like written before during the celebrations of Ganesha’s birthday I didn’t consciously know about this celebration; many times I just feel the energy of these important dates. I was meditating under the full moon and felt that the energy was helping me to get rid of all obstacles that were in between me and my dharma. That is exactly where Ganesha symbolically stands for: overcome the inner obstacles between you and Moksha or enlightenment. I might not know every hindu celebration by name and date, but I definitely feel them and most of the time I am able to deeply understand their meaning.
Deepavali this year is very strong. During Navratri a couple of weeks ago, a lot of inner demons were destroyed by our Mother. This is something we cannot observe with our senses, only with our intuition. People who do very deep meditation and pranayama might have felt this too: the closer you are to your own inner self, the more aligned you are with Cosmic Energy, which is Prana Shakti. She overcame a lot of negative energy and darkness that was befogging our pure Cosmic Energy, as if she was literally destroying Kali Yuga to make place for the New Era of spirituality and love. Prana Shakti is pure love. And love is shining everywhere today; that is the light of Deepavali.
When we focus on negative energy and dark forces who live inside people with bad intentions and acts, their power increases. This is how they often win elections or lead huge companies. When we focus on light, light increases. This is the message of the Bhagavad Gita and Gandhi taught us many lessons with that philosophy at hand; only the light of love can take out the darkness of hatred. When we focus on love, light will shine and every darkness will disappear by itself. Light one candle in a dark room and there will be light everywhere: the light and love are always stronger because Prana Shakti is the strongest energy in the universe, it all started with her. So when we are shining love from our hearts (like with Light meditation) with billions of people during Diwali, we are actually able to dissolve all darkness so that the light of love can shine into Cosmo: we help our Mother. When everybody in the world would do this with us, world peace will be in our reach.
For me personally, what I have felt during sadhana these beautiful days of Deepavali, is that on cosmic level the light of love will shine for many decades from now on. That is the universal Moksha that has to be transformed into individual Moksha: darkness has to leave our thoughts and patterns too now like ego, greed, materialism, anger, bitterness, sorrow, grief, heartache, fear, attachment, etc. We can do this by living a yoga lifestyle with the proces of Jnana Yoga, Karma Yoga and Bhakti Yoga. When we become light and love, our surroundings will become so too. So normally it works the other way around: when we overcome inner demons and let the light of love enter our lives, cosmic energy changes too. It starts with the inner process. Though these days God has taken over the powers to be changed: darkness has been taken away on universal level, to make it easier for us to follow the healing proces on an individual level; this is God’s grace to mankind.
With Diwali we focus on love. With Diwali we light the candle of consciousness and good acts of love for others, so that the light of love can shine brightly inside of us. We see the world with the amount of love in our hearts. When we are loving, the world will be so too. The light of Deepavali has seldom been so strong as today and that light of love will protect us for many, many years during Sathya Yuga. Congratulations are not only for our family or friends these days, but the universe as a whole. Shubh Deepavali!
YOGA LIFESTYLE 