Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals: 1.1 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday 27, February 2025, 10:45.
Books
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals: 1.1
Swami Krishnananda.

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Publishers' Note to the Third Edition:

As time passes, contexts change and the relevance of a book written many years ago gains new significance. So it is with The Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals.

In this 21st century, as people have fully merged into consumerism, the intention and drive behind celebrating festivals has completely been erased, making them yet another occasion for celebration in the secular sense, an occasion to indulge in more clothes, more food, more adornments, filling the moment which was intended for spiritual ascent with noise and material—both antithetical to the original intention.

This book is intended for anyone who wants to go deeper into why festivals came to be, their historical origin and, critically, their spiritual significance. Those who are already on the path spiritual will find terrific acceleration to their endeavors, enhanced meaning to their understanding thus far, and a new spirit to their pace. Others will find a clarification for why they need to alter their approach to 'celebrating' these moments in history that repeat year after year. It is very striking, even if obvious, that these events repeat year after year as if God Himself is giving us yet another chance to renew our relationship with life.

This book is a compilation of the lectures on religious festivals, delivered by Swami Krishnananda on different occasions. Swamiji has only briefly hinted at the 'story' behind the festival while his effort has been entirely to stress the significance of the rituals of a festival for the spiritual ascension of man. As the Publisher's Note to the second edition rightly observed, “There is a meaning behind every act, or ritual, in the religious field, even as there is a hidden purpose behind the implementation of any project or the doing of any work. Rarely are religions seen to awaken themselves to the spirit that they are expected to convey, the living flame which they enshrine and without which they remain forms without content.”

Since these were lectures in their original form, the transcription seeks to retain the spoken word form in order to transport the enriching, divine flavour of Swamiji's words and feelings to the reader. This is experienced distinctively in the lectures in the Appendix, which carry with them extra fire and intensity, especially since the subject matter itself was such.

We are pleased to release this third edition of Spiritual Import of Religious Festivals on the auspicious occasion of the 5th anniversary of the Mahasamadhi of Revered Sri Swami Krishnanandaji. May his blessings and grace fill us even as we soak in the words of his messages.—THE DIVINE LIFE SOCIETY

Shivanandanagar,

23rd November 2006.

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Preface:

These random ideas which I expressed on various occasions have been brought together by the effort of my colleagues in the Ashram, and it should go without saying that this effort will amply be rewarded by the benefit that it is likely to render to spiritual seekers the world over. Being words spoken on the spur of the moment, they are perhaps more in the form of a visualisation or communication than a text deliberately written in any systematic manner. As it is well said that philosophy is the autobiography of the philosopher, students are likely to find here the infrastructure, the trend and the outlook that I sought to present to participants in religion, with a view to be of some aid to them in their efforts to find a meaning in religious life, or perhaps in life in its generality. Unprepared and unpremeditated as these disquisitions are, they will evidently carry a novel force of conviction arising from feeling and from a vision which can be considered as the framework of one's existence.

I shall be thankful if students, seekers and readers find here something which they would regard as their own.—SWAMI KRISHNANANDA

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1.Introduction: 1.

The earliest statement of the Nature of Reality occurs in the first book of the Rig Veda: Ekam sat-viprah bahudha vadanti—the ONE BEING, the wise diversely speak of.

The tenth book of the Rig Veda regards the highest conception of God both as the Impersonal and the Personal. The Nasadiya Sukta states that the Supreme Being is both the Unmanifest and the Manifest, Existence as well as Non-existence, the Supreme Indeterminable.

The Purusha Sukta proclaims that all this Universe is God as the Supreme Person—the Purusha, with thousands of heads, thousands of eyes, thousands of limbs in His Cosmic Body. He envelops the whole cosmos and transcends it to infinity.

The Narayana Sukta exclaims that whatever is anywhere, visible or invisible, all this is pervaded by Narayana, within and without.

The Hiranyagarbha Sukta of the Rig Veda declares that God manifested Himself in the beginning as the Creator of the Universe, encompassing all things, including everything within Himself, the collective totality, as it were, of the whole of creation, animating it as the Supreme Intelligence.

The Satarudriya or Rudra Adhyaya of the Yajur Veda identifies all things, the high and the low, the moving and the unmoving, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly—nay, every conceivable thing, with the all-pervading Siva, or Rudra, as the Supreme God.

The Isavasya Upanishad says that the whole Universe is pervaded by Isvara or God, who is both within and without it. He is the moving and the unmoving, He is far and near, He is within all these and without all these.

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Continued

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