The killing of Mahishasura and Shumbha-Nishumbha

 

Mahishasura Mardhini

Guruji: You cannot have Kama to infinity. You would quickly become overwhelmed by Her Desires, which are a million-million times more than anything you are capable of containing.

So let’s say we manage to shut off Mahisha, Kama, Desire. Let’s say we’ve turned off our lust to get more and more. What do we substitute for it? Eros; Sringara, Love. You want to beautify the world – you are tuning in to the desire of the Mother, and Her desire is to discover better and better expressions of Her Love in this world: Better civilizations, better understanding, better manifestations of Her beautiful creations; that is what She is after. And when you tune into that desire, then Kama becomes Sringara.

The transformation from Kama to Sringara is the story of Mahishasura Mardhini, Devi as the Slayer of Desire. What is this Mahisha? Mahisha is the bull which represents blind, hurtful lust. Lust has to be transformed into something higher. Lust means that the notion of the other is preserved and you want it badly, no matter what cost. So you want to grab and seek only for your pleasure, ignoring the other's sentiments or feelings. That is lust. This has to be transformed into love. In lust there is no caring for the other's pleasure, as you would care for your own pleasure. You are only interested in your pleasure. That has to be transformed. Transformation means changing its nature. Transformation means killing its present nature, and giving birth to a new nature.

However, love can not survive without lust. Let us understand this. The lotus flower is born in the mud then grows in the water. Its flower comes out into the open, into air and looks to the light and blooms when the sun comes out. We are like the lotus. You are born in flesh. You can say, "I don't want this flesh, I want to throw it away", and then you cut off the lotus from the stem. It is the lotus itself that will die. So it is the fear, the lust, the greed and the jealousy which are transformed into love. It is the demonic that have to be transformed into the divine. But you cannot totally destroy the disorder. Order and disorder have to be in balance.

When She comes and kills Mahishasura – ardha nishkrantha evasou – he “comes out half of it” (i.e., halfway out of the Buffalo he has transformed himself into; halfway out of the body of his Desire) and devya veeryena samyuthaha – he is filled by Her energy and thus he emerges. Devi transforms that loveable part of Kama into love, and She slays carnal desire, the hateful part that remains. Then She grants Mahishasura a boon: “Whenever my name is mentioned, your name will be mentioned first.” And thus is She called Mahishasura Mardhini. She has controlled him.

So lust transformed into love is what preserves the world. That is why it is Sthiti, Cosmic Maintenance. This is the function of Maha Lakshmi. Maha Kali governs the first part of the Durga Sapthashathi – the birth of the child from inside the womb of the mother. And then in the second chapter we have its continuance in the form of love sustained by erotic desire. The erotic expressing itself in waves of beauty, waves of organization.

Annihilation of Shumbha-Nishumbha

 The final part is the Shumba-Nishumba vadha, governed by Maha Saraswati. In the film The Matrix Reloaded, there is a version of the Durga Sapthashathi demon called Raktabija. Each time a drop of this demon’s blood falls to the ground, another demon is born out of that drop, in equal proportion to the original. Rakta here means Desire, the seed of desire as it exists at the Muladhara level. You kill Kama, and it becomes anger; you kill anger, and it becomes lobha; and so on. And once again Kali has to come to the rescue. When the Devi tells Her, “Extend your tongue and make sure that the seed does not fall to the ground!” – that means that the seed of Desire is not allowed to return to the Muladhara Chakra, where it would multiply into more and more Desires, but is stopped at the Agni Chakra, which simply burns it away. The purpose of Srividya Upasana is to loosen the structures that constitute Duality and bring them into Unity. What we’re trying to establish is the identity between what you see and what you are.

One way to conceive this is to see the whole world as collapsing into ourselves; another way is to see ourselves as expanding into the whole world – both are equal. The first is achieved by the Pasham, the noose that attracts everything to you. The second is achieved by the Ankusham, the goad that pushes everything away.

In fact, we need both; they are the very atoms of life. If we have only attraction, everything reduces to a point. If we have only repulsion, then everything expands away to infinity. First you need attraction and then, if it comes too close, you need repulsion to push it all away.

Remember this: Our inquiry does not stop at stories. One has to go behind the stories and understand the meaning of every single line.

Loka samastha sukhino bhavanthu. Let the whole world be happy.
Pranams