Navaratri and Ayurveda Part 1 | Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati

Episode Topics

• What is Navaratri
• The Mother
• Shakti, Parvati, Maya
• Purusha and Prakruti
• Navaratri and Ayurveda as written by Charaka
• Kali and Ayurveda
• Lakshmi and Ayurveda
• Saraswati and Ayurveda
• Navaratri and Joseph Campbell
• Navaratri in daily life
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• May we all be well, adapt and thrive! - Tim and Vie

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Audio Transcript

Hello, this is Tim and this is Vie. And we welcome you to another episode of the spartan mind strength podcast.

And this is going to be a four-part episode even though I held five fingers up, four part episode on -- 

Navaratri, the nine nights of the goddess.  

Yay.

Stay tuned. We’ll be right back.

Navaratri!  Did I say that right? 

Navaratri.  Yes.

Yay. I can speak Sanskrit. 

So we’re going to be talking about Navratri and it’s nine days, it’s a celebration of the three goddesses. And that is -- 

That is Kali, Lakshmi and Saraswati.

And we know that there’s a lot of different ways to celebrate this. There’s a lot of different concepts behind it, but we’re going to be mainly talking about the ayurvedic concept of it.

Navaratri.  Yes. And the reason we are talking about it is because the celebration starts October 7th.

I thought we were talking about it because we just like to talk about it.

Just because, just for the heck of it. Yes. That’s actually a perfect reason to talk about Navaratri.

Okay. So explain to me how we’re going to be doing this because I know we’re going to be doing three more parts after this, but, but put it all together for me. 

Okay.  Navaratri celebrates all different aspects of Shakti, of the feminine energy, of the divine, of the mother. The concept of the mother is very important in Vedic tradition. And the reason it is important is because without the mother, there is no existence.

And I know that not just the Vedic philosophy, every philosophy,  the mother is very important.

Exactly. We talk about mother earth, we talk about mother universe. We come from the mother, we get our mitochondria from our mother. 

Yeah, and I’ve been called a mother ** many times.

Exactly. So the concept of the mother is very, very important for our existence. 

Yes.

Because the father, the male energy is pretty much there. There is, the father, there is no manifestation --

Without mother.

Without the mother. 

Mother is the creation. 

Mother is creation. And, in the Vedic tradition mother, the mother can be referred to as Parvati, or Prakruti the primordial creation or Shakti the feminine energy. I’m sure there are a lot of other names. It can even be Maya, right?

Yes, Maya, because isn’t Maya another word for earth? 

Yes.  Because Maya comes from the root ma and it means to measure forth, which is actually very interesting because our, our experience, the quality of our experience can be measured by our feminine energy.

It can be measured, but only when we use time and space, which is actually also part of the mother energy.

Exactly. So we can’t have manifestation as we understand it without time, space and causality. 

And Mom is all those. 

And Mom is all of those, right?  Mom says how long you are going to do certain things for, where you’re going to do them --

When I have to be back for supper.

And why you can or cannot do them, right?

Time-space and causality. It’s very, very interesting. So that’s what Navaratri reminds us of.  That there are all sorts of aspects to our experience, but they all come from the divine feminine energy.

Okay. And that kicks into ayurveda in a --

Because ayurveda is all about the experience, right.  Charaka said ayurveda is all about a desire for health --

Yes. 

A desire for wealth --

Yes.

And a desire for the other world.

Ayurveda is all about the experience. You can look at it as - it’s all about the observed, all about the observer and all about the aspect of the observation, the process of the observation.

That’s what experience means. Experience, you can’t have an experience -- that’s why Purusha created Prakruti because he couldn’t have an experience without --

Her. 

Exactly. Without her.

Again, it goes back to the male is non-experience in the Vedic philosophy.

In the Vedic tradition, yes, Purusha.

So, Male is always there, but doesn’t actually experience life, happiness, until Shakti comes.

Exactly. Until Prakruti comes. Yes.

So, in the Vedic philosophy, you have to have what is it, Brahma?

Brahma started it?

You have to have Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. Right. You have to have some process of creation, preservation and dissolution or change. 

It’s all about a cycle. Nothing is linear. And it’s actually all about a cycle at many different levels because back to time, space and causality, it’s just one aspect of it.

So we need the woman.

Exactly. Exactly. 

Got to have the Mom.

Got to have the Mom, got to have Maya, got to have Maya, can’t do without Maya.

Okay. Now with that, there’s three different steps of Navaratri. 

Yes. 

And the first step is about Kali.

Kali. The first three nights are dedicated to Kali. The next three are to Lakshmi and the last three are to Saraswati.

Okay. So the next podcast is going to be all about Kali.

Yes. It’s going to be fun. It’s going to be about Kali Ma or Kali Durga. She’s got many different names.

And then she leads into the next goddess

Yes: Lakshmi

And her, Lakshmi. And then, she does three days also, right?

Yes.

And then she leads into --

Saraswati. But again, it’s not just linear. It’s a cycle. It’s actually a cycle that can be at many different levels. So even though we talk about a cycle, there are still infinite possibilities.

And the reason why these three goddesses are involved in Navaratri is --

Because Kali is all about the aspect of the physical, mental, and emotional existence. The right here, right now.

Kali is about death and rebirth of different aspects. And that’s what we’ll talk about. 

Lakshmi is about creation. It’s all about doing things for the aspect of wealth, right, that comes in many different ways.

And Saraswati is all about the knowledge that you acquire through that experience. It’s all about learning and remembering.

It’s almost like Joseph Campbell’s, the -- 

The hero’s journey, right, The hero journey. 

Yes.

So one way to look at Kali is as the observed, right, this physical, mental, and emotional body, this object of observation, our life, what are we doing.

The way to look at Lakshmi is what you do through the process of observation, right? You have to take action, when you are observing you take action and you do certain things. 

And then the Saraswati represents the observer. Are you able to step back and say, what did I learn through this? What did the process of observation with that particular observed object give me?

So, in other words, the nine days that we’re getting ready to come into is a great celebration. But in reality, we should be thinking about this every single hour.

Exactly. Every single minute. That’s how that symbolism, say, those rituals, those traditions are to say, what are you doing from moment to moment And there is no better way to learn, to help you understand your experience than myth, ritual and tradition.

And with that, this, however you want to call it, is actually a way of living. 

Yes, that’s it, it's a way of life.

It’s a great way of seeing the world and going into the next level of the world.

Exactly, exactly.

Or heaven, whatever you want to call it.

Whatever the next level of the experience, whatever that is, we should actually say happy navaratri all the time, right?

I think I’ll do that and say happy navaratri and you say night night.

Until next time, much, much love from both of us. Na’maste kala.  May we all be well, adapt and thrive

And Happy Navaratri!