Holi play of energies, positive and negative

Feb 28, 2010, 12.00am IST
YOGI ASHWINI.


Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Entire creation is nothing but manifestation of energy, and this has been revealed by yogis thousands of years ago.


Every object of creation, all lokas or dimensions of existence and yugas or dimensions of time, they say, exist as energy forms. The earth’s movement changes the dimension of time. When the earth moves on its tilted axis, yugas change, as do seasons when it revolves around the sun. Every movement from one dimension to the other brings about transformation as every day comes with its unique energy patterns.


The concept of sandhya is helpful to understand energy changes that occur daily, when powerful transformations take place. There are two forces in creation, positive and negative; both these energies keep the other in balance. Vedanta describes four types of sandhyas that occur on any given day. The first, the Brahma sandhya, occurs an hour before and after sunrise. This is a time when positive forces are at their peak. This time, therefore, is ideally suited for higher practices.

As the day progresses, energies get transformed. Positive energies tend to diminish while negative energies gain ascendance. The waxing and waning of positive and negative energies lead to the Tantric sandhya. This occurs between 10.20 am and 11.30 AM, when positive and negative forces are most likely to be equal in strength. This time is propitious for material gain.

At sunset, once again energies go through a transformation. The process gives rise to the third sandhya when negative energies peak. Practices like the Sanatan kriya are usually done during this time to protect us from the negative energies in the environment. The last and fourth sandhya occurs at midnight, when negative energies tend to go down and positive energies begin to go up

While all the interplay of positive and negative energies might hold true on an average, on ordinary days, there are certain special days when energies are vibrant that everyone and particularly practitioners of Sanatan kriya and Tantra sadhana receive abundant benefit. Hough we tend to associate these special days with sacred stories, there’s more to them than what is apparent on the surface. The days have been chosen with deliberation, for their significance in energy composition.


Let’s take the story of Holika, associated with the celebration of the Holi festival. King Hiranyakashyapa, irked at his son Prahlad’s devotion to Narayana, makes several attempts to have the child killed. Facing one failure after the next, the king finally decides to make Prahlad sit on Holika’s lap and set him afire, as he was confident that Holika would remain unharmed as she enjoyed the benefit of the boon of immunity to fire.


Prahlad’s unshakable faith in the divine Narayana or Vishnu enables him to emerge from the raging fire unharmed. On the other hand, Holika is reduced to ashes. The story establishes the victory of positive forces over negative forces and inspires one to think in terms of celebrating and respecting positive forces in nature. It’s not all that simple, though. These stories involve super-beings and the meanings of each of these sacred stories embedded deep, pregnant with the very secrets of creation, and which are revealed to a practitioner when the stage comes.


For a spiritual aspirant, the night of Holi is a night of sadhana or meditation. For those who value the festival but who might not be spiritual seekers, it is certainly a good time for introspection, a time to `burn’ the Holika hiding within to ashes, so that truth can reveal itself.
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