Dīpāvalī, Vedic mythology, and collective consciousness
Unpacking the past week in our collective experience and why Vedic celebrations matter
Last week billions of people all over the world celebrated dīpāvalī (diwali in Hindi), which is referred to as the ‘festival of lights’. It’s called this because the word dīpa in Sanskrit means ‘lights, lamps, candles, or glow of that which illuminates wisdom’, and āvalī means ‘row of’ or ‘continuous line’.
Dīpāvalī doesn’t have to be something you know about or celebrate yourself in order for this time of year to have an impact on you personally. Think about it - billions of people around the world are focusing and placing their awareness on this one celebration. That’s at least quarter of the world’s population collectively thinking about the same thing! Imagine if that same amount of people focused on peace, or tolerance, or some form of collective action. We would inevitably see a huge ripple effect worldwide.
We also know that Vedic celebrations are a way of creating spaces for us to express and process what is taking place internally, as these celebrations are always about an archetypal journey we go on during our time on Earth. Why we celebrate certain archetypes at certain times is a complex web of factors which include planetary alignment and seasonal transitions. What is fascinating to me is around the time we begin to bring our awareness to these archetypes through celebrations in the Vedic calendar, the energy is very naturally alive and present in our collective. These celebrations are always so perfectly timed and in tune with the dominant theme in many people’s lives. This is because we are always experiencing our environment and the collective through our individuality. We are never alone in what we are feeling and we’re more connected to the collective mind and experience than we give ourselves credit for.
Whether you realise it or not, the celebration and intention of dīpāvalī is present and alive in the collective consciousness right now (having taken place last Thursday/Friday depending where you were in the world), so let’s explore how you may have experienced this energy in your own life and what this celebration is all about.
The energy of dīpāvalī & mahālakṣmī.
You’ll hear many different stories about the nature of dīpāvalī - where it comes from, what is being celebrated, and how the celebrations take place. What you will find is an overall theme of the triumph of wisdom over ignorance. We can see this as the inner light of knowingness (symbolised by the row of lights) burning brightly against our baser instincts and trauma. How we explore this theme is through the stories and archetype of mahālakṣmī, the devī or law of nature that gives us evolutionary growth, abundance, prosperity, and wealth of all kinds.
Before we really dive in, we must remember that mahālakṣmī is not a ‘being’ that exists outside of us. She is that aspect of our own nature that expresses these attributes in our own life. When we place our awareness on mahālakṣmī what we’re really doing is flowing our attention to that part of us she represents.
Now, the true nature of mahālakṣmī is a little more than meets the eye. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (who was the teacher that brought the practice of transcendence to the modern world) described mahālakṣmī as the centre point (or the middle ground) between silence and dynamism or expansion and contraction. She is the part of our awareness that sits between the stillness of the Absolute (not-doing) and the action of the relative world (doing). This is the real understanding of mahālakṣmī and the way to a life of abundance; to be stabilised in both ‘not-doing’ and ‘doing’ simultaneously (integration) with our actions coming from this place - ‘the centre point’. This is how we find true fulfilment and bliss. This is the true meaning of the word ‘prosperity’.
“Mahālakṣmī is an element of all possibilities, completely self-sufficient at any time, and any place. It is an expression of prosperity and it is not stagnant prosperity, it’s growing prosperity, growing and growing and growing. In every step of progress there is a wave of happiness. Progress means successive waves of happiness. So, mahālakṣmī is the basis of all progress and it is so self-sufficient in its self-interacting dynamics that it creates and creates and creates itself in terms of infinite variety. This is the progressive fulfilling nature of mahālakṣmī. And in this fulfilling nature of mahālakṣmī, because everything is growing, it is growing in fulfilment and bliss.” - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
So what does this really mean for us?
We always like to ask the question, ‘So what?’ How is this relevant to me and my life?’ What we can conclude from the above is that prosperity, enjoyment, fulfilment, and bliss don’t lie in stagnancy. They come from living a life geared towards progressive change, towards an evolutionary flow of life.
We also don’t find these experiences by just living life in the material world or in living only in the eyes closed state (meditation). To live a life of abundance we have to learn how to be the master of both and cultivate mahālakṣmī - our awareness stabilised at the junction point of the unmanifest (not doing) and the manifest (doing). This is why we meditate and then move into activity, and then meditate again in the afternoon and move into more activity afterwards. This is the technique for integration. Mahālakṣmī is not either/or. Mahālakṣmī is the integration of being (not doing) and action (doing). In this Maharishi is giving us a blueprint or a guide of where to aim in life to find what we are truly looking for, and to not go searching for bliss in places it doesn’t exist.
“What we are saying here is when mahālakṣmī is in our mind, our mind is a full blossom of all possibility. All knowledge is there, all action is there, our base is there (fulfilment).” - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
The individual and collective impact.
By placing our awareness on mahālakṣmī we are enlivening that consciousness state within that allows us to access fulfilment and infinite creative potential. When we start doing this we may notice where mahālakṣmī is currently not present in our life! We may find that what gets highlighted is where we are stagnating; this could be mental, emotional, physical, or situational stagnancy such as with a house, job, relationship etc. We may find old patterns of thoughts become really prevalent, or we discover something that we didn’t even known was bothering us.
This year I noticed as we celebrated dīpāvalī in our community that there were a lot of people experiencing big release of old stresses, belief systems, and narrow ways of thinking. People shared they felt more triggered than usual or they felt more sensitive. When we spoke about what dīpāvalī was actually about it gave them a sense of understanding and appreciation and also peace because they understood it was part of a collective letting go of stagnancy. As we moved through the celebration I spoke to many people who felt like they had just pulled through something very big, and felt like they were a little lighter and ready to move into something new. It was beautiful to witness and I felt the same way myself!
I hope this post resonates and provides some insight into anything you’ve been experiencing over the last week. Drop a comment below if you feel!
With love,
Sarah x
Resources to explore.
Listen to Maharishi Mahesh yogi speak about Mahalakshmi
Read the stories and archetypal adventures featured in Vedic storytelling in
Myth = Mithya: Decoding Hindu Mythology by Devdutt Pattanaik
Attend a Vedic ceremony or experience at Sukha Ashram in Melbourne with Sarah O’Brien
Group meditation timetable.
Join us this week for a group meditation and wisdom session. Open to all Vedic meditators. Please book in via the timetable.
Monday 4 November - 6:30pm-8pm in Elsternwick with Sarah O’Brien
Monday 4 November - 6:30pm-7:45pm in Noosa with Laura Poole
Tuesday 5 November - 6pm-7pm online with Sarah O’Brien
Wednesday 30 October - Every Wednesday 6am FREE meditation, swim and chai at Noosa Main beach. Open to anyone to attend. Tell your friends! Follow us @noosa_meditation to stay in touch.
Upcoming courses + offerings.
Gift yourself a lifelong practice for health, happiness, and deeper connection. Join our community and be supported for life. We currently teach in-person courses in:
MELBOURNE - NOOSA - CASTLEMAINE
Below are our final Vedic meditation courses for 2024:
7-10 November - Vedic meditation course in Noosa with Laura
15-18 November - Vedic meditation course in Melbourne with Laura
21-24 November - Vedic meditation course in Castlemaine with Kathleen
23-26 November - Vedic meditation course in Melbourne with Sarah
28 November - 1 December - Vedic meditation course in Noosa with Laura
2025 - Siddha Training with Sarah O’Brien (for advanced Vedic meditators) - this is our advanced training on dharma and manifestation where you will learn how to take the power of yogic wisdom and harness it for action in your daily life. The training re-enlivens the teachings of Maharishi Patanjali’s Yoga Sūtra, which was cognised over 2700 years ago, and is designed to support you in embodying your fullest potential.
Free discovery call.
We get it! Booking in to a 4-session in-person course is a commitment. Looking to learn Vedic meditation but want to meet your teacher and know more before signing up? Join us LIVE for a free Q&A discovery call on Zoom.
Retreat with us.
Join Mahasoma in 2025 on retreat. Connect to yourself through deep practice, nourishing wisdom and community connection.
Siva Sakti Sages & Siddhas, South India 15-day Pilgrimage
17 February - 3 March 2025 with Laura Poole and Pandit Baskaran
This pilgrimage has been in the making for over a decade as Laura has journeyed through Tamil Nadu, visiting ancient temples, meeting siddhas and sages, meditating, and receiving great blessings and boons. It’s also Pandit Baskaran’s homeland and together they have experienced many powerful pilgrimages with his embodied wisdom guiding. We are filled with joy to be sharing this lovingly curated pilgrimage for the first time, so you too can have life-changing experiences, deep realisations, and viscerally know the power of our Vedic tradition and meditation we so dearly treasure.
We start where Maharishi Mahesh Yogi journeyed to from Uttarkashi after Guru Deva dropped his body. The thought came to him ‘Rāmeśvaram’ and so began his voyage to this sacred town of Śiva, one of the 12 jyotirlinga. We will meditate at Maharishi Patanjali’s birthplace and mahāsamādhi, who cognised the Yoga Sūtra from where our siddhi practice originates. We will experience the power of South Indian vāstu (Vedic temple architecture) that creates the perfect conditions for inner realisations and kundalinī awakenings. We will explore many of the sacred places established by Adi Śankara and spend time at the original Śankarācārya matha, where Adi Śankara himself took the first seat. We will bathe in the wisdom of Advaita Vedānta at Arunachala and the mahāsamādhi of Ramana Maharshi. We will also be attending Mahāśivarātri, the ‘night of Śiva’, at Mahānanda Siddha’s temple, one of the 19 Tamil Nadu siddhas, before concluding the pilgrimage at the home of the Divine Mother, an avatāra of Narayani, Śrī Śakti Amma’s Śrīpurum.
Find out more HERE or email laura@mahasoma.com for the PDF
FYI - This is not your average retreat! It will be a full power deep immersion into the Self and the Vedic culture of India. We recommend having a dedicated twice daily Vedic meditation practice along with advanced wisdom training and/or techniques of rounding and siddhis to support the flow of the journey. It’s also a great opportunity for Vedic meditation teachers to explore their Shankaracharya lineage and have the direct experience of the wisdom they teach in India. Unsure if this is for you? Send us an email and we can chat!
Who is Mahasoma?
The Mahasoma team is a feminine-led collective of Vedic meditation teachers, who choose to come together to create something greater than what could be done as individuals. Through working together they support the ever growing community of Mahasoma meditators by offering Vedic meditation courses, online and in-person group meditation and Vedic wisdom sessions, advanced trainings, and retreats. They are accredited Mental Health First Aiders and have been trained in pre- and/or postnatal support for women and families.
Want to know a little more on who and what we are? We’ve written a few things on our website you can check out. We would love to connect with you!
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Feeling this! thanks for your beautiful share x