NAVRATRI AND SAPTASHATI SHOW LIBERATION THROUGH EMBRACING LIFE

Saptashati reveals freedom comes by meeting life fully, not bypassing form.

- ACHARYA PRASHANT

Navratri returns each year to remind us of something both simple and profound: the formless is reached only through form.

The scriptures speak of the formless; we, meanwhile, often either cling to rituals or treat life as something to step over. The result is predictable: religion risks becoming an abstraction, and ordinary life is left outside its gates.

But we do not live in abstractions; we live in form. Navratri's point is simple: what is beyond form is reached only by going through form. The task, then, is to meet life as it comes, without shortcuts or avoidance. In these nine nights, the real 'vrat' should be simple and exact: approach the Durga Saptashati with your whole heart, as a 'sankalp' not to remain as you currently are.

The Durga Saptashati is often treated as a chronicle of gods and demons, somewhere between earth and heaven. Read only as a story of gods and demons, it serves little purpose. Scripture finds its power when it addresses the human knot at the center of life.

The Saptashati presents these episodes as inner, psychological events rather than dated chronicles. The events are not bound to one time and place; they keep occurring within us. The "when" is now; the "where" is the mind. If a text cannot address this inner continuity and show a way through it, it is not worth nine nights of attention.

Fittingly, the book opens with a door to the human problem. King Surath, once secure in power, is defeated by a smaller force; returning to his capital, he finds betrayal among his own ministers. He leaves the city on the pretext of a hunt and wanders into the forest, reaching the hermitage of Sage Medha: a place in which even predators and prey seem to sit without violence.

Around the same time, a merchant named Samadhi arrives. Stripped of wealth and status, abandoned by those who once honored him, he drifts toward the same hermitage, the same unsettling peace.