Which town?

It was now time to become.

And, for Her city, She had indicated that religions would be studied in the context of human evolution, but that each one’s conduct would be based, or would have to found itself, on a direct experience of the spiritual Truth. While all religions had originally issued from genuine inner experiences of a spiritual order and were essentially one, they all had, sooner or later, succumbed to an exclusive identity and a pragmatic will for dominance and as a consequence lost their initial purity. Only the religion termed “Hindu” still largely escaped this corruption insofar as, within its ambit, every authentic approach of the Divine is accepted and any realization of the Divine may be recognized and respected - since the Brahman is infinite, rests in all that is and there is no other Existence but It. And in India one of the consequences of this universality is that the religious attitude - the intentional bond with the presence of a higher reality embracing and informing all that is, reality made accessible by a multitude of forces, powers and divinities – is so much part of everyone’s daily life that it is spontaneous, natural and unreasoned. Thus in many parts of India, whose pantheon comprises a formidable family of higher beings, it is customary to celebrate the role and action of such or such of its members, god or goddess, on certain days of the solar or lunar year. Each year the battle waged by Durga, an aspect of the Shakti, against a particular asura (demon), and Her victory on the tenth day, are inscribed in almost everyone’s life. During the battle, on each of the nine days Durga calls upon a different power of the great Mahashakti. This celebration occurs in October or November. In Her ashram for many years, during those days, She had used to come down and sit in a flowered alcove, clad in a sari of a different color according to the aspect being It, She, He = That. Aum Tat Sat.

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