Wishing Happy New Year

Happy New Year 2013

Hindu Festival

Date	Day	Festival
Jan14,2013	Monday	Makarsankranti/Pongal
Feb14,2013	Thursday	Vasanth  Panchami
March 10,2013	Sunday	Maha Shivarathri
March 27,2013	Wednesday	Holi
April 11,2013	Thursday	Hindi New Year
April 11,2013	Thursday	Telugu New Year/ugadi
April 14,2013	Sunday	Tamil New Year
April 14,2013	Sunday	Baisakhi/Vishu
April 15,2013	Monday	Bengali New Year
April 20,2013	Saturday	Ramanavami
April25,2013	Thursday	Hanuman Jayanti
May13,2013	Monday	Akshaya  Tritya
Jun08,2013	Saturday	Savitri Pooja
Jul 10,2013	Wednesday	Puri Rath Yatra
Jul 22,2013	Monday	Guru Purnima
Aug 11,2013	Monday	Nag Purnima
Aug 20,2013	Tuesday	Raksha Bandhan
Aug 28,2013	Wednesday	Krisha Janmashtami
Sep 09,2013	Monday	Ganesh Chaturthi
Sep 16,2013	Monday	Onam
Sep 20,2013	Friday	Ptir-paksha Begins
Oct 04,2013	Friday	Pitr-paksha ends
Oct 11,2013	Friday	Durga Puja Begins
Oct 13,2013	Friday	Lakshmi Puja
Oct 22,2013	Tuesday	Karwa chauth
Nov 01,2013	Friday	Dhan Teras
Nov 03,2013	Sunday	Diwali
Nov17,2013	Sunday	Kartik Poornima

Why The World Will Never End in Year 2012 (Based on Hinduism & NASA(National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.

Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.

Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?

A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.

Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?

A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.

Q: Is NASA predicting a "total blackout" of Earth on Dec. 23 to Dec. 25?

A: Absolutely not. Neither NASA nor any other scientific organization is predicting such a blackout. The false reports on this issue claim that some sort of "alignment of the Universe" will cause a blackout. There is no such alignment (see next question). Some versions of this rumor cite an emergency preparedness message from NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. This is simply a message encouraging people to be prepared for emergencies, recorded as part of a wider government preparedness campaign. It never mentions a blackout.

Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?

A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.

Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?

A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.

Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?

A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.

Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?

A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012?

A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.

Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?

A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.

Debunking Indiana Jones

Unfortunately, the little most Westerners know about the Hindu Goddess tradition is what they learn fiction Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Horrison Ford is called upon to rescue struggling victims about to be sacrificed to a horrible, multi armed female deity. There is no way to sufficiently express how offensive this depiction of Goddess spirituality is to Hindus!

Europeans of the Victorian era also mistakenly believed that Shaktas engage in drunken sex orgies. No such luck! These myths got started from rumors based real tantric practices, though. A Shakta would purify himself or herself for weeks, fasting and chanting a Goddess mantra millions of times. Then under the close supervision of a Shakta master, the aspirant would drink high-proof liquor, strong enough to knock the socks off even the sturdiest drinker, much less a teetotaler like most Hindus.

The point of the practice was to learn to face death consciously. Most people die in a state of unconsciousness, which is bad news from a Hindu point of view because you want to be alert so that you can direct the stages of the after-death process. By learning to maintain awareness despite the stupefying effects of strong liquor, the Shakta is training to remain conscious during the process of death itself. 

Shaiva Siddhanta : Loving Shiva

Shaiva Siddhanta also shows more flexibility in matters of caste, gender, and ethics than the generally more socially conservative Vaishnavas. It is the most commonly practiced form of Shaivisim in south India today. Devotees of this tradition value the Tiru Murai even more than the Veda. This exquisite collection of Tamil hymns to Lord Shiva was compiled by Nambiyandar Nambi in the eleventh century.

Shaiva  Siddhanta is famous for its 63 Nayanars, Tamil poet saints who lived between 700 and 1000 C.E. Their poetry extols Shiva's extraordinary grace and compassion. Until their arrival on the scene, both Buddhism and Jainism had made substantial in roads in South India. The Nayanars won back the hearts of the people and reestablished Lord Shiva as South India's premier god. Let me introduce you to a few of these exceptional saints :

< Appar (600-681) converted from Jainism to Shaivisim. The local Jain king had him thrown into a vat of poison, tried drowning him, and drove an elephant to attack him. But by remembering the holy mantra

" Nama Shivaya", Appar survived every assault. The king was so impressed he converted to Shaivisim himself.

< Sambandar (644-660) was known for the miracles he accomplished in Shiva's name. It was said he was so adept he could raise the dead even after they were cremated! Like Appar, he taught that ultimately Vishnu and Shiva are the same Divine Being.

< Sundar (716-735) went blind as a young man. He complained angrily to Shiva who, after all, according to myth, had three good eyes! Shiva restored his eyesight. In fact, Shiva loved the boy saint so much he is said to have shared his wife, Parvati, with him!

Shaktas : " Jai Ma"!

There's famous saying in India. " When you're in public, be a Vaishnava. When you're in private, be a Shaivite. But in your heart, always be a Shakta". The advice is to behave like a conventional religious person with its masses. With a circle of friends you may explore your more radical spiritual insights. But when all is said and done, there ain't no lap more comfortable that Mom's!

Shaktas worship the Mother of the Universe as both the Supreme Consciousness itself and its power. Its power is the will and energy that creates, nutures,and finally dissolves away the worlds. Some Shaktas, called Kaulas, engage primarily in ritual practice. Others, in the meditatively oriented Samaya tradition, focus exclusively on inner work. The Mishras do some of both : ritual to channel one' s physical energy and focus the mind, and meditation to plunge into the inner depths where Devi, the "radiant goddess", resides.

In heavily Shakta of India, like Bengal or Assam, you'll hear Hindus shout "Jai Ma"! It literally means 

" Hurray for Mom!" and has an energy something like " Hallelujah!" Worship of Divine Mother permeates every aspect of Hindu spirituality. Even Vaishnavas and Shaivities don't worship a male God exclusively like Christians and Muslims do. The feminine divine is always also honored even when the male aspect of the Supreme Being is emphasized. 

Kashmir Shaivisim : The Naked Lady

Kashmir Shaivisim is the best known form of Shaivisim in the West today. It was popularized here by Swami Muktananda and his successor Gurumayi Chidvilasananda in the second half of the twentieth century. It emphasizes that we're already enlightened. We just need to remember that.

Pratyabhijna mans recognizing ones true identity and is the key to the Kashmiri system. At the center of our being lies undying divine awareness. When we clear the impurities out of our minds and stop being distracted by our desires, the light of pure awareness shines through. Then we experience our real nature as Shiva.

Lalleshvari (fourteenth century) is one of the best-known saints of this tradition. She walked out of an abusive marriage and spent the rest of her life wandering naked through the countryside, absorbed in love for Shiva and performing advanced yogic practices. 

Vira Shaivisim : Path of Heroes

The Vira Shaivities also behave horribly by conservative Hindu standards. One of their greatest saints, a twelfth-century brahmin from Karnataka named Basava, was one of the great religious reformers in Hindu history. He led the Vira Shaivities in rejecting caste distinctions ( a major no-no in Hinduism), honoring women as full equals of men and respecting all forms of honest labor including the lowest and dirtiest.

Vira means hero. A Vira Shaivite is as dauntless and alert in his or her spiritual life as a soldier in the thick of battle.

Vira Shaivite wear a linga, the symbol of Shiva, on their bodies. They consider it his living presence. By keeping it close, they make their bodies Shiva's living temple. A second form of linga exists in the heart. When the kundalini rises from the bottom of the spine illuminating the energy of the heart center, this linga is directly experienced. The third linga is in the brain. When the kundalini activates the center at the top of the head, union with Shiva is experienced. You merge into the linga of pure consciousness.

Vira Shaivities compare the jiva, the individual soul, and Shiva, the cosmic being, to a river and the ocean. There is definitely a difference between the two, as anyone can see. But at the time of enlightenment, the soul merges into Shiva like the river pouring into the sea. At that point, it becomes impossible to distinguish between the two. 

Guidepost

Some crazy people are, well, crazy. Others may actually be enlightened! In India great saints sometimes act crazy to get supplicants-people who show up demanding miracles and favors to leave them alone. 

Pashupati : Lord of Beasts

Of the major subsects of Shaiva Hindus, the Pashupatis are the most notorious. Pashupati means " lord of domesticated animals". Most people, these Shaivities say, are like cows with rings through their noses. They're led here and there by social conventions by their own hopes and fears. The Pashupati practitioners break with social norms and often behave in the most outrageous and upsetting ways- on purpose. They're trying to set their inner world upside down so that they can shake themselves loose from past mental conditioning and begin to move through the world with true freedom.

There are five stages of practice according to this tradition. First is the conventional spiritual aspirant, who meditates and tries to do good. If these aspirants progress, they'll reach the second stage of genuine sainthood. They follow rigorous moral standards and are exemplars of compassion, wisdom, and selfless service. By Pashupati standards, the average saint we recognize in the West is at the second of five levels of spiritual attainment.

The problem with being a Stage 2 saint is that you attract needy souls who waste your time with their constant demands and sycophants who inflate your ego with their constant praise. So at the third stage, practioners are advised to act outrageously, leaping around and shouting as if they're crazy. They make sexual advances to anyone and everyone and break their promises. The crowds of devotees and well wishers who surrounded them in the past now quickly vanish, and the yogi is free to move on to higher practices.

In the fourth stage the aspirants are more "there" than "here" Though still inhabiting a physical body, their awareness is centered in the world within. To normal people, they may seem distracted or even catatonic. Stage 5 is the level of real mastery, where the adept remains centered in the highest consciousness but now acts in the material world for the benefit of all beings helping to free others from their "nose rings".

Shaivities : " Om Nama Shivaya!"

You can identify the Shaivities by the three lines each lines of ash running horizontally across their foreheads. Or by the lingam ( a small conical stone) many of them wear around their necks. While the Vaishnava holy men usually have shaved heads, the Shaivities have a full head or hair, sometimes matted and wrapped around their skulls like a turban.

Even if you've never met a Hindu in your life, you still have heard friends of yours come home from their yoga classes repeating the most sacred Shaivite mantra, "Om namah Shivaya". " With loving reverence, I bow to the Supreme Consciousness". In this tradition, the Supreme Being is called Lord Shiva. 

Merging in the Temples, Singing in the Streets

Names of certain Vaishnava saints will come up not infrequently in your conversations with orthodox Hindu families. Here is a primer listing a few of the most loved saints from the last 1,500 years or so (the dates given here are historian's approximations):

< Antal (725-755). One of the most famous of the Alvars, she so adamantly insisted she would have no husband but God himself that her family actually took her to the Vishnu temple at Srirangam for the marriage ceremony! It's said that there she physical merged into the image in the temple, her love for him was so intense.

< Jnanadeva (1275-1296). The child author of the Jnaneshvari, which is a commentary on the Bhagavad Gita and perhaps the greatest spiritual classic of Maharashtra. At the age of 21, Jnanadeva had himself entombed alive so that he could close out his life focused exclusively on attaining union with Krishna.

< Mira Bai (1948-1546). A Rajput princess whose ecstatic songs to Krishna are still sung throughout India. She caused a stir of divine fervor everywhere she traveled singing of her love. At her death, she merged into a statue of Krishna at Dvaraka.

< Chaitanya (1486-1533). Regarded by many Hindus as the incarnation of both Krishna and his lover Radha, Chaitanya made his way through much of India chanting Krishna's name and dancing in the streets. And triggering a massive social movement of religious devotion!

< Anandamayi Ma (1896-1982). A saint so amazing other saints came to prostrate before her. Illumined from birth, she lived in God consciousness, travelling around India wherever God directed her. From an inner space of luminous clarity, she shared her experience of the unity of all things. 

Heaven Full of Saints

The spiritual sky of Vaishnava spirituality is alight with a brilliant array of stars : saints of the highest magnitude. Some of the most famous were the 12 Alvars, who lived in the eighth and ninth centuries C.E. in the south of India. Their hymns were saturated with love for divine, bemoaning their separation from the Lord (usually in the form of Krishna) and celebrating those moments of merger when they experience his living presence.

The Alvars had such an enormous impact on Hindu spirituality that across the subcontinent Hindu intellectuals were forced to rethink their philosophical systems to accommodate a personable God. They also had to work in the intense devotion that the Alvars showed can transport a soul to highest states of mystical ecstasy.

Closer to our own time the Bauls of Bengal frankly call themselves "madmen for God". Many are minstrels who travel through the countryside singing and dancing. If you hear a Baul even once, you'll never forget the experience. They sing with such passion you half expect their hearts to split open!

Thaipusam Festival

Every year end of January / beginning of February it is time for the spectacular Thaipusam Festival which is expected to draw more than one million devotees and visitors to the Batu caves near Kuala Lumpur but there are also processions in Georgetown/ Penang and Singapore. Thaipusam is a Hindu festival celebrated mostly by the Tamil community. Especially images of devotees piercing their cheeks, tongue, face or other suitable body parts with sharp objects make this event memorable. 

Hanging Out with Vishnu

While Vaishnavism recognizes the importance of meditation practices, its emphasis lies primarily in religious devotion and morality. The word bhava is the key to understanding Vaishnava spirituality. It means emotion, or more specifically the overwhelming joy and love that arise from living life active companionship with God.

While some Hindus focus on deep meditation and others on philosophical contemplation, Vaishnavas are often suspicious of too much head stuff. It's that juice in the heart called love that gives spiritual life its zip. Vaishnavas love to recount the story of Rama's passion for his wife, Sita, or it contemplating Krishna's beautiful features and amorous adventures. Deep feelings of religious ecstasy cleanse the mind and propel the heart toward living companionship with Vishnu here and after death.

For some Vaishnavas, God's wife is just as important and maybe even more important than he is. This is Lakshmi, which you've already met in Chapter 13, " Meet the Hindu Goddesses". Many Vaishnavas call her Sri (pronounced shree), which literally means "auspiciousness" or "all good things". She is the supremely compassionate one, the beloved World Mother who looks after us kids and guide us home to Dad. 

A Personable God

Many Vaishnavas believe God has six special qualities : all knowledge, all power, supreme majesty, supreme strength, unlimited energy, and total self-sufficiency. So he's not just a transcendent undifferentiated mystical blur, but an actual divine person. Vaishnavas like to use one of the oldest Vedic names for God, Purushottama, which means " the ultimate person". Or, as the Hare Krishnas put it, " the Supreme Personality of Godhead".

For most Vaishnavas, the divine Self inside ourselves is the same as but no equal to Vishnu. Spiritual liberation means merging into God, but not in the same total sense that Shankaracharya taught. We merge in God without losing our individual nature, for we are meant to be his companions for all eternities. And even though we may enjoy his bliss when our awareness bathes in his, we do not share his infinite power. Only God can create a universe. We hang out in the worlds he places us in. We don't create new worlds ourselves.

Guidepost

Shaven-headed young men in orange robes approach you at the airport chanting " Hare Krishna! Hare Hare !" Who are these people? The " Hare Krishnas" are devotees of late Bahktivedanta Parabupada, who showed up penniless in the streets of New York back in the mid 1960s. This Vaishnava guru was already in his 70s when he began his hugely successful teaching mission to the West. He was following in the tradition of the fifteenth-century Bengali saint Chaitanya, who also liked to sing and dance in public streets. 

Vaishnavas : " Hare Krishna!"

The Vaishnavas are the largest denomination in India and have numerous subsects. Devotion to Lord Vishnu and his avatars (especially Krishna and Rama) is their keynote. In addition to the Veda hold particularly sacred Bhagavad Gita, the Bahagavata Purana  (which contains many enchanting stories about Krishna), and various compendiums or religious lore, such as Vishnu Samhita. There is also ecstatic devotional poetry such as the erotically charged Gita Govinda, which compares a devotee's yearning for God with a young woman's intoxication with her lover.

The Main Dominations

There are so many thousands of Hindu sects that religious scholars despair of ever getting them all straight. Still, if you walk into a Hindu home, odds are high that the family members belong to one of three major groups :

> Vaishnavas : devotees of Vishnu

> Shaivities   : devotees of Shiva

> Shaktas     : devotees of Devi, the Goddess

Let's have a look at Hinduism's major denominations. Then we'll take a quick peak at some very important sects which broke from Hinduism to start their own religions.

Kalki : The Future Liberator

Vishnu's most dramatic incarnation is yet to come. At the end of the Kali yuga, the cycle of darkness in which the world is presently languishing, Vishnu will incarnate in the form of Kalki the liberator. He will be military commander who will " liberate"the world from evil and inaugurate a new cycle of truthfulness, justice, and universal goodness.

It is difficult to say where the legend of the Kalki avatar originated. It seems to be an extremely ancient myth, shared by the Persians, the Jews, the Christians, the Tibetans, and many Central Asians. Even the Native Americans had their version named Kukulan!

Significance of Skanda Sashti

Sashti is the day the Lord Subramanya defeated the demon soorapadman. When the devas couldn't tolerate the evil doings of this demon, they approached the younger son of Lord Shiva and Parvati for his assistance he fought soorapadman for six days, at the end of which the Lord vanquished the asura. He threw his weapon at him and soorapadman was split into two halves. One half became a peacock, which he took as his vahana. The other became a cock and was transformed into the flag. 

King of Mathura

As a young man, Krishna left Vrindavan to fulfill his destiny in Mathura, where he overthrew the vicious king Kamsa. But back in his village , the gopis pined for him night and day, especially Radha, his favorite girlfriend. Krishna never returned to Vrindavan. But lives, until they actually began to see him in everyone and everything around them. Merging in Krishna's true Self, the all-pervading consciousness of Vishnu, they each attained enlightenment. Many Hindus still cherish the memory of the gopis as the greatest devotees who ever lived.

Krishna eventually became king of Mathura. As the Mahabharata relates, he would go on to help his friend Arjuna win the disastrous war against the Kauravas. The Bhagavad Gita, one of the wisest and most powerful scriptures in the world's spiritual literature, recounts Krishna's advice to Arjuna confronts the consequences of human evil and the inevitability of death.

Once, when hundreds of women from a nearby kingdom were carried off by pillaging army, Krishna rushed to the rescue. After he'd saved them the women cried that their husbands and fathers wouldn't accept them back because they were "impure" now that they'd been raped. Krishna called for a priest and married them all on the spot. It's easy to see why Krishna is so popular with women devotees to this day!

Krishna may well be the single most beloved figure in the history of Hinduism. He's more loved than Vishnu himself even though he's supposed to be just one of Vishnu's ten major incarnations. The character of Krishna combines unsurpassed wisdom with masculine charm and heroic deeds. He towers over the centuries as a Divine Man for all time. 

The Dance of Love

The stories of Krishna's boyhood in Vrindavan are some of the most delightful-and most sensual-in Hindu spiritual lore. It's not surprising that Vrindavan is one of the most popular pilgrimage sites in India today! It was here Krishna grew up looking after the cattle. In Hindu art, he is often depicted as a loving tender of cows, much as Christians picture Jesus as the good shepherd.

Krishna was so devastatingly attractive that all the women of the village fell helplessly in love with him. Most of them were simple milkmaids (gopis in Sanskrit), who made their living selling fresh milk. At night,Krishna would wander out into the forest and play enchantingly on his flute. This gopis would slip out of their homes (sometimes out of their husband's!) to rendezvous with their divine lover. 

The Rasa Lila is Krishna's mystical dance, s bewitching scene depicted again in Hindu art. One night, to satisfy the desires of all the women in love with him, Krishna temporarily "cloned" himself into dozens of Krishnas. Then he danced through the night with every one of the gopis at the same time. Each of them innocently believed she alone enjoyed his love! This beautiful story makes the point that while members of different sects and religions believe God is theirs alone, in fact God dances with his lovers everywhere, in all times and all places. 

The Butter Theif

A sage had told me malicious king Kamsa that his nephew would kill him and take his throne. No problem : Kamsa simply had each of his sister's children killed the moment it was born . But sister Devaki and her husband Vasudeva managed to slip their eighth infant to safety. Little Krishna grew up in the village of Vrindavan, where he made a charming nuisance of himself. He was always finding ways to get his little fingers into his foster mother Yasoda's tasty fresh butter. Which is why to this day you'll hear Hindus, with tears of affection streaming from their eyes, call Krishna damodara, " the butter theif".

Kamsa's assassins were always lurking but somehow the little toddler turned the tables on them all. Kamsa never did catch the boy destined to be his undoing. 

Krishna : He's So Divine

No Hindu contests Krishna's level of consciousness. He was a full avatar of Vishnu, completely conscious of his divinity from birth. Every day of his life was full of miracles. He embodied Godhood at its most loving, most wise, and most fun.

According to the Bible, King Herod heard of the birth of a future king and was paranoid enough to send out troops to kill newborn male infants. The circumstances around Krishna's birth were so similar that Christian theologians at first thought the Hindus had stolen parts of the story of Jesus's birth-till they discovered that Krishna's story was centuries older. 

Who's an Avatar ?

Some avatars are "full" avatars, fully aware of their divine nature form birth. The late Anandamayi Ma, believed by many to have been an incarnation of the goddess Kali, reported that she was fully conscious from birth. She even described details from her earliest infancy that ordinarily a child couldn't possibly remember. She said she didn't experience the world piecemeal, but "all at once," without any limitations on her awareness. She proved again and again that she accurately knew exactly what was happening with devotees in other parts of India.

Some incarnations, like Rama and Sita, may be "partial", where God and Goddess retain some of their divine powers but are not fully aware of their divinity. Others, like Parashu Rama, had forgotten their divine status completely and lost themselves in the world play until reawakened by an inspired guru.

Many Hindus sincerely believe their own guru is a special incarnation of one aspect or another of the divine. A guru may be an incarnation of divine wisdom or an embodiment of divine love. A number of truly remarkable modern women, like Anasuya Devi from Jillellamudi and Amritanandamayi Ma from Kerala, are felt by many Hindus to be actual incarnations of the Mother of the Universe.

An important point to remember here is that in a sense, we're all avatars. Each of us incarnates a portion of divine consciousness, though most of us (like Parashu Rama) have completely forgotten it. The fundamental distinction between a great avatar like Rama or Krishna and the rest of us is that we're "average" souls working our way up to divine status. The great start from the top, working their way down to our level of consciousness.

God and the Flying King

Vishnu was born as Rama in the city of Ayodhya where he sat an example as the perfect son, perfect husband, and perfect king. All the while not realizing that he was God incarnate! And not realizing he was getting into, Ravana kidnapped Rama's wife, Sita (who was the goddess Lakshmi incarnate, though she didn't realize it either), hoping to force her to marry him.

Rama came after Ravana and eventually destroyed both the demon and his capital city. Ravana had a huge, highly trained army at his disposal as well as every technological advantage. He even had a flying machine called a vimana, the Vedic equivalent of a helicopter, with which he could drop in unexpectedly on his victims.

Rama had only a motley army of monkeys and bears (perhaps this was a colorful way of describing some simple tribal people of southern India), and bows and arrows. Yet his love for Sita was so strong he managed to defeat Ravana's vastly superior forces. The story is told in loving detail in the Hindu epic Ramayana. 

Guidepost

Confused about the violence in Ayodhya? Sad to say the city where Rama was born is now a battleground between Hindus and Muslims. In the fifteenth century, a Mogul emperor horrified Hindus by building a mosque over the spot where Rama was born. In December 1992, militant Hindus destroyed the mosque. Today the matter rests with the Indian court system which is searching for a peaceful resolution to an issue almost every Indian-Hindu or Muslim-feels extremely passionate about. 

Rama : Avatar Unaware

Could God ever forget he was God? Amazingly, according to many Hindus, he could!

Through intense spiritual practices the king Ravana won a boon from Shiva that no god or any other supernatural being could defeat him in battle. They say power corrupts, and what that kind of power Ravana went a little crazy and started terrorizing heaven and earth Problem : Ravana was so formidable it never occurred to ask Shiva that a mere human not be able to kill him either.

So it was up to Vishnu to set matters right, but the only way through the loophole in  Ravana's contract with Shiva was that Vishnu would have to renounce his divine identity and come to earth as a mortal man. 

Peace of Mind

In passages of extraordinary beauty, Dattatreya introduced Parashu Rama to the Goddess within. By learning to see the Goddess of beauty and bliss inside himself,Parashu Rama overcame his violent tendencies and finally found peace.

Parashu Rama is also honored for leading a community of north Indians to colonize the south. The Vedic god Varuna promised him as much land as he could cover with an arrow shot. Then realizing Parashu Rama was so strong his arrow might fly over the entire earth, Varuna sent an to gnaw loose his bow string. Because the bow was damaged, Parashu Rama's arrow only flew as far as the southern tip of India.

Thousands of years later, Parashu Rama is still enthusiastically worshipped in South India. I have been told these days he lives quietly in a cave in Central India.