Last month we had Guru pournami, this month we have Agasthiar pournami.
Many of you may not know this but August is named after Agasthiar, and
January is named after Ganesha. It was named after the Roman god called
Janus. If you remove the J and replace it with a G it's Ganus, Ganesh,
the remover of obstacles. He had two heads in Roman mythology. They
named the first month month January so we start the year removing
obstacles. Then we come to the month of August, named after Agasthiar,
but they very cleverly also had someone by the name of Augustus.So this is Agasthiar pournami. There are only four very powerful pournamis. The first one is the pournami of January – Thaipusam pournami. The Second is July – Guru pournami. The third is pournami in August – Agasthiar pournami. And the next one is in October/November during the time of Navarathri. These are the four most powerful pournamis, when the energy of the moon is totally different. If you saw the moon last month on Guru pournami, you would have seen it was the brightest moon. Of all the pournamis, God has created certain ones to energise the body, to give us divine energy. But this is not for everyone, it is dependent on your karmic consequences, the karma you accumulate in this lifetime.
The greatest karma is children abusing their parents – this is the highest karma. Second to that is wives abusing husbands, and husbands abusing wives. Let's look at this: generally husbands abuse wives more. If you abuse your wife, the karmic consequences for this lifetime of abuse is 50 lifetimes to come. You already have 33 000 lifetimes against your name. You're going to add another 50 lifetimes. So it is very important, if we engage in abuse, to think about it and try to make peace with that. The only way to make peace when you've abused your father or mother is before you leave this physical body, to do padau pooja, wash their feet, and drink the water.
When a husband abuses his wife, that's a tough one. It depends where you live. If you live in Umhlanga you buy a Mercedes; if you live in Verulam buy a Toyota. If a husband abuses his wife, very rarely can those consequences be nullified in this lifetime. You really have to change you life 480 degrees, looking at everything upside down. And if you are that individual who doesn't abuse, but who just gets abused and doesn't worry about it, really you're a gentleman. Generally abuse starts from one side and ends on the other.
So please, why I'm saying this is because respect and duty for parents from children seems to be falling by the wayside. We have places to take care of the elderly now, so we think, so we go and dump them in these places. In the Hindu sastras, the Law of Manu (Manu was great lawmaker), it is said that when a girl child is born she is taken care of by her father. And you'll see also in this life that girls stick to the father. And when she grows and marries she'll be taken care of by her husband – not abused. And when she becomes an old lady, and a widow, she will be taken care of by her sons. All the time there is supposed to be a male taking care of you as a woman. But if you put any abuse in between, really, karmically … they might make me the parole officer for that on the astral plane – I don't know.
This is a very powerful pournami, this is the pournami you can mentally take your vows and say that this is when you want to stop – from here you must be a calm individual. It's a good month to make that change. We make mistakes in life. This material, physical, and spiritual journey is very difficult. As you sit here you know its not very easy. If you're living in South Africa, it's more difficult – you have to keep going to the windows and doors to check nobody is breaking and entering. We've become very insecure so the only thing we can do now is leave it in the hands of that supreme energy, light, soul, we call God.
Hari Om and God bless you.
