Significance of Skanda Avatara

From Swami Sivananda, Divine Life Society

Skanda Avatara brings out the eternal struggle between Avidya and Jnana, between the lower Asuric and the higher divine forces that operate both upon the cosmic scale as well as within the individual Prakriti. Skanda Lilas brings out the resolution of this eternal struggle and its consummation in supreme triumph to the divine forces.

We are told that Tejas burst forth from the Ajna Chakra of Lord Siva, which assumed the form of Lord Skanda. Thus He is the Jnana Jyoti. Significantly, He was taken out of six lotuses by Goddess Parvati from the Saravanappoigai, the lake where reeds were growing. We know that the supreme spiritual experience or the Aparoksha Anubhuti is attained, in Yogic parlance, through Shat-Chakra-Bheda or by piercing the six plexus. It is the emerging out of the six lower lotuses that finds the Jiva ultimately in a state of perfect (Purna) Yoga or Wisdom in the Sahasrara Chakra. Thus, in Skanda we have the ultimate product of an emergence out of the six lotuses or Shat-Chakras and this we know to be Supreme Wisdom. Therefore, Lord Skanda is a mass of ultimate transcendental Supreme Knowledge that has to destroy nescience, Ajnana or darkness, represented upon the plane of manifest cosmos in the form of the Asuric hosts.