This is an article series. Please read all previous articles before reading this article. The URLs for all previous articles are located in the www.special thoughts section.
Last week, we saw some elaboration of the symbolism of Ganapati and his various Anga-s. Now let’s continue from where we left off.
The Trunk: The elephant trunk of Ganapati should remind us of Praanaayaama.
Most humans do not realize how precious this human life is. As has been mentioned several times in the previous articles, the Jeevaatma goes through a seemingly endless Janma-s (birth and death) and suffers through many miseries in each Janma. And in this lengthy series of Janma-s that a Jeevaatma goes on taking, there is never ever any kind of guarantee to the Jeevaatma of being born with a human body. In other words, all of us have been born with bodies of various species, such as creepers, weeds, plants, trees, lizards, roach, squirrel, rabbit, horse, donkey, pigeon, and so on, ranging to 8.4 million species. And after this life ends, the Jeevaatma has no guarantee of being born with a human body any time soon. But liberation from this seemingly endless Janma-s is possible only through human body. By the way, non-Hindu religions have all rejected this extremely important fact referred to as Punarjanma, and thus, there is no easy way to impress upon the followers of those religions about the importance of this human life.
The total life span in each Janma, called Aayushya, is basically the total time we take to breathe a certain number of breath cycles. One cycle of ‘inhale + exhale’ is one complete breath. Humans breathe 21600 times a day on average, which amounts to approximately 777 million times in a span of 100 years. We don’t keep track of how many times we’ve breathed already. We breathe faster when running. We take much shorter and quicker breaths when singing so as to keep with the rhythm, and we take much longer breaths when sleeping. Animals, such as dogs, breathe so rapidly that they will have exhausted the 777 million breaths in a much shorter time. This is why they live for only about 15 years. But on the other hand, we hear about whales, turtles (and elephants too) living for over 150-200 years. Why? Because they take longer to breathe each breath, and they do hold their breath. In general, the longer we take to breathe each time, the longer is our life span. A longer life span is very essential for spiritual progress. It is said that Shree Bheeshmaachaarya was over 800 years old when he fought in the battle of Kurukshetra. His uncle Baahleeka was even older. This hints to us that perhaps they had mastered Praanaayaama and had practiced taking much longer to complete each breathing cycle.
Devata-s are not to be thought of as existing somewhere up in the clouds or in some other solar system far away. They are all around us and, even more importantly, they are right within us. Unfortunately, the Asura-s too are right within us. Therefore, each time we breathe, we should always like for the Devata-s to get a stronger hold over us, and not the Asura-s. This is how spiritual progress should begin. Ganapati’s trunk should remind us of this, and his Anugraha (grace) should help us with this. And hence, we do Pooja to Ganapati at the beginning of everything auspicious.
The Broken Tusk: Elephant’s tusks are a symbol of its valor and strength. Male tuskers duke it out with other bulls for control over territory, mating rights, etc. But the moment an elephant breaks one of its tusks amidst the battle, it realizes that it is no longer as strong as before to defend itself. So, it’ll make a retreat and run for its life. Similarly, for a spiritual seeker, the notion of being strong and valorous is basically his/her ego, which is not helpful in spiritual pursuit. Ego kills humility. Others may point out a person’s ego issues to him/her… but he/she will usually disagree. What really makes a difference is when he/she realizes on his/her own about the lack of humility. This is symbolically shown as Ganapati breaking one of his tusks on his own, thus indicating to us to break our ego and develop humility.
The Small Eyes: As we may’ve noticed, an elephant’s eyes are quite small compared to its massive body size. It’s only slightly larger than the size of human eyes. So, it’s eyesight is quite poor, and it can see only short distances. Naturally, an elephant has to try hard to see things around it. But it has great night vision and is best suited for detecting motion and changes in the environment. This should hint to us that a spiritual seeker needs to be observant. An observant person will see God’s presence in everything around him/her.
The Mouse: Ganapati is Mooshaka-Vaahana. But… how can a mouse carry someone so huge? Is this meant to be like a cartoonish tale? How are we to imagine Ganapati riding on a mouse? Symbolically, the mouse represents the state of our mind. A mouse is a rodent. It runs in one direction and suddenly changes direction. It sits in one place only to pick up something to eat. Our mind is like this. It keeps running in multiple directions, scanning through many things around us. It sits in one place only when something pleases one of the Indriya-s. This state of mind is not conducive to spiritual pursuit and needs to be addressed first. Therefore, one of the requests to Ganapati is to help us get a grip on this rodent-like nature of our mind.
The Color and the Snake: Just as the scriptures describe Krishna and Shiva to be blue in color, Ganapati is portrayed in the scriptures as red color. There are 7 chakras in our body, and each has a color. The color of these Chakras is the same as that in a rainbow, and they appear in the same order too, popularly represented as VIBGYOR, denoting the first letter of each color in the rainbow. Red is associated with the Chakra, which is situated at the lowest point in the human body, referred to as Moolaadhaara. The energy emanating from this Chakra is referred to as the Kundalini energy. True spiritual progress is when this Kundalini energy travels upwards to the Chakra-s situated at higher levels. Kundalini energy is symbolically represented by a snake. And we see a snake in Ganapati’s belly, thus symbolizing his Abhimaana over Chakra-s below the Naabhi (naval or belly button). But this is beyond my realm of personal experience and, therefore, has remained with me mostly as an academic detail. Someone with a higher level of yogic ability will be able to explain this better.
The Four Hands: We notice that many of the Hindu Devata-s are depicted with 4 hands. There may be many reasons for this, but only 2 that I am aware of.
- In an earlier article, I had presented a diagram of how the various Indriya-s are connected to the mind. One of the Indriya-s is the hand. It is a Karmendriya (motor organ). It should be noted that every Jeevaatma has not just 2, but 4 hands. We see some insects having 4 hands and 2 hind legs. Some insects have 2 antennae in addition to 4 hands and 2 hind legs. Some other worms and snakes don’t have any legs. And most birds have only 2 wings, and most mammals have only 2 hands. Some primates have extraordinary abilities in their tails. Elephants have extraordinary abilities in their trunks. So, how do we understand all these extraordinary abilities? After all, our scriptures only state that the Jeevaatma has 4 hands and never mention anything about a Jeevaatma having any trunk or tail or antennae. What are we to understand from all these observations? My take is that, like in the case of humans, the Jeevaatma’s 2 hands have manifested as 2 visible functioning hands, while the other 2 hands’ abilities have been distributed all over the body. And thus, we can move our fingers and use them to do many wonderful things like painting, sculpting, knitting, typing etc. Similarly, in the case of various species, the abilities of the 4 arms are distributed all over the body thus explaining how they can move their ears, their antennae, wag their tails and use it like a 5th arm, and use their trunk to lift huge loads and so on.
- Anytime we see a Devata depicted with 4 hands, then it symbolizes 4 Purushaartha-s. A Purushaartha is something a Jeevaatma has to earn through its efforts, i.e., through its Karma. The 4 Purushaartha-s are: Dharma, Artha, Kaama, and Moksha. Among these, Dharma, Artha and Kaama pertain to our existence in this world. And Moksha is what we accomplish when we break free from this seemingly endless cycle of birth/death which has kept us tied to this world.
Furthermore, as mentioned in the previous article, Ganapati is Abhimaani Devata for the created space, which is made of 3 Guna-s i.e., Satva, Raja, and Tama.
Question: Earth gets polluted, for example, through the use of fertilizers and pesticides or when dangerous chemicals seep down. Similarly, water gets polluted when industrial chemical waste is released into the river. Air gets polluted through vehicle exhaust, the release of burnt gaseous waste from industries, etc. How about pollution of space? Can space get polluted too?
Yes! The space gets polluted when the Satva component in that particular space goes down.
- The smallest space that the Jeevaatma lives in, and calls its own personal space, is its own body. Some of the things that cause Satva component in the body go down are: smoking tobacco, vapes, weeds etc.; consumption of certain vegetables, some lentils/pulses, alcohol, meat (especially meat from animals that were tortured before killing such as bleeding them to death slowly, frying or boiling them while still alive etc.); eating food that has been contaminated with someone else’s saliva; drug abuse and so on. The Bhagavad-Gita elaborates on all 3 types of foods and their effect on the mind, thus giving us general guidelines. But some other religious scriptures prohibit only one of the above, such as alcohol or meat, without giving any general guidelines. This confuses the followers. Thus, they end up avoiding only those particular things specifically prohibited by their religious scripture, but end up consuming everything else. This results in pollution of their inner spaces and mental faculties. Then on, everything wrong seems correct and vice versa. Therefore, utmost importance must be given to maintaining the Satva component in our individual spaces and mental faculties.
- Expanding the radius of “My Space” a bit further… most Hindus, who have a place for Pooja in their homes, do not pay any attention to what comes into their Pooja Once I went to a place popularly known as “Sunday Bazaar”. There were many Moortis that were sold on dirty footpaths. It would be best not to buy such Moorthis (especially Saalagraamas; More on Saalagraamas later). It’s best to get Moortis and/or Saalagraamas either new or from your parents/ancestors or Guru or a Punya Kshetra. And for all those who do not have the time, know-how, and wherewithal do handle Moorthis and Saalagraamas, it’s best to stick to pictures and photos. But keep in mind… when it comes to pictures and photos, it is not who gave you that picture that matters… it is who is in that picture that matters. It’s best to stick to pictures of Devata-s only, and avoid pictures of all Babas. If you do not have a Guru, then my recommendation is to keep a picture of Shree Raaghavendra Swamiji and consider him your Guru. Also, it is important to refer to Shree Raaghavendra Swamiji as Guru and not God (like how many Hindus do).
- Expanding the radius of “My Space” further to the entire home… most Hindus do not even have a Pooja room in their home these days. There is rarely a Pooja, Homa/Havan, not even a picture of any Devata anywhere in the home. But there are big screen TVs, loud sound systems in every room, a variety of electronic gadgets to play all kinds of video games, plenty of food items, and beverages, which is best avoided. The music they listen to, the movies they watch, the games they play are all pretty much devoid of Satva. There is very minimal scope for such homes contributing anything positive to the enhancement of the Satva component in society.
- Expanding the radius of “My Space” even further to the entire town/city we live in… most Hindus do not understand that there are 3 different types of Tantras underlying the temples. They are Saatvik Tantras, Raajasik Tantras, and Taamasik Tantras. But for an uninformed/underinformed Hindu with an untrained mind, everything looks the same. There is a Moorti, there is the architecture which resembles a temple, there is a Purohit, there is the same Pooja happening, the familiar Aarati, Teertha (Charanaamrut), Prasaada, Hundi, Haldi/Kumkum/Vibhooti, free food and so on. At the outset, everything appears the same. And therefore, most Hindus think they are all the same. But their minds are neither trained nor attuned to observe the Satva component in a temple. For example, I lived in an apartment in Bengaluru for 9 years, and the apartment was right behind a temple that followed the Taamasik Tantra. My observation was that in those 9 years, I have seen an average of 5 dead bodies going to the cremation ground passing by in front of this temple every single day. The atmosphere at my home was rarely happy/peaceful, and my mother ended up seeing a psychiatrist. All these observations stayed with me. Later on, through my Guru’s grace, these experiences taught me what line of thought to stick to and what to avoid.
- Expanding the radius of “My Space” much further to entire states and countries… today, we see very, very large areas with no temples that follow Saatvik Tantra. This results in very rapid deterioration of the Satva component in large areas spanning states and even countries, thus causing swelling up of Raja and Tama As explained in earlier articles, the Raja component only aids the Tama Guna and never the Satva Guna. Over years, decades, and centuries, the Raja and Tama charge up the space so much and in such large areas that even an untrained mind will start to see its result. This may manifest as forceful conversions to irrational religions or the entire society turning towards atheism, epidemics, pandemics, wars, destruction, and the collapse of the society overall.
Therefore, it is very important to maintain the Satva component in our space constantly, starting from our own bodies, which should be an abode for Devata-s and not Asura-s. Everything we consume must be thought of as an offering to the Devata-s, and their hold on us should strengthen with every breath we take in. And this should improve our focus on that feeble Saatvik inner voice amidst loud Raajasik and Taamasik inner voices. The large ears of Ganapati should remind us of this.
In summary, before beginning any good Karma, our Praarthana should involve a request to Ganapati for the following (and Ganapati’s form should remind us of the same):
- May my/our body be an abode for Devata-s. May every breath be long. May the presence of Devata-s enhance inside us every time we breathe in. May the strength of Asura-s subside each time we breathe out.
- May the focus on the feeble Saatvik inner voice improve; May we listen to the Guru with humility, and without unnecessary interruption while he lays the dots; May we patiently wait for the Guru to connect the dots and help us understand the big picture.
- May we be more observant to see God’s presence in everything around us; May the desire to see the light inside gain strength; May we see everything around us with compassion and shun cruel and/or lustful gaze.
- May we minimize speech and limit it to pleasant and well-wishing words.
- May we break our egotistic mindset, be humble and develop a sense of deep gratitude towards God, realizing that we are in Bhagavaan’s Garbha.
- May we shun the tendency to tease, make fun of others’ shortcomings, inabilities, and/or disabilities; May we shun all bad attitudes and habits.
- May our faith be based on good rationale extending from our observation of realities around us as experienced through our sensory organs.
Shree Siddhi Buddhi Sameta Ganesha Antargata
Shree Bhaaratee Ramana Mukhyapraana Antargata
Shree Lakshmi Vishvambhara Moortaye Namah Om
