Loving Ganesha: Chapter 4 - In Science and Beyond--Vijnane Paratascha

[Guest guest]

http://www.himalayanacademy.com/books/lg/lg_ch-04.html

 

Vijnane Paratascha

In Scienceand Beyond

HARMA, SANATANA DHARMA, THE ETERNALfaith, Hinduism, is in my opinion the

greatest of all religions on the planet, not merely because it is the oldest,

the root religion from which all others have sprung forth. It is the greatest

because it is the most profound and mystical. No other religion offers such

insight into the intricate workings of our universe. More importantly, no other

religion offers the grace of a God that is within us as well as within all

things outside of ourselves, that is both within form as Saguna Brahman and

beyond form as Nirguna Brahman, and that may be known by the devout seeker even

in this life. Little wonder that the Sanatana Dharma, the eternal path, has

withstood the ravages of time and stands today as the most advanced system of

philosophy and devotion on the Earth. It is fully in accord with the advances

of 21st-century science, which, in fact, its sages clearly anticipated.

Hinduism now stands as the religion of the village community as well as the

urban family -- an enlightened faith for all men in all times. The single most

unifying force within Hinduism is Lord Ganesha, son of Siva-Shakti, beloved

Deity of 900 million Hindus.

To Him we offer our reverent love and praise. It is an incontrovertible fact

that Lord Ganesha is real, not a mere symbol. He is a potent force in the

universe, not a representation of potent universal forces. Corpulently built,

Lord Ganesha is said to contain within Himself all matter, all mind. He is the

very personification of material existence. We look upon this physical world as

the body of Lord Ganesha. In seeing and understanding the varied forces at work

in the physical universe, we are seeing and understanding the powers and the

being of Lord Ganesha. There is nothing that happens on this material plane of

existence except that it is the will of God Siva and minutely detailed by His

beloved son Lord Ganesha. When this is known, life becomes a daily joyous

experience, for we know that all that happens -- whether it brings sorrow or

happiness, whether we personally wanted it to happen or not, still we know that

all that happens -- is right and good, for it flowed from the wisdom and

benevolent kindness of our loving Ganesha, the gracious Lord of Dharma. This

wonderful spirit all Hindus strive to carry into daily life -- a complete trust

that all that happens is for the best, a full knowing that the Supreme God's

will prevails everywhere and that the elephant-faced God is caring for each

detail every minute of every hour of the day.

Hinduism is at the heart of science, and yet its understanding of the universe

lies beyond the most advanced scientist's conceptualization. Modern science,

like the Vedic rishis, describes the whole of the universe as energy in one

form or another. Matter itself is merely condensed energy, as Einstein's

renowned equation E=MC2 proclaims in mystic brevity.

A Meditation on the Gods and Three Forms of Energy

There are three strong forces at work in the universe: gravity, electromagnetism

and the nuclear force. On the following pages we offer a meditation comparing

these three energies that are affecting our lives all the time to the powers of

Lord Ganesha, Lord Murugan and God Siva. It is a general analogy -- not meant to

be theologically perfect -- humbly offered as an aid to understanding the unique

characteristics of the Deities.

Once Lord Ganesha appeared to me as I was slumbering in a half-waking state

close to the Kumbalavalai Ganesha Temple in Alaveddy, northern Sri Lanka, in

the home of the Chettiar family that adopted me in 1948. He pointed out that

the gardener had unnecessarily broken a branch off a tree while pruning, and

that this small mishap had immediately affected the whole universe. Such

instantaneousness is Ganesha's way, and such enormous scope is His hallmark, as

we shall soon see. We can then liken His nature to the force of gravity, as one

gravitational pull in one part of the universe affects all other parts of the

universe that very instant, no matter how distant. The nine planets in this

solar system affect all humans and plants in their interaction, so precise is

Ganesha's mind, the Lord of Karma, the Lord of Dharma.

When I was trying to buy the original building for the Sri Subramuniya Ashram in

the village of Alaveddy, much opposition was offered from the owners, but

finally we prevailed. Soon after, I had an early morning vision in which Ganesa

was sitting on my knee as the baby elephant, Pillaiyar. With His soft face

pressed against my cheek, He said, "We have accomplished the unaccomplishable."

I knew then that the building and all that was to go on within it was blessed by

His loving grace. This has proven true over the many decades that followed. The

doors and windows of my ashram have since opened on all continents, as the

devotees who learned of their religion had to join the Tamil diaspora,

spreading to nearly all the countries of the world. They now carry forth with

great vigor all they learned at our little ashram, keeping it all in practice

today as it was so many years ago.

This showed me that if you forge ahead for a good cause, even when all the

forces of the universe align themselves against you, including society itself,

you will succeed. It's a little like a great elephant walking through the

forest, clearing all barriers for those who follow. Such blessings come to

those who follow Ganesha. Slowly the forces will clear, and all benefit from

His grace.

Gravitational Force

Tradition describes the entire universe as being contained in Lord Ganesha's big

belly. Thus we look upon Him in this meditation as the overlord who holds sway

over the material universe, the sum of cosmic mass. And one of His potencies is

gravity. Gravity is a mysterious force to the scientist even today. It is the

galactic glue that draws and holds larger mass together and gives order to the

macrocosm. It is an instantaneous force, so that when one celestial body moves

in a remote corner of a galaxy, all other masses throughout the galaxy adjust

simultaneously, even though it would take light, at its incredible speed,

millions of years to travel the distance. This implies to the scientist what

the Hindu knew from the beginning, that space and time are relative concepts

and there is a "something" that exists everywhere in the universe at once. Like

gravity, Lord Ganesha is totally predictable and known for orderliness. Without

gravity the known galactic systems could not exist. Masses would stray apart;

all organization of life as we know it would be impossible. Gravity is the

basis of ordered existence in the macrocosm, and our loving Ganesha holds

dominion over its mysteries.

Electromagnetic Force

Within and between the atoms that comprise our physical universe there reigns a

second force: electromagnetism. Lord Murugan, Karttikeya, holds sway over the

forces which bind sub-atomic particles together. The electromagnetic force is

many magnitudes greater than the gravitational force, but because it works in

the microcosm of existence, it has less influence on our daily lives than the

gravitational force. Similarly, Ganesha is more involved in our day-to-day

concerns than is Lord Murugan, whose power is electric, given more to change

than to order, more to the unsuspected than to the predictable. Like the

powerful forces that bind together the atomic systems of protons, neutrons,

electrons, quanta, quarks and other sub-atomic "particles," Lord Murugan's

shakti works deeply within us, within our spiritual sphere, within the great

depths of the mind. His electric power issues forth from the shakti vel. Just

as energy races through the universe in the form of radio, radar and light

waves, x-rays, heat, gamma and cosmic rays, so does Murugan's electric shakti

impact our life. Just as we experience light and darkness, positive and

negative potential, so do the electromagnetic forces issue forth from Murugan's

realm of positive and negative forces, of devas and their asuric counterparts.

Like gravity, Lord Ganesha is always with us, supporting and guiding our

physical existence. And just like electrostatic energy, Lord Murugan is most

often invisible, working in a sphere of which we are not always conscious,

present in our lives through His radiant energies and light, yet not so

apparently known as Lord Ganesha. The ancient Agamas offer a more

philosophically technical summary of the above. They declare that Ganesha rules

over ashuddha maya, the gross energies of the odic realms from the thirteenth

tattva to the 36th. Murugan's domain, they state, is shuddhashuddha maya, the

realms of actinodic energy, being the sixth to the twelfth tattvas. Finally,

they declare that Siva's domain is shuddha maya, the purely spiritual realms of

actinic energy, being the first to the fifth tattvas in the unfolding of the

universe.

Atomic or Nuclear Energy

God, Siva, is the Lord of Lords and the source of all energies in the universe.

His is the most interior sphere of all -- the nuclear energies within

sub-atomic particles and the essence even of that. Of all energies, the nuclear

energy is by far the most powerful; and of all the Hindu Gods, God Siva reigns

supreme. At the core of matter, Lord Siva whirls through His Cosmic Dance as

Nataraja. Never has a greater conception been seen by seers to describe the

divine operations of the universe. We quote from the book, The Tao of Physics,

by noted physicist and researcher Fritjof Capra:

"The dance of Siva is the dancing universe; the ceaseless flow of energy going

through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another. Modern

physics has shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only

manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of all living

creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. According to

quantum field theory, all interactions between the constituents of matter take

place through the emission and absorption of virtual particles. More than that,

the dance of creation and destruction is the basis of the very existence of

matter, since all material particles 'self-interact' by emitting and

reabsorbing virtual particles. Modern physics has thus revealed that every

subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy

dance -- a pulsating process of creation and destruction. For the modern

physicist, then, Siva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter, a continual

dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos, the basis of

existence and of all natural phenomena. The metaphor of the Cosmic Dance thus

unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. It is indeed, as

Coomaraswamy has said, 'poetry, but science nonetheless.'"

Hinduism's Unsurpassed Cosmology

Hindus may be justifiably proud of a religion which postulated thousands of

years ago a cosmology that only today is being discovered and appreciated by

science through the ponderous process of reason and empirical proof. Hinduism

knew the truth of the source and organization of the universe long before

Newton and Einstein confirmed the validity of our world view. While many

Western religious systems stand opposed to science or alter their beliefs

according to its evolving conclusions, it is one of the great heritages of the

Hindu perception of the all-pervasive God, soul and cosmos that we have

spiritual Truths that are in complete accord with and cannot be refuted by

modern science.When the astrophysicist ponders the expanding and contracting

nature of the universe, he is contemplating the Hindu view of existence as the

day and night of Brahma, a non-linear conception of time and space that

manifests and then undergoes total absorption in mahapralaya, then manifests

again in unending cycles. And when that same theoretical, scientific mind

contemplates the end of the cycle of contraction wherein all matter-energy is

assembled together, he is contemplating the Cosmic Egg, Brahmanda, of Hindu

cosmology. When high-energy technicians assembled in the 1970s in California to

construct the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, they went

to Swami Muktananda of Ganeshpuri, India, and asked him to name it for them. He

aptly named it "Siva." Hinduism, the Hindu-inspired faiths of Buddhism, Sikhism,

Jainism and most indigenous faiths offer knowledge and insights to science;

religion is once again cooperating with science in the quest for knowledge. No

wonder we boldly proclaim Hinduism the greatest religion in the world

 

 

 

Loving Ganesha by Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

 

Web sites: http://www.hindu.org/ & http://www.himalayanacademy.com/

email: contact (AT) hindu (DOT) org

Himalayan Academy Kauai's Hindu Monastery107 Kaholalele RoadKapaa, HI 96746-9304

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.Checked by AVG anti-virus system

(http://www.grisoft.com).Version: 6.0.465 / Virus Database: 263 - Release Date:

25/03/03

Attachment: (image/jpeg) Ch_04_Science_Rajput.jpg [not stored]

Attachment: (image/jpeg) Ch_04_Science_icon.jpg [not stored]

Attachment: (image/jpeg) D.jpg [not stored]

Attachment: (image/jpeg) 051_Outer_Space.jpg [not stored]