Om sri Ganesaya Nama:

These are the various symbols associated with Ganesha, according to some interpreter. I don’t know who that is. Few may find few of the interpretations absurd, I find the whole exercise of interpreting futile as it failed to convince me in any manner, I am not trying to interpret it in a stronger manner per say, but going to ridicule it. If you can’t handle it, keep away from the site. “Disclaimer”.

For you, intelligent reader, Read fully, there is a surprise in the end.

I will go counter clock wise from left ridiculing all the explanations given in the image.

Large ears- listen more, listen everything and don’t censor anything. #wikileaks

Axe- To cut off all bonds of attachment, resort to violence.

Small mouth- talk less, (Elephant doesn’t talk, they trumpet-and its loud) You don’t need a big mouth to have a big tummy.

Blessings- That hand is to say, STOP your non-sense. may be mine, oops

Stomach- Peacefully digest good and bad in life, (The function of large stomach is not to digest, but to act as a storage source:Elephant anatomy) Store all the good and bad, so that you can take revenge later.

Prasada- The whole world is at your feet and for your asking, The fast food joint serving junk food is just around the corner.

Mouse- Even a pest like mouse won’t eat the junk food, are you sure you want to eat it? (And, I would prefer Mallika sherawat to be shown if its desire you are talking!)

Madaka- The only meaning I could find is ‘intoxicating’ , is that what it is?

Trunk- High efficiency and adaptability- Really?, Why do you need a trunk, if you have four hands, and I don’t want to see my nose getting dragged on the road- I’ve cold.

One Tusk- Retain good and throw away bad, That is a pretty good way to explain scars from war.

Rope- To pull you nearer to the highest goal, to tie you to insanity.

Small eyes- concentrate- Evolutionary tool! so that nobody knows where you are looking.

Big head- Think big??  Really? Ravana had ten.!

So, please Refrain from interpreting, if you want to know how to interpret well, read along.

A friend of mine named Gurudev had deciphered the sloka

“Vakra tunda Mahakaya surya kodi sama praba

Nirvignam kurume deva sarva karyeshu sarvada”

Literally it means

“Lord with curved trunk and a huge body and with a brightness of 10 million suns”

“Oh lord, always may all my work be free of all obstacles”

He then deciphers it as a science lesson a.k.a morning prayer long back as,

When there is an imbalance of forces(ensued implosion against neutron degeneracy) in a massive star, the result is a supernova (a stellar explosion with brilliance of 10million suns).

Read more @ HitXP » Alien Twist to God – Part II - by Gurudev

and this wiki page

So, my sweet Ganesha, I am going to have my examination or my space travel today, so please don’t mess it up with shock waves and/or stellar dust.

Now that is what I call deciphering and interpreting, not the Deepak Chopra style. So guys, Please refrain from interpreting, if you are not good enough for me.

-Santhosh K Ramachandran

P.S: A quick Googling helped me find its some K.Krishnamurhty who interpreted the image.

P.P.S: It's a Bird...It's a Plane...It's Superman..Na, its really a plane..!

Oh my ‘God’!, the title itself is so riot provoking! Am I out of my mind? May be not. Read the “Disclaimer” before you read further.

The very first phrase in this blog may confuse a self proclaimed non Hindu if uttered by a Hindu. Since there are millions of Gods in Hinduism.  

My take is on few of the famed gods by either myth or history.

Krishna- The most revered, the most philosophical, the most famed, the most adored, the most brilliant god of the pantheon.

He is a polygamist, it is not acceptable in the present day society, illegal according to ‘Hindu marriage act’, wonder what Praveen Togadia thinks when he criticizes the Indian civil code granting polygamy for Islam.

He broke Radha’s heart, that may or may not be acceptable depending on who you are. He supported polyandry of Draupadi citing some past life wish, citing mom’s word as the final word. He supported Arjuna to practice polygamy. His life as Casanova can incite sharp reactions if it was performed today.

Rama- The most noblest man ever lived. I doubt that! He left his wife in exile after a comment from his people. The most repeated argument by scholars is that “Rama was wrong as a husband, and he was right as a king.” I doubt that! He was definitely wrong as a husband, also, he was wrong was a king, as he was setting a horrible example of how to be husband. A simple man, might think, “ok! so it is right for me to leave my wife, if someone else mentions her as unchaste or infidel”. According to me, the king should be a leader who leads by setting an example, not as a person who should appease to every demand said/unsaid by his followers.

Another wrong doing of Rama is the murder of king Bali by hiding. It was in no way, a symbol of heroism and chivalry. When Bali’s wife asked Rama about the sin, the reason cited by Rama is as follows, “ I will be born as Krishna in my next birth, and your husband will be a hunter and will kill me by hiding with an arrow thinking that I am a deer.” I wonder, which judge will take that as a reason for murder.

Also, there are other minor wrong doings, including marrying Sita without his dad’s consent (It is a big thing in today’s society). Depriving Lakshman of his marital life with a newly wed Urmila. Murder of Ravana (a Brahmin) is also a sinful act, for which he did penances. His children was devoid of a parent throughout their life, Rama can be partly blamed.

Shiva- The powerful god is always given a negative connotation as a destroyer. For me he is the MAN in its every meaning. But in present day, he will find trouble. He lives in cremation ground, is a drug addict, is an alcoholic, is a nomad, is a hunter. How much of an outcaste he can be is shown in the six part documentary on ‘Aghoris’, people who practice life similar to Shiva.  Also, he would be criticized if he performs catastrophe after his wife’s death. Though according to the myth, he granted all their lives whose lives where lost during his anger and the insane “Tandava dance”.  In the present society, anger itself is considered a vice. Hmmm.

Ganapati and Murugan- Shiva’s two sons, one is a celibate, one is a bigamist. Both are considered ‘not so good’ by today’s mothers. Muruga is also a runaway kid. A god running away from god parents. Hmmm.  Another son of Shiva, Ayyapa is also a runaway kid. All the kids are going to mountains and forests. {I like it}.

Vishnu has already been portrayed as Krishna and Rama, also when he was Mohini (a lady role), her main/only motive was cheating. She cheated on Asuras during “The churning of Ocean” episode, Come on!, they toiled and am sure worked harder than devas, and all they got was one of them ‘Rahu’ getting a taste of it before being beheaded. Reminds me of Al-Qaeda. Hmmm.

Finally, Devi-a general representation of all goddesses, they are normally represented without clothes. But hardcore Hindu fanatics cannot even take cleavage in the main stream society throwing them out, slapping them, beating are all common practice. Also, wearing clothes over their bosom is a 20th century practice in the state of Kerala. 

Most of the gods became heroes through murders, they practice polygamy. Anger is a common trait. Cursing is an even more common trait. So many incidents. Runaway practices are common. Most of them have animals as vehicles, wonder, what PETA thinks.

The interesting thing is that, most of the self proclaimed Hindus know all these facts. Scholars may call these as not facts, but just symbolism, a figurative depiction. Alright. I agree, but I was just doing a literal take. The list of such non-societal acts is endless. I was just picking on the main ones.

-Santhosh K Ramachandran.

P.S. My intent was not to hurt anyone, but to have a different view point.

Brian L Weiss is a smart psychologist, he is the author of “Many lives, many masters”. In that book, he discusses the concept of rebirth, perhaps it is for the first time a westerner is acknowledging and propounding the belief of rebirth to a widespread audience.  Though the concept is prevalent and widely believed by believers of Buddhism and Hinduism.

I am not completely bowled over by Dr. Weiss to begin with. The criticism in the scientific community towards him includes lack of peer review, the absence of scientific protocol in his experiments. Conceivably Weiss can argue that it is a metaphysical area that current protocols are handicapped to be used for his research. Weiss uses a method known as past life regression. He uses hypnosis on his patients/clients and the clients are said to have revealed their past life experiences. From memories. He in his book admits being skeptical in the beginning and was convinced when one client during the hypnosis mentions about his own child’s death. A personal tone can always mislead even scientists of high skepticism.

He was able to ‘evidently’ remove nightmares and traumas of his clients by this technique. Here is the catch. A late researcher had also mentioned, these revelations from the clients and their traumas was result of their own ‘imagination’ and not past-life memories. It is arguable. It cannot be proved. The researcher also compared such memories to dreams. Though few psychic people claim dreams to have hidden meanings and blah blah. I would go with Freudian view that the dreams are part of “wish fulfillment” attempts by the unconscious. Again, our own imagination, similar to an illusion like déjà vu.

Probably, Dr. Weiss was able to successfully remove fears and nightmares with the help of psychoanalysis just like many other psychiatric practitioners. That doesn’t entitle to him to have proved the fears stemming from past life. The most famous reincarnation researcher Ian Stevenson had a more methodical research, he did his case studies on children. He never was a firm believer of reincarnation, but he was into science of it than superstition. He made strong supporting reports of birth marks and congenital defects as the cause of past life incidents as he identified a deceased person’s family from a child’s memories by using a wide network of volunteers.

Rebirth and reincarnation will be a matter of speculation, science and superstition for quite sometime. We all can only speculate and (not)believe.

My take is not on rebirth, but to the direction which Weiss stretched his study from there, in his subsequent books about soul-mates, love, spirituality etc.

I started the article mentioning Weiss as a smart psychiatric practitioner. He identified/believed that anxiety or frustration was the major trouble for human problems(just like Buddha and Schopenhauer).

A psychiatrist (also an astrologer, in India) is THE resort for people in metal trauma resulting from various reasons. The major reasons being the worry of future, death and such anxieties.  As a psychiatrist, he wanted to reply to the questions posed by his clients and help them, hence he adopted the theory of rebirth. Fair enough, as long as it serves purpose. He was able to quench their thirst and say “its not over”, there will be more chances for you to live it out.

I guess more questions started coming to Weiss. More that had to do with love (may be lust too). This chemical imbalance his clients had dragged him down some unconvincing roads. He had adopted the theory of soul along with the ‘rebirth’ theory. He stretched it with the concept of soul-mate.  His idea that they come back and join during every life. IF your love stint is not working, then that is due to the fact that the person you are dating is not your soul-mate. Wait and you will meet your soul mate. Makes sense? It was utter stupidity. May be that might have satisfied few of his clients or his own inquisitive mind for a while.

He hit a dead-end when whiny women started coming with claims of loving more than one person. After pondering, he stretched it with theory of multiple soul-mate theory. No trouble, along with that he mentioned that the soul-mates come to your life for a purpose and then they leave you, once their deed is done. So his advice was not to worry about when someone leaves you geographically, emotionally or even mortally. Bulls eye. No trouble there.

That might have worked wonders with his patients, so much so that he himself believed it completely and got the confidence to even write books on it. He went on with saying love is the only real thing existing in the world. He was preaching many things probably along with it, love (chemical imbalance as many call it), tolerance and lots of other stuff.

However flawed or untrue his findings and writings may be, his intentions was genuinely noble to solve the mental troubles which had inflicted on thousands of his patients. He might have been even successful in solving many troubles using this theory along with his psychoanalysis. He may not be able to prove it to the scientific community, but at the same time, no one can disprove him just like the argument surrounding a personal God.

-Santhosh K Ramachandran

My friend had to dump his girl friend because, an astrologer said it is not good for his family and his life. Another friend of mine quit smoking because the astrologer said that his life will end if he don’t quit. He would not dare quit if his friends said so, he would not quit because his doctor said so, but because his astrologer said so.

We need to remember this fact, his friends are his well wishers, his doctor is a trained medical professional. He is ready to risk by disregarding their words. But he would not disregard a man with a chalk, thirteen square boxes and few shells(Stuff old school astrologers use for drawing the birth chart).

Why?

Why is that, Indians blindly believe astrologers, most of them reply like “why risk it?”

Cynics counter, How the hell can he predict my future when he can’t say which movie is being played in the theater next to him. But the same cynic will follow what astrologer said bitching about him on the outside.

If a radical places a gun in an astrologer’s mouth and ask about the astrologer’s future. The astrologer can only stutter.

There is a small folk story regarding a small evil boy and a scholar. The small boy had a small live bird cupped and hidden in his hands, he asks the scholar whether the bird is alive or dead! His aim is to prove the scholar wrong. He is ready to clasp and kill the bird if the scholar says it is alive, and leave it alive if the scholar says that it is dead. The scholar smiled and said the following words “It is in your hands”.

In a way, all of us believe that the life we are living is entirely in our hands, the choices we make which comes from the chemical reactions in the brain which computes all the different permutations and decide whether to have either Coke or Pepsi. What is the role of astrologers then? And how are they able to judge the course of chemical reactions which is going to happen in our brain. How are our marriage, career, education and happiness controlled by the planets which are far far away?

Let me look into this in a critical manner which a person of no background of astrology can still read (atleast that is what I am going to try.)

To begin with the birth time, which is used for all the calculations. There are many different( I think four or five) birth time used for calculations for an individual. The time when head of the baby touches the ground for the first time, the time when the baby cries for the first time, the time at which the umbilical cord is being cut, the time at which the semen and egg unite(I don’t think that is easy to find out). The first three time can be taken for calculations. “The time aspect” of the birth is completely scientific since it is “time”. No argument over there.

The birth place, which is the second important thing is taken with regard to latitude and longitude. It is a completely accepted scientific method to describe a position. The astrologer uses these two inputs to formulate the birth chart, or the position of different planets and constellations. By planets, I mean the Sanskrit word “graham” which can be translated to house, which can be extended to ‘which protects you’, ‘which can influence you’, ‘which can arrest/inhibit you’ etc. In that meaning, Sun, Moon, Earth are all planets. In Vedic astrology, a total of 9 planets are considered. Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Rahu and Ketu. Earth is not considered because, the observer is in the Earth. There are two imaginary planets as well in Vedic astrology “rahu” and “ketu”. They are not exactly imaginary rather invisible, They are basically South lunar node and North lunar node. The position of these planets are “calculated” based on the time and place of birth with respect to constellations. This part is completely scientific, because it is astronomy. Any astrologer can reproduce the same results at all times. This proves one of the basis of scientific study which is reproducibility. I put the word calculated in quotes because the process of calculation is purely mathematical, what is done in figuring the birth chart is also purely mathematical.

Now comes the attribution, every planet is given qualities/characteristics/attributes, every planet is given further more attributes based on its position. Who has given this attributes, no body has an answer. Whether it is scientific, Nobody is sure. But experience does seem to accept the truth of these attributes. These attributes is said to have an impact on physical, mental and spiritual characteristics of a person. That is the planets or ‘graham’ influence these three aspects of a human being. It also influences the phase of a human life due to the positioning of planets at a given point of time based on the birth chart of that person.

If you have a doubt on whether the planet has an effect on you. I have a few questions. Does the wall color on your room impact you? Does the wallpaper on your screen impact you? Does the season impact you? Does the day of the week impact you? If these trivial(may be not) things can impact you in a tangible way. Only thing I can say is that “everything in this world impacts everything else”.

Now comes the funny part, the prediction part performed by the astrologers, it is completely unscientific. The horoscopes given on magazines, websites on how your day is going to be is even more absurd. The prediction part performed by the astrologers are based on his knowledge about the attributes, his knowledge about the situation etc. Just like any doctor, or engineer, if he is good in his knowledge, he will be able to give a sound advice or able to mention the situation. But still, prediction is unscientific. If you ask an engineer whether plastic is better or metal. He may or may not answer. Because a thousand factors need to be considered, the application, the metal under consideration, so on and so forth. Just like there is a good doctor, there is a good astrologer as well who knows his science.

I don’t want to keep on write and bore you. But one question might be lingering in everyone’s inquisitive minds. Why is it that the birth can determine the aspects of one’s complete life?

My honest answer would be “Karma”. The actions of your past life determine the birth of your present life, and thereby the implications in it, If you ask me whether that is fair, yes it is fair. The world or universe has to be fair. Your actions are not determined by any planet. Do good deeds, it’ll protect you.(Stop preaching, Santhosh!)

Coming back to astrology, let me say one last point, Astrology is called Jyotisha in Sanskrit. Which means study of light or rays. The light and rays given out by the planets. I guess. LOL.

“Astrology is an ocean which extends from one horizon to the other both in the perceivable three-dimensional space frame and time frame. We are an observer observing finite number of elements observed by infinite number of elements.”

-Santhosh K Ramachandran

"Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it."
- Sakyong Mipham