“She scrubbed her skin with Sandalwood paste, scrapped off the dead
cells mixed it with turmeric and moulded a beautiful boy into which she installed
life.” This is how our Puranas describe the birth of Ganesha.
Let us begin with
the story before this event. Gajasura was an ardent devotee of Maharudradeva. He
did penance and asked Maharudradeva to dwell in his stomach. Maharudradeva took
the form of a Linga and the Asura swallowed it. The Layakaraka (i could not find a English word for Laya) was absent so
dissolution was stalled. When all the Devas started praying to Maharudradeva,
he burst out of the stomach of Gajasura. The Asura understood his grave mistake of gulping
one of the Trinity and hampering the creation. Gajasura begged for forgiveness
and requested thus, “Now that you have burst out of my body only my head is
intact, everyone should remember my head and you should wrap your body with my
skin.”
Meanwhile Parvathidevi in Kailasa was preparing herself for a bath. She didn’t want
anyone to disturb her and moulded a young boy and did Prana Pratista
(installation of life force). She asked him to stand guard at the door. Maharudradeva
came to Kailasa after a long stay in the belly of Gajasura. He was confronted
by the young lad at the door. Not allowed inside Maharudradeva angrily threw
his trident at the boy which severed his head.
Now why did Maharudradeva who is known for being clam by practicing meditation
get agitated???
Here Bhagavan Vyasa reminds us of the story of Maali and
Sumaali the two demons brothers who fought with Suryadeva. Being the devotees
of Maharudradeva the brothers pleaded him to intervene. Maharudradeva struck
Suryadeva with the trident and this made the entire world plunge into darkness.
Kashyapa the father of Suryadeva cursed Maharudradeva, “Just as you pierced my
son’s chest with a trident, you will one day pierce the head of your son with that trident.”
2 + 2 is 4 and the curse unfurls and the young boy to whom Maharudradeva was
father was killed. Parvathidevi insisted her husband to bring the little boy back to
life and now the elephant head of Gajasura was used for transplantation. We all know the
rest of the story.
The outermost layer of our skin is composed of dead stratified squamous,
keratinized epithelial cells. Science today says that cloning is possible with
epithelial cells. Never know if Parvathidevi used her epithelial cells to clone
Ganesha. In fact as per our scientific knowledge clones are the identical copies of donor
of cells, if so clone developed from the cell of a male will be a male and if
develop from a female cell it will be a female. Parvathidevi created Ganesha
who is of opposite sex by using the
genetic engineering to alter the genes in a cell, which the science may come up
with this technology in future.
Whatever may be the science behind the creation of Ganesha, I wish to
contemplate it from the spiritual angle. The dead cells from the body of
Parvathidevi were mala (Dirt). We humans have Ego as dirt in our mind. Maharudradeva
who is Consciousness beheads the ego with a little head and installs a bigger
head which is awareness. Small head is narrow thinking, selfish thinking and
being avaricious it has to be replaced by a head which has broad thinking,
selfless thinking and being generous. This is more helpful to excel and move on further instead of being stuck with the arguments of those who have pride in identifying as devotees of Ganesha and those who call themselves atheists.
May Gowri Maa bestow auspiciousness to the entire mankind.
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