Elephants are very wise animals, and Lord Ganesh is an embodiment of wisdom. If you sagittally cut a human brain, you can see the shape of an elephant’s head in each half. If you have ever looked at Ganesh’s forehead, you can see divine structure inside it that glistens golden. It is beautiful, yet it is order. You can see the brain wave pattern and it’s infinite. His brain is pregnant with knowledge. Ganesh is worshipped as the God of education, writing, wisdom, and wealth. The embodiment of bliss, Lord Ganesh bestows harmony, peace, wisdom, and good luck upon his devotees.
Ganesh is depicted sometimes with two hands, sometimes more. The hands represent the ways of interfacing with the multiple realities of existence. From one perspective, Ganesh has two hands, another four, another sixteen. All are equally valid.
The gods are laws of nature. Shiva births the underlying structure of existence and Ganesh presides over it. He is the leader of the demigods. Mother Divine brings that structure to life.
Lord of Categories
Existence is crystalline in structure, as if it is all done with mirrors: Consciousness becomes aware of itself over and over again, creating the structure. Ganesh is the principle in Nature of categorization, in other words, the structuring of Nature – the structuring of the crystal of existence. That is why Lord Ganesh is the Lord of Categories. You can view the whole topic from the perspective of physics or personification. Ganesh is the remover of obstacles because enlivening the structure (categorizations) of the crystal causes it (life) to resonate, to hum, to function in harmony, which means to receive the support of the whole of Nature and thereby obstacles are removed, cast off, purified out.
“Gana” means category or group. Lord Ganesh is the Lord of Categories. He is the personification of the nature of structure. With groups and categories, we get into the arena of group theory. We get into the nature of the mathematical structure of the manifestation of existence. Group theory is the mathematics of the fundamental structure of existence. And, there are many different groups.
It is like a snowflake. You can look at a snowflake that has 5 branches coming off of it, and you could say it is all the dance around 5. You can do the mathematics around 5 and the structures that blossom off of the fundamental principle of 5. However, there are many possibilities. For example, you can count around each branch, maybe 3 little branches off of each major branch. Now, it’s the dance around 15 (5 x 3). So, that creates a whole other structure. And you can do different things with it. You can count every other branch, or every third branch, and generate infinite numbers off of each, creating even more complex mazes of structure. You could say that the heart of that, the feeling, the soul of the beauty of that structure, the personified correlate to structure, that is Ganesh.
The law of nature that regulates flow of the Abstract, Unbounded, into concretion, that’s Ganesh. That principle is called the principle of Ganesh.
Lord of Writing
Ganesh is also the Lord of writing. Why? Because writing takes a blank page, the Absolute, and puts upon it, dances upon its face, structure – letters, words, concepts. It’s kind of the same thing.
Even language, which is writing, is Ganesh. There is such a thing as a pure language, for instance, Sanskrit. It is name and form. The name correlates to the meaning. For instance, “pushpam” means flower. When Consciousness sees itself as other and duality is born, that is when structure starts to get created. When Consciousness becomes aware of two things, a third thing is born. And that structure cascades out, like a crystal growing, only an infinitely dimensional, profoundly complex crystal. Ganesh is the Lord of that process.
A Mouse as Ganesh’s Vehicle
Why is Ganesh’s vehicle a mouse? Ganesh is the remover of obstacles. A mouse hides in the nooks and crannies. It gnaws through things and can be very destructive.
Different animals have a group consciousness that permeates the whole world. Ganesh rides the mouse as his vehicle and through that level, that consciousness, he deals with the destructive nature of the mice that create obstacles in life.
Mice can trash things. They can destroy whole crops. He regulates that and removes obstacles in that subtle way. He is not going to go negotiate with your enemy. He is going to go there, almost in a subtle and clandestine way, to get rid of the mice. Tame the mice or keep those hidden qualities that obstruct your progress at bay. He gets rid of all those interferences and obstructions, so you function well.
Elephants are afraid of mice. Ganesh has mastered that, he has overcome that. That’s nice.
It is fun to look at the vehicles for all of the different gods.
