HARMA, SANATANA DHARMA, THE ETERNAL
faith, 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.