September 03, 2007

The power of myth!

Now a days we humans consider getting married and buying a house as the biggest accomplishment in their life, once we achieve these stuffs, we try to train his next generation ‘genes’ to achieve the same. In ancient India, the ‘achievements’, siddhi (in Sanskrit) was of eight different types, and one who have archived these eight siddhi are considered to be saintly person or even worshiped as ‘God’! Check out the list of siddhi to achieve to become God! Well! These siddhi really existed or not? Is it possible to achieve all these siddhi? Well these are multi-billion dollar question. We, the rationalist will start laughing at these ‘siddhi’ in the same way as the people laughed at the concept of electricity, telephone or even the theory of relativity when it was fist spoken about. Well! spiritualist’s history can be rationalist’s mythology. But even if we consider this as just a myth, naïvely believing in such a myth, can give us power to overcome our obsession over silly ‘modern’ human defined achievements, right?

Well! How did I get into all these mythological stories today? I was reading an article on the discovery of new gene which contributes to the small height differences in humans. That remained me of the mythological stories about hanuman (monkey God) and many other ‘Godly’ characters who had the siddhi to change their heights. The painting is an ‘God’ (mythological character) Ganesh(elephant God) with his eight siddhi personified as women by the famous painter Ravi Varma.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

a different way to see our ancient stories;impact of paris ganesh festival? how was it?

-san

Uma Maheswari said...

Hmmmm! more or less, may be the impact of Ganesh festival! I missed it though, it was a heavy, thought provoking day...I am not sure if 'right' thoughts got provoked ;-). any way, I got my blog to blabber my thoughts!

Anonymous said...

Quite often, this blog discusses about stuff way beyond my comprehension!

Uma Maheswari said...

Thanks for not running away still ;-) I write such stuff in the blog because everyone around me run away, when I start talking about it ;-) Please feel free to discuss and comment your doubts!

Anonymous said...

Aṇimā: reducing one's body even to the size of an atom
Mahimā: expanding one's body to an infinitely large size
Garima: becoming infinitely heavy
Laghimā: becoming almost weightless
Prāpti: having unrestricted access to all places
Prākāmya: realizing whatever one desires
Iṣṭva: possessing absolute lordship;
Vaśtva: the power to subjugate all.

The things listed above are simply impossible. There is always a ideal case and it's never achievable in reality. Real life is about adjusting and chasing dreams that can probably and rationally accomplished.
It's a common trick to tempt a kid to learn and encourage it by applauding when it does simple things. Maybe, our targets today are simplified versions of the Siddhis
And, for sure, when you come and talk to me, I will not run away :-)
but I doubt how long you can really tolerate my stupid questions
:-)
B

Uma Maheswari said...

Right! Following your argument..."These things may not be possible, but I feel mythologies makes us realize that there is whole world of undiscovered things which are still beyond our comprehension". Just imagine... if you go some centuries back and talk to people(who were still using pigeons to send messages) and explain them about Internet and make them believe it. Keeping this in mind if we go few centuries ahead, we may see something, which we can never imagine now.(which may sound like the list of siddhi now). When this is the case, why should we feel so proud about our limited (incomplete) knowledge and have a ridiculous feeling that there is nothing beyond our perception. If we understand this, we will not make any hard and fast rules about life, we will be more open towards life and happily wait for the surprises which each day will bring to us.

Anonymous said...

http://www.voidbuff.com/

Have a look at this blog - This guys looks at the cause - effect relationship
at some point, he argues that we don't evolve and develop, but get dumber and dumber.

At the same time, we have become smart in believing and feeling contended with the small progress we make everyday.

Anonymous said...

Why should I become god ? Having born as a human, I prefer to live life humanely and exit the world as well humanely. I don't see the need to become god or be worshipped by someone else

Uma Maheswari said...

I don't see God as just an object of worship, unfortunately religions have made him so. I see him as the state of knowledge (complete) or ultimate wisdom , form of compassion and love, and a form of 'completeness'. All these are lacking or incomplete in us, the humans. so the process of becoming God, is just to develop in such qualities and not to have a temple of our own :-)

Unknown said...

may be just me.. but

'our obsession over silly' compare to.. but may even theirs too until Buddha redefined it..

even those are 'very objective' definition. point is: success/'siddhi' is very subjective and commonly defined by time we live-in, people that we allow to surround ourself, our priorities(or what we consider priority),etc..

i think, not many(if not no) emotions can have timeless definition. be it- love, faith, success, failure, health, wealth,etc..

Uma Maheswari said...

I agree! we are bound by the time and every thing we define is withing this frame work of time, ...love, faith, success, failure, health, wealth,etc. so our knowledge is incomplete and it cannot stand the strong hands of time, but still we are not open to this idea. we may be right today and wrong tomorrow. just imbibing this idea will make us humble and open us to new ideas and thoughts! I feel what we call God (ultimate knowledge), or the state of Buddha is to understand and perceive this impermanence, not by intellectual or by rational explanations but by experience.

Unknown said...

Hi Uma,

It was a pleasure visiting your blog!
Your thinking is clear and your articulation is so crisp.Congrats.

Long time, haven't heard from you.

Love... LC

Uma Maheswari said...

Thank you very much for your love and time sir!