The Elephant Goddess
On the pursuit of knowledge
“mahaa kaavya naatakaadi priyam”
One who loves poetry and dance
— from the song “Mahaganapathim” (The great ganesha)
Dear reader — I am so excited to meet with your mind!
I will be having my first bharatanatyam performance to the song “Mahaganapathim” on January 26 in Bengaluru!
It’s a poetic composition written in deep praise of the Elephant God, Lord Ganesha, the patron of arts and sciences, the god of knowledge and consciousness. In homage to this beautiful rendition, I decided to write this article about my pursuit of knowledge, and the feeling of awe that comes during the search for truth and beauty.
As an artist, I knew sensory beauty. I have an innate love for beautiful people, things, places. I was seeking an insightful beauty, which is the beauty in understanding something that one did not understand before, and a transcendental beauty, which is the beauty in intuitively perceiving truths which are universal and timeless.
This pursuit of knowledge led me to the gates of academia. It held the promise of improving my understanding of the external world through rationalist thought and empirical methods. As I went deeper and deeper in, however, I seemed to be drawn to the pursuit of the knowledge of the inner world, which is not so easily perceived through rationalist thought and empirical methods.
In a hyper-rational, capitalistic world, I had to ask: Is this a worthy pursuit at all? And how does one go about it?
In my reading, I seemed to find some answers.
The science of ‘Raja Yoga’, in the first place, proposes to give men such a means of observing the internal states, and the instrument is the mind itself. The power of attention of mind, when properly guided, and directed towards the internal world, will analyse the mind, and illumine facts for us. The powers of mind are like rays of light being dissipated; when they are concentrated they illumine everything. This is the only source of knowledge that we have.
Everyone is using it, both in the external and the internal world, but, for the psychologist, this minute observation which the scientific man can throw upon the external world, will have to be thrown on the internal world, and this requires a great deal of practice. From our childhood upwards we have been taught only to pay attention to things external, never to pay attention to things internal, and most of us have nearly lost the faculty of observing the internal mechanism. To turn the mind, as it were, inside, stop it from going outside, and then to concentrate all its powers, and throw them upon the mind itself, in order that it may know its own nature, analyse itself, is very hard work. Yet that is the only way to anything which will be a scientific approach to the subject.
What is the use of such knowledge? In the first place, knowledge itself is the highest reward of knowledge, and, in the second place, there is also utility in it. It will take away our misery.
— from “Raja Yoga” by Swami Vivekananda
Indeed, it seems that the knowledge of the world and ourselves are both worthwhile pursuits. The world today is biased heavily towards the knowledge of the external world. The knowledge of the internal world is formalised through psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, religion or spirituality. Yet, so much is also intuitively expressed and finds resonance through art!
The Elephant God, Lord Ganesha, symbolises the many aspects of this pursuit of knowledge, which is captured in these beautiful lines.
“maara koti prakaasham shaantam”
One who shines with the brilliance of a thousand cupids
One whose nature is peaceful
To me, the Elephant God embodies true knowledge which bestows us with penetrating vision and insight, yet fills us with profound compassion, allowing us to cultivate peace not only within ourselves but also the world around us.
If we do not see compassion and peace within ourselves and the world, I really can’t help but wonder:
Are we truly pursuing knowledge at all?
My personal experience in engineering, social sciences and business has surely given me an appreciation for the scientific and utilitarian pursuit of knowledge. Yet, I have found that exploring my inner world through art has unearthed truths about myself that resonate no matter how far I travel across space and time. It seemed that the personal truths I was uncovering within me also had the potential to stir something deep within others.
I realised that art has always been a vehicle for the insightful beauty of understanding oneself, and the transcendent beauty of discovering shared truths which can resonate across cultures or generations.
Indeed, I believe that creating art is an important form of knowledge-seeking which we are depriving ourselves in Modern India. We must revitalise Indians with a love for artistic greatness — not merely as passive spectators but through active engagement with the fine arts.
The first step is to embrace pride in our ability to create meaningful art. The second step is to sincerely commit to growing ourselves as artists despite our limitations. In doing so, we develop ourselves as individuals and as a society to become vehicles for compassion in the world!
Currently inspired by:
Rukmini Devi Arundale by Leela Samson:
Select quotes from George Arundale on the Indian Education System which still hold urgently true:
“If education were for living and not merely for livelihood; if education were for joy and happiness and not merely for temporal success; if education were for self-expression and not so exclusively for imitation; if education were as much for eternity as it is for time; if education were as much for wisdom and truth as it is for so-called facts; if education were as much for the soul as it is supposed to be for the mind; then indeed would the younger generation be well-equipped for life.
How far away is our present system of education from the dignities of growth! How soulless! How prostituted to self-seeking rather than to self-sacrifice! My dream is of a truly Indian education system with the spirit of India’s faiths and India’s cultures, and beautifully harmonizing the dharma of the individual citizen to himself, with the dharma of reverent submission to the Motherland. How wonderfully exalted shall become the citizenship of India, if the very soul of India should be afire in her education system, because the mighty citizens of India’s past, be they the Rishis and the heroes, be they geniuses or simple men and women of the land, by their very spirit bear witness to the nobility of true living!
India’s need is a new race of teachers themselves afire with the greatness who count money as little and the power to inspire as everything.”
“Mirrors & Windows” is a book (series) of meditations on creativity. Through the language of metaphors from history, mythology, nature, astronomy & fine art, I write to reflect on our internal journeys. Within the pages of my book, I hope you find mirrors to your truest desires and windows that open to your deepest expressions!
I love the way you’ve categorized forms of ‘beauty’ - it eases the burden on the word itself, stops asking that six-lettered-sequence of characters to single-handedly capture the complex multi-layered experience of feeling a response to phenomena in the universe around us.
As someone exploring their identity as an artist while also participating in the ‘hyper-rational, capitalistic world’, I wonder about this bifurcation of ‘beauty’, too. To build a bit further on the excerpt you’ve shared from Rukmini Devi, I want to comment on the effect the current implementation of our education system has on a young mind, as well as the ensuing reinforcement learning that society (not necessarily Indian) subjects this mind to in terms of rewards and penalties.
I think we are attuned (so wrongly) to believe that these different forms of beauty are contrastive in nature. That a pursuit of one must come at the cost of the other. As if it were a zero-sum game. But that isn’t true, is it? A true pursuit of one form happens only when you also pursue the others.
Imagine fall. Leaves in scarlet and burgundy and bright orange-red, gently falling to the ground on a sidewalk. There’s a poem, there’s (to use your terms) sensory beauty. Now step back (figuratively) and look at yourself imagining fall. What is it about those leaves that makes a human stop and look and smile? What exactly is it about this specific intersection of flora, temperature, and gravity that evokes an emotional response? Discovering an answer to that would perhaps be insightful beauty (if I’ve understood your point correctly). Even further rumination can, perhaps, lead to a realization of how and when humans can and do feel moved by such things - how this is our nature as a species, and how this simple feeling has historically motivated us to fight wars or build companies. How that falling leaf can change the world.
Or maybe it does nothing but simply fall.
That’s transcendent, isn’t it? These forms are all tied together, and we must learn to see how.
**
Thanks for the read, and good luck for your performance!