To a Hindu, the name Ganapati immediately brings to mind the Lord in a form of elephant-faced God, worshipped all over India irrespective of caste, creed or religious beliefs. He is famous as the remover of obstacles and is, therefore, worshipped before undertaking any task. In Sanskrit gana means to count. We count and categorise things into groups; a group is also called a gana. Every field of knowledge makes its own set or groups. Science categorises the phenomenal world as groups of organic or inorganic chemicals, amphibians or reptiles, constellations or galaxies. Ganapati is the Lord of all groups.
The world is made up of permutation and combination of a group of five elements (space, air, fire, water and earth) and three qualities (sattva, rajas and tamas). Each body is constituted of seven substances (bones, flesh, blood, fat, lymph, marrow and semen), the five sense organs of action (locomotion, grasping, speech, reproduction and excretion), the five sense organs of perception (seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, feeling and touch), the five physiological functions (respiration, digestion, circu-lation, excretion and reversal action) and the four mental mind modifications (mind, intellect, memory and I-notion). Ganapati is the Lord of all.
Each group may have its own leader. For instance, Indra is the king of heaven, a President is the head of a nation, human beings are crown of creation, but Ganapati is the Lord and master of all. According to the Ganapati Atharvashirsha Upanishad, he, in his absolute nature, is the truth — the very self of all beings. What is his relation with the world? Every effect must have a cause. Our existence proves the existence of our parents. The products seen in the market must have a company that produces them. This world was not created by us, or by any institution or nation.
We can only take credit for creating confusion in it! The infinite universe must have a creator who has infinite knowledge and strength. That omniscient and omnipotent Lord who created this universe of countless cosmoses is Ganapati. Let us see the form of Ganapati to be meditated upon and worshipped. His four hands represent the four human pursuits (purusharthas) — righteousness or merits (dharma), wealth (artha), pleasures and comforts (kama) and liberation (moksha). Usually an elephant has two tusks. They represent the vision of duality and also the pairs of opposites. Ganapati is depicted as having one tusk — he has destroyed (broken) such false notions, has a vision of non-duality (advaitadrishti) and is beyond the pairs of opposites. We pray to him to bless us with peace, prosperity, harmony and happiness.
