Ganesh Chaturthi: The Play Of Worship

Honouring is a sign of divine love, and puja is the art of honouring the Divine. The ceremony of puja imitates what the Divine is already doing for you. The Divine worships you in so many forms. In puja, you offer everything back to the Divine.

Before we begin anything auspicious, Lord Ganesha is first invoked to take us from tamo guna, or lethargy, and darkness to sattva guna, or purity. The tradition is, we make the idol out of clay and invoke Ganesha, asking the Divine within to come and manifest in the idol for a while so that we can play with that form. The flowers, which are offered in a puja, symbolise love. You offer fruits and grains, just as nature provides them to you. You light camphor and incense and take it around the Lord, praying, “May my life circle around you and not go away from you.” Through puja, we say to God, "Oh, whatever you give to me, I give back to you."

We bring home Ganpati with a sense of joy and gratitude, as if a loving family member has arrived. You start planning for the decorations and invitations and making special prasad. You offer God his favourite things, share your innermost feelings and desires, and sing and dance. And after the celebrations, you immerse the idol by inviting the Lord back into the abode of your heart.

Guiding Light: Incarnation Of Love

The ritual of immersing (visarjan) the idols after a few days of worship reinforces the understanding that God is not in the idol; He is inside us. Ganesha is the adhipati, the ruler of knowledge and consciousness. He is the one who is never born, one beyond any imagination or idea, one who is formless, one with and without joy, the non-dual one. He is described as the god who is above, below, and everywhere, and the one who exists in all forms. Ganesha is the same energy that is the reason for this universe to exist, from which everything has manifested, and it is the same energy in which the whole world will dissolve. Although Ganesha is worshipped as the elephant-headed God, the worship of his manifested form is simply to take you to the formless consciousness that is Ganesha.