I recently had a conversation with a friend where we were talking about the fact that several Indian gods become decapitated in their stories. The two that are most important are, of course, Ganesha and Kali. Now, the case with Kali is that she decapitates herself and holds up the head in victory. But for Ganesha, his head is decapitated by Shiva, his father, the Father; and then the Father recapitates Ganesha with the head of an elephant, right? Now, often it doesn’t say which elephant was chosen, but in fact it was Airavata, who is the flying elephant—Airavata is Garuda on acid. Airavata is an extraordinary being, like all elephants. They are extremely wise and extremely massive in their power. They’re very friendly, if you’re friendly to them. They’re vegetarians; they live on the bark of trees. They don’t take nutritional supplements, and they get everything they need from the elements of nature.
So the recapitation is the key to understanding Ganesha, because that’s what makes him the god of new beginnings. In the same way that the Christian metaphor is “die and be reborn,” yes, you have to be reborn, but reborn as Christ-consciousness—not as human-consciousness of an egocentric variety but as divinized consciousness that is one with God, that’s in the state of Shivo Ham. But why is it that Kali then doesn’t get recapitated—she doesn’t put her head back on afterwards? It’s because she does this at the end of Kali Yuga, and she’s done with her act—she’s gone—she’s gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi swaha. That was her last act of self-decapitation, and that ends Kali Yuga. So if you have a little Kali living inside of you (which is an angry ego), decapitate it, and you will see that your Kali Yuga will come to an end. And then if you’re recapitated by Shiva—if you’re as lucky as Ganesha—you will dream the new Sat Yuga.
So the recapitation is important because it’s the final stage of our evolution as pure Spirit. A lot of people make a mistake in thinking that the decapitation is the end. For example, Nisargadatta will often say, you go to the point of holding the I-am and then realize the I-am is false and then dissolve into Nothingness, Para Brahman, cluelessness. You don’t know even who you are or where you are—it’s a kind of empty presence. But that’s not the final stage. Para Brahman is not God, not the Supreme; and this has to be understood. Para Brahman is the field of infinite consciousness emanated by Shiva that becomes the screen within which the quantum unified field that then produces a cosmos appears, as in a mirror. But Brahman, as the Hindus admit, doesn’t design the world of maya—doesn’t even know anything about it. There’s an Infinite Intelligence who has designed this Theodrama that these characters that you might think you’re playing are in. Who did that?
Well, see, what Nisargadatta (or the Buddhists, for that matter) don’t perceive is the presence of Para Shakti. Para Shakti is the power of God; She is the mind of God who translates the supreme energy into beauty. You could say that She is the set designer for the Theodrama, and She is the costume designer, and She is the dance instructor and the choreographer (She loves to dance). And She engages in all of the nuances of beautiful moments that occur in every life that give you a sense of that magical presence, even when it’s starting to be lost in the despair of the ego. She Herself is an emanation from the Unmanifest, as is Para Brahman. She’s the manifestation of the mind and the heart of God and the soul of beauty that is also an aspect of God. But the Ultimate, the Absolute, the Anuttara is beyond all description . . . but not without an “I”. You see, for the Buddhists and for Nisargadatta and for others, Advaita Vedantans, there is no I. But no, there is the I—the Real I. Once you remove the false “I-thought,” you are the I. That’s why Ramana says no, no, the final stage is aham; but it’s aham aham, meaning “I am both observer and observed.” The observed is merely the mirror image of the observer, but they are the same.
Speaking of mirrors and mirror images, when you look in a mirror, I take it that your mirror image will imitate all of your actions and gestures and words, right? If you ever saw the mirror image going first and you imitating it, you’d be in a little trouble; and if the mirror image started telling you what to do, you’d be in a lot of trouble. Now, what you have to realize is that this world is the mirror image of God, of God’s intelligence—Shakti, Shakti’s mind and heart. But you do not appear in the mirror; you’re not the image in the mirror; the image in the mirror is not you—it’s only a reflection; and you are still there even if the mirror breaks.
This is very important to know that you never appear in the mirror, only an image. Don’t identify with your self-image. That’s all an ego is: it’s a set of self-images, like clothes in your closet. Some of them are very nice and pretty and healthy, and others are very dark and angry and hateful. You decide which one you’re going to wear that day, but they are all just images of the ego. And it lives in that realm of images because it’s an appearance. It’s an appearance in the mirror of the world and in the mirror of the other’s gaze. But that’s all it is, because you are not an object that could appear or disappear.
So it’s very important to recognize that you are indeed the one seeing the mirror image. But you also recognize that the image is your image. And so there is nonduality when you understand that you’re not seeing someone else. If you were in that movie, All of Me, when the guy looks in the mirror and a woman looks back, you’d be in another kind of trouble. (I think that happens a lot these days though, actually.) The point is that the mirror image is your image, even if your image is split between male and female, but it’s not you. You cannot be represented by any images because none of them are adequate for the fullness of who and what you are. And your ego image only has life for as long as you’re looking at it. That means it exists in this lifetime of the soul (if we talk about observing it from the soul level), but you’ve had other images in other lives.
The ego image has no interest in the destiny of your soul. All it cares about is what it can have in this life. It has no understanding of the full trajectory of your being and your consciousness—and your extension throughout time and beyond time. So your egocentric mind can never act in your best interests because it doesn’t know the soul’s best interests. And its own ideas of what its best interests are actually create more bondage. So it’s important to get out of the mirror and discover who you are—and to recognize that, because the world is only an image in the mirror (as quantum physics has learned), it will only exist as long as it has an observer. If you stop observing the image in the mirror, it’s gone—you turn away from it, it’s not there anymore. But then you have to get to the point where even the observer has merged and there is nonduality because what was observed was your own imagination. And now, as you pull that back into your Self—the Self that is potentially both subject and object—beyond that, duality alone abides.
