Magnificence of Shaligrama stone and Golden Spiral !!

        In my previous post - Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu, I have mentioned about 'Nitya Kalyana Perumal' temple at Thiruvidanthai in Chennai.        

        The main deity of this temple is, 'Sri Lakshmi Adi varaha' and the deity is decorated with a garland of 108 shaligrama stones around his neck. Why Shaligrama stones ? Why this historic stones were used ?

        Shaligrama / Saligrama stone is a unique variety of ancient sacred stone found on the banks of Kali Gandaki river in Nepal. It is one of the oldest stone in this world, which is about 400 - 95 million years old. 

        Scientifically, they are called as 'Ammonoid' / Ammonite fossils. It is a group of extinct cephalopods, forms related to the modern pearly nautilus, that are frequently found as fossils in marine rocks dating from the Devonian Period (began 419 million years ago) to the Cretaceous Period (ended 66 million years ago)

Why it is sacred and what is so special about this shaligrama stone?

        As this stone bears the symbols (Chakra) of Lord Vishnu naturally, without any human interventions, this stone is considered as non-anthropomorphic representation of Lord Vishnu in Hinduism. It is considered as sacred stones by many south asians. 

Sri Adi Shanakaracharya had used this shaligrama stones to worship Lord Vishnu, which is also mentioned in many of hindu sacred texts...

        It is one of the most sacred stones worshipped by vaishanavites in India. This stone represents 6 values of life - Righteous living, wealth, protection, good health, pleasures and spiritual blessing.

       

    This shaligrama stone is naturally appears in the pattern of Golden spiral. Golden Spiral is a spiral arrangement that occurs naturally, with the ratio of - 1.618. This pattern allows the organism to grow without changing shape.

         The Golden Spiral has the special property such that for every 1/4 turn (90° or π/2 in radians), the distance from the center of the spiral increases by the golden ratio φ = 1.6180. 

        In geometry, a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is φ, the golden ratio. That is, a golden spiral gets wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of φ for every quarter turn it makes.

   This golden spiral symbolizes balance, growth, birth, expansion, contraction, change, evolution, surrender, release, letting go, connectivity, union, journeying, development, constant movement, and infinity – because it goes on and on

        The golden ratio is about 1.618 and it is sometimes called as "divine proportion," because of its frequency in the natural world. The number of petals on a flower, for instance, will often be a Fibonacci number.

        A spiral is a curved pattern that focuses on a center point and a series of circular shapes that revolve around it. Examples of spirals are pine cones, pineapples, hurricanes. The reason for why plants use a spiral form like the leaf picture above is because they are constantly trying to grow but stay secure.

    

        

        This golden spiral abounds in nature. Snail shells and nautilus shells follows golden spiral. It can also be seen in the horns of certain goats and the shape of certain spider's webs..

The golden spiral can also be seen in cochlea of inner ear. The cochlea is the part of the inner ear involved in hearing. It is a spiral-shaped cavity in the bony labyrinth, in humans making 2.75 turns around its axis, the modiolus. 

Everywhere in this world, you can see the nature's design in golden ratio....

Spiral galaxy in the universe with the golden spiral - 1.6180...

            Nature has association with spirals. In hurricanes and galaxies, the body rotation spawns spiral shapes. When the center turns faster than the periphery, waves within these phenomena get spun around into spirals.

        

        Now, Coming back to Shaligrama stones, these are not only ancient, but also contains the golden spiral in nature. These stones are so unique, natural and sacred in Hinduism.  Also, as it resembles Lord Visnhu's symbol Sudharshan Chakra, it is considered as sacred in Vishnu temples and Vaishanavites... 

     The famous Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvanthapuram (Kerala), where the main deity Padmanabhaswamy (Lord Vishnu) can be seen in 'Anantha Shayan' posture (Yogic sleep). 

    The original deity of this temple in garbhagriha, is made of 12,008 shaligrama stones. These shaligrama stones were transported from the banks of Gandaki river in Nepal. These Shaligrama stones are sacred stones worshipped and venerated as a direct manifestation of Lord Vishnu.

Also, there are different shapes of shaligrama stones representing Dasavatar (10 forms) of Lord Vishnu...

Sudharshan Chakra like Shaligrama

         The knowledge of golden spiral and golden ratio was known to ancient sages and rishis in India. Thus, they built and designed many architectures in India with this golden ratio principle. Will explore those in my next post...

        Thus, there are 108 shaligrama stones in the garland of Adi Varaha swami in Thiruvidanthai (Chennai). 

Why 108 ? Why 108 is considered as divine number ?

Sun's diameter is 108 times that of the earth.

The distance between earth and moon is 108 times the diameter of the moon..

The distance between the Earth and Sun is 108 times the diameter of the Sun .

Distance between earth and sun is 149 900 000 kms

Diameter of sun 1390 000 kms

Distance from earth to moon 381 000 kms

Diameter of moon 3499 kms

Diameter of earth 12798 kms

How did the ancient maharishis know the 9 planets and their diameters, 9000 years before?

Sri Vaishnavite Tradition has 108 Divya Desams (temples of Vishnu) 

Our body has 108 Marma points i.e vital prana points...

54 is the number of triple intersections on the Sri Yantra which in Shiva-Shakti format works out to 108. 

How did the ancient sages and maharishis know the importance of this divine number 108 several thousand years before ???

The magnificence of the divine number 108 is more than this. I will write down a separate post for the divine number 108.....

- Aarthi Thiyagarajan

Varaha Avatar of Lord Vishnu - The Third Avatar!!

        Varaha Avatar is a third avatar of Lord Vishnu. There are 10 avatars of Lord vishnu, which is popularly known as Dasavatar.  Lord Vishnu took a form a Wild board / Varaha, to save mother Earth from the Asura Hiranyaksha. 

Lord Vishnu's first avatar - Matsya Avatar - Dolphin 

https://divinediyaas.blogspot.com/2020/05/pandya-king-satyavrata-and-matsya.html

Lord Vishnu's second avatar - Kurma Avatar - Tortoise

https://divinediyaas.blogspot.com/2020/11/kurma-avatar-of-lord-vishu-second-avatar.html

Varaha Avatar

When did Lord Vishnu took Varaha Avatar ?

        At the end of Satya Yuga, Lord Vishnu took Varaha avatar, the form of wild boar, to kill the demon king Hiranyaksha and to save Mother Earth from sinking into the cosmic ocean. Satya yuga is first yuga in the yuga cycle.

Who is Hiranyaksha ? Why did he try to kill mother Earth ?

    

        Hiranyaksha was the first, powerful and oppressive demon who walked on this earth. Sage Kashyapa was father of both Devas and Asuras. So, always there were fight among them to show their superiority and strength. Hiranyaksha is the elder son to Sage Kashyapa and Diti. 

        Asura king Hiranyaksha was troubling Devas, Indra's abode, Earth and people in the earth. He received a boon through his severe austerities / tapas from Lord Brahma that no man or animal could kill him. His brother is Hiranyakashipu (who is also killed by Lord Vishnu in the form of Narasimha avatar).

        Hiranyaksha = Hiran means - golden eyed + Yaksha, as he was from the clan of yakshas i.e demons. He was too tall, muscular, strong and aggressive that he was looking like a huge golden mountain. He wore golden anklets, golden belt, golden bracelets and golden bands on his arms, several golden chains with rubies, emerald, diamonds on his chest and a big golden precious crown on his head. The earth trembles upon, when he takes every step on the earth. His capital city was Hiranyapura - a floating celestial sky city of demons.

        Both the brothers Hiranyaksha and Hiranyakashipu tortured Devas and people in the Earth. This ferocious asura attacked heaven, devas and all the three worlds. They engaged war with devas, some devas were scared of Hiranyaksha and flew to Earth to hide and some devas were defeated terribly. He believed that the source of deva's power comes from the Earth. So, he decided to destroy Earth by sinking it under the cosmic ocean, so that none of the devas can access Earth and it will make devas much weaker. 

        Due to the heavy blow of Hiranyaksha and his power, Earth got slipped from her axial position in the solar system, lost her balance in the universe and she started to sink into the cosmic ocean called 'Garbhodaka'. 

Do we have ocean of water in the broad universe ? Let us see about the scientific part of this before continuing the story..

Here ocean - means cosmic ocean. Not really water ocean, whenever we have abundant of some thing, we call it as ocean, for example: ocean of knowledge. 

    Here, the cosmic ocean - is a place where innumerable planets and galaxies exists, it's like an ocean of dark energy and dark matter.

Dark matter - binds the planets with the galaxy through its gravitational effects. Dark matter exerts more gravitational force that it holds the entire galaxy. 

        Actually all the planets in the solar system floats as weightless balls and are placed intact in corresponding position with the respect to the Sun and respective planets, due to the gravitational effects existing in the universe. 

        Dark Matter / Ether is something that boosts gravitational pull of stars and galaxies, it increases the flexibility of space time for the matter to have bigger gravitational effect than their weight. 

 

     "Hiranyaksha pushed the earth and hid her in the ocean". This means that, if the gravitational effect of the Earth is disturbed from it's orbit around the Sun, then Earth will be detached from it's position and fall into the ocean of dark energy.  

        Dark energy is the single largest constitute of Universe, it forces space to expand. It is a mysterious force that is causing the rate of expansion of the universe to accelerate over time. It tends to drive the universe apart due to its opposing approach. It produces an opposite effect to the gravitational force.

  The Dark matter produces an attractive force (gravity), while dark energy produces a repulsive force (antigravity). Together, they make up 96 percent of the universe and we can't see either.

        So, Hiranyaksha with his power used dark energy in the universe, to harm earth, and Earth in turn got loosen up from the axis, detached from her position in the universe and fell into the ocean of dark energy. This is the real meaning behind, Earth sinking into the cosmic ocean.  

Now, coming back to the story, sages on the Earth realised this strange terrible situation and performed a great yagna to please Lord Vishnu to save mother Earth from sinking. 

Lord Vishnu took the form of half boar and half human called as 'Varaha Avatar', and went to search for mother Earth. He searched for bhuma devi and retrieved her from the ocean, by lifting the earth on his tusks.

        Vishnu balanced the earth on the horns above his snout and safely placed the earth in the universe in her original position with an axial tilt of 23.5 degrees. 

Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu lifting the Earth 

        Due to the tilt in the earth's axis, sun travels continuously from tropic of cancer 23.5 degree North, to tropic of Capricorn 23.5 degree south and causing the seasons.

        The earth's spin axis is tilted with respect to its orbital plane. This is what causes the seasons. When the earth's axis points towards the sun, it is summer for that hemisphere. When the earth's axis points away, winter can be expected.

      The tilt of the earth's axis set by Lord Vishnu is the reason for the seasons in the earth and life on this planet.

“ After placing the earth, He adorned it with mountains and then divided it into seven continents”

- Vishnu Purana 1.4.45-50

         After saving the mother Earth from cosmic ocean and he placed her safely in the universe in her original position. Then Lord Vishnu engaged in a war with Hiranyaksha, they both fought fiercely. Hiranyaksha couldn't harm Lord Vishnu even once, all his powers were draining. He tried to beat the boar in various ways and had a strong duel, they fought each other with heavy maces. But all the efforts of Hiranyaksha were failed in vain. At last, Hiranyaksha realised that the Boar is none other the supreme god Lord Vishnu. Then, he was ready to embrace his death from God's hand. 

Battle between Hiranyaksha and Varaha Avatar of Vishnu

    Thus Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu killed the demon king Hiranyaksha and saved mother Earth and people in the World.

        Dasavatar of Lord Vishnu is closely related to evolution of humans in the Earth. First avatar was Matsya avatar - dolphin. Dolphin is an intelligent animal which can pass mirror test and hear the divine frequency 7.83Hz - Schumann's resonance. 

In this avatar, Boars - are male pigs with tusks. These wild pigs are similar to human beings, they dreams like humans and express their emotions as well.  They respond to names and commands, the DNA of pigs are close to humans, it's heart system is similar to humans and it is one of the intelligent animal. Thats why, Cancer drugs are often tested on pigs before humans. 

Ancient Indians knows that the DNA of pigs and humans are very close and that's the reason that Indians don't eat pig meat.

Udayagiri cave, Madhya Pradesh

        One of the famous temple for Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu is situated in Thiruvidanthai, Chennai. This 1300 years old temple was built by Pallava kings in dravidian style of architecture. Mamallapuram and Thiruvidanthai were one of the port towns of Pallavas during their reign.

        This temple is also called as 'Nithya Kalyana perumal temple', where the main deity is 'Sri Lakshmi Adi varaha' and idol is around 7 ft tall. Lord Vishnu is holding a conch in his upraised right hand and the disc in his left. The goddess is seated over his left thigh, his left hand is holding the goddess and only the right leg of varaha swami is touching the floor. The deity is decorated with a garland of 108 shaligrama stones around his neck.

Why the garland is made of 108 shaligrama stones ?

108 is a divine number... It is widely used in Hindu sacred books and it symbolically represents many hidden meanings. This will take a separate post.

Now, let us see some of the intricate carvings of Varaha avatar of Lord Vishnu in ancient Indian temples....

Halebidu

Eran - Madhya Pradesh

Varaha avatar carvings at Mamallapuram cave....

        Though the Earth and Moon are rotating independently, we can see only one side of the moon and the other side of the moon is not visible to us. How is it possible ? Doesn't it require some divine fixing of Earth?


        When Lord Vishnu's Varaha avatar had lifted mother Earth from the ocean of dark matter/ Ethet in his tusks and placed her gently in her original position with an axial tilt of 23.5 degrees, then Gods and Sages sang Lord Varaha's praises in 108 verses...

        Why 108 verses ? The magnificence of the divine number 108 and the uniqueness of 108 shaligrama stones in the garland of Lord Varaha will be uncovered in my next post...

- Aarthi Thiyagarajan