Ganesha chaturthi, more insights

How often people see Ganesha in different forms, the most revered god of hindu culture.. There are usually literal meanings, superficial and subtle meaning to our old scriptures always and different people interpret differently.. There is mentions of "Ganesha" as owner/ruler of ganas (means series or multiples in sanskrit) in rig Veda. The scholars who have interpreted and written down the Upanishads have interpreted Ganesha as leader of knowledge, the supreme before anything else in this Cosmos, hence you see Ganesha in all hindu temple no matter if the primary temple deity is different.

Ganesha Upanishads also mentions Ganesha is shiva, he is Shakthi, he is brhama , he is Visnu he is the supreme brhman itself.(he here does not mean male gender). Later in puraanas like Mahabharata, Ganesha is interpreted as a human form, personalised attachment, and made loveable for everyone..Its only after later recent years (around 2000 years ago may be) the elephant head was interpreted based on shiva puraana incident where it mentions that all the ganas were called and his head was resurrected. Later when temple building increased this image elephant head and personalised human "Ganesha" spread throughout the world from far east japan even to the Americas..

The "Ganesha chaturthi" seems to be historically, a family festival until late 19th century when Mr Balagangadhar Tilak wanted to protest against "The curfew act" by the British which inspired from small group gathering and introduced mass Ganesha festivals in Mumbai and the tradition continues in many other parts of India and worldwide..

Coming to subtle meaning, my personal opinion is Ganesha, the vigna nayaka , ganapathy resides in every individual until they realise..which is the conscious intellect itself ( not education or intelligence) but the capacity to seek knowledge….Self realisation and Ved tells that to put knowledge in frist before everything we do and all the times.. now if you interpret the shiva puraana in this context and re interpret, the cutting of head was meant to be ignorance of Shiva himself who is the supreme..., so ignorance does not spare even shiva himself but intellect can replace the ignorance of anyone to the right path..

Hence hindus generally celebrate and respect Ganesha all through out the year , in all the temples, divotees seek blessings from Ganesha first at the entrance before they reach the garbagudi (main center Sanctum)..The chaturthi in the festival is special because it is belived that "Ganesha" came to Earth on this day as per astronomical calculation..In subtle meaning it is the concept of intellect, to question, reject, accept, reason came to this world…in a sense where humans were blessed with intellect by shiva himself along with Shakthi which eventually helped us survive, compete, improve and finally self realise the Brhman itself which no other animal have capacity to do.

Further, the Ganesha deity used for the Ritual on this auspicious day is sent back to the earth in the form of visarjan (dipping into water), would mean even Ganesha is also temporary like everything else in this Cosmos.

Om ganapathaye namaha