The sacred secret of Vasanth Panchami

Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom, is depicted sitting on a rock. Knowledge is always rock solid, and it brings stability to you. Once you gain the knowledge, it stays with you. And there is a peacock depicted next to Devi Saraswati. The peacock symbolizes celebration and beauty, which comes with knowledge.

Devi Saraswati plays the Veena with two hands, holds a book and a rosary in the other two hands, symbolizing the three aspects of education of great importance. What are the three elements of education? Meditation or meditative experience, spiritual education or ethereal knowledge and the knowledge from books. If any one of them is missing, education remains incomplete.

Meditation is experiential knowledge. And the knowledge from books, the scientific knowledge, or the material knowledge is valuable too. The book in the hand of Devi Saraswati encompasses both spiritual knowledge and material knowledge. And then music balances these two aspects of knowledge. The left brain is logical and speaks of knowledge, and the right brain is for music and art. Logic and music are essential in life. I suggest that people who perform a lot of left-brain activity, like accountants, engineers, and scientists, should listen to music every day to balance their right-brain activity. Similarly, creative people like musicians can solve some crossword puzzles, do some math, or study and read something. We need to balance these two sides of the brain.

Music should be a part of an all-inclusive education. Education shouldn’t be leaning towards any one side of the brain- the left brain or the right brain. You need both the left and right brain to be active and balanced. And then there is a japa mala in the other hand. Japa mala signifies meditation and spirituality. Brain synchrony comes with meditation, wisdom, and music. Saraswati is depicted as being born out of the creator and is also bound to stay with the creator. If the knowledge leaves, the creation cannot exist. And, knowledge comes because there is creation. Unless you create something, you can’t gain knowledge of it. And once it’s created, whatever is created, the knowledge stays; it doesn’t vanish.

We have heard about the river Saraswati, which is believed to flow secretly. Does this mean that spiritual knowledge should also be kept a secret? We all know that spiritual knowledge is sacred. But the reason to keep something secret when it is sacred puzzles many. It is simply to bring more attention to it.

You see, your mind is so tricky. It always tries to find what the secret is. If you tell someone that something is a secret, it invokes curiosity. They want to know what that secret is. So, invoking curiosity is the purpose of secrecy.

There are two types of secrets. The first type of secrecy is one that you are ashamed of, and so you want to keep it hidden. This type of secret is associated with shame and guilt. There is another type of secret that is associated with serenity, spirituality, or sacredness. So here in the world of spiritual knowledge, all the mantras are kept very secret because they are sacred.

Saraswati sitting on a rock means that once you have acquired complete knowledge, it is deeply grounded in you. Only when spiritual knowledge, experiential knowledge, and intellectual knowledge come together does wisdom dawn and becomes complete.