Sri Varadhar Theppam 2025 - பதக முதலை வாய்ப் பட்ட களிறு

The concluding day of Theppothsavam today (5.3.2025)  is for Sri Varadharajar.  It was eye-capturing sarruppadi – Elephant King Gajendra (in silvery white) – lifting its trunk and serving Lord Devathi Rajar.   Great darshan of Varadharajar and His servant Gajendra, the elephant.

 

Likely most of you enjoyed His darshan through FB posts / video / WA shares and Insta !!!  Social media has transformed the way we communicate, access information, and perceive the world. However, its pervasive influence raises concerns about how it distorts memory, reinforces biases, and alters perception. 

One of the most concerning ways social media impacts cognition is through the misinformation effect—a psychological phenomenon where exposure to misleading or false information alters memories and beliefs. Research has demonstrated that fake news on social media can lead individuals to develop false memories of events that never actually happened. Social media’s carefully curated highlight reels create unrealistic benchmarks, making everyday life seem dull in comparison. This can lead to dissatisfaction and a sense of failure, despite the fact that most people live perfectly normal and meaningful lives without luxury mansions or  high end vehicles.  

Before you read this,  a couple of famous quotations:

·        ** Humans see what they want to see.

·        **Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change. 

Sensory organs are the gateway to perception. They receive information from the environment and convert it into electrical signals processed by the brain. Each sense has its own specialized organ: the eyes for vision, the ears for hearing, the skin for touch, the tongue for taste, and the nose for smell.  On the other, Perception interprets sensory information to form a mental representation of the world. It's influenced by experience, expectations, attention and varies across individuals.  

Life bias is  all about perception ! ~  Perception (from the Latin perceptio) is the organization, identification and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the environment. All perception involves signals in the nervous system, which in turn result from physical stimulation of the sense organs. For example, vision involves light striking the retinas of the eyes, smell is mediated by odor molecules and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not the passive receipt of these signals, but can be shaped by learning, memory and expectation. Since the rise of experimental psychology in the late 19th Century, psychology's understanding of perception has progressed by combining a variety of techniques. 

We  perceive or have our own thoughts of many things without ever realizing that they could be far different from what we think them to be…  some would not care to know what in reality it is, worser still, some would only hear to those voices, which correspond to our style of thinking and ignore any deviant thought or words.

 

பதக முதலை வாய்ப் பட்ட களிறு

கதறிக்கை கூப்பிஎன் கண்ணா  கண்ணா  என்ன  !!   

Today’s darshan of Lord Varadharajar, perhaps it was unmistakably clear – Gajendra in service was in excruciating pain, having been gripped heavily on its leg by monster Crocodile.  Like the elephant, many of us are in deep trouble due to physical, medical, financial, psychological, family problems – yet the World perceive a different picture of us and even envy  the way we are living  !   

The epistemology of Vaiśeṣika school of Hinduism,  accepted only two reliable means to knowledge: perception and inference.    Nyāya, literally meaning "justice", "rules", "method" or "judgment", is one of the six orthodox (astika) schools of Hinduism.  Nyaya school's epistemology accepts four out of six Pramanas as reliable means of gaining knowledge – Pratyakṣa (perception), Anumāṇa (inference), Upamāṇa (comparison and analogy) and Śabda (word, testimony of past or present reliable experts)  

Gajendra the King of elephants, was attacked and caught by a crocodile and death seemed imminent.  Gajendra had been rendering service to the Lord by offering fresh, fragrant Lotus and when he appealed to God to protect him, Sriman Narayana appeared on Garuda vahanam, saving the devout elephant by killing the crocodile with his ‘Chakram’.   It also explains that one who falls under the divine feet of Lord [prapathi – surrender] seeking salvation will surely be taken care of.  

For us, Sriman Narayana is the only savior ~ for human beings to get salvation – with His divine grace, He showers benevolence on every living thing as evidenced by this act of kindness on might elephant Gajendra.  

 
adiyen Srinivasa dhasan
Mamandur Veeravalli Srinivasan Sampathkumar
5.3.2025