[ExI] Dieties

[Stefano Vaj]

On Fri, Feb 29, 2008 at 9:27 PM, John Grigg <possiblepaths2050 at gmail.com> wrote:
> But I was thinking that in the Hindu paradigm that
> it was acceptable or even laudable for mere mortals to ascend to divinity.

Yes, this is exactly the point. Plus, the world is not created by a
god in the image of whom the man was made. Rather, the world is made
of the body of Purusha, the ancestral men, from whom gods, animals,
plants and rocks are originated. Nothing in this prospective can be
really "innatural", and Ganesh may well be a god while he is not even
entirely human himself, having had his head replaced with that of an
elephant. Many hindus may of course take the story as some kind of
metaphor by now, by I seriously doubt that the idea of chimeras or of
fiddling with human nature might ever generate the same recoil in
horror or "yuck factor" that is so widespread in the west.

Stefano Vaj