SPIRITUAL SENSE OF THE SNAKES

Dear Balarishi,

Of all living beings, snakes are considered to be more connected with spirituality. Why are they significant in spiritual path?

Very recently, in this blog we discussed about people praying in different languages to God. In spirituality language operates only in a gross level. It is a tool for communication but it might not express what all a person feels. In that place, the vibrations and thought waves play a major role. Snakes are too good in understanding vibrations. They are sensitive enough to grasp the vibration of thoughts. See, one might think something and communicate something which is directly opposite. If you are somewhat sensitive, if a person tells all false rosy words and has some negative thing in mind, you will be able to feel it. But this sensitivity is not that active among human beings as their logical mind tries to interpret.

But snakes are accurate in grasping vibrations. Now many people argue on the point that snakes can hear or cannot hear. The fact is they need not rely on hearing as they can go with the vibrations. If a person is nearing the snake with an attitude to attack, even before he has made up his mind to attack the snake comes to know about this. Accordingly it indulges in self defense. People misunderstand that it is coming to bite. Normally snakes never take the initiative to attack anyone. People mistake snakes to be a threat to them and attack them. Due to this many rare species of snakes are destroyed and their numbers are decreasing. So human beings have become big threats to the snakes.

Snakes are meditative beings. We came in human form with a specific purpose and similarly snakes are here with a purpose. Though there are so many varieties of snakes, they have some qualities in common. Among these, cobras are the most sensitive ones. Snakes are closely related with siddha tradition. Forests and untrodden jungles are the abodes of siddhas for their secret and sacred spiritual practices. They take up higher practises, intense penance and research on herbs at forests. To ensure solitude they have certain shields known as kavasams. As they had manthra kavasams to protect themselves from animals and negative vibrations, they also had naaga kavasams, where snakes stood as the border warriors. The snakes are also the shields for some rare divine herbs.

Similarly certain siddhas also take the form of snakes and go into deep penance. As snakes live in caves siddhas also live in caves. There are few more dimensions of the spiritual aspect of snakes. We shall look into them later.