How can God incarnate as a pig, fight with a demon and retrieve Earth from under the ocean, when the ocean itself is on

[sridatta]

[Question by Shri Surya, Mumbai.] The concept behind the symbolic story must be understood. The earth represents humanity. The sea represents worldly attractions. The demon represents the preacher, who attracted humanity and immersed it in the worldly attractions by rejecting the existence of God. The earth was then lifted on the mouth [on the tusks] of the pig. This indicates that God in human form came down and lifted humanity from the worldly attractions by preaching through His mouth.

Here, both the demon-preacher and the followers are really stupid pigs. God in the form of a pig indicates that God has to come in a medium that has qualities similar to the people whom He wants to uplift. Similarly, God came as a fish and uplifted from the ocean, the knowledge of God (Veda), which was stolen by a demon.

This again represents that the knowledge of God was being used as an instrument to achieve worldly happiness and thus, the spiritual knowledge was immersed in the worldly attraction. The fish represents the third eye of knowledge by which the spiritual knowledge is isolated from such worldly attraction. So, God was established as the ultimate aim to be achieved and not as something instrumental to achieve worldly happiness.