#tower-bearer

Young priest trying to escape from the burning hot roof of the Ramana Ashram Samadhi Hall at Tiruvannamalai

ॐ

See, when God is bearing the burden of the world (and of all the people in the world), the pseudo soul imagining as if it were bearing that burden is a mockery like the form of a gopuram-tangi (a sculptured figure which seems to support the top of a temple-tower). Whose fault is it if someone who is travelling in a train, which is bearing a great burden, undergoes suffering by bearing his small burden on his own head instead of placing it on the train?

—  Ulladu Narpadu - Anubandham, V. 17 (pg 116)

Note: Since God alone is in truth bearing all the burdens of each and every soul in the world, it is wise for us to surrender ourselves entirely to Him and to live happily free from all cares and anxieties. If, instead of thus surrendering everything to Him, we imagine that we are bearing our own small burden, we will suffer needlessly, like a man who, though travelling in a train, continues to carry his own small luggage on his head instead of placing it down on the train.

      When it is so foolish for us even to imagine that we are bearing our own small burden, how much more foolish will it be if we imagine that we have to bear the burdens of other people or of the whole world? Therefore, in order to show what a foolish mockery are the efforts of those people who wish to reform or rectify the world, in this verse Sri Bhagavan compares them to a gopuram-tangi.

      Just as the gopuram-tangi does not in fact support even a small portion of the tower, but is itself supported by the tower, so the individual soul, who is a spurious and unreal entity, does not in fact sustain even a small part of the world’s burden, but is himself sustained only by God. 

      The word gopuram-tangi literally means ‘tower-bearer’ and is a name given to the sculptured figures which stand near the top of a south Indian temple-tower and which seem to be making strenuous efforts to support the upper portion of the tower; by extension, the word gopuram-tangi is commonly used to mean a person who has an immoderate sense of self-importance and who believes that on himself alone everything depends).