If Lord Shiva is the Adhipati (ruler) of all the Navagrahas (the nine planets), why is it that each Graha is invoked and honoured in every pooja?
Your body has different parts, isn't it? And you have a foot cream and face cream. You don’t apply your foot cream on your face, or your face cream on your feet. Hair oil is different and body oil is different. You don’t say that you will not apply toothpaste on your teeth but somewhere else. Similarly, these are two different things. One is, there is one divinity, and then, for specific actions or things, there is a ‘yagna’. These are different concepts.
Yagna is a science where specific materials and herbs are used that impact specific parts of our body. Don’t think that the Navagrahas are just planets, they are specific vibrations in the cosmos and they relate to different parts of our body. The whole science behind a yagna is the connection between microcosm and the macrocosm. For example, Mars is connected to the liver and to proteins.
Like this, there are many connections between different herbs, different materials with cosmic vibrations. The cosmos has a number of vibrations and specific vibrations are named for different planets and they also relate to the movements of planets. You doing something here is not going to affect the Sun, but you holding an umbrella definitely protects you from the sun.
Similarly, in different seasons, you take different foods. Nature grows different foods in different seasons. You don’t get mangoes in the cold winter. Mangoes come only in the summer. If you consume them only during the season nature grows, your health is better. Nature has designed this, and so the time, vibrations, food, environment and even animals are all connected.
Another important thing is that all the Grahas (planets) and their Devatas (vibrations) come in specific vehicles. What is the vehicle? This is interesting to analyse. A goat carries the Mars vibrations, and like this every animal brings down specific vibrations from nature on to the ground. It is fascinating to go deeper and analyse this.
In the middle ages, people never understood that butterflies have very specific things to do. If there are no butterflies, food cannot be grown. People with less knowledge question what butterflies have to do with having more food. In the US, when the pesticides were spread, they never considered butterflies or insects as an important phenomenon. So what happened? All the butterflies disappeared! Now they are bringing butterflies in containers and leaving them in the fields so that pollination can happen and food can be grown. The quality of food suffers a lot when pollination does not happen. So, from an ant to an elephant, everything has a role to play in this planet. Honouring them is what this is about.
When you say that there is only one consciousness - this is quantum physics. But there are also many different materials and that is classical chemistry. They are not at loggerheads with each other, and can both go together. You don’t have to pray to all the Navagrahas. All that you need to say is, "Om Namah Shivayah". The prayer is only to one, in that everything is contained. But in yagnas, specific things are done and you see they are all part of that whole. You don’t see it as separate.
See, in your homes, there are different rooms - kitchen, dining, bedrooms, etc. Don’t you decorate each room? If someone says, you have decorated the house from outside, what is the need to decorate each room? You simply say that you would like to decorate each room inside the house. But it is all part of the big house. This is how you should take it. Not think that there different Devatas away from Shiva. They are all a part of Shiva, each an aspect of Shiva.