[Hong Wu]

If we look at eastern (generally, from India going east) Gods and Demons, there's a common if not ironclad trend. The God or Goddess is often depicted with multiple arms and hands but one head, the demons (sometimes called asura or rakshasa) of this region tend to have multiple heads and sometimes only one pair of arms/hands.

Lately I see in this is a commentary on the human mind. When a person is "unified" mentally they can do many things, sometimes at once, effectively (this may be analogous to multi-tasking) but then there are other people who are split on the inside. Instead of having a different pair of hands for a different task, they change their entire mentality as they move from one task to another. They can end up leading double or even triple lives while trying to do everything the same way.

Here's an Indian Goddess:


Notice how many things she's doing at once.

Here's a Rakshasa:


What a mean fellow!

Here's an Asura:


If you look closely, each head has a different expression on its face.

[fuser]

If we look at eastern (generally, from India going east) Gods and Demons, there's a common if not ironclad trend. The God or Goddess is often depicted with multiple arms and hands but one head, the demons (sometimes called asura or rakshasa) of this region tend to have multiple heads and sometimes only one pair of arms/hands.

There's no such trend.

Good Guy aka God (Bhagwaan):



Bad Guy aka Demon (Rakshassa):

[Potemkin]

Have you thought of publishing a book, Hong Wu? You could call it The Deep Thinks of Rainbow Crow. The world is waiting for such a book, to bring light to the darkness and wisdom to the ignorant!

[Hong Wu]

Weird, my sources must be off. I still think the idea is sound though

[Orestes]

Hey Pot, why don't you write a book, you smartass?

But yeah, I believe the most widely held interpretation is that the many hands and heads were meant to simply express the idea of super-human faculties. Deities with more than one head (but regular arms or none at all) were also pretty common in Eastern Europe, like the god Tryglav ("Three-headed").

[Hong Wu]

Thanks for the oral support Orestes To a certain degree I may have set myself up for it because Indian religions are very complex. I have a pretty simple relationship with them really. A guy on a beach once gave me a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. I read it and was like, this is crazy, he has like six arms.

My other thought is that in the "kali yuga" we are denied everything but breathing and sex. In this I see a commentary on modern working life. We go to work (where we can't control anything but our breathing) then if we are lucky, we have someone we can go home to and have sex with. I am reading a book on Tantra and Yoga right now, although my comments in the OP were just from internet searches where some guy said there's usually an arms/head dichotomy. But searching a bit more I see that the arms and heads thing is not strictly enforced and the symbolism is probably used in lots of different ways.

Regarding the breath and sex thing, if that is all we have, breathing exercises at work and Tantric exercises in bed might be worth looking into (from a spiritual perspective and not just an enjoyment perspective, which Tantra is usually limited to).

[Paradigm]

Brahma, the creator god, has four heads. Then again, he is seen as a kind of "lesser god" in that he brought about this illusion that is existence, and Hindus tend to be kind of sore about that.




Kali with many heads.




Three-headed Shiva.




And here, of course, is the famous Vishvarupa, where Krishna reveals his universal form to Arjuna.


Many arms and many heads are both common features in the Dharmic faiths, and I don't see either of them as being confined to good or evil (though most asuras I've seen simply have the standard human number of appendages). The many heads may, in some instances, represent the kind of inner conflict you describe, but it seems like it can also represent multiple perspectives, seeing into the past, present, and future, having multiple manifestations (as in the Vishvarupa icon), etc. Going to Buddhism, we have Avalokitesvara, who has everyone beat in terms of both heads and arms:

[Potemkin]

Kali with many heads.

...not all of them her own.

[Frollein]

You also have double headed Janus in the West... and Hecate with three heads...

[Ummon]

This reminds me of something I read about how when a person's facial expressions are biforcated that is a sign of low trustworthiness in a facial recognition app used to identify emotions. Good luck sourcing it though.

My favorite was always Yamantaka the fierce dharma protector version of Manjusri who appeared as a demon to those attacking the dharma:

Spoiler: show