How do you get on the path of moksha, the inner path to Bhawan, the path to liberate your soul? This is one of the most ancient of questions and something that people have tried to answer for time immemorial. This is where a guru or a teacher comes in. A teacher describes to you how to find and how to walk on this path and then how to reach the goal.
Parikshit is waiting out the seven days till his death takes place and Suka is reciting the Bhagwat Purana (BP) to him. Parikshit asks about this path, so Suka starts by saying that one has to renounce all attachments, all desires before one even comes to the path. Once in this no attachment state, one meditates and awakens the kundalini shakti, which sleeps at the base of one’s spine. This shakti or power rises through six chakras along the spine, from the base to the navel to the heart to the breath to tongue to eyebrows to the top of the head in the brain. At this point the person is one with the Brahman.
But this is not the end, but just the beginning of the journey. He passes through a realm of divine fire called as Vaisvanara, where all impurity is burnt out of him. Then he arrives at the Saisumara chakra where the links to a thousand previous lives is cut out from him. Then he goes on a world where other beings who know the Brahman live. The yogi lives here for a kalpa (and that is a seriously long period to live).
Once the kalpa ends, the universe is consumed in the cosmic apocalypse and then he migrates to the next world of Paramesthin, where the greatest yogis and munis meditate for two parardhas, sitting in great flying platforms. By the way, each parardha is 100,000,000,000,000,000 human calendar years each. That left me fairly shell-shocked, because I like to put my arms around numbers, but these kinds of numbers are beyond my comprehension. Either these are there to impress people, or are actually meant to teach devotees that they should not really count days and years, but look at the end result. It is a way to show that time moves differently in those realms, for those who are on the path of Bhakti. Suka says that these realms do not have any old age or death, no sorrow and no nothing, except for compassion for those who are on the lower wheels of life and death.
The next stage for the yogi is to unite the spirit body with the five cosmic elements including earth, water, fire, air and then merge into ether. After this merge, the yogi transcends the senses of smell, taste, sight, touch and sound and finally merges with the vital breath, Prana. Then the yogi arrives at the core of the Ahamkara, the sense of self after having merged with the elements and transcended the senses. Crucially, he also transcendent the deities who rule over these elements and senses.
Past Ahmkara, he moves into Mahat and then into Prakriti, which is primal and original. He now transcends the self and is absorbed into the supreme soul, the Paramatman and finds perfect bliss. This is the first of two paths. The second path is to worship particular deities,for particular purposes as a starting point. For example, Suka Muni says that one should worship Brahma if one wants the wisdom and power of the Vedas; worship Indra if one wants power and skill in his body. For children, Prajapatis, for prosperity worship Devi Durga, for brilliance appeal to Agni, for wealth meditate on the eight Vasus and for strength worship Rudras. Similarly the list goes on including worshiping Shiva for learning, Vishnu for justice etc.
There are more than one god to worship for the same thing, like for the treasures, one worships Varuna, but for prosperity, one can also worship Ma Durga; while for wealth, the eight Vasus. The flip side also applies, such as appealing to and worshipping Brahma for wisdom of the Vedas; you can worship him as well if you want to be an emperor. There were many gods mentioned in the Purana whom I did not even recognise, but given that there are tens of millions of Gods, that is not surprising. But all these are manifestations of the same godhead, Vishnu or Krishna. This is the gradual path and this is not wrong, because Krishna is supposed to be the beginning, middle and end of every step on the step. All you are doing is doing Bhakti for Vishnu.
After this, Parikshit asked Suka Muni about how the universe was created by the Lord Vishnu? Suka says that Narada Muni had asked the same question of his father Brahma. Brahma described the process as such: He said that there is one beyond Brahma himself, Narayana (another name for Vishnu). He is formless but has assumed three Gunas or attributes or abilities, namely Sattva, Rajas and Tamas. These create, sustain and destroy the world of reality. The five elements (earth, water, fire, air and ether) plus Gyana (knowledge) and Karma (deeds) are founded on these three gunas. As one can make out, the human soul is bound by these three Gunas, five elements and Gyana and Karma, which sheathe the body in ignorance and illusion, or Maya.
That is the underlying concept. Formless Vishnu then desired to be many and have forms. The balance of the three Gunas was therefore disturbed and Mahat came in existence permeated with Sattva and Rajas, but with an additional dimension dominated by Tamas. In this Tamas dominated dimension came the five elements, the senses and the gods of them. These all came together to give rise to Ahamkara, the true self.
Ahamkara then modified itself into Sattvika, Rajasika and Tamasika. Tamasa gave rise to Akasa, the cosmic ether whose essence is sound and gives rise to the knowledge of seers. Akasa then transformed into Vayu or air, whose essence is touch, which gives rise to life. Vayu gave rise to Tejas, fire/brilliance/heat which then became Agni. At the same time, the evolution of Tejas threw out water, whose essence is taste. Out of water evolved earth, whose essence was smell. Thus the five elements were born.
From Sattvika, the mind was born whose God is Soma Deva and the other ten Devas who rule over the five senses and five who rule over the organs. They are Vayu, Surya, Varuna, Aswin twins ruling over the ears, skin, eyes, tongue and nose. Then you have Agni, Indra, Upendra, Mitra and Ka, who rule over speech, hands, feet, anus and genital reproductive organs. From Tamasika the five organs and five senses were born and finally from Rajasika emerged intelligence, the ability to know, the vital breath and the power to act emerged. This, when acted upon by the will of Vishnu, are combined as the body in the shape of a golden egg and after many Kalpas had passed, he breathed life into the golden egg. He himself came bursting out of this egg with thousands of legs, arms, mouths, faces and heads. This is the Virata Purusha, the Cosmic Man having seven worlds below his loins and seven above. The Brahman was born from the cosmic man’s mouth, the Kshatriya from his arms, the Vaisya from the thighs and Sudra from his feet.
The cosmic man defines the universe and the worlds. Bhurloka from his feet, Maharloka from his chest, etc. His nostrils are the abodes of Prana, the vital airs. His tongue is the font of taste. His body hairs are the trees and plants, while the hair on his head, beard and nails cause rocks, metals, clouds and lightening. His three paces provide Bhur, Bhuvar aAns Svar, they provide protection. His feet are the sanctuary of all seekers, which makes the Sudra the first port of call, so to say. The description goes on, such as his buttocks being the source of defeat, godlessness and ignorance, his heart being the source of the spirit body,is arteries and veins the sources of rivers and streams.
When you worship any god, you are doing so using parts of his own body, the water, the food-grains, the fruits, the wood, the ghee, the gold, the clay, the earth, the Vedas, the vows, the Dakshina, all emanate from him and revert back to him. As Brahma carried out the first Yagna, the nine Prajapatis joined Brahma in worshipping the Cosmic Person and this gave rise to Vishnu manifesting himself as Indra and the other Devas. He is the first man, the unborn one who creates time out of himself. He is the truth, perfect, whole without beginning or end, with and without change, eternal and alone. So this is the story of how creation happened.
I come to the end of the second part of the second Skanda. As I was reading and rereading the Skanda, I kept going back to the other books and trying to decipher the Sanskrit shlokas, trying to cross correlate with the English translations. It was ok, but once it was written down, I felt absolutely tiny, miniscule, infinitesimally minute in front of this awe inspiring story of creation. I felt empty of anything other than sheer awe. “Big Bang” theory? Sure, bring it on, you can see the links between the theory and this theory of creation. Call it intelligent design if you will. Actually, it’s up to you what you call it, but I am not going to call it anything. It just is.
This exercise is perhaps one of the most difficult I have undertaken in my life. The actual logistics of the review was fairly complex anyway, but the philosophical elements have seriously made my hair hurt and I can feel my brain expanding and pressing in my tiny cranium. This is going to be painful, but in a good way. In the next part of this Skanda, we will explore the other incarnations of Vishnu and finally end with the complex and searching questions that Parikshit asks of Suka.