[The Reality that Existed before the Universe existed. By Muralidhar Das]
Before the billions of worlds in the stars were forming at the start the power and potential of fire and water was unmanifest. There was no distinction between any positive and negative values. Geometric shapes did not occupy spaces, partition or divide things, or multiply. Numbers were not being added or subtracted anywhere, misery and happiness were in an undefined state, and there was as yet no difference between insentient and sentient things.
Brahma and other immortal seers were in the deepest trance of samadhi, merged in the all-pervasive Unity, the Absolute. Then, in a new span of time, seers differentiated from the infinite Unity. Starting to see the finite potential of their own nature, their bodily light naturally illuminated whatever they reflected upon, so they beheld countless immortal spirits of the same nature as themselves, everlasting beings with a greedy and grasping nature wanting to awake and grow in the wild. They saw unembodied, unformed things that like to eat one another. Things asleep within a night sky enclosed on all sides by tridents stationed at all the farthest extremities. They clearly saw the three points on tridents would destroy anything forming in the past, present and future.
They envisaged a nebulous fog of egos conjoined in the dim dreams of one another, a motionless expanse of shared ignorance, passions and pious ideals. A reality, Jiva-Prakriti. There were creeping and crawling creatures ingrained with lasting impressions of hunger and craving, crushed together in a dark hole by their tendency to miscalculate reality. Hungry things were longing for the flavour of the bodies of each other. The seers saw hungry beings wanting to awake and be wild and lively.
Dimly, far, far beyond the night sky they also saw Vishnu contemplating reality. They could envision the Lord enjoying Himself in His meditation, resting on a snake, sleeping upon coils of the serpent of time Shesha. Shesha Naga, the endless snake of transformative change. Shesha coils time endlessly, repeatedly rearranging his posture. Vishnu rests on this coiled movement of time he controls, gently breathing in and out whilst softly voicing the mantra so-hum, meaning ‘I am. I am the Self. I am as I am.’
so-hum, so-hum, so-hum, “I am. I am the all-pervasive and omnipotent Self. I am beginningless, the sole Reality. I am eternal Self-awareness.”
Then sometimes he was saying, hum-sa, hum-sa, meaning swan. “I am the immortal swan reflecting on the mirroring, fluid changes arising from me. I drift in time as a swan does, always swimming in the glimmering stream of Time. I am the swan moving forward within Time.”
Seeing himself in the likeness of a swan, he says to one and all, to Oneself, to the Unity that is real, the singular Being in existence embodying all facets of Reality, “Whatever is perceived by the mind, speech or vision, that comes from I alone. I alone am, eternally. I am perfectly as I am. I am beginningless, the all-pervading reality ohm.”
Two specks fell from the space inside His ear into the water. A pair of demons emerged and awoke. They came from a place He hears and understands, the sleep-filled night sky within the outer rim of perfect Consciousness. An indefinite emptiness containing unformed souls.
The two Asuras began swimming ahead forcefully and they wondered where they were and how they got there for they had no knowledge of any of this. The ocean gave them nourishment and time went by whilst they were swimming. Then in the progress of time they grew larger with a wilful desire to amass more strength. The Asuras felt strong with a very prominent and potent male desire. They had a feeling of lack and wanting. They wanted much, much more.
A gentle sound of music touched their ears as they were swimming. It was an unexpected harmony, audible symbols expressing a coherent message, an aggregate of sounds conveying a clear and meaningful thought to the demons. They looked up to see a Goddess in a sky above. It was Saraswati the Mother of speech and singing, the feminine side of the One that provides insights. The One providing the foundations of knowledge.
Saraswati brightens the mind with perceptions and inspiration. She gives thoughts, ideas, clarity, and an eagerness to create art, music, melodies, rhetorical speech and eloquent language. She held a flower garland in one hand and a book in another, with a goad for controlling a wild elephant and a noose in her third and fourth hands. Looking at Her the Asuras could not see Her various aspects, instead they perceived a blast of blinding lightning illuminating the boundless sky and filling everything with light.
In the unity of light and air above the two Asuras they heard a sound oim the seed mantra of Goddess Saraswati. The Demons said to each other, “There is no doubt this glorious sound we heard is a mystic incantation. The lightning also appears to be worthy of worship. Let us contemplate the Force, chanting the mantra again and again.”
The demon twins with massive bodies developed common sense. Thinking there must be a Force empowering them they began searching to understand what the Force is. Repeating the sound they heard they practiced saying the sound for aeons. All the while they were swimming in the endless stream of Time. Then, after realising the power of the mantra’s repetition, they became completely charmed by this mantra and had no more feelings of lack. No cravings or hunger or need to sleep. Filled with passionate intensity they repeated the mantra with full conviction.
ohm and oim are not ordinary words but seed mantras. A seed produces something that will grow and the mantra ohm is the seed of awareness of the Absolute, the ultimate reality. It is the origin of all other seed mantras. The mantra oim is the seed mantra of Saraswati. It reveals the divine Mother is pure, conscious and beautiful. She is the Source and embodiment of artistic perfection.
Constant repetition of the mantra oim brought the two demons nearer to the Goddess. Coming closer, the demon brothers both had the same thought, a thought revealed by the Goddess in the vast sky and the mantra. Their idea was that the twin Asuras would be invincible and could choose their own time of dying.
All this happened before the world began. The maker of the world Brahma was wide awake. He sat in silence within a lotus yantra, a symmetric form of beauty. The lotus he was born in is his seat; he saw himself situated in a pattern arising from an endless stream of time. And in his meditation he sensed someone perfect was out there in the obscure distance. “Vishnu,” he thought.
The man sat on a golden lotus with a precise symmetric form, floating near Vishnu who lay at rest on the surface of the sea of tranquility. Brahma was calm in his silent meditation. He was at home in his own continuous state of awareness. Somewhere beyond him Vishnu was also there in the unity Brahma could sense. And there were those two eager demons too. Two ignorant, passionate beings making waves and swimming together forcefully.
Brahma began to mouth words clumsily. From that jumbling of sounds in his mouth a discordant vibration formed. The emergent discord came from Brahma’s laziness, from the Creator’s lack of concern for what he was willing or intending. Idle thoughts had distracted him while his lips mechanically performed their functions. At once, he found two strange beings emerging from the disharmony he made. One was Madhu, intoxicated by lust. The other was Kaitabha, a fiend with the cruel temperament of a hunter. Seeing Brahma the two demons felt a carnivorous craving for blood and immediately wanted to kill golden Brahma so they could eat him.
Brahma was awake and Vishnu his support was sleeping. Brahma stood up and began to pray to Yoganidra the Sleep of contemplation filling the eyes and body of Vishnu. Brahma prayed to divine Sleep, the Queen of the universe, the origin of permanence and dissolution.
Brahma spoke, “You are Thought, the meditation Vishnu is absorbed in. The Body of Knowledge and Power of Nature. The Great Goddess of Illusion, Maya, the Great Memory and Great Delusion. You are the power of Thinking. The moving Force of Nature, the divine Artist, the Maker of wonders. Please arise from Hari! Arise so Vishnu may awake. Save me from these fears I see attacking me!”
Then the Goddess showed Her unique beauty. Rising from within Vishnu and going up in the sky She revealed Her own form. She came out from the eyes of Hari, from his mouth, his nose, arms, heart and chest. Armed with a sharp sword and spear the Mother of a multitude of natural powers went and stood in the empty sky. She had a club and discus in two hands, stabbing arrows and a bow, and ropes and an iron mace in more hands.
Brahma said, “You are gentle and beautiful. More than gentle to those who pray to You! Exceedingly more than beautiful for those who see You! You are the Queen supreme. Whatever it is, good or bad, You are the source of it all. You are the energy making everything come alive, the energy making things return at the end to the place of rest in the kingdom of sleep. O Goddess, please bewitch Madhu and Kaitabha and let the Master of the world awake. Let him see me! Let him slay these two hungry demons!”
Then, with a smiling Goddess watching in the sky, Vishnu arose to fight and defeat the demons. This Goddess is pure power and beauty. She is the everlasting Mother of change, the enchanter of the world.
Long ago, when Ravana was lord of the island of Lanka he roamed all around conquering gods and kings who ruled various regions. His sister Surpanaka came to see him one day, she began speaking while Ravana was sitting on his throne. Surpanaka spoke of Rama and his wife Sita. The description of Sita was so realistic Ravana said at once, “O sister! Is this the Sita you have described, this image of an exquisite girl I see standing before me now with cruel eyes curved like a sword. Delicious eyes, so beautifully smeared with makeup!”
Ravana became obsessed with the thought of a girl he imagined before him in his palace. He rushed to the forest where Rama and Sita were living then hid himself amongst a cluster of trees so he could look at her from a distance. Ravana stood behind the trees peering at Sita. So when Rama went out Ravana came to the house and kidnapped the image of the girl he desired. The real Sita, however, he could not see. This is the power of the Goddess of Thought, the Great Knowledge, the Great Illusion.
It was like this for Madhu and Kaitabha too. When they looked and saw the Goddess illuminated with lightning in the sky they could only see what they liked to see. Whatever it is they saw was something seen with an evil eye. Not everyone has this evil eye… the eye looking towards the outside world seeking things to exploit. It comes from the nature within oneself. When you have it it will take three lifetimes at the very least, three lifetimes of change and struggle, to get rid of that evil way of seeing things.
After being born as a Madhu or a Kaitabha, a self-centred, purely demonic being with no goodness or kindness within him, the demon experiences dying. The individual soul fixed in ignorance must die as he is before he becomes someone better.
Dying is a profound experience, a tremendously personal experience! Death is a great reality the self experiences, and the idea of awe experienced inwardly when death stuns a demon is something good for them.
A soul struck down by Vishnu will begin to rise up again on the stepping-stones of their lifeless dead bones, rising to higher things. The Power of the Goddess inherent in cutting weapons of the Lord such as his mace petrifies the demons and they remain stunned henceforth, after being cut down, but their inner eye begins to open, so they are able to observe how they are rising from the dead, and that an Other being is attracting them upwards into light.
From that point in time it will take at least three lifetimes for a selfish being to see God properly. The soul will gradually begin to develop their inner, contemplative eye, looking for a path towards spiritual fulfilment, but their path is very long. In a previous lifetime the ancient demon Ravana was the demon Madhu, brother of Kaitabha the hunter.
It is the diamond studded club of Vishnu that stuns the demons. The tip of the Lord’s mace is unchanged and undamaged when it hits and crushes the spirit of an adversary, but this diamond emblem also has its intrinsic Power to communicate something mystical to the demon it touches. Hit by the diamond-hard symbol of Vishnu the demonic nature will not change immediately yet the diamond does transmit something understandable to the person it struck. It gives a feeling of the limitless Power of God.
Goddess Saraswati, inherent in all the Powers of Vishnu, transmits a moment of revelation to the dying demon. The envious and monstrous individual feels Power when he gets hit. That Power will incite a jealous mind to also want to possess power too. He will feel envy. He will want to be as great as the king of demons Hiranyakasipu, as great as Ravana. And be like handsome Sisupal who is killed by Krishna. It is finally in the lifetime of a Sisupal that the demon gets free from all his innate cruelty, misconceptions and envy.
Vishnu began fighting Madhu and Kaitabha on the surface of the sea of serenity. Enjoying the heroic fight the intoxicated demons said to Vishnu, in an insulting, depreciating tone, “We love fighting you! Ask a boon from us and we shall grant it!”
Vishnu replied, “What other boon should I ask for but that I shall kill you now!”
“So be it,” the demon brothers replied. “But you can only kill us on Earth and not in any watery place.”
This was the statement the demons cleverly devised. There was no land in sight so they felt safe. But Vishnu grabbed them, pushing them against his thigh He killed them using His discus. His legs contain the concrete element or reality of Earth. The Earth is formed from God and God is in the Earth.
Vishnu honoured the hasty agreement He made with the Asuras and in this way Brahma was saved. Then the transformations of Nature began. Constellations arose, coming out of a churning oceanic atmosphere. Clusters of stars in the sky formed into patterns of dots of starlight in the expanding awareness of Brahma and other liberated seers envisaging the creation.
Vishnu immersed himself in fluid moves in the form of Kurma a sleepy tortoise. Submerged clouds swam by him until the clouds of matter began to fly. Clouds began moving swiftly then an Earth appeared from the clouds of matter, a radiant, beautiful being full of life, a divine Deity. Then in the transforming immensity of the Earth there was a creation of sand, of new gems, and of crawling seashells coming up from obscure depths. Living things began moving up and up into fresh starlight and the daylight.
Stars kept going across the heavens and turning around, moving in the darkness of night. They were all active, going to and fro, adrift, pursuing their involuntary movements. Stars kept moving in a tenuous existence within a universe that exists in a void.
The stars had emerged mysteriously from rolling waves of a concealed reality, an incomprehensible darkness, and now they were all manifesting as glowing things. The stars and the night itself together became a vast expanse, a mass of flickering, pulsating power.
Another epoch arrived. The time of humankind.
Mother Ganga, the river Ganges, drifted with petals and lotus leaves floating in her water in the gentle rain. Black clouds in the shapes of elephants softly thundered as they gathered in the far distance over Himalaya.
