Reading section 34

SECTION III.

Parāçara said The dissolution of existing beings is of three kinds, incidental, elemental and absolute. The incidental is that which relates to Brahmā and takes place at the end of a Kalpa: the elemental is that which occurs after two Parārdhas; the absolute is final liberation from existence.

Maitreya said:—"Tell me, O excellent preceptor, what is the enumeration of a Parārdha, the expiration of two of which is the period of elemental dissolution".

Parāçara said:—Parardha, O Maitreya, is that number which takes place in the eighteenth place of figures enumerated according to the rule of decimal notation. At the end of twice that period elemental dissolution takes place when all the discrete products of nature are withdrawn into Their indiscrete source. The shortest period of time is Mātrā which is equal to the twinkling of the human eye; fifteen Mātrā make a Kāshthā; thirty Kāshthās one Kalā: fifteen Kalās one Nādhikā. A Nādhikā is determined by a measure of water with a vessel made of twelve Palas and a half of copper in the bottom of which there is to be a hole made with a tube of gold of the weight of four Māshas and four inches long. According to the Māgadha measure the vessel should hold a Prastha (or sixteen Palas) of water. Two of these Nādis make one Muhurta; thirty of which make one day and night. Thirty such periods constitute a month; twelve months make a year, or a day and night of the celestials; and three hundred and sixty such days, constitute a year of the celestials. An aggregate of four ages consists of twelve thousand divine years; and a thousand periods of four ages complete a day of Brahmā. That period is also termed a Kalpa during which fourteen Munis preside and at the end of it takes place the incidental or Brahmā dissolution. The nature of this dissolution is very dreadful; hear, I shall describe this as well as that which takes place as the elemental dissolution.

At the end of a thousand period of four ages the earth is for the most part exhausted. A total dearth takes place which lasts for a hundred years; and on account of the failure of food all beings become languid and exanimate and at last entirely die. The eternal Vishnu then takes the character of Rudra the destroyer and comes down to reunite all his creatures with himself. He enters into the seven rays of the sun, drinks up all the waters of the earth and causes all moisture, whatever in living bodies or in the soil to evaporate, thus drying up the whole earth. Thus fed with his intervention with profuse moisture, the seven solar rays dilate to seven suns, whose radiance glows above, below and on every side and sets the three worlds and Pātāla on fire. The three worlds, consumed by these suns, become rugged and deformed all over their mountains, rivers and seas; and the earth bare of verdure, and destitute of moisture alone remains resembling in appearance the back of a tortoise. Hari, the destroyer of all things, in the form of Rudra, who is the flame of time, becomes the scorching breath of the serpent Sesha and thereby reduces Pātāla to ashes. The great fire, when it has reduced all the divisions of Pātāla to ashes, proceeds to the earth and consumes it also. A vast whirlpool of eddying flame then spreads to the region of the atmosphere and the sphere of the celestials and wraps them in ruin. The three spheres shew like a frying pan amidst the surrounding flames that prey upon all movable and stationary things. O great saint, the inhabitants of the two upper spheres, having satisfied their respective duties and being assailed by the heat, repair to Maharloka. When that becomes heated its inhabitants, who after the full period of stay, are desirous of ascending to higher regions depart for the Janaloka.

Having consumed the whole universe in the person of Rudra, Janārddana, breathes fourth heavy clouds, and those called Samvartta resembling huge elephants in bulk overspread the sky, roaring and darting lightnings. Some are as white as the water-lily, some are dusky like smoke; some are yellow; some are of a dun colour, like that of an ass; some like ashes sprinkled on the forehead; some are deep blue, as the lapis lazuly; some azure like the sapphire; some are white at the couch or the jasmine; some are black as colly rum; some are like the lady-bird; some are of fierceness of red arsenic and some are like the wing of the painted joy. Such is the colour of these massy clouds; in form some resemble towns, some mountains, some are like houses and hovels and some are like columns. Huge in size and loud in thunder they fill space. Showering down torrents of water, those clouds quench the dreadful fires which involve the three worlds and then rain incessantly a hundred years and deluge the whole universe. Showering down in drops as large as dice these rains overspread the earth and fill the middle region and inundate the celestial sphere. The world is now enshrouded in darkness and all things animate and inanimate having perished, the clouds continue to pour down waters for more than a hundred years.

SECTION IV.

Parāçara said:—O great ascetic, the waters having reached the region of the seven Rishis the whole of three worlds becomes one ocean. The breath of Vishnu, thereupon, becomes a strong wind, which blows for more than a hundred years until all the clouds are dispersed. The wind is then re-absorbed and he, of whom all beings are made, the lord by whom all things exist, he, who is inconceivable, without beginning of the universe, reposes sleeping upon Sesha in the midst of the ocean. The creator Hari, sleeps upon the ocean in the form of Brahmā glorified by Sanaka and the saints who had departed to the Janaloka and contemplated by the holy inhabitants of Brahmaloka, anxious for final liberation—involved in mystic slumber, the celestial personification of his own illusions and meditating on his own ineffable spirit which is called Vāsudeva. This, O Majtreya, is the dissolution called incidental, because, Hari, in the form of Brahmā, sleeps there as its incidental cause.

When the universal spirit wakes, the world revives: when he clears his eyes, all things fall upon the bed of mystic sleep. In the same manner a thousand great eyes comprise a day of Brahmā so his night consists of the same period: during which the world is submerged by a vast ocean. Awaking at the end of his night the unborn Vishnu, in the character of Brahmā, creates the universe anew in the manner formerly described unto you. I have thus related to you the intermediate dissolution of the world taking place at the end of every Kalpa. I will now, O Maitreya, describe to you elemental dissolution. When by dearth and fire all the worlds and Patalas are dried up and the modification of Mahat and other products of nature are by the will of Krishna destroyed the progress of elemental dissolution is begun. At first the waters swallow up the property of earth which is the rudiment of smell; and earth, deprived of its property, proceeds to destruction. Devoid of the rudiment of odour the earth becomes identical with water. The water then being much increased roaring and rushing along fill up all space whether agitated or still. When the universe is thus pervaded by the waves of the watery element its rudimental flavour is licked up by the element of fire and on account of the destruction of these rudiments the waters themselves are destroyed. Devoid of the essential element of flavour they become identical with fire and the universe is therefore entirely filled with flame which drinks up the water on every side and gradually overspreads the whole of the world. While space is envelope in flame above, below and all around the element of the wind seizes upon the rudimental property or form which is the cause of light, and that being withdrawn, all becomes of the nature of air. The rudiment of form being destroyed and fire deprived of its rudiment, air extinguishes fire and spreads resistlessly over space which is deprived of when fire mages into air. Air then accompanied by sound which is the source of ether, extends everywhere throughout the ten regions of space until ether seizes upon contact, its rudimental property; by the loss of which air is destroyed and ether remains unchanged: devoid of form, flavour, touch and smell, it exists unembodied and vast and pervades the whole of space. Ether, whose characteristic property and rudiment is sound exists alone occupying all the vacuity of space. At then the radical element egotism devours sound and all the elements and faculties are at once merged into their original. This primary element is conscientiousness combined with the property of darkness and is itself swallowed up by Mahat whose characteristic property is intelligence; and earth and Mahat are the inner and outer boundaries of the universe. In this manner, as in the creation were the seven forms of nature (Prakriti) reckoned from Mahat to earth; so at the time of elemental dissolution these seven successively re-enter into each other. The egg of Brahmā is dissolved in the waters that surround it, with its seven zones, seven oceans, seven regions, and their mountains. The investure of water is drunk up by fire; the stratum of fire is absorbed by that of air: air blends itself with ether; the primary element of egotism devours the ether and is itself taken up by intellect, which, along with all those, is seized upon by nature. Equilibrium of the three properties, without excess or deficiency, is called nature (Prakriti), origin (Hetu), the

chief Principle (Pradhāna) cause (Kārana), supreme (Param). This Prakriti is essentially the same, whether discrete or indiscrete; only that which is discrete finally is lost or absorbed in the indiscrete. Spirit also which is one, pure, imperishable, eternal, all-pervading is a portion of that supreme spirit which is all things. That spirit which is other than embodied spirit, in which there are no attributes of name, species or the like—which is one with all wisdom and is to be understood as sole existence, that is Brahmā, infinite glory, supreme spirit, supreme power, Vishnu, all that is from whence the perfect sage returns no more. Prakriti, which I have described to you as being essentially both discrete and indiscrete and spirit both resolve into spirit, supreme spirit is the upholder of all things and the ruler of all things and is glorified in the Vedas and in the Vedanta by the name of Vishnu.

Works as sanctioned by the Vedas are of two kinds, active and quiescent; by both of which the universal person is worshipped by mankind. He, the lord of sacrifice, the male of sacrifice, the most excellent Purusha, is worshipped by men in the active mode, by rites enjoined in the Rik, Yayur and Sama Vedas. The soul of wisdom, the person of wisdom, Vishnu, the giver of emancipation is worshipped by the sages in the quiescent form through meditative devotion. The exhaustless Vishnu is whatever thing that is designated by long, short or prolated syllables or that which is without a name. He is that which is dissolute or that which is indescrete: he is exhaustless spirit, supreme spirit, universal spirit, Hari, the assumer of universal forms. Nature, discrete or indiscrete is absorbed unto him, and spirit also merges into the all diffusive and unobstructed spirit. The period of two Parārdhas, as I have related to you, O Maitreya, constitutes a day of that powerful Vishnu, and whilst the products of nature are merged into this source, nature into spirit and that into the supreme, that period is called his night and is of equal duration with his day. But in reality, to that supreme spirit there is neither day nor night and these distinctions are only figuratively applied to the Almighty. I have thus explained to you the nature of elemental dissolution and will now explain to you which is final.

SECTION V.

Parāçara said:—O Maitreya, having investigated kinds of worldly pain and having acquired true wisdom and detachment from worldly objects the wise man obtains final liberation. The first of the three pains, or Adhyatmika is of two kinds—physical and mental. Bodily pain, as you shall hear, is of many sorts. Affections of the head, catarrh, fever, cholic, fistula, spleen, hemorrhoids, intumescence, sickness, opthalmia, dysentary, leprosy, and many other diseases constitute physical affliction. Mental pains are love, anger, fear, hate, covetousness, stupefaction, despair, sorrow, malice, disdain, jealousy, envy and many other passions that are created in the mind. These and diverse other afflictions, mental or physical, are comprised under the class of worldly sufferings which is called Adhyatmika, The pain Adhibhautika, O excellent Brāhman, is every kind of evil that is inflicted upon men by beasts, birds, men, goblins, snakes, fiends, or reptiles and the pain that is called Adhidaivika or superhuman is the work of cold, heat, wind, rain, lightning and other phenomena. Affliction, O Maitreya, is multiplied in thousands of shapes in the progress of conception, birth, decay, disease, death and hell. The tender animal exists in the embryo surrounded by abundant filth, floating in water and distorted in its back, neck and bones; enduring severe pain even in the course of its development and disordered by the acid, bitter, pungent and saline articles of its mother's food; incapable of extending or contracting its limbs, reposing amidst slime of ordure and urine; every way incommoded with conciousness and calling to memory many hundred previous births. Thus exists the embryo in profound affliction bound to the worlds by its former works.

When the child is about to be born, its face is besmeared by excrement, urine, blood, mucus, and semen; its attachment; to the uterus is ruptured by the Prajāpati wind: it is turned head downwards and violently expelled from the womb by the powerful and painful winds of parturition; and the infant, losing; for a time all sensation when brought in contact with the external air, is immediately deprived of its intellectual knowledge. Then born the child is tortured in every limb, as if pierced with thorns or cut to pieces with a saw, and falls from its fetid lodgement as from a sore, like a crawling thing upon the earth. Unable to feel itself, unable to turn itself, it is dependent on the will of others for being bathed and nourished. Laid upon a dirty bed, it is bitten by insects and mosquitoes and has not power to drive them away. Many are the pangs attending birth and many are those which succeed to birth; and many are the afflictions that are inflicted by elemental and superhuman powers in the state of childhood covered by the gloom of ignorance; and internally bewildered man knows not whence he is, who he is, whither he goeth nor what is his nature; by what bonds he is bound; what is cause and what is not cause; what is to be done and what is to be left undone; what is to be said and what is to be kept silent, what is righteousness and what is iniquity; in what it consists or how; what is right, what is wrong; what is virtue, what is vice. Thus man, like a brute beast addicted only to animal gratification, suffers the pain that ignorance brings about. Ignorance, darkness, inactivity influence those devoid of knowledge so that pious works are neglected; but hell is the consequence of neglect of religious acts, according to the great sages, and the ignorant therefore suffer affliction both in this world and in the next.

When old age comes in, the body is infirm, the limbs are relaxed; the face is emaciate and shrivelled; its skin is wrinkled and scantily covers the veins and sinews; the eyes discern not a far off, and the pupil gazes on vacuity: the nostrils are stuffed with hair; the trunk trembles as it moves; the bones appear beneath the surface; the back is bowed and the joints are bent; the digestive fire is extinct and there is little appetite and little vigour; walking, rising sitting, sleeping are all painful efforts; the ear is dull; the eye is dim; the mouth is disgusting with dribbling saliva; the senses no longer are obedient to the will; and as death approaches, the things that are perceived even are immediately forgotten. The utterance of a single sentence is fatiguing and wakefulness is perpetuated by difficult breathing, coughing and painful exhaustion. The old man is lifted up by some body else; he is an object of contempt to his servants, his children and his wife. Incapable of cleanliness, of amusement, or food, or desire, he is laughed at by his dependents, and disregarded by his kin; and dwelling on the exploits of his youth, as on the actions of a past life, he sighs deeply and is sorely distressed. Such are some of the pains to which old age is doomed. I will now describe to you the agonies of death.

The neck droops, the feet and hands are relaxed; the man is repeatedly exhausted, subdued and visited with interrupted knowledge; the principle of selfishness afflicts him and he thinks what will become of my wealth, my lands, my children, my wife, my servants, my house? The joints of his limbs are tortured with severe pains as if cut by a saw or as if they were pierced by the sharp arrows of the destroyer; he rolls his eyes and tosses about his hands and feet; his lips and palate are parched and dry and his throat obstructed by foul humours and deranged vital airs, emits a rattling sound; he is afflicted with burning heat, thirst and hunger: and he at last passes away tortured by the servants of the judge of the dead, to undergo a renewal of his sufferings in another body. These are the afflictions to which a man is doomed when he dies. I will now describe to you the tortures which they suffer in hell.

Men are bound, when they die, by the servants of the king of Tartarus, with cords, and beaten with their sticks and have then to encounter the fierce aspect of Yama and the horrors of their terrible route. In the different hells there are various intolerable tortures with burning sand, fire, machines, and weapons; some are severed with saws, some roasted in forges, some are chopped with axes, some buried in the ground, some are mounted on stakes, some cast to wild beasts to be devoured, some are gnawed by the vultures, some torn by tigers, some are boiled in oil, some rolled in caustic slime, some are precipitated from great heights, some are tossed upwards by engines. The number of punishments inflicted in hell, which are the consequences of sin, is infinite. But not in hell alone do the souls of the deceased undergo pain: there is no cessation even in heaven for its temporary inhabitant is even tormented with the prospect of descending to earth again. He is again liable to conception and to birth; he is merged again into the embryo and repairs to it when about to be born; then he dies, as soon as born, or in infancy, or in youth, or in manhood or in old age. Death sooner or later is inevitable. As long as he lives he is immersed in manifold afflictions, like the seed of the cotton amidst the down that is to be spun into thread. In acquiring, losing, and preserving wealth there are many griefs; and so there are in the misfortunes of our friends. Whatever is produced that is most acceptable to man; that, Maitreya, becomes a seed whence springs the tree of sorrow. Wife, children, servants, houses, lands, riches, contribute much more to the misery than to the happiness of mankind. Where could man, scorched by fires of the sun of this world, look for felicity, were it not for the shade afforded by the tree of emancipation? Attainment of the divine being is considered by the wise as the remedy of the three-fold class of ills that beset the different stages of life, conception, birth and decay, as characterised by that only happiness which effaces all other kinds of felicity however abundant, and as being absolute and final.

It should therefore be the assiduous endeavour of wise men to attain unto god. The means of such attainment are said, great Muni, to be knowledge and works. Knowledge is of two kinds, that which is derived from scripture, and that which is derived from reflection. Brahma that is the word is composed of scripture. Brahma that is supreme is produced of reflection, ignorance is utter darkness, in which knowledge, obtained through any sense, shines like a lamp; but the knowledge that is derived from reflection breaks upon the obscurity. What has been said by Manu, when appealing to the meaning of the Vedas with respect to this subject, I will repeat to you. There are two forms of spirit or god, the spirit, which is word, and spirit, which is supreme. He who is thoroughly imbued with the word of god obtains supreme spirit. The Atharva Veda also states that there are two kinds of knowledge; by the one, which is the supreme, god is attained: the other is that which consists of the Rik and other Vedas. That which is imperceptible, undecaying, inconceivable, unborn, inexhaustable, indescribable; which has neither form, nor hands nor feet; which is almighty, omnipresent, eternal; the cause of all things, and without cause, permeating all, itself unpenetrated, and from which all things proceed, that is the object which the wise behold, that is Brahma, that is the supreme state, that is the thing spoken of by the Vedas, the infinitely subtle, supreme condition of Vishnu. That essence of the supreme is defined by the term Bhagavat: the word Bhagavat is the denomination of that primeval and eternal God: and he who fully understands the meaning of that expression, is possessed of holy wisdom, the sum and substance of the three Vedas. The word Bhagavat is a convenient form to be used in the adoration of that supreme being, to whom no term is applicable; and therefore Bhagavat expresses that supreme spirit which is individual, almighty, and the cause of causes of all things. The letter Bh implies the cherisher and supporter of the universe. By ga is understood the leader, impeller, or creator. The dissyllable Bhaga indicate the six properties: dominion, might, glory, splendour, wisdom, and dispassion. The purport of the letter va is that elemental spirit in which all beings exist, and which exists in all beings. And thus this Great word Bhagavān is the name of Vāsudeva, who is one with the Supreme Brahma and of no one else. This word therefore, which is the general denomination of an adorable object, is not used in reference to the supreme in a general but a special signification. When applied to any other thing or person it is used in its customary or general import. In latter case it may purport one who knows the origin and end and revolutions of being and what is wisdom and what ignorance. In the former it denotes wisdom, energy, power, dominion, might, glory, without end and without defect.

The term Vāsudeva means that all beings abide in that supreme spirit and that he abides in all beings as was formerly explained by Kesidhwaja to Khāndikya called Janaka when he enquired of him an explanation of the name of the immortal Vāsudeva. He said "He dwelleth internally in all beings and all things dwell in him; and thence the lord Vāsudeva is the creator and preserver of the world. He though identical with all beings is beyond and separate from material nature, from its products, from properties and from imperfection; he is beyond all investing substance; he is universal soul; all the interstices of the universe are filled up by him; he is one with all good qualities; and all created beings are endowed with but a small portion of his individuality. Assuming at with various shapes he bestows benefits on the whole world, which was his work. Glory, might, dominion, wisdom, energy, power and other attributes are collected in him. Supreme of the supreme, in whom no imperfections abide, lord over finite and infinite, god in individuals and universals, visible and invisible, omnipotent, omnipresent, omnicient, almighty. The wisdom, perfect, pure, supreme, undefiled and one only by which he is conceived, contemplated and known, that is wisdom; all else is ignorance".