This led to an anxious thought: was creation born out of cosmic loneliness or boredom? If we are just hallucinations of a single universal mind, it felt as though extreme separation and the delusion of those separated identities were required just to make the experience feel real. This idea of cosmic isolation left me feeling deeply anxious about the relationship between the One and the many.
Sesh Nag with a thousand which holds the planetary system is clearly the force of unfolding Time. Ksheersagar, the ocean of milk, is the expandingย Space that holds within it the Knowledge that would eventually give birth to creation. Vishnu, the Deity resting on this Space-Time couch as the great Preserver, is the Divine Being as Consciousness that holds both these together. Goddess Lakshmi, by his side, is the power that harmonises creation as it emerges from Brahma, who brings Existence by the power of the Word, the original vibration represented by the goddess Saraswati. At the apex of the creation, on Kailash, sits Shiva along with his shakti Uma Haimavati, or Parvati, who is the power through which creation emerges as well as is dissolved.ย
Beyond them, or the Supreme Sacchidananda from whom the Trinity itself has emerged, is Sacchidananda Brahma or the supreme Sacchidananda, the Parameshwara who is impelled to create by His own power, Parashakti or Adishakti. Beyond is the indefinable Parabrahma.ย
It is the Parabrahma in the dual poise of Parameshwara and Parameshwari, or Ishwara and Shakti, from whom creation emerges as the tree from a seed. Why does it emerge? For the delight of it. The multiplication of the One into Many is simply to multiply Delight. It is the one Sacchidananda, Existence-Consciousness-Force-Bliss, Brahma-Vishnu-Shiva-Krishna, who intends to become many, many Sacchidananda. Each of us is therefore a seed of Sacchidananda growing into the fullness of Sacchidananda through the process of creation in endless Space and Time. Lord Vishnu, lying on the couch of Time, in the heart of Space, oversees the process as the seeds of existences emerge from Brahma by the power of the Word, the secret Knowledge or the Vedas and are absorbed by Shiva in a recurring cycle of Time that are like seasons through which these seeds pass and evolve until each seed is ready to manifest Sacchidananda.ย
Where then is the unreality or illusion? It is Sacchidananda expressing or manifesting Itself. Is He an Illusion? Then all would be an illusion. If He is Real, then all that emerges from Him will be real. But since the manifestation is taking place in Time and Space each of us may, at a given point in time, may be limited in terms of the manifestation, just as a tree emerging from a real seed takes time to develop. But if the seed is real, then the tree is real. If Vishnu is real, then how can the creation, you, me, and all else be an illusion?
Or to take another example, is the pot made by the potter, the ornament made by the goldsmith, unreal, an illusion just because all the different ornaments are made of the same gold? Is the pot unreal if the earth out of which it is made is real? Yes, it is subject to Time, we may say. We can say that the wave emerging out of the sea or the pot made out of the mud or the ornament made out of gold are subject to mutation and to Time. But that does not make it unreal.ย
And if we know that the potter is making and breaking the instrument or the goldsmith thrusting the ornament again and again into the fire and knocking it with his hammer only to make it more and more perfect, then even the sense of transience passes away. It means that when the ornament arrives at some degree of perfection, then it doesn’t need to plunged again and again into fire or hammered again and again. In fact, we can even go further and say that the goldsmith and the gold fulfils itself in and through the ornament. A poet may be and is greater than the poem, but it is equally true that the poem enhances the poet himself. Vyasa exists without his writings, but Vyasa may well be nothing without his writings. So too the Creator exists without the creation, but it is equally true that the delight within Him is enhanced through the creation. He is not creating illusions but miniature ‘reals’ out of Himself, each of which He has imaged in His Cosmic Mind. And since He is perfect, as all yogic experience affirms, the Creation too is destined to evolve perfection out of it.ย
Hope it is clear now.
Love
Alok da
