The great Cause of all causes, the Supreme Being, projected this universe and Itself arose out of the universe, as it were, in a character of immanence, not losing the transcendence of its own essential being. And all the functions that we see in case of our own selves, Jivas or individuals that we are, were present there in their original form. But the seeds of the manifestation of diversity were also sown in the body of this Cosmic Being. There is a great difference between the original and the reflected parts that we are. Thus it is mentioned in the Upanishad that the causative factors of all the functions were projected first. These are what are usually known as the Adhidaivas or the superintending divinities, the gods of religion, the various Devatas, the supreme celestials, the divinities. They began to twinkle forth in the body of this universal manifested Being. So the Adhidaiva is nothing but the Supreme Being Himself appearing in part or essence as the controlling principle behind all functions in the universe. This is the point of a sudden transformation taking place in many quarters of creation. And we cannot actually have an idea as to what are the various transformations that took place. The entire constitution of the government of the universe was laid down at one stroke: “Yathatathyatah arthan vyadadhat sasvatibhyah samabhyah”. It is a non-amendable constitution. It cannot be meddled with, interfered with; it does not stand in need of any kind of change in the process of time. Such an eternal set up of administration of the whole cosmos was contemplated and laid down. Now, the basic principles of human experience also were laid down and made manifest in the form of the subjective experiencers called Jivas and the objective world known as the Adhibhuta-Prapancha. The individual may be called the Adhyatma and the external world is the Adhibhuta. The Adhidaiva has already been mentioned, the controlling divinities. But all this does not happen at once. There is a gradational procedure followed. From the Cosmic conscious Being, who as a total of the entire divinity rose up from the manifested universe, there were the multiplicity of divinities or the Adhidaivas.

As mentioned towards the conclusion of the previous chapter, there was a drop of the curtain, as it were, and a sudden unexpected and unpalatable change or transformation takes place by which the divinities begin to assert a sort of independence. This is the beginning of individuality. As Plato said, “Marriages always take place in the heavens first. They manifest themselves on earth afterwards.” Likewise, we can say in regard to everything. Even wars take place in the heavens first; they reveal themselves on earth afterwards. Every function takes place in the heavens first, which means to say the Adhidaivas contemplate the possibility of every action in the beginning, and these are manifested gradually into the Adhibhuta-Prapancha, and felt and experienced by the Adhyatma, the Jiva. So there was a split of an universal character, as if every drop in the ocean began to feel its own independence. This is a very good example, because the drops in the ocean are not qualitatively different from the ocean. And it appears that, at least at the very outset, there was no qualitative distinction of the individual divinities from the total of the Universal Being. This isolation of particulars was, therefore in, consciousness - we have to underline this word because a real split is not possible - it was not an actual bifurcation but a consciousness of one’s having been bifurcated, separated, segregated from the Whole. To give an illustration, it is exactly perhaps as one would experience in dream. There is a split of consciousness into the knowing subject and the world of experience. But the split has not taken place. If it had really taken place. you would not wake up into the integrity of your mind. But there is an experience nevertheless of such a transformation, change and division having taken, place.

The first consequence of this division is, as the Upanishad puts it, an intense hunger and thirst. Well, this is a very beautiful word, implying much more than what our usual hunger and thirst would connote. The hunger and thirst of the divinities who wrenched themselves, as it were, from the total of the universal can be called, in the language of our modern philosophers, the constitutional appetition of the individual. It is not merely the stomach asking for food or throat asking for water; it is the entire set up of individuality craving for experience in an objective manner. They craved for objective immortality, a thing that they have lost on account of their isolation from the Whole. They became mortal. Mortality is the consciousness of the isolation of the part from the Whole, and then every disease crops up at once. Hunger and thirst visited these divinities who were cast into this restless ocean of experience objectively, which is what we call this Samsara or the world, the universe. But how. could this hunger be satisfied? The hunger and the thirst or the appetition of the individual for satisfaction can be satisfied only through a medium of experience. There must be a body; there must be a food to appease this hunger. Where is this food and where is the vehicle, where is the body in which these divinities are to ride and to have their experience of the satisfaction of their hunger and thirst? The whole Upanishad is very symbolic and metaphorical in explaining a highly spiritual experience. The divinities were archetypal, super-physical essences. These are the deities. They are not physical bodies like ours, and there was no food for them to satisfy their hunger or the appetition for contact. What were they to contact? So, they asked for an abode; “Give us a body. Give us a vehicle. We want a house to stay in.” Now the metaphor continues. The Great Being projected a bull before them and said, “Here is the abode for you. This is the body for you. You enter this body and satisfy your hunger and your thirst.” The divinities looked at the bull and said, “This is not suitable. This is not a proper abode for us.” Then He projected a horse. They looked at the body of the horse and concluded that the horse too is not a proper body for real satisfaction. Then He projected a human body. “This is correct,” they said. “We want this body only,” and they entered it. The Aitareya Upanishad is very precise. It does not go into long details of the evolutionary process of the individual body. But certain other Upanishads, such as the Maitrayini for instance, give us hints of there having been a gradual ascent, or you may call it a descent from another point of view, of the consciousness of these individual divinities from one category of experience to another category. And we may call it, in the language of our evolutionary doctrines, the rise from the abode of inorganic matter to the abode of the vegetable kingdom, then further up to the abode of the animal world, and finally to the human level. Then we find ourselves in the state in which we are. The divinities entered every body and rejected the earlier ones on account of not finding adequate facilities for the satisfaction of their appetitions through those bodies. Even if we have a desire, there must be a proper instrument to fulfil that desire. If the instrument is defective, the desire cannot be fulfilled. So they wanted a perfected embodiment or a tool for the satisfaction of their appetition, the hunger and the thirst as the Upanishad puts it. And the human body which is superior to the lower categories of manifestation - the mineral, the vegetable and the animal - was considered by them as the fittest instrument and the Great Being ordered them to enter this body. “This is your house. Live in this house. This is your vehicle and now you do whatever you like through this.” They entered. How did they enter?

Here is the peculiar characteristic of the individual explained in contradistinction with the original status of the divinities in the body of the Cosmic Being. The Upanishad mentions that when the divinities were originally projected from the body of the Cosmic Being, there was first the location of the function, for instance, the mouth; then there was the urge of the expression of that location in the form of speech; and then the divinity or Agni, the presiding deity over speech, manifested itself. And so on and so forth with every other function. So the god or the divinity came afterwards, the function came first, so that the controlling principle of even the divinities was co-extensive with the existence of the Universal Being Himself. The gods were not independent, but were dependent on the Total from which they were projected. The gods were not the controllers; rather they were controlled by the forces that worked integrally behind themselves rising from the total being of the universal Virat. But now, what has happened is that when the divinities entered the human body, there was a reversal of the whole process. The human functions correspond to the universal functions in the same way as the functions in a reflected image correspond to the functions in the original reflected. Or, to give another example, when you look at your face in a mirror, there is a reflection of the face seen in that mirror, but there is a reversal of parts taking place, the right looks left and the left looks right. Also, if you stand on the bank of a river and see your reflection, you will find the head as the lowermost position in the reflection, though it is the topmost in you, the original. Some such distorted reversal of processes took place when the divinities entered the body of the individual, so that instead of the mouth projecting the speech and then the Agni or the Devata coming thereafter, Agni entered into the body as speech and found the mouth as the abode. So Agni is the controller here and we are dependent. We are the effects. The effect in the universal status becomes the cause in the individual realm. So Jiva is different from Isvara in this manner, though it has come from Isvara only. It is a tremendous difference not-withstanding the identity of essence, because of the same divinities operating there as well as here.