The Nature of the True Religious Life

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 7: The Doctrine of Creation in the Purusha Sukta

All philosophical study is centred around four great themes: the nature of the Ultimate Reality, the process of creation, the status of the individual, and the mutual relationship among individuals, called society. The whole of philosophy is only this much—four themes. All these four themes are pressed into the Purusha Sukta in a very few words, so that we may say the whole of philosophy is here in sixteen mantras.

During the previous session I touched upon the subject of the characteristic of the Ultimate Reality as enunciated in the very first mantra of the Purusha Sukta: Sahasraśīrṣā puruṣaḥ sahasrākṣaḥ sahasrapāt (P.S. 1). Actually, only the first half of the first mantra is the foundational enunciation of the nature of the Supreme Being. From the second half of the first mantra until a few mantras onwards, there is a very concise and pithy statement of creation: how the great Almighty, the One Being, encompasses all that can be regarded as the universe, the cosmos.

Recall to your memory one important point I referred to in this connection, namely, that the Supreme Being has no sense organs; and when it is told to us symbolically that It is all heads and all eyes and all feet and all hands, what the mantra implies is that It has no heads, no hands, no eyes, no feet, no limbs, because that which is everywhere is really nowhere. That which is everything is equal to nothing. In a similar fashion, we may say that every face of the Supreme Being is every other face at the same time. Anything that we can think about God is also, at the same time, any other thing that we can think about God. This concept of God is a novel idea in our minds. It cannot be compared with any other idea that is related to things visible, audible, etc. God thinks, acts, feels and does all things at the same time. God's existence is His activity. While our activity proceeds from our existence, God's existence is identical with His activity. Being is acting, being is knowing, being is force, being is all things. Everything is everywhere, timelessly and spacelessly.

Sabhūmiṁ viśvato vṛtvātyatiṣṭad daśāgulam: “Enveloping everything, He stands above infinitely, transcending the whole of creation.” Puruṣa evedaṁ sarvaṁ yad bhūtaṁ yacca bhavyam. “This Supreme Purusha,” as the Almighty is designated in the Purusha Sukta “is whatever was, whatever is and whatever will be.” Evedaṁ sarvam: “All this”; yad bhūtaṁ: “whatever was”; yacca bhavyam: “whatever shall be, whatever will be”—the past, present and future are melted in the eternity of infinite comprehension.

The compactness of eternity is not a composite of the past, present and future. It is not woven into a fabric by the threads of the past, present and future, but is an unimaginable, unthinkable, transcendent indivisibility which is not a combination of the past, present and future but is something in which these three limitations of the time process are overcome completely—as dream is overcome in waking, to give one instance.

The concepts which are found in studies of the Vedanta philosophy—Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, terms which do not occur in the Purusha Sukta—have a parallel series in this Sukta when, in a half mantra, the Sukta says tasmādvirāḍajāyata virājo adhipūruṣaḥ: “From this all-comprehending Almighty, the Virat is born.” Though the word “Virat” occurs in the Purusha Sukta, the word “Hiranyagarbha” does not occur, though it occurs elsewhere in the Rigveda, in the Hiranyagarbha Sukta, which is in the Tenth Book. It is said here that the Virat is revealed as bodily coming out from this great Purusha; and the Purusha once again manifests Himself through the Virat as the superintending principle of creation, known here, in the language of the Purusha Sukta, as Adi Purusha.

These terms can sometimes, with a little variation, be seen in the Bhagavadgita also, especially in the beginning of the Eighth Chapter. Adhibhūtaṁ kṣaro bhāvaḥ puruṣaś cādhidaivatam, adhiyajño'ham evātra dehe dehabhṛtāṁ vara (B.G. 8.4). These verses at the commencement of the Eighth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita practically refer to the manifestations stated in the Purusha Sukta in very precise, pithy and pregnant words. When God becomes the universe, He does not become something else.

Yesterday when I was casually speaking to a few people who were sitting in front of me outside on the veranda, I put a question, almost in a humorous way. In the beginning there was God, and there was nothing except God; and this is the fundamental principle of all religions. The Upanishad says this, the Bible says this, and every other scripture says this. There was God alone in the beginning. Sad eva saumya idam agra āsīd ekam evādvitīyam (C.U. 6.2.1), says the Chhandogya Upanishad: “Pure Being alone was there. One alone was, and that One Being manifested this universe.” Or, to put it in more plain language, God created the world.

Now, we have to bring about a harmony between these two statements “God alone was and there was nothing else outside Him, external to Him” and “God created the world”. From what substance did God create the world? The carpenter created the table out of wood; the mason created the building out of bricks. Out of what substance did God create the world if our earlier statement that God alone was, and nothing else could be, is true? So the Bible says God created the world out of nothing. Well, what else can we say? When it has been accepted that God alone was, the word was with God and the word was God, how can we escape asserting that God created the world out of nothing? There was no substance, no wood, no brick, no mortar, no cement, nothing of the kind. This is not a very safe statement. Very serious consequences will follow from this statement that God created things out of nothing. I shall tell you what consequences follow from this.

There are others who think that it is meaningless to say that a substantial universe has been created out of nothing. The world is not nothing; it is something. How can something come out of nothing? Ex nihilo nihil fit is a logical dictum: “Nothing can come from nothing.” If nothing was the cause of the universe, the whole universe is also nothing, and we, as a part of the universe, are also nothing—a very strange conclusion indeed. We cannot stomach all these things. Therefore, it was opined that God created the world out of Himself, not out of nothing. Hence, this whole universe is God Himself manifesting in space and in time. But this also has a serious consequence. It is not a very safe statement because if God has become this universe, we are subjecting God to the process of becoming. Being cannot be identified with becoming, because Being is a timeless eternity, whereas becoming is a time process. We cannot subject the indivisibility of the Eternal Being to the movement of the process of what we call time. Unless time is present as an element involved in the process of creation, God transforming Himself into the world is inconceivable.

There are some philosophers, thinkers, religious theologians who think that God became the world as milk becomes curd, yoghurt. This is another interesting thing. Milk has become curd; like that, God has become the world. It seems very easy to say this, but it is hard to understand its implications. If milk has become curd, the whole of the milk has become curd. We cannot have only half the milk as milk, and half as curd. If the whole of God has become the world, no further God is remaining that we may reach through our aspirations; and there will be nothing called moksha, inasmuch as curd cannot become milk once again. Yoghurt does not become milk once it has become yoghurt. Finished, the matter is over. Then no moksha is possible; there is no such thing as moksha because moksha is curd becoming milk once again, and that is ruled out. Thus, there is a snag in this doctrine of the modification of God into the world because modification involves limbs, parts, spatio-temporal involvement. No modification is conceivable except in terms of space and time, and God is above space and time. Hence, the doctrine that God became the world through a modification is also hard for the brain of man to comprehend. On the other hand, that God created the world out of nothing also seems to be very difficult for us to grasp.

Now we are landing ourselves in an impasse when we discuss the doctrine of creation. It was Acharya Sankara who, for the first time in the history of philosophy, boldly proclaimed that the doctrines of creation are not histories of events that took place in time. The process of creation described in the scriptures, whether it is in Hinduism, Christianity, Islam or wherever it be, is not a chronicle that a historian has written of events that actually took place in the process of space and time. In order that the seed of modification, or creation, be sown at the outset, space and time should be there. But space and time are a part of creation; therefore, they could not be prior to creation, and unless they are prior, there could not be creation. This is a very difficult subject before us, and without going too much into the details of these intricacies inasmuch as our main theme is the Purusha Sukta, I shall bypass this problem by giving one simple example which will bring some sort of satisfaction. How has creation taken place, whether it is a modification or it is a creation out of nothing, etc.?

This question can be solved by an analogy that you can bring before your mind by present-day observations in science. Imagine that there is a stone, a piece of granite, in front of you. When you look at the object, what do you see? A round or oblong-shaped object, hard to the touch, what you call a stone, is what your eyes report to you. Your senses tell you that here is a hard stone. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the taste and the sense of touch always collaborate with one another in describing a particular object. There is no discrepancy among the reports of the five senses.

But if you bring a microscope and look at this same stone, you will realise that you are not seeing the very same thing in the same manner as you saw it earlier. You will find that the stone is a family comprised of small members. It is not a round, hard stone; it is made up of small molecules. Go deeper, with a stronger microscope, and you will see they are not chemical substances called molecules, but indescribable units which are sometimes called atoms, with a large space intervening between one atom and another. Go deeper with an even stronger microscope, and you will see a seeping energy rushing hither and thither in a hectic manner, and you will not see the molecules or the atoms. You will see a tremendous activity billowing like waves in the ocean, an activity comparable only to an electromagnetic action, a field of force, a field of energy emanating from an electromagnetic setup. It is not a molecule, it is not an atom; it is something different, as you can imagine for yourself. You will see there is no rotundity or squareness or oblong nature of the object. It is a concretisation, or a concrescence, or a particularisation of a heap of force which has centralised itself in one speck of space, at one point in time.

Now bring the doctrine of creation. You may say that this seeping energy has created the atoms, the atoms have created the molecules, and the molecules have created the stone; or you may say the energy has become the atoms, the atoms have become the molecules, and the molecules have become the stone. Now, can you say that the energy, the atoms and the molecules, have transformed themselves into the stone, as milk becomes curd? You cannot say that there has been a transformation. You are only seeing things more and more clearly, that is all. You are not seeing a transformation of things. You cannot say that the atoms of the stone have transformed themselves into the molecules of the stone because if they have actually transformed themselves, they will be seen as molecules only, and cannot be seen as anything else.

One thing cannot be seen in three different ways at the same time, because one thing cannot be more than one thing at one and the same moment of time. A is always A at one moment of time. A cannot be B. So if we are seeing one and the same thing as A and B and C and D, it is very strange. It only means that the substance has not become A, B, C, D; we are only enhancing the intensity of our perception and employing a newer faculty of observation in the envisagement, or insight, into the very same object. Just as we cannot say that the force which is appearing in a concretised form has become, or transformed itself, into the more concrete form, we cannot say that God has become the world. Yet, God is the world in the same way as the atoms are the stone.

Now, in the same way as the atoms have become the stone, God has become the world. But as we cannot say that the atoms have become the stone—they have not become the stone; they are just what they are, even now—in the same way, we cannot say that God has become the world. So the process of creation, says Acharya Sankara, is like an x in an equation. He does not use the letter “x”, but I am saying this for your understanding. “X” is a kind of symbol we have introduced in the understanding of a great problem, and the symbol itself has no significance. It has no substantiality in itself. The x in an equation is not a number by itself, but its importance is very well known to every student of mathematics. The x helps us in solving a great mystery, an equation, and then it is automatically cancelled when the equation is solved.

Thus, the doctrine of creation is a ladder for us to climb to the pinnacle of the Ultimate Truth, but when we reach the top, the ladder is no longer necessary. Even this analogy of a ladder is inadequate here because we will not even see the ladder after we reach the pinnacle, as x cannot be seen when the equation is solved. We see only the solution, and the means that we have employed is no more there.

Thus, these strata of creation—Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha, Virat, and the Adi Purusha mentioned in the Bhagavadgita or the Purusha Sukta—are the strata of our confronting, through the layers of our personality as it is now, at this present moment of time, in the present state of evolution, this great Almighty which has no degrees of reality in itself. Before the sun rises, we see things dimly as a homogenous mass, as it were. We cannot clearly see the mountain with trees or stones, with animals moving, etc. As the day breaks and the light becomes clearer and clearer, we see things more and more clearly, and our understanding increases. But it does not mean that merely because we see things more and more clearly, things have become different. The things are the same; they have never changed themselves or become something else. They have been seen in different ways because of the inadequacy of the apparatus of perception or understanding.

Thus, the Purusha Sukta comes down to the level of the cosmic appearance as this universe, and the whole of the Vedanta doctrine of creation is simply stated in three words of the Purusha Sukta when it says that the Almighty Purusha became the Virat, and the Virat appeared as the multitudinous variety of this creation superintended over by the Adi Purusha, the Lord of the universe, the God Whom we worship in religions.

I also told you that philosophical studies involve four themes: the great Reality, the process of creation, the status of the individual, and the society of human beings and of everything. The individual is nothing but a spark of this huge fire of God, and these are the gods of religions. Christianity speaks of angels, Hinduism speaks of devas, and every religion speaks of some divine beings. These divine beings, these gods, these celestials, these angels are the sparks which have been shot forth bodily, as it were, from this Almighty conflagration. This analogy, this picture, this image is given to us in the Mundaka Upanishad: “Sparks emanate from fire; thus, individuals shoot forth from the Almighty” (Mundaka 2.1.1).

The gods are said to be qualitatively almost equivalent to the Almighty Himself, though quantitatively they are very small sparks. We know fire is fire, even if it is a spark; but a spark is a small quantity of fire, while a conflagration is a large mass. In Hindu mythology and theology, and in the Puranas, we hear that in Vaikuntha, the attendants of Lord Vishnu are also of the same form as Narayana Himself. We cannot distinguish one from the other, and an attendant may be mistaken for Vishnu Himself. He has four hands; he has the shankha, chakra, gada, padma, and the same gorgeous appearance, but he is not Vishnu, he is not Narayana. Likewise, a spark may look like fire, but it is different from fire in the sense that it has not got the strength of the whole conflagration.

These devas were originally created. The first creations of God were angels. We do not speak of Adam and Eve in the beginning itself. Angels come first, and Adam and Eve come afterwards. In Indian theology, human beings—Manu and Satarupa—also come later on. So these angels were the first manifestation of the one Supreme Light, which alone was as the Supreme Logos.

The Purusha Sukta continues. Yatpuruṣeṇa haviṣā devā yajñamatanvata: “A great sacrifice was performed by these angels, in the form of a cosmic worship in respect of the Almighty.” The moment the angels were created, they offered their obeisance to the Almighty. “Great Lord, obeisance to Thee.” This was the first utterance or the first inward communion of utter harmony with the Almighty and, at the same time, was implicit obedience to the Almighty. How was this obedience manifest? What was the first worship which was performed in creation?

We perform worship in temples and churches, but these gods, angels, also performed worship. They performed worship in the form of what can be called yajna. Yatpuruṣeṇa haviṣā devā, says the Purusha Sukta. They performed a great sacrifice, a gorgeous worship of the Almighty, at the very outset, in the beginning of creation. How did they perform this sacrifice? What was the worship that they offered to the Almighty? There were no flowers, no incense sticks, no place to sit, and no temple, no church, no building. What kind of worship or service can be offered? What sacrifice is practicable at that moment, at the outset of creation, when the spark has shot forth from the Almighty and it is beholding the great vision that Arjuna saw, as described in the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita?

Yajñena yajñamayajanta: “They performed the sacrifice through the sacrifice.” The material was the Purusha Himself, not some flower that they purchased from the shop, not some incense stick from a bazaar, not some water brought from a river. There were no rivers at that time. No vessels were there, and no ground on which to sit. In such a predicament of proximity to the terrible Almighty, the sparkling effulgences of the angels—the celestials, the devas—contemplated; and the contemplation itself was the sacrifice and the worship. Thus, the highest worship is contemplation; the greatest sacrifice is meditation. The greatest martyrdom, we may say, of the spirit of the angel was a surrender of his very being to the Almighty Presence. This was the original sacrifice, and this was the origin of law; this was the origin of dharma.

Tāni dharmāṇi prathamānyāsan. These sacrifices that they performed, this worship that was offered by the gods to the Almighty at the beginning of creation, was the origin of all law, regulation, constitution and dharma, in essence. Oh, wonderful! This contemplation of the Almighty by the divine celestials was the seed of the law of the cosmos—rita and satya, in the language of the Veda. Satya is the word used in the Veda to designate the law of the indivisibility of the Absolute. Rita is the law of the Absolute as manifest in the cosmos of space and time, from which all dharmas emanate, and every law is determined by that central organisational principle. All enactments in parliament, all regulations in human society and all principles followed in mutual relationship among individuals should be conditioned by the original law, which was the dharma of the Absolute as contemplated in the minds of the sparkling gods. What was this dharma? This dharma was the dharma of sacrifice—yajna, to repeat once again.

I had occasion to mention at other times also that the culture of Bharatavarsha is summed up in one word: yajna. If anybody asks what is Indian culture, yajna, sacrifice, is our culture. What is yajna? It is sacrifice, to translate it into a simple English term. What is sacrifice? It is that intricate relationship that you establish between yourself and the Almighty through all the strata of the manifestations of Himself. So in the act of sacrifice, in the act of worship, in the act of doing anything in this world, for the matter of that, you simultaneously establish a relationship with all the manifestations of God.

I will give you another example of how to understand this. There is a democratic government, and there is a central figure called the president, and he lays down a constitution through a parliament. The parliament elects ministers, called the cabinet. The cabinet forms the system of working in the various provinces, or states, as they are called. Each state has its own secondary minister or secretary, or call it by any other name, for the matter of that. Each province, or state, is again divided into districts. Each district has a head called the collector or the magistrate, and under him there are so many revenue officials, and below these revenue officials there are smaller officials who look to the organisation and welfare of villages. This is the lowest strata of the government.

Now this little man, who has a small authority over a village, may appear to be concerned only with the law of that little village, for all practical purposes. He is not concerned with bigger things. He may not even know that there is a man called the president. It is not necessary. But we know very well this little legal management that he is conducting in a small village is conditioned by the immediately higher organisation, which is again conditioned by the immediately higher, immediately higher, immediately higher, until the last point is reached where we have the original seed of the enactment of law. So in a single act of this smallest official in a village he has at once unconsciously, as it were, established a harmonious relationship with the highest lawmaking. Though he may not be aware of all these things that are involved in his act, it does not contradict even his smallest act in a village. In a particular democratic setup of government, any law may operate upon the lowest official through the various strata of the descent of this law through these layers.

Likewise is every one of us. We are small beings, little nothings practically. Nobody wants us. Yet a little so-called insignificant behaviour of ours is a dharma that we are manifesting out of ourselves. It is a law unto itself. When we behave or conduct ourselves in a particular manner—say something, do something or even think something—we have moved the whole cosmos into action, just as when a little official in a village has done something, he has touched the layers of all the manifestations of the law of the government.

Imagine how careful you have to be in living in this world. You cannot say you can go scot-free and do something in a little teashop unknown to people, and nobody is seeing you. Everybody is seeing you in the little shop. Even when you have a sip of tea in a dark corner of a shop in Rishikesh, the Almighty sees. Be very careful.

Just as, with its long arms, the law sees every little act of every official in the development of the administration of a country, the original dharma of the sacrifice of the gods in respect of the Almighty's presence conditions every other dharma in this world. Therefore, it is said these worships that the gods offered, this sacrifice that was made in the presence of the Almighty merely by the act of contemplation, is the original dharma: tāni dharmāṇi prathamānyāsan.

Now we have touched upon three important themes of philosophical consideration: the Ultimate Reality, the process of creation, and the individuals originating as the angels, the gods, parts of the cosmic fire, who gradually descend into the more manifest forms of individuals such as us.

Many of you might have read Plato's Republic, for instance. The philosophy of Plato envisages the Realm of Ideas. These Ideas are not your idea and my idea. I have an idea that I am sitting here, and you have an idea that you are listening to me. This is not the idea that Plato is thinking of. The Idea—with a capital I, if you like—is the contemplation of Plato's philosophical mind of what we call angels, gods, celestials, etc., the originals of the duplicates which we are. Plato thinks these are all duplicates of an original prototype which is in a realm of Ideas, and this is a world of sense, and he calls it the realm of reason. It is not the ordinary reason that we are using in courts and in mathematical solutions. It is the pure reason of the spirit, the angel that is in us. We are also angels in our essence, but we have become very gross by descending into this body. Hence, these Ideas that Plato speaks of correspond to the angels of our religions, or the gods or the devas of the Purusha Sukta.

Sometimes it is said that all marriages take place in heaven first, and they are celebrated on Earth afterwards. It is not only marriages; every event takes place in heaven first. Even war takes place in heaven first. Even disease originates in heaven first, and it comes down to the level of the body and society afterwards, as great thinkers have told us that the originals condition and determine the processes of the manifestation and activity of the duplicates, or their manifestation.

Thus, we are not doing things wholly independently, as we are prone to think. We are limited by the original realm of the Ideas, or the originals we ourselves were at the beginning of creation, and these originals that we were are the conditioning factors of our present movements as gross bodies, as individuals, as human beings.

Much has been pressed into these few words of the Purusha Sukta. Something more about this theme has to be thought over by us, a subject I shall take up later on.