In my previous post I gave a short exercise in reconstructing paradise from the Deities I covered so far. I had also given a short list to aid you, the reader, if you were interested in doing it. From the exercise, you could have come to the following conclusions:
1) Each individual on this planet is regarded as the most significant entity by the planet itself.
2) The purpose of each individual is to learn something from whatever is given to him/her.
3) Each individual has a unique combination of qualities that are purposeful for himself/herself as well as for the planet.
4) From the qualities given, the individual has the capability to control certain aspects of the environment he/she resides in.
5) The planet doesn’t consist of only one individual but many. Therefore, each individual learns to blend in the environment he/she resides in.
6) An intellectual individual weighs all the obstacles before doing what he/she wants to do and in return learns from them.
7) The goals of each individual are protected between the individual and the planet.
8) The planet is the source of the individual’s survival. The individual in return gives back whatever the planet requires from him/her.
From the conclusions listed above, it becomes implicit that paradise is not only about getting what one wants but to also give. In fact, there’s more in the giving side (Shiva) than getting (This conclusion comes from the understanding of the Maruts – The core of any entity is Shiva, the science of the entity’s behaviour). The imbalance brings about sacrificial qualities (Agni) by which the concerned individual learns. This imbalance should not be confused with the balance between what the planet expects from the individual and what the individual does. From the previous post, Agni’s association with the Maruts gives Agni the keyword of Doing. This keyword enhances Agni’s keyword of Sacrifice.
By including the Maruts in the exercise, it enhances the notion of communication between the individual and its environment. This notion of communication was seen by the Vedic authors as the most significant thing that binds the Universe together. In fact nothing would have existed if entities did not have the capability of communicating with each other. Even light would not be able to travel if it fundamentally can’t move from, say, an infinitesimal distance from point A to point B. Time would also not exist if time A can’t move to time B. In order to classify this as a single notion, the Vedic authors termed it as Aum.
AUM:
The idea of Aum was derived from the creation sequence Purusha-Vayu-Soma-Agni-Prithvi that fundamentally describes one entity transferring something to another entity. The entities are Purusha and Prithvi. Removing Purusha and Prithvi leaves Vayu as the prime reason for anything to be transferred between two points and its counterpart Agni, becomes the prime reason for anything to receive what was transferred (Soma). The Vedic authors then had to signify Vayu in their idea of Aum (yet to be developed). Using Vayu, they represented the idea of Aum as some Sound Energy (not necessarily saying that Sound Energy is the only energy that creates movement). To further enhance this representation (Indra) – note that it is being confined, they figured out that all terrestrial living creatures have a mouth that modulates the air to send a message. As humans, the mouth is by far the most significant thing that enables us to communicate our thoughts and emotions. From this came script writing which requires the imagination of sound when reading or writing.
A sequence of phonemes was then made to represent the source (Purusha), i.e. the individual. They came up with Aah-Ooh-Mmm that represents The Abdomen – The Heart – The Head. Surprisingly, I noticed that the Native Americans too have the same sequence. Instead of combining Aah and Ooh into one Au to make Aum or Om like the Indians, they combined Ooh and Mmm as one and hence they say it as Aah-Umm.
Aum became the symbol for Hinduism when religions began dividing the humans. Until then as per Vedic Scriptures, an individual was given the right to create his/her own Deity, possibly from existing Deities, that represents the individual’s character and goal (which are already bounded) in the divine sense. The notion of religion did not exist fundamentally. The Vedic ascetics at the time of division would have not understood why the people wanted to symbolize a formless entity. In fact they were ready to adopt the teachings into theirs and maintain one belief system, much like how they adopted the teachings of Buddha. But symbolism was what drove them and so to protect the Vedic teachings, they too had to symbolize the formless entity.
By formlessness, it means that the concept of communication exists in all scientific fields. Today, we use this concept in money distribution (Economics), heat distribution (Thermodynamics), charge distribution (Electronics), variable distribution (Software – no ics here), knowledge distribution (Spirituality), etc, as there are many more. It is definitely very difficult to represent all this as one sensible symbol. Well, you can make an insensible symbol that probably looks weird and say it represents everything.
By now, you, the reader, have come across the use of sequences in Vedic Science. This is actually an important Vedic concept which I’m going to cover right now.
VARUNA:
Varuna, in Vedic depiction, is the God of Rain or the God of the Sky. The depiction of Varuna as the God of Rain helped me more in understanding what Varuna actually represents. His depiction of the God of the Sky comes after understanding the actual representation.
As the God of Rain, I personally saw the specific sequence of events as the representation of Varuna. Hence I associated the keyword ‘Sequence’ to Varuna. This very keyword explained most of Varuna’s characteristics given in Vedic Literature. From the notion of Sequences comes the notion of Patterns and Rules. From Rules comes the Law. This Sequence can represent a sequence of events in time or the sequence of structure (patterns or rules). Are there more? Well I just defined sequences on two infinites, time and space. The number system too is a sequence and so is the music scale.
It so happens that all sequences are closed (Indra) sequences. Very often in Vedic Literature will you find the animosity between Indra and Varuna caused by Indra’s overthrow of Varuna’s Rule. The animosity depicts Indra’s constraint on Varuna, i.e. sequences of anything must close. Indra and Varuna were placed facing each other in the Vaastu Chart probably for this reason. Hence Time, Space, The Number System, The Music Scale, Sentences (meaning is closed or complete) etc, are all in closed form sequences. When these sequences close, they become Indra entities.
Sequences left open become uncontrolled or wasteful as there is no reuse or repeatability. Closed sequences also help in monitoring a particular portion of its sequence. This concept is heavily used in Closed Loop Control Systems, today, where measuring instruments are part of the process (sequence of activities) control. In Vedic depiction, the measuring part for process control maintenance is the Sun, the eye of Varuna. The Sun (Surya), which I will describe in detail later in my Sun Marathon, is an entity of multiple Fires (Agni). As Varuna’s eye, Surya measures (Agni) multiple parameters of the ongoing process (Varuna) and controls it based on its set of defined rules (Varuna). Likewise, natural systems are usually self-correcting (Indra) systems, e.g. the planet Earth.
In the Vaastu Chart (a closed sequence of Deities with Varuna as one of them), it becomes evident that the starting node is Varuna. This starting node is empowered by one of the later nodes, Indra. Actually it is Varuna-Chandra empowered by Indra-Aditya but since I have not yet explained Chandra and Aditya, I’m breaking it down to Varuna empowered by Indra. In the design perspective, this translates as during the commencement of a design a closed or complete (Indra) specification sheet (Varuna) is required. In the learning perspective, the learner looks for a closed or complete set of rules that can be used to understand something. These set of rules or patterns become the alphabets in that particular understanding which when arranged in different ways form different meanings, i.e. different words. If you had watched “The Gods must be crazy” movie, you will get the idea of I’m talking about. In that movie, they show two different cultures, the White Western Culture and the Black African Tribal Culture. In the perspective of both, the other is illiterate because they (the other) can’t read the patterns known to the them. For the African Tribe, the patterns they learned to read were events that happened in a particular area, e.g. deer fighting (I think), whereas in the West (or Europe I think), patterns they learned to read were some kind of data on a computer plot. The two pattern analysis had different purposes (Vayu, which is why Vayu comes after Varuna in the Vaastu Chart) and because of this difference the movie showed that one race is not superior or inferior to the other.
The Vaastu Chart, today, is understood only as a building construction chart. There is actually a lot more to it than just a building construction chart. Once I have covered all the Deities in that chart, I will dedicate one post to explain in detail the Vaastu Chart. There are two versions of the Vaastu Chart you can find on the internet. A simplified one, which is the more common one, and an advanced one. The advanced one is a little more intricate and quite complicated for me. The simplified one, however, gives really good insights on the Vaastu chart which I will cover.
Just like the Vaastu Chart, the Creation Sequence which is also a sequence of Deities, has a lot more to it than just a Creation Sequence. Other than a creation sequence, according to me, this sequence also tells gender progression. With Purusha starting the sequence and Prithvi ending the sequence, it kind of tells that the male progresses to the female. :S. For a guy it sounds weird, but I bet the girls would love this. There is, however, enough evidence within the sequence to support this. Note that Purusha is associated with Vayu while Prithvi is associated with Agni. Purusha’s association with Vayu translates to the male as agents of change while Prithvi’s association with Agni translates to the female as a mediation to the next level. Since the next level to human is divinity, the feminine is a mediation between the human and the divine. As I mentioned earlier in one of my posts, the woman is actually form of divinity represented in Parvathi. The masculine, on the other hand, are agents of change in the human race or any other species (they are the ones who have a natural tendency to go out to the world and make their mess). It is in fact an interesting theory to consider in mapping which species progresses to which species in the hierarchy. So according to the Karma concept, a man’s next birth is a woman if the man met all requirements to complete him as a man. Little more thinking in this direction, a good man becomes a hot chick in his next birth. :P. Again, with the associations of Vayu and Agni with Purusha and Prithvi respectively, and that Agni’s characteristics place Agni as the elder one among the brotherhood of Agni, Indra and Vayu, it shows that the feminine reaches maturity much faster than the masculine. This is true in the biological sense as well. The Egyptians made their Agni counterpart, Shu, feminine probably for this reason.
As mentioned earlier, the Vedas represent singularity as masculine and plurality as feminine. This is another concept that supports the gender progression. The representation doesn’t mean that men can only do one thing at a time and women can only to multiple things at a time. They are actually common characteristics. In fact both men and women do multitasking or just do one thing. To compensate for the representation, the Vedic saints introduced a deity termed Ardhanareswar to show that both men and women do multitasking or just do one thing at a particular point of time. Ardhanareswar is a deity that is half Shiva and half Parvathi. At the point of its introduction, it became a more powerful form due to concept it represented. The concept was powerful enough to explain why alien planets don’t exist and that the planet Earth is the only planet with life in this massive universe. The Ardhanareswar deity explains that to implement a single (Shiva) entity it requires a multitude (Parvathi) functionality to define it or a single entity is made up of a multitude of other entities. Examples are the human body system that has multiple organs that make it work, a car engine that has multiple other parts just to ensure the cylinders run the wheels smoothly, a source code of a software application that has multiple functions and libraries to make it work (also to note is that there is only one main function for a software application that calls other routines), etc. Likewise the massive universe exists just to define the functionalities of every species living on the planet Earth including the stimulus that runs it (the stimulus part comes from the understanding of the Gayathri Manthra which I will cover after Savitr in the Sun Marathon). Ardhanareswar also explains that there exists multiple paths to divinity and that one of them can be chosen by an individual. Multitasking in fact is achieved by regulating multiple single tasks in consequent time frames in software. In human life, an individual has multiple things to deal with such work, family, personal development, community, etc. The individual has to regulate these in a well-balanced (Vishnu) manner. This is because an individual has multiple purposes (Vayu, but Vayu is also associated with Rudra – the important aspect of Shiva) for the planet.
Varuna has an important companion called Mitra by which He is always paired with. Mitra is a Sun Deity which I will cover in the Sun Marathon. Together they provide an interesting concept especially when they are paired with the Sun-Moon pair.
Now that you as the reader have come across too much of Purusha, I might consider posting about Purusha before the commencing the Sun marathon.
