The Gold Mountain in the Ocean of Milk

Janamejaya had heard a great deal about Narayana by then, and the question he asked next was the one that all of it had been circling.

"O regenerate one," he said, "are there many Purushas or is there only one? Who, in the universe, is the foremost of Purushas? What, again, is said to be the source of all things?"

Vaisampayana, who was Vyasa's disciple and who had the whole epic from his preceptor's mouth, did not answer it out of his own head.

"In the speculations of the Sankhya and the Yoga systems many Purushas have been spoken of, O jewel of Kuru's race," he said. "Those that follow these systems do not accept that there is but one Purusha in the universe."

That is the difficulty, stated plainly. Purusha means the person, the conscious one, the self that stands behind a set of eyes and looks out through them. Sankhya counts them and finds them innumerable, one to every creature. And yet the same books speak of a Purusha who is single and supreme. Vaisampayana did not pretend the two statements were the same statement.

"In the same manner in which the many Purushas are said to have one origin in the Supreme Purusha," he said, "it may be said that this entire universe is identical with that one Purusha of superior attributes."

Then he bowed, as he always did before saying anything he had not earned himself, to his preceptor Vyasa, that foremost of Rishis, conversant with the soul, endued with penances, self-restrained, and worthy of reverent worship.

"This speculation on Purusha, O king, occurs in all the Vedas. It is well known to be identical with Rita and Truth. Diverse Rishis, having Kapila for their first, have declared their opinions on it, both generally and particularly. Through the grace of Vyasa of immeasurable energy, I shall expound to thee what Vyasa has said in brief on this question of the Oneness of Purusha.

"In this connection is cited the old narrative of the discourse between Brahma and the Three-eyed Mahadeva."

It is an old story even by the standards of the Shanti Parva, and it has only two people in it, and both of them are gods.

In the midst of the Ocean of milk there is a very high mountain of great effulgence like that of gold, known by the name of Vaijayanta.

Nothing else is said about it. No forests, no cities, no attendants, no gates. A gold mountain standing up out of a white sea, and that is the whole of the description, and the emptiness of it is the point, because of what the Grandsire used it for.

Repairing thither all alone, from his own abode of great splendour and felicity, the illustrious deity Brahma used very often to pass his time there, engaged in thinking on the course of Adhyatma. Adhyatma is the enquiry into the self, the turning of the mind back along the line of its own looking. The creator of the worlds had a habit of leaving the worlds and going out to sea to do it.

While the four-faced Brahma was seated there, his son encountered him one day in the course of his wanderings through the universe.

Mahadeva had sprung from his father's forehead. That is how Rudra came into being, and it is worth remembering while reading what follows, because everything the two of them say to each other is said between a father and a son who was born out of a thought. The Three-eyed Siva, endued with puissance and high Yoga, was proceeding along the sky in those days of yore when he looked down and saw Brahma seated on that mountain, and therefore dropped quickly onto its top.

With a cheerful heart he presented himself before his progenitor and worshipped his feet.

Beholding Mahadeva prostrated at his feet, Brahma took him up with his left hand.

Then the one Lord of all creatures addressed the son he had not seen for a long time.

"Welcome art thou, O thou of mighty arms. By good luck I see thee after such a long time come to my presence. I hope, O son, that everything is right with thy penances and thy Vedic studies and recitations. Thou art always observant of the austerest penances. Hence I ask thee about the progress and well-being of those penances of thine."

It is exactly what any father asks. How is the work going.

"O illustrious one," Rudra said, "through thy grace, all is well with my penances and Vedic studies. It is all right, again, with the universe."

He had answered for himself and then, in the same breath, for everything that exists, because he is one of the few who can. Then he came to what he had actually dropped out of the sky to ask.

"I saw thy illustrious self a long while ago in thy own home of felicity and effulgence. I am coming thence to this mountain that is now the abode of thy feet. Great is the curiosity excited in my mind by this withdrawal of thyself into such a lone spot from thy usual region of felicity and splendour. Great must the reason be, O Grandsire, for such an act on thy part."

And he set out the comparison, item by item, so that his father could hear how strange the choice sounded from outside.

"Thy own foremost abode is free from the pains of hunger and thirst, and inhabited by both deities and Asuras, by Rishis of immeasurable splendour, as also by Gandharvas and Apsaras. Abandoning such a spot of felicity, thou residest alone in this foremost of mountains. The cause of this cannot but be grave."

Read the list again and notice that it is a list of company. Hunger and thirst are named once and then dropped. What fills Brahma's own heaven is beings: gods, Asuras, sages of immeasurable splendour, the musicians, the dancers. It is the most populous place in existence and nothing in it can hurt you, and its owner had walked out of it to sit by himself on a rock in the middle of a white ocean.

Brahma's answer was four lines long and it did not apologise for anything.

"This foremost of mountains, called Vaijayanta, is always my residence. Here, with concentrated mind, I meditate on the one universal Purusha of infinite proportions."

Always my residence. Not a retreat, not an occasional practice. The heaven full of gods was the place he visited. This was where he lived.

Rudra heard the phrase and stopped on it, and the objection he raised is the objection anybody with a clear head would raise.

"Self-born thou art," he said. "Many are the Purushas that have been created by thee. Others again, O Brahma, are being created by thee. The Infinite Purusha, however, of whom thou speakest, is one and single. Who is that foremost of Purushas, O Brahma, that is being meditated by thee? Great is the curiosity I feel on this point. Do thou kindly dispel the doubt that has taken possession of my mind."

The force of it lies in the first three words. Self-born. There is nobody above Brahma in the order of creation. He was not made; he makes. Every Purusha in the universe came out of him and more are coming out of him while the two of them are speaking. So when the maker of all the persons sits on a mountain in the middle of the sea and meditates on a Person, the son wants to know who is left for him to meditate on.

"O son," Brahma said, "many are those Purushas of whom thou speakest. The one Purusha, however, of whom I am thinking, transcends all Purushas and is invisible."

Then he gave the relation between the many and the one, which is the answer to the question Janamejaya had asked at the beginning.

"The many Purushas that exist in the universe have that one Purusha as their basis. And since that one Purusha is said to be the source whence all the innumerable Purushas have sprung, hence all the latter, if they succeed in divesting themselves of attributes, become competent to enter into that one Purusha who is identified with the universe, who is supreme, who is the foremost of the foremost, who is eternal, and who is himself divested of and is above all attributes."

So the many are not a mistake in the counting and the one is not a figure of speech. The many are real and they are numberless and every one of them came from the same place, and there is a road back, and the toll on that road is everything by which a person can be described.

"Listen, O son," Brahma said, "as to how that Purusha is indicated."

What follows is a description offered by someone who says in the middle of it that he cannot see the thing he is describing.

"He is eternal and immutable. He is undeteriorating and immeasurable. He pervades all things. O best of all creatures, that Purusha cannot be seen by thee, or me, or others."

Not by thee. Not by me. The Grandsire put himself on the same side of the line as his listener, and then named the only ones who are shut out entirely: those that are endued with the understanding and the senses but destitute of self-restraint and tranquillity of soul. The Supreme Purusha is said to be one that can be seen with the aid of knowledge alone.

"Though divested of body, He dwells in every body. Though dwelling, again, in bodies, He is never touched by the acts accomplished by those bodies. He is my Antaratma. He is thy inner soul. He is the all-seeing Witness dwelling within all embodied creatures and engaged in marking their acts. No one can grasp or comprehend him at any time."

Then the images, which are the oldest way anyone has found to say this.

"The universe is the crown of his head. The universe is his arms. The universe is his feet. The universe is his eyes. The universe is his nose."

And then the name, arrived at by an argument rather than announced. Alone and single, he roves through all Kshetras, unrestrained by any limitations on his will and as he likes. Kshetra is another name for body, a field. And because he knows all Kshetras, as also all good and bad deeds, therefore he who is the soul of Yoga is called by the name of Kshetrajna, the knower of the field.

"No one succeeds in perceiving how he enters into embodied creatures and how he goes out of them."

Then the admission.

"Agreeably to the Sankhya mode, as also with the aid of Yoga and the due observance of the ordinances prescribed by it, I am engaged in thinking of the cause of that Purusha. But alas, I am unable to comprehend that cause, excellent as it is."

The creator of the worlds, on the golden mountain, at his own practice, reporting failure. And then going on anyway.

"I shall, however, according to the measure of my knowledge, discourse to thee upon that eternal Purusha and his Oneness and supreme greatness."

"The learned speak of him as the one Purusha. That one eternal Being deserves the appellation of Mahapurusha."

Then Brahma gave his son five examples, and they are all examples of the same shape, drawn from things a person can stand and look at.

"Fire is an element, but it may be seen to blaze up in a thousand places under a thousand different circumstances. The Sun is one and single, but his rays extend over the wide universe. Penances are of diverse kinds, but they have one common origin whence they have flowed. The Wind is one, but it blows in diverse forms in the world. The great Ocean is the one parent of all the waters in the world seen under diverse circumstances."

Fire, sun, penance, wind, water. Nobody counts fires. A man with a lamp and a man with a forge and a village with a hundred hearths are not the owners of a hundred fires, they are places where the one thing is occurring.

"Divested of attributes, that one Purusha is the universe displayed in infinitude. Flowing from him, the infinite universe enters into that one Purusha again, who transcends all attributes, when the time of its destruction comes."

Then he named the price of the road he had spoken of before, and it is stated in three clauses and not one of them is comfortable.

"By casting off the consciousness of body and the senses, by casting off all acts good and bad, by casting off both truth and falsehood, one succeeds in divesting oneself of attributes."

Good acts go with the bad ones. Truth goes with falsehood. Not because there is nothing to choose between them, but because a man who is still the sort of thing that can be described as truthful is still a thing with attributes.

"The person who realises that inconceivable Purusha and comprehends his subtile existence in the quadruple form of Aniruddha, Pradyumna, Sankarshana, and Vasudeva, and who, in consequence of such comprehension, attains to perfect tranquillity of heart, succeeds in entering into and identifying himself with that one auspicious Purusha."

Some persons possessed of learning, he said, speak of him as the supreme soul. Others regard him as the one soul. A third class of learned men describe him as the soul. The truth is that he who is the Supreme Soul is always divested of attributes. He is Narayana. He is the universal soul, and he is the one Purusha.

"He is never affected by the fruits of acts, even as the leaf of the lotus is never drenched by the water one may throw upon it."

There is a second soul in the account, and Brahma kept it separate.

"The Karanta, the acting Soul, is different. That Soul is sometimes engaged in acts, and when it succeeds in casting off acts it attains to Emancipation, or identity with the Supreme Soul. The acting Soul is endued with the seven and ten possessions."

Seventeen: five senses of knowledge, five of action, five vital breaths, the mind, the understanding. That is the whole inventory of a person as the Sankhya counts him.

"Thus it is said that there are innumerable kinds of Purushas in due order. In reality, however, there is but one Purusha."

Then the list that shuts every door.

"He is the abode of all the ordinances in respect of the universe. He is the highest object of knowledge. He is at once the knower and the object to be known. He is the thinker and the object of thought. He is the eater and the food that is eaten. He is the smeller and the scent that is smelled. He is at once he that touches and the object that is touched. He is the agent that sees and the object that is seen. He is the hearer and the object that is heard. He is the conceiver and the object that is conceived. He is possessed of attributes and is free from them."

Every pair in it is one that experience keeps apart. The eye and the thing looked at. The mouth and bread. Say both sides are the same and nothing is left over to be a second thing.

"What has previously been named Pradhana, and is the mother of the Mahat tattwa, is no other than the Effulgence of the Supreme Soul, because He it is who is eternal, without destruction and any end and ever immutable. He it is who creates the prime ordinance in respect of Dhatri himself. Learned Brahmanas call Him by the name of Aniruddha. All the deities and all the Rishis, possessed of tranquil souls, occupying their places on the altar, dedicate to him the first share of their sacrificial offerings."

Then the Grandsire put himself and his son into the line of descent, in one sentence, in that order.

"I, that am Brahma, the primeval master of all creatures, have started into birth from Him, and thou hast taken thy birth from me. From me have flowed the universe with all its mobile and immobile creatures, and all the Vedas, O son, with their mysteries."

Rudra had come to ask why his father sat alone on a mountain, and was being told that both of them stood rather far down a line that began somewhere else.

"Divided into four portions," Brahma said, "He sports as He pleases. That illustrious and divine Lord is even such, awakened by His own knowledge."

Awakened by His own knowledge. Nobody woke him. There was nothing else there to do it.

"I have thus answered thee, O son, according to thy questions, and according to the way in which the matter is expounded in the Sankhya system and the Yoga philosophy."

And that is the end of the discourse. There is no vision granted at the close of it and no boon and no transformation. The Three-eyed one had prostrated himself, been raised by the left hand, asked his question, and received an answer that included the sentence that Purusha cannot be seen by thee, or me, or others. Then the story simply stops, on a gold mountain in the Ocean of milk, with a father and a son sitting where they had been sitting.

What the two of them had settled between them was Janamejaya's question, and Vaisampayana had chosen the narrative because of who is in it. If the answer had come from a sage it could have been doubted. It came from the self-born maker of all persons, delivered to the god who wanders the universe and sees everything in it, and what he said was that above the creator there is one who is not created, whom the creator meditates upon and cannot comprehend, whose cause he had been trying to think his way to for ages and had not reached.

The many Purushas are real. They are as many as there are bodies, and every one of them is a field with a knower sitting in it. The one Purusha is real, and he is the field and the knower both, and the way from the many to the one runs through the surrender of everything by which a person could be picked out from another person.

That is what Brahma was doing out there, alone, with the ocean all round him and the worlds he had made somewhere behind his back.

Vaisampayana turned back to the king who had asked, and left it where the old narrative left it, and went on to other things.