The King Who Hung Between Worlds

The sages told the Pandavas of King Trishanku, who wished to climb to heaven without dying, and so came to hang forever between the earth and the sky, neither here nor there - a warning that has given his name to every soul caught between two states.

Trishanku was a king of the ancient solar line, the house of Ikshvaku, a good and able ruler. But he was seized by a strange and prideful desire that no king had ever fulfilled. He wished to ascend to heaven - not after death, as the righteous do, their souls rising to the higher worlds - but bodily, in his own living flesh, to walk into the heaven of the gods while still a mortal man. It was a thing against the whole order of nature, for the body belongs to the earth and only the soul may rise; but Trishanku would not be content with anything less. He resolved to find a way to carry his mortal body, just as it was, up into the realm of the gods.