The Calendric Round

CORRESPONDING to the spatial order of the world mountain, the four quarters, and the ever-cycling spheres, there is everywhere an associated temporal order of precisely measured days, months, years, and eons.



In India, for example, where the first form to appear in the lotus of Vishnu’s dream is seen as Brahma, it is held that when the cosmic dream dissolves, after 100 Brahma years, its Brahma too will disappear-to reappear, however, when the lotus again unfolds. Now one Brahma year is reckoned as 360 Brahma days and nights, each night and each day consisting of 12,000,000 divine years. But each divine year, in turn, consists of 360 human years; so that one full day and night of Brahma, or 24,000,000 divine years, contains 24,000,000 times 360 or 8,640,000,000 human years, just as in our own system of reckoning the 24 hours of a day contain 86,400 seconds-each second corresponding to the length of time, furthermore, of one heartbeat of a human body in perfect physical condition. Thus it appears not only that the temporal order written on the faces of our clocks is the same as that of the Indian god Vishnu’s dream, but also that there is built into this system the mythological concept of corresponding between the organic rhythms of the human body as a microcosm and the cycling eons of the universe,the macrocosm.

Every day of a Brahma lifetime of 100 Brahma years, the god’s eyes slowly open and close 1,000 times. When they open a universe appears, and the moment they close it fades, appearing, enduring, fading, and disappearing thus in a cycle of four stages called yugas, named in descending series after the four throws of a die:

Krita, 4, “the lucky throw”

Treta, 3

Dvapara, 2

Kali, 1, “the worst”

These correspond to the four ages in our own classical tradition, of gold, silver, bronze, and iron; also to the meaning of the prophetic dream attributed in the Book of Daniel to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon; which was of an idol “mighty and of exceeding brightness,” the head of which was “of fine gold, its breast and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of clay” (Daniel 2:31-33).67

The four ages of the Indian cycle are described in the sacred books as follows: Krita Yuga, a golden age of 4,000 divine years, preceded by a dawn of 400 years and followed by a twilight of equal length; in sum, 4,800 divine years, during the whole of which the Cow of Virtue stands on all four legs, men are perfectly virtuous, and the laws of caste strictly honored.

Treta Yuga, one quarter less virtuous, blissful, and long; in sum, including its dawn and twilight, an age of 3,600 divine years, when the Cow stands on three legs. Dvapara Yuga, a second quarter gone, and the Cow is balanced on two legs; a period lasting, with its dawn and twilight, but 2,400 divine years.

Finally Kali Yuga, our own world age: wicked and consequently miserable, with the Cow of Virtue on one leg. And just as in the prophecy of Daniel it is declared that the races of this age “will mix with one another in marriage,” texts of India the fourth period is characterized by “the mixture of castes.” This law- SO in the sacred less terminal age, declining toward catastrophe, is believed to have commenced on February 17, 3102 B.C., and it will endure, including its dawn and twilight, only 1,200 divine years.

Translating, now, divine into human years, we arrive at the following sums:

4,800 × 360 = 1,728,000 human years

3,600 × 360 = 1,296,000

2,400 × 360 = 864,000

1,200 × 360 = 432,000

12,000 divine = 4,320,000 human years = 1 Great Cycle or Mahayuga

Furthermore:

1,000 Mahayugas = 1 daytime (or 1 night) of Brahma (1 kalpa): i.e., 12,000,000 divine years or 4,320,000,000 human years.

360 days and nights of Brahma (720 kalpas) = 1 Brahma year: i.e., 8,640,000,000 divine or 3,110,400,000,000 human years.

100 Brahma years =1 Brahma lifetime:

i.e., 864,000,000,000 divine or 311,040,000,000,000 human years.

At the close of each Brahma lifetime, Brahma and all dissolve into the body of the cosmic dreamer, who remains then absorbed in dreamless sleep for a period equal in length to another Brahma lifetime-until presently something within him stirs, the lotus dream again unfurls, and all begins anew. Moreover, in the distances of infinite space innumerable lotus universes are everywhere unfurling, flowering, and fading, each with its Brahma, as on a boundless lotus lake. Nor in the infinitudes of time will there ever be an end-as in the past there was no beginning of this flowering and fading of Brahma worlds.

When the time arrives for the reabsorption of such a lotus dream into the timeless state of deep dreamless sleep within the body of the world-dreamer, the work of destruction is absolute. As told in the Matsya Purana, reviewed and retold by Heinrich Zimmer in a chapter on “The Waters of Non-Existence”;

In this Indian conception of the process of destruction, the regular course of the Indian year-fierce heat and drought alternating with torrential rains-is magnified to such a degree that instead of sustaining, it demolishes existence. The warmth that normally ripens and the moisture that nourishes, when alternating in beneficent,co-operation, now annihilates. Vishnu begins the terrible last work by pouring his infinite energy into the sun. He himself becomes the sun. With its fierce, devouring rays he draws into himself the eyesight of every animate being. The whole world dries up and withers, the earth splits, and through deep fissures a deadly blaze of heat licks at the divine waters of the subterranean abyss; these are caught up and swal- lowed. And when the life-sap has entirely vanished from both the egg-shaped cosmic body and all the bodies of its creatures, Vishnu becomes the wind, the cosmic life- breath, and pulls out of all creatures the enlivening air. Like desiccated leaves the sear substance of the universe leaps to the cyclone. Friction ignites the whirling tumult of highly inflammable matter; the god has turned into fire. All goes up in a gigantic conflagration, then sinks into smoldering ash. Finally, in the form of a great cloud, Vishnu sheds a torrential rain, sweet and pure as milk, to quench the conflagration of the world. The scorched and suffering body of the earth knows at last its ultimate relief, final extinction, Nirvana. Under the flood of the God-become- Rain it is taken back into the primal ocean from which it arose at the universal dawn. The fecund water-womb receives again into itself the ashes of all creation. The ultimate elements melt into the undifferentiated fluid out of which they once arose. The moon, the stars, dissolve. The mounting tide becomes a limitless sheet of water. This is the interval of a night of Brahma.Vishnu sleeps. Like a spider that has climbed up the thread that once issued from its own organism, drawing it back into itself, the god has consumed again the web of the universe. Alone upon the immortal substance of the ocean, a giant figure, submerged partly, partly afloat, he takes delight in slumber. There is no one to behold him, no one to comprehend him; there is no knowledge of him, except within himself.

Once you realise that you are not an individual but a whole universe.

_Aham Brahmasmi is an egoistic phrase.

Tat Tvam Asi(Thou Art That )makes it complete phrase.

That is the notion that is found in the Upaniṣads. In India, when the famale power of the goddess serevived during their period, there female on that the ultimate mystery is found in the mystery of one’s own being but that mystery is deeper than any individual’s thinking can go.

This spiritual experience has been termed Gnosticism, from the Greek gnosis, or knowledge, and it describes this intuitive realization mystery that transcends speech. For that reason, for that reason,the language we use in speaking of religious mystery is that of the metaphor.

Metaphor is the language of myth that remains, as we have observed, a still widely misunderstood term. Even many so-called well-educated people think that “myth” means something that is false that is, a lie or distortion about some person or event.

But that misunderstanding arises, as we know, only when we misread metaphorical language. All of our religious ideas are metaphorical of a mystery. It is vital to recall that if you mistake the denotation of the metaphor for its connotation, you completely lose the message that is contained in the symbol.

God is a symbol. The connotation of the symbol lies beyond all naming, beyond all numeration, beyond all categories of thought. One often asks, “Is God one, or is God many?” These, however, are categories of thought and do not serve well in talking about what is beyond all speech. You are probably familiar with one of my favorite quotations from Heinrich Zimmer, who used to say, “The best things can’t be told. The sec- ond best are misunderstood.” Why are the second best misunderstood? Because they are metaphors that, as we only seem to repeat too often, are misread for their denotation rather than their connotation.

Jesus dies, is resurrected, and goes to Heaven. This metaphor expresses something religiously mysterious. Jesus could not literally have gone Heaven because there is no geographical place to go. Elijah went up into the heavens in a chariot, we are told, but we are not to take this statement as a description of a literal journey. to

These are only spiritual events described in kinds of two metaphor. There seem to be people: Those who think that metaphors are facts and those who know that they are not facts. Those who know the facts and are what we call “atheists,” and those who think they are facts are “religious.” Which group really gets the message?

There is a doctrine that comes out of the Vedantic tradition that has helped me to understand the nature of the energy that flows through myths. The Taittiriya Upaniṣad speaks of five sheaths that enclose the atman, which is the spiritual ground or germ of the individual.

The first sheath is called annamaya-koša, the food sheath. That is your body, which is made out of food and which will become food when you die. The worms, the vultures, the hyenas, or the flame will consume it. This is the sheath of our physical body: the food sheath.

The second sheath is called the sheath of breath, prānamaya-koša. The breath oxidizes the food; the breath turns it into life. That’s this thing, this body: food on fire. The next sheath is called the mental sheath, manomaya-kośa. This is the consciousness of the body, and it coordinates the senses with the you that thinks it is you.

Then there is a big gap.

And the next sheath is called the wisdom sheath, vijñānamaya-koša

This is the sheath of the wisdom of the transcendent pouring in. This is the wisdom that brought you to form in the mother womb, that digests your dinners, that knows how to do it. This is the wisdom that, when you cut yourself, knows how to heal the wound. The cut bleeds, and then a scab comes along; finally a scar forms, and this is the wisdom sheath going to work.

You go for a walk in the woods. Somebody has built a barbed-wire fence.

It leans right into the tree. The tree incorporates that barbed wire. The tree has it, the wisdom sheath. This is the level of your nature wisdom that you share with the hills, with the trees, with the fish, with the animals. The power of myth is to put the mental sheth in touch with this wisdom sheath, which is the one that speaks of the transcendent. And the sheath inward of the wisdom sheath is the sheath of bliss,

ānandamaya-kośa, which is a kernel of that transcendence in and of itself. Life is a manifestation of bliss. But manomaya-kośa, the mental sheath, is attached to the sufferings and pleasures of the food sheath. And so it thinks, Is life worth living? Or, as Joyce asks in Finnegans Wake, “Was liffe worth leaving?”

Just think: the grass grows. Out of the bliss sheath comes the wisdom sheath and the grass grows. Then, every two weeks, someone comes along with a lawn mower and cuts the grass down. Suppose the grass were just to think, Ah, shucks, what’s all this fuss about? I quit? That’s mental sheath stuff. You know that impulse: life is painful; how could a good god create a world with all of this in it? That is thinking in terms of good and evil, light and dark-pairs of opposites. The wisdom sheath doesn’t know about pairs of opposites. The bliss sheath contains all opposites. The wisdom sheath is just coming right up out of it, and it turns into pairs of opposites later on.

When I was in Egypt, I went to the miserable little tomb of Tutankhamen. Compared with the tomb of Seti I right beside it, it was just somebody’s outhouse. There are two little rooms the size of a studio apart- ment. Seti’s tomb is as big as a small gymnasium. That’s why nobody both- ered to rifle Tutankhamen’s tomb, and that’s why we got all that wonderful stuff from it.

Think about the coffin Tutankhamen in terms of the Indian image of the sheaths. I don’t know if that is what the Egyptian sculptors intended, but this is what I saw. You have three quadrangular boxes, one inside the other: food sheath, breath sheath, and mental sheath. That’s the outside. Then you have a great stone coffin that separates the inner two sheaths from the ones on the outside. And what do you have inside? You have a sarcophagus made of wood, inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli. This is shaped in the form of the young king, with his signs of kingship crossed over his chest. That, I would say, is the wisdom sheath, the level of the living or- ganic form. And within that is the sheath of bliss: a solid gold coffin in the form of Tutankhamen, with several tons of gold. When you realize how gold was mined in those days, that sarcophagus cost many a life and lots of suffering to get that much gold. And this was the sheath of bliss. And within this, of course, was the atman, the body itself. Unfortunately, the Egyptians made the enormous error of mistaking eternal life for the eternal concretized life of the body. And so what do you find when you go to the Egyptian Museum? You pay an extra dollar to go to the Mummy Room. And you come into a room with three rows of wooden coffins. And in each sleeps a pharaoh. And the names of the pharaohs are there like the names on a collection of butterflies: Amenhotep I, II, III, and so forth. All I could think of was the room in a maternity ward, the nursery where they have the little babies. The Egyptians based all of this-building the pyramids and these great tombs-on this basic mistake, that eternal life is the life of annamaya-kośa, the food sheath. It has nothing to do with any such thing. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Time is what shuts you out from eternity. Eternity is now. It is the transcendent dimension of the now to which myth refers.

All of these things enable you to understand what myth really is about. When people say, “Well, you know, this couldn’t have happened, and that couldn’t have happened, and so let’s get rid of the myths,” what they are doing is getting rid of the vocabulary of discourse between manomay kośa and vijñānamaya-kośa, between mental wisdom and organic, life-body wisdom.