Mapping of Space and Time

Shuka Maharishi began his discourse in an orderly fashion. He first set out the forms of yoga and dharma one must follow in life, and then explained the concepts of the jeevatma, the individual soul, and the paramatma, the Supreme. In the language of the Vedas, the Lord Sriman Nārāyaṇa is described as the one who pervades everything inside and outside of creation; He is Brahmā, He is Shiva, He is Indra, He resides in every atom that has been made, and He is supreme over all.

Having established this, the sage turned to describe how space and time are arranged. It is a vast and intricate picture, and the listener is asked to build it up patiently in the mind.

Consider first how a place is located. A city sits within a region, the region within a land, the land within a subcontinent, the subcontinent within a continent, and the continent upon the Earth. The Earth, as the texts name it, is Boohu. Above it lie six ascending worlds — Buvaha, Suvaha, Mahaha, Janaha, Tapaha, and finally Satyam, where Brahmā himself dwells. Below Boohu lie seven descending worlds — Athala, Vithala, Suthala, Rasaatala, Thalaathala, Mahathala, and the deepest, Pathala.

Imagine these fourteen worlds as the layers of a single vast form, Boohu at the middle, seven above and seven below.

This entire fourteen-layered structure is contained within a great egg, and because it was fashioned by Brahmā it is called the Brahmandam. The egg is protected by a shell, the Aavaranam, and above and below Boohu flows a cosmic fluid, the Aavarana-Jalam. Beyond the egg lie further realms in ascending order — the world of Vayu, then of Agni, of Sūrya, of Chandra, of the stars, of lightning, and beyond them the circle of the Saptarishis, the seven great sages.

This whole formation is held to rest within the eye of an inverted celestial dolphin, the Simshumara, which revolves like a great wheel — hence it is called the Simshumara-Chakram. At its heart lies the Dhruva-Mandalam, the fixed abode of the pole star, around which all else turns. And this immense revolving form is itself borne upon the lotus that emanates from the navel of the Lord. So the mapping of space comes to a close.

Time, seen from the creator's vantage, is no less vast. Sixty seconds make a minute, sixty minutes an hour, twenty-four hours a day, and so on through months and years in the familiar way. Four hundred and thirty-two thousand years constitute one Kali Yuga. Twice that span is the Dvāpara Yuga, thrice it the Tretā Yuga, and four times it the Kṛta Yuga. Taken together, these four ages form one Chaturyuga. A thousand Chaturyugas pass in what is, for Brahmā, the span of a single day, and as many again in his night.

Three hundred and sixty such days make one of his years, and the office of a single Brahmā lasts a hundred such years, after which the next Brahmā succeeds him.

A thousand Chaturyugas make one Kalpa. To oversee each Kalpa, Brahmā appoints fourteen presiding demigods called Manus, each ruling seventy-one Chaturyugas. We currently fall under the seventh Manu, Lord Sūrya, who bears the title Vivasvān; within his tenure we are in the twenty-eighth of his seventy-one Chaturyugas, and within that Chaturyuga, in the age of Kali.

It is this precise reckoning of space and time that is drawn together in the Saṅkalpam, the ancient declaration of intent recited at the start of every sacred act. A sankalpam is, in essence, a statement of where and when the worshipper stands. Before beginning any rite, one first announces one's exact place within the whole of creation — descending from the vastest cosmic cycles all the way down to the present hour — and only then states the purpose for which the rite is being performed.

The effect is to root the smallest human act firmly within the largest possible frame, so that the worshipper acts not in isolation but as a conscious point within the ordered breath of the creator.

It moves, as it were, from the greatest to the smallest: first the age of the presiding Brahmā, then the Kalpa, the Manvantara, the Chaturyuga, and the yuga; then the continent, the land, the region, and the sacred river; and finally the year, the season, the month, the fortnight, the lunar day, the weekday, and the star under which the moment falls.

To see how this works, consider the sankalpam as it would be recited on this very day.

One would declare that it is now the second half of the reigning Brahmā's lifetime, in the Shvetavarāha Kalpa, in the Vaivasvata Manvantara, in the twenty-eighth Chaturyuga, in the first quarter of Kali Yuga, upon the Jambu Dvīpam, in the land of Bharata — and then, narrowing to the immediate present, that it is the year Parābhava; the Dakshiṇāyana, the sun's southward course; the Varsha season of the rains; the month of Siṃha; the bright fortnight, the Shukla Paksha, of the waxing moon; the sixth lunar day, the Shashṭhi; the day of Bhauma, which is Tuesday; and the hour falling under the star Svātī.

Only after all of this is named — the entire cosmos funnelled down to a single blessed moment between one sunrise and the next — does the worshipper finally state the purpose of the rite. In this way even the briefest observance is understood as taking place at a precise coordinate in space and time, held within the boundless order of creation.

Parikshith listened in wonder, for he had been shown the shape of the universe, and now stood ready to hear of the One who lies beyond it.