As Above So Below: Structures of Sacred Cosmologies
By Matthew Krepps, C-IAYT
Ancient Cosmology
At the Shala, we study and practice systems like Ayurveda, and various forms of Yoga. In order to understand these things, we are required to grapple with the sacred cosmologies that produced them, despite the general modern ignorance and/or distrust of the metaphysics they instantiate. These cosmologies generate specific theories concerning essential things like the nature and causes of suffering, the self, and the potential pathologies that accompany its misunderstanding to name a few. Moreover, as responses, sacred cosmologies have inspired specific methods or techniques aimed at obtaining right knowledge, actualizing the spiritual values they embody, and coming to the liberating ends they cherish. So we need to give these cosmologies affectionate attention if we are to understand the context that birthed our aspirations and practices.
In the sacred cosmologies of the ancient world, the human being and the universe exist in an interdependent, hierarchically organized, multi-leveled, harmony. This is indicated for instance in the famous Hermetic axiom, “as above, so below”, or again, “as within, so without”. In modern language we might say that the microcosm recapitulates the Macrocosm. In this view, that which is below, or outer, emanates from “above” or “within”, eventually producing a system of distinct levels. Each level is patterned on the structural-functional-organization of its origin, and each finds its purpose and orientation relative to the levels above and below, or relative to its place in the system.
This is why the ancient Greeks referred to the lived, human world as a cosmos: an ordered world patterned on higher, more subtle realms. Seen from this point of view, we ourselves and the world we inhabit are nonrandom, beautiful (‘cosmos’ shares a common root with cosmetics), ‘adorned’, or ‘anointed’ images of one another. To be a cosmos is to be a place where life dwells. The cosmos is intelligible and attractive, a place where randomness is involved, but where it does not reign supreme.
Lastly, there is a hierarchy of functional competence instantiated in these ancient cosmologies: the higher levels exert normative influence over their respective lowers, and the lower levels provide feedback, or nourishment to their highers. So there is a sort of communication stream running in two directions between the top and bottom, or the inner and outer of the structure.
YAJNA: VEDIC COSMOLOGY IN BRIEF
Let’s take as an example the primary elements of the sacred cosmology in the Vedic revelation. In the broadest outlines, the Vedic worldview presents a two tiered cosmology consisting of the Divine/heaven (adhidevata), and the earth/human (adhyatmani). However, it allowed for a “breakthrough” or “transfer” to occur between these two levels, facilitated by sacrificial ritual (yajna).
Heaven is the higher, the place where the gods dwell, and as such it rules over the lower realm of the earth. To rule in this context is to provide the standard toward which the lower aspires and by which it organizes itself. One might imagine heaven and the gods here as a set of subtle, transcendental laws or patterns which imprint themselves on the more gross potentialities of the lower world in the establishment of order, and in doing so help to set the conditions which bring forth the myriad and specific objects that make up the creation.
The lower is the place where nourishment is found. It is important to remember that the higher and the lower are images of one another, both functioning according to a common, organized, structure. This is reflected in the fact that both gods and mortals must partake in the sacrificial ritual, so both are in need of the elements composing it, particularly the soma. Soma is perhaps the most essential element of the sacrificial ritual. It is also known as the nectar of immortality, which when drunk produces visionary experiences. It should be conceived of as a kind of food.
The middle, mediating realm of sacrifice is the place where higher and lower energies meet, coalesce, and are transformed. The sacrifice is the means through which the dictates of heaven, and the potentiality inherent in the earth, communicate through the action of the fire. We can see this happening literally in an actual fire: heaven, or the higher, can be understood as air, or breath (vayu). All fires must breathe in order to stay lit. But the fire cannot live on air alone, it must cling to its fuel, or eat its food (soma). Without fire there is no transformation. Without fuel and air, there is no fire. Sacrifice is the creative synergy between all three.
When the sacrifice is performed and a portion of soma is poured into the fire, it is transformed into smoke, which rises to the heavens where it is received by the gods, who are also performing the ritual on their level. The necessity of this act shows two crucial aspects which form the dynamic stream of communication that flows between the heavens and the earth: nourishment and worship or devotion. In speaking of this dynamic, the Bhagavad Gita will later say, “devan bhavyatanena te deva bhavayantu vah, parasparam bhavayanta sreyah param avapsyatha”, which Sargeant translates as: “By this (sacrifice) may you nourish the gods and may the gods nourish you; by nourishing each other, you shall attain the highest welfare.” Sargeant’s footnote on the root word bhavyate in the passage is telling:
“Bhavyate, ‘may you cherish’, sometimes translated ‘may you foster’, ‘prosper ye’, or ‘may you nourish’, is actually a causative form of the root bhu, ‘be’, ‘exist’. Thus its literal meaning is ‘may you cause (the gods) to be.’ The metaphysical inference is interesting. Man causes the gods to be and in return the gods cause man to be. This is by no means the only place in religious literature where a mutual creation is hinted at - man creating god and god creating man. The idea also reminds one of William James’ statement in ‘Essays on Faith and Morals’: ‘I confess that I do not see why the very existence of an invisible world may not depend in part on the personal response which any one of us may make to the religious appeal. God himself, in short, may draw vital strength and increase of being from our fidelity.”
So the sacrifice is an exhortation to both the higher and lower realms to be. The gods must be nourished/cherished through worship, remembrance, and the offering of soma in order to maintain their immortality. Humans must be nourished/cherished by food and the knowledge of right action in order to flourish and live wisely in the lower realms. Because the gods have the power to provide resources like rain, and the knowledge which determines the proper order and functioning of the lower realms, humans try to catch their interest and curry their favor via the ritual.
Finally, when humans imbibe the soma, their consciousnesses are transformed into god-like awareness: their knowing becomes like that of the gods. This allows them to receive divine revelation, which is knowledge as both rapture and truth. When it all goes well the divine and the human dwell together in mutual belonging and reciprocal feeding, communicating and cooperating for shared benefit: the rain comes at the right time, the crops grow, and the animals, plants and people prosper in accordance with revealed divine law (dharma).
Now, if we human beings are microcosmic fractals of a macrocosmic origin, we should see the dynamic of the sacrificial triad at work in us also, and we do. Briefly, for the human microcosm, heaven corresponds to the head, or the higher, inner sense associated with mind, intuition, and knowing. The earth corresponds to the thighs and the pelvis, the place of the sexual organs, the desires that originate there, and the reproductive tissues (shukra) associated with them, all of which go to an innate fecundity (potentiality) that is the precondition for the generation of new life. The middle realm (mesocosm) of sacrificial action connects the upper and lower, and corresponds to the heart: the place where sensory impressions, intuition, and memory mingle with basic animal desires “from below”. So the heart is a confluence where all of these things meet and are transformed into feelings, insights and actions. In this sense, both our biological metabolism and our cognition are instantiations of the sacred liturgy of sacrifice.
PURUSHA SUKTA: HYMN TO PURUSHA
Let’s look at one more very important image of the organized, multileveled relation between the higher and the lower in ancient cosmology, again from the Vedic revelation: the purusuhsa suktam, or the “Hymn to Purusha”, from book 10 of the Rig veda. The hymn provides a high resolution image of the multiple ways that the higher and the lower exist in a sacred and necessary relationship. It shows how that relationship is the basic pattern according to which the lower realms are functionally organized.
Purusha is generally translated literally as man, or the man. The Purusha is the first victim of the sacrificial ritual in the Vedas, and from this initial act, an organized and beautifully structured creation emerges. In the first four strophes of the hymn, Purusha is presented as a primordial giant with human-like characteristics, but also as that which is transcendent of any created entity:
Sahsra seerhaa purusha; Sahasraksha saharpath.
Sa bhoomir viswatho vruthwa.Athyathishta ddhasangulam. 1-1
The Purusha has thousand heads,
He has thousand eyes,
He has thousand feet,
He is spread all over the universe,
And is beyond the count with ten fingers.
Purusha eeveda sarvam.Yad bhootam yad bhavyam.
Utha amruthathwasya eesana. Yad annena adhirohathi. 1-2
This Purusha is all the past,
All the future and the present,
He is the lord of deathlessness,
And he rises from hiding,
From this universe of food.
Ethaa vaanasya mahimaa.Atho jyaaya scha purusha.
Padhosya viswa bhoothanee.Tripaadasyamrutham divi. 1-3
This Purusha is much greater,
Than all his greatness in what all we see,
And all that we see in this universe is but his quarter,
And the rest three quarters which is beyond destruction,
Is safely in the worlds beyond.
Tri paddurdhwa udaith prurusha. Padhosye habha vaath puna.
Thatho vishvangvyakramath.Sasanana sane abhi. 1-4
Above this world is three quarters of Purusha,
But the quarter, which is in this world,
Appears again and again,
And from that is born the beings that take food,
And those inanimate ones that don’t take food.
And all these appeared for every one of us to see
There is a profound Paradox here. On the one hand we see a human-like image: the source of creation displays a body of sorts, with heads, eyes, feet, a belly button, and a mind. But on the other hand, we also see that Purusha is higher than anything human: he is the origin of “past, present, and future”, and even of that which transcends time altogether as “the Lord of deathlessness” (1.2). The sense of paradox grows when we dig deeper into the characteristics of Purusha’s body, which itself shows a basic bifurcation into levels of subtle to gross, or heaven and earth.
The higher portion of Purusha’s body is “three quarters” of his total, which is said to be “above” the rest, “beyond destruction”, and residing “safely in the worlds beyond”. This aspect of his body is transcendent of temporality and the changes that characterize the manifest world. It comprises that which is not obviously seen, or that which needs to be revealed via the divine, or by intuition, logical inference, or some other trans-sensory means. It is an analog of heaven, and thus things like mathematics, scientific law, unity, etc.
The lower or manifest part of his body is “one quarter” of his total. This is body-as-substance, or the “stuff” of manifestation, the part that produces “all that we see in this universe”. Further, this lesser portion “appears again and again”: its substantiality is rhythmic, a fecund cyclicality of coming and going which produces the animates, inanimates, and the “scintillating, ever shining universe” as is proclaimed in 1.5.
As fractal images of the primordial man, all things in creation exhibit this substantial-cyclicality: everything in the lower realms is animated by/involved in the inherent rhythm of coming and going. For instance, at the level of the planets there are the celestial rhythms of sun and moon, and the seasonal changes that accompany them. At the level of the biosphere there is the birth, growth, and death of individual creatures; and even at the level of each individual creature, there are repetitive metabolic rhythms - breathing, digesting, excreting for instance - that function to regulate the lives of all “those that take food”. This lower “one quarter” of Purusha’s body is analogous to earth, and therefore to fertility, potentiality, diversity, novelty, etc.
What about the mediating force of sacrifice, which makes communication between the transcendent and the created possible? Strophe 1.8 begins to detail the sacrifice of the first man:
Tham yagnam barhisi prokshan. Purusham Jaatham agradha.
Thena deva ayajantha. Saadhya rushayasch ye. 1-8
Sprinkled they the Purusha,
Who was born first,
On that sacrificial fire.
And the sacrifice was conducted further,
By the Devas called Sadyas,
And the sages who were there.
Note that the sacrifice proceeds by ‘sprinkling’. This indicates that Purusha’s lower, visible, body (“one quarter” of his totality), in the form of a liquid oblation is offered to the fire. That his form is liquid here points to his filling the role of the soma in the ritual. Strophes 1.9 - 15 then detail the sequence of emergence that initiates as the heavens impress their secrets on the earth, which forms in response. Because the sacrifice is “all embracing” (sarva bhuta), everything comes from it. But most importantly, because his bodily form is an expression of the heavenly hierarchy (macrocosm), each of Purusha’s specific body-parts becomes a unique element of the created order, fulfilling a specific function:
Brahmanasya Mukham aseed.Bahu rajanya krutha.
Ooru tadasys yad vaisya. Padbhyo sudro aajayatha. 1-13
His face became Brahmins*,
His hands were made as Kshatriyas*,
His thighs became Vaisyas*,
And from his feet were born the Shudras*.
Chandrama manaso Jatha.Chaksho surya Ajayatha.
Mukhad Indras cha Agnis cha. Pranad Vayua aajayatha. 1-14
From his mind was born the moon,
From his eyes was born the sun,
From his face was born Indra and Agni,
And from his soul was born the air.
Nabhya aseed anthareeksham.seershno dhou samavarthatha.
Padbyam Bhoomi,, disaa srothrath.Tadha lokaa akampayan. 1-15
From his belly button was born the sky,
From his head was born the heavens,
From his feet was born the earth,
From his ears was born the directions,
And thus was made all the worlds,
Just by his holy wish.
Strophe 1.13 outlines the basics of the varna system, or the organization of the social world according to occupation. As expected, the structure here follows that hierarchical organization of its heavenly origin, and this is indicated by the order of the listing and the specific body part from which each occupation is derived. The basic sequence of emmanation presented here is telling: head, hands, thighs, feet.
In the ancient context, the head is the ruler of wise bodily existence: that is, it guides the attention and action of the other bodily constituents. If we look at 1.14 and 15, we see that all things derived from the head reflect this exalted status. So, from the head the heavens emerge, the dwelling place of all divine and celestial objects. The mind is the inner sense associated generally with the head, and it generates the moon, whose cycles show the rhythm of coming and going that is the waxing and waning of all living things. The eyes are the organ of sight, which is dependent on light, and so they produce the sun, which is the source of all light. The ears are the organ of distance because listening opens up inner space, and so they produce the 7 directions of up, down, front, back, right, left and the center, or within.
When the head, eyes, and ears are taken together we get the face, which is the locus of the human being’s identity, and from it emerge the priests (brahmins). The priests sit at the apex of the system because their business is revelation: they hear the Vedic hymns, commit them to memory, and chant them at the sacrifices. They know the contents and movements of the heavens, and particularly that of the moon, according to which the ceremonies are conducted. They are, so to speak, closest to heaven, and as such they embody the inherent sacredness of the cosmos on earth. This means the priests are to orient and steward the values and actions of the overall social organization, just as the head and face are to orient and steward the bodily senses and organs of action.
Following the path of emmanation downward, after the head/face come the hands, from which are born the kshatriyas, or the warrior kings. Whereas the priests are concerned primarily with heavenly things, the warrior kings are the first section of the social order to make selective contact with the world: hands are for grasping, caring, and fighting, and they must be kept clean: it is the hand that gathers food to the mouth in the head, and also the hands that protect the body as a whole, thus the warrior king acts as interface between the holiness of the priest and the mundane workings of the kingdom. The priests can know what is most valuable according to the revelation in the Vedas, but the king is responsible for hearing these things and implementing them in the culture, just as the head can know what is good for the body, but the hand must either grasp and appropriate that, or defend against that which threatens.
Next come the thighs, or the major supports for the entire body, from which are produced the Vaisyas, or what are generally known as the merchants and farmers. The primary task of the Vaisyas is to offer sacrifices for the priests to adjudicate, and to serve the king. As a group they preside over gift giving, agriculture, animal husbandry, and all forms of trade. A broad and vibrant commerce sector is crucial to the health of any culture because it provides the goods and services that each member of the culture needs to survive, and by extension it generates the employment opportunities that emerge as goods are harvested and distributed. Their scope of operation touches everyone. In this sense the Vaisyas provide the major supportive strucutre for the culture analogous to that provided for the body by the thighs.
The last traditional varna comprises the sudras, or the workers/laborers, who are born from Purusha’s feet, from which also comes the fundamental element of earth. The role of the sudra is primarily in the labor force, and in other cultures these people would be called peasants and artisans. Some texts described them as ‘givers of grain’, stating that the sudra makes money via “the sickle and ears of corn.” The connection between the earth element and agriculture here is obvious, as well is the fact that feet are that portion of the body that is always in contact with the earth. In this sense the sudra’s role in the culture is to produce things directly from contact with the earth. In this sense they are to the culture as the feet are to the body as a whole.
SUMMARY
When the microcosm is the macrocosm, everywhere one looks, one sees an image of the original divine body that is both the substance and function of all created things; and, conversely, when I see and experience myself, I see that I am structurally and functionally organized according to the same plan.
Looking up to the heavens reveals Purusha’s skull; the moon and sun are his mind and eyes, and the space in all directions his ears. Just so, my skull is the vault of heaven, and in it are contained the celestial objects of ideas, insights, and intuitions. My eyes and mind are images of the sun and moon, and my ears generate the sense of endless space when I can manage to listen.
We see his face in the leaders of the culture, the wise ones who bring together the myriad influences from heaven and form those into the laws and values which guide the structure and function of society. Just so, the expressions that animate my face, which are the synthesis of many things both seen and unseen, orient and structure my interactions with the others in my environment, allowing stable and functional relations to emerge.
We see his hands in those charged with protecting society and enforcing the laws that come from heaven. Just so my hands act to pull toward me the things that are needed for bodily integrity and flourishing, and to push away those things and relations which result in degradation or violence to my structure. His thighs are reflected in those that structure and mange the organized, stable flow of goods and services amongst the many sectors of the social order; likewise, my thighs undergird my gut, wherein many things are produced, bought, sold, and distributed amongst the various sectors of this bodily kingdom.
And finally we see his feet in the blue collar sector of the social organization: those who are in continual contact with ground level activity and production, who provide the dedicated offering of power which animates the overall structure, and the knowledge of how things are actually made from the most basic levels of existence. Likewise, my feet interface continually with the ground to carry the body toward what is seen, heard, and desired. As they move me, they provide specific feedback about the nature of the terrain over which I travel so that the higher sectors can adjust speed and attitude during the journey.
Because we are patterned on the structural functional organization of the heavenly, we recognize what we are. We know from where our form and our particular talents originate. We therefore know what to care about and what to do given our situation. And finally we know that proper relations between the members of the whole are facilitated by sacrifice, by action that nourishes and cherishes the purpose and nature of each part of the organization. The sacred cosmologies thus grant access to an inherent sense of belonging and participation in the whole that has all but been lost in the modern world, with the exception of those ways of being generated by traditional systems like Ayurveda, Yoga writ large, and shamanism for example. The consequences of this loss of orientation and purpose are many and profound, and will be one of the main topics of continuous exploration in future discussions.