The word sarva contains three letters: sa, ra, and va. Sa means sattvaguńa [sentient force], ra means “energy”, and va means “nature” or characteristics. The world is composed of these three and they exist in Parama Puruśa. For this reason the final container of everything is Parama Puruśa. For instance, I create an elephant in my thoughts; certainly I know it as well. In the same way, Parama Puruśa is the knower of the entire universe. Parama Puruśa, however, is not the knower of the universe in the same sense that we knowingly perceive external objects. Ordinarily the easy knowledge that a person acquires about external objects comes through the medium of his or her sense organs. One gets that knowledge by coming in contact with a certain object. However, for Parama Puruśa there is no external object. Everything is internal. So the term “knowledge” as it applies to human beings does not apply to Parama Puruśa.

Parama Puruśa is the lord of both heaven and hell. For this reason it is said that everything is held within Him; nothing is outside Him. There is, in fact, no separate region such as heaven or hell. A spiritual aspirant is established in heaven or eternity by performing spiritual sadhana. This means that vidyámáyá [cosmic centripetal force] has two forces, samvit and hládinii. Through samvit a human being earns knowledge, moving away from the darkness of ignorance; through samvit humans move towards the life. Áhláda means “bliss”. Since Parama Puruśa is the blissful entity, as a result of samvit the experience of bliss appears within the human being. Gradually he or she reaches satyaloka and beyond that the human merges and becomes one with the ultimate blissful entity situated one of far shore of satyaloka [the causal world of macrocosm].⁽¹⁾ In one words, a person who performs spiritual sadhana advances towards Parama Puruśa, and that peaceful heavenly abode where Parama Puruśa resides is obtained.

What is degradation? The divine effulgence earned through the performance of spiritual sadhana dispels the darkness of the spiritual aspirant’s mind. And the moment we turn away from sadhana that darkness comes back to our mind to stay and our mind gradually advances towards deeper darkness. Thus in our gurupújá mantra the guru is the one who banishes that darkness of ignorance which befools our eyes and which arises as a result of our mind’s movement towards darkness. So, the guru is not a spatial entity. One who moves towards Parama Puruśa moves towards the world of knowledge.

Just as vidyámáyá has two forces, avidyámáyá [cosmic centrifugal force] also has two forces, vikśepa and ávarańii. The more a living being moves towards darkness, the more they gradually forget their true nature, their actual source. They think themselves to be separate from the Supreme Being and gradually they move towards deeper and deeper darkness. This is referred to as the living being’s movement towards darkness. However Parama Puruśa is everywhere. We have heard this in the Mahabharata. Since this is entirely the divine drama of one Parama Puruśa, wherever one goes, be it heaven or hell, their momentum comes from Parama Puruśa.

Footnotes

(1) This creation is divided into seven strata called lokas; the highest is satyaloka, the causal world of the Macrocosm. –Trans.