Book: The scriptures; learning or gaining understanding; revelation that can only come from God or man's wisdom; acquired information; instruction; important register; book of law; Book of Life; book of God's judgment; scroll: can be prophecy; eating is receiving the Word or whatever is written on what you are eating; genealogies; recorded miracles. (Dan. 7:10; Rev. 3:5; 1:11; 18:8; 17:8; 0:12; Ez. 2: 03-sep:3; Heb. 12:23; Josh. 1:8; 18:9; Mal. 3:16-18; 2 Kings 22:8; Ez. 3:1-3; Num. 21:14; Gen. 23:40-43; 5:1)

(Source: Tehillah Ministries)

Related pages: Christian Dream Interpretation, Dream Symbols, Dream Interpretation, Dream Symbol Book, Dream Dictionary Book, Meaning of dreams about Book, Dream Interpretation Book, Dream Analysis Book, Dreaming of Book

book, the scriptures, scriptures, learning, gaining understanding, understanding, revelation, god, god's wisdom, man's wisdom, acquired information, information, instruction, register, book of law, book of life, book of god's judgment, scroll: prophecy, eating, receiving, the word, written, eating, genealogies, recorded miracles, miracles,

faith: Trust or belief. Conviction. From the Latin fides, "trust." Faith in its broadest sense means "religion, dharma." More specifically, it is the essential element of religion-the belief in phenomena beyond the pale of the five senses, distinguishing it sharply from rationalism.

Faith is established through intuitive or transcendent experience of an individual, study of scripture and hearing the testimony of the many wise rishis speaking out the same truths over thousands of years. This inner conviction is based in the divine sight of the third eye center, ajna chakra.

Rightly founded, faith transcends reason, but does not conflict with reason. Faith also means confidence, as in the testimony and reputation of other people. The Sanskrit equivalent is shraddha. Synonyms include astikya, vishvasa, dharma and mati.

(See also: Faith , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Ramayana

"The most ancient Sanskrit epic poem, written by the sage Valmiki. It is estimated to have been composed about 500 B.C., and contains approximately 50,000 lines. The Ramayana describes the life of Sri Rama: his banishment from Ayodhya; life in the forest with his faithful wife Sita; Sita's abduction by Ravana; the war of Rama and his allies against Ravana; defeat of Ravana and rescue of Sita; Rama's return to Ayodhya as ruler; slander of Sita by the people of Ayodhya and her banishment from the kingdom; her subsequent exoneration and final ascent to heaven, where she is joined by Rama."

-- Ramakrishna-Vedanta Wordbook

"The Ramayana is a work of the same essential kind as the Mahabharata; it differs only by a greater simplicity of plan, a more delicate ideal temperament and a finer glow of poetic warmth and colour. The main bulk of the poem in spite of much accretion is evidently by a single hand and has a less complex and more obvious unity of structure. There is less of the philosophic, more of the purely poetic mind, more of the artist, less of the builder. The whole story is from beginning to end of one piece and there is no deviation from the stream of the narrative. At the same time there is a like vastness of vision, an even more wide-winged flight of epic sublimity in the conception and sustained richness of minute execution in the detail.

...The eopic poet has taken here also as his subject an Itihasa, an ancient tale or legend associated with an old Indian dynasty and filled it in with detail from myth and folklore, but has exalted all into a scale of grandiose epic figure that it may bear more worthily the high intention and significance. The subject is the same as in the Mahabharata,, the strife of the divine with the titanic forces in the life of the earth, but in more purely ideal forms, in frankly supernatural dimensions and an imaginative heightening of both the good and the evil in human character. On one side is portrayed an ideal manhood, a divine beauty of virtue and ethical order, a civilization founded on the Dharma and realising an exaltation of the moral ideal which is presented with a singularly strong appeal of aesthetic grace and harmony and sweetness; on the other are wild and anarchic and almost amorphous forces of superhuman egoism and self-will and exultant violence, and the two ideas and powers of mental nature living and embodied are brought into conflict and led to a decisive issue of the victory of the divine man over the Rakshasa. All shade and complexity are omitted which would diminish the single urity of the idea, the representative force in the outline of the figures, the significance of the temperamental colour and only so much admitte as is sufficient to humanise the appeal and the significance.

The poet makes us conscious of the immense forces that are behind our life and sets his action in a magnificent epic scenery, the great imperial city, the mountains and ocean, the forest and wilderness, described with such a largeness as to make us feel as if the whole world were the scene of his poem and its subject the whole divine and titanic possibility of man imaged in a few great or monstrous figures. The ethical and the aesthetic mind of India have here fused themselves into a harmonious unity and reached an unexampled pure wideness and beauty of self-expression. The Ramayana embodied for the Indian imagination its highest and tenderest human ideals of character, made strength and courage and gentleness and purity and fidelity and self-sacrifice familiar to it in the suavest and most harmonious forms..."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture,

SABCL Vol 14 pp. 289-90

(See also: Ramayana , Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Vedas

Veda is a generic name for the most ancient Indian sacred literature, i.e. the Rg-veda, Yajur-veda, Sama-veda and Atharva-veda. Each of these books is divided into two portions, mantra and brahmana. The term Veda is generally reserved for the mantras or metrical hymns, especially those of the Rg-veda. Sri Aurobindo has translated and/or commented on many of the Vedic hymns. Most of his writings related to the Vedas have been collected in Volumes 10 and 11of the Sri Aurobindo Birth Centenary Library(SABCL), The Secret of the Veda, and Hymns to the Mystic Fire.

"I propose...that the Rig-Veda is itself the one considerable document that remains to us from the early period of human thought of which the historic Eleusinian and Orphic mysteries were the failing remnants, when the spiritual and psychological knowledge of the race was concealed, for reasons now difficult to determine, in a veil of concrete and material figures and symbols which protected the sense from the profane and revealed it to the initiated. One of the leading principles of the mystics was the sacredness and secrecy of self-knowledge and the true knowledge of the Gods.

The Veda...is an inspired knowledge as yet insufficiently equipped with intellectual and philosophical terms. We find a language of poets and illuminates to whom all experience is real, vivid, sensible, even concrete, not yet of thinkers and sytematisers to whom the realities of the mind and soul have become abstractions.

The Vedic Rishis believed that their Mantras were inspired from higher planes of consciousness and contained this secret knowledge. The words of the Veda could only be known in their true meaning by one who was himself a seer or mystic; from others the verses withheld their hidden knowledge.

Many of the lines, many whole hymns even of the Veda bear on their face a mystic meaning; they are evidently an occult form of speech, have an inner meaning.

Under pressure of the necessity to mask their meaning with symbols and symbolic words...the Rishis resorted to fix double meanings, a device easily manageable in the Sanskrit language where one word often bears several different meanings, but not easy to render in an English translation and very often impossible....The Rishis, it must be remembered, were seers as well as sages, they were men of vision who saw things in their meditation in images, often symbolic images which might precede or accompany an experience and put it in a concrete form, might predict or give an occult body to it. ...The mystics were and normally are symbolists, they can even see all physical things and happenings as symbols of inner truths and realities, even their outer selves, the outer happenings of their life and all around them."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Secret of the Veda, SABCL Vol. 10

(See also: Vedas , Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Mahabharata

"[The Mahabharata] is...probably the longest single poem in the world's literature. Traditionally the author of the poem was the sage Vyasa, who is said to have taught it to his pupil Vaisampayana. The latter, according to tradition, recited it in public for the first time at a great sacrifice held by King Janamejaya, the great grandson of Arjuna, one of the heroes of the story. ...the poem tells of the great civil war in the kingdom of the Kurus, in the region about the modern Delhi, then known as Kuruksetra."

-- A.L. Basham, The Wonder That Was India, p. 407

"The Mahabharata is the creation and expression not of a single individual mind, but of a whole people. ...The whole poem has been built like a vast national temple unrolling slowly its immense and complex idea from chanber to chamber, crowded with significant groups and sculptures and inscriptions, the grouped figures carved in divine or semi-divine proportions, a humanity aggrandised and half-uplifted to super-humanity and yet always true to the human motive and idea and feeling, the strain of the real constantly raised by the tones of the ideal, the life of this world amply portrayed but subjected to the conscious influence and presence of the powers of the worlds behind it, and the whole unified by the long embodied procession of a consistent idea worked out in the wide steps of the poetic story."

"The leading motive is the Indian idea of the Dharma. Here the Vedic notion of the struggle between the godheads of truth and light and unity and the powers of darkness and division and falsehood is brought out from the spiritual and religious and internal into the outer intellectual, ethical and vital plane. It takes there in the figure of the story a double form of a personal and a political struggle, the personal a conflict between typical and representative personalities embodying the greater ethical ideals of the Indian Dharma and others who are embodiments of Asuric egoism and self-will and misuse of the Dharma, the political a battle in which the personal struggle culminates, an international clash ending in the establishment of a new rule of righteiousness and justice, a kingdom or rather an empire of the Dharma uniting warring races and substituting for the ambitious arrogance of kings and aristocratic clans the supremacy, the calm and peace of a just and humane empire. It is the old struggle of Deva and Asura, God and Titan, but represented in the terms of human life."

-- Sri Aurobindo, The Foundations of Indian Culture, SABCL Vol.14 pp. 287-88

(See also: Mahabharata , Hinduism, Vedic Scriptures, Yoga, Body Mind and Soul)

Fundamental darkness

(Jpn.: gampon-no-mumyo)

Also, fundamental ignorance or primal ignorance. The most deeply rooted illusion inherent in life, said to give rise to all other illusions. Darkness in this sense means inability to see or recognize the truth, particularly, the true nature of one's life.

The term fundamental darkness is contrasted with the fundamental nature of enlightenment, which is the Buddha nature inherent in life.

According to the Shrimala Sutra, fundamental darkness is the most difficult illusion to surmount and can be eradicated only by the wisdom of the Buddha. T'ien-t'ai (538-597) interprets darkness as illusion that prevents one from realizing the truth of the Middle Way, and divides such illusion into forty-two types, the last of which is fundamental darkness. This illusion is only extirpated when one attains the stage of perfect enlightenment, the last of the fifty-two stages of bodhisattva practice.

Nichiren (1222-1282) interprets fundamental darkness as ignorance of the ultimate Law, or ignorance of the fact that one's life is essentially a manifestation of that Law, which he identifies as Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. In The Treatment of Illness, Nichiren states: "The heart of the Lotus school is the doctrine of three thousand realms in a single moment of life, which reveals that both good and evil are inherent even in those at the highest stage of perfect enlightenment.

The fundamental nature of enlightenment manifests itself as Brahma and Shakra, whereas the fundamental darkness manifests itself as the devil king of the sixth heaven". Nichiren thus regards fundamental darkness as latent even in the enlightened life of the Buddha, and the devil king of the sixth heaven as a manifestation or personification of life's fundamental darkness. The Record of the Orally Transmitted Teachings reads, "Belief is a sharp sword that cuts off fundamental darkness or ignorance."

(See also: Fundamental darkness , Enlightenment, Buddhism Enlightenment, Buddhism Enlightenment Dictionary)

Tiruvasagam: (Tamil) "Holy Utterances."

The lyrical Tamil scripture by Saint Manikkavasagar (ca 850). Considered one of the most profound and beautiful devotional works in the Tamil language, it discusses every phase of the spiritual path from doubt and anguish to perfect faith in God Siva, from earthly experience to the guru-disciple relationship and freedom from rebirth. The work is partly autobiographical, describing how Manikkavasagar, the prime minister to the Pandyan King, renounced the world after experiencing an extraordinary vision of Siva seated beneath a tree. The 658 hymns of Tiruvasagam together with the 400 hymns of Tirukovaiyar by the same author make up the eighth Tirumurai of Saiva Siddhanta scripture.

See: Manikkavasagar, Tirumurai.

(See also: Tiruvasagam , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

In the stillness of the night, when not a sound breaks the hushed silence, they timorously creep into your mind. Fragile, flittering forms—often more real than reality—seek you out from the deepest abyss of your soul and open for you a vista of visions—nonsensical, terrifying, fantastic—and sometimes, just sometimes, hauntingly beautiful. You wake up with a lump in your throat that threatens to cascade down your eyes, a lingering nostalgia for something near, yet eternity away. But weren't you closer to believing, even then, that somewhere, all that you saw was real; that, beyond the tangible truth of ticking time, you had lived one moment of timeless infinity? Perhaps that's the secret. The chance to glimpse beyond. Why else should we take a dream, those phantasms of the chaotic unconscious, so seriously?

Read more here: » Meaning of Dreams: Dream Works

Buddhism: Basic Buddhist Dictionary

A basic dictionary of Buddhism terms. Please note that all words in grey like " Buddhism " are links to an archive with related articles.

Zen Buddhism: Zen Buddhist Dictionary

A dictionary of Zen Buddhism terms. Please note that all words in grey like " Buddhism " are links to an archive with related articles.

Saiva Agamas: (Sanskrit) The sectarian revealed scriptures of the Saivas. Strongly theistic, they identify Siva as the Supreme Lord, immanent and transcendent. They are in two main divisions: the 64 Kashmir Saiva Agamas and the 28 Saiva Siddhanta Agamas. The latter group are the fundamental sectarian scriptures of Saiva Siddhanta. Of these, ten are of the Sivabheda division and are considered dualistic: 1) Kamika, 2) Yogaja, 3) Chintya, 4) Karana, 5) Ajita, 6) Dipta, 7) Sukshma, 8) Sahasraka, 9) Amshumat and 10) Suprabheda.

There are 18 in the Rudrabheda group, classed as dual-nondual: 11) Vijaya, 12) Nihshvasa, 13) Svayambhuva, 14) Anala, 15) Vira (Bhadra), 16) Raurava, 17) Makuta, 18) Vimala, 19) Chandrajnana (or Chandrahasa), 20) Mukhabimba (or Bimba), 21) Prodgita (or Udgita), 22) Lalita, 23) Siddha, 24) Santana, 25) Sarvokta (Narasimha), 26) Parameshvara, 27) Kirana and 28) Vatula (or Parahita).

Rishi Tirumular, in his Tirumantiram, refers to 28 Agamas and mentions nine by name. Eight of these - Karana, Kamika, Vira, Chintya, Vatula, Vimala, Suprabheda and Makuta - are in the above list of 28 furnished by the French Institute of Indology, Pondicherry. The ninth, Kalottara, is presently regarded as an Upagama, or secondary text, of Vatula. The Kamika is the Agama most widely followed in Tamil Saiva temples, because of the availability of Aghorasiva's manual-commentary (paddhati) on it. Vira Saivites especially refer to the Vatula and Vira Agamas.

The Saiva Agama scriptures, above all else, are the connecting strand through all the schools of Saivism. The Agamas themselves express that they are entirely consistent with the teachings of the Veda, that they contain the essence of the Veda, and must be studied with the same high degree of devotion.

See: Agamas, Vedas.

(See also: Saiva Agamas , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

smriti: (Sanskrit) "That which is remembered; the tradition."

Hinduism's nonrevealed, secondary but deeply revered scriptures, derived from man's insight and experience. Smriti speaks of secular matters - science, law, history, agriculture, etc. - as well as spiritual lore, ranging from day-to-day rules and regulations to superconscious outpourings.

1)    The term smriti refers to a specific collection of ancient Sanskritic texts as follows: the six or more Vedangas, the four Upavedas, the two Itihasas, and the 18 main Puranas. Among the Vedangas, the Kalpa Vedanga defines codes of ritual in the Shrauta and Shulba Shastras, and domestic-civil laws in the Grihya and Dharma Shastras. Also included as classical smriti are the founding sutras of six ancient philosophies called shad darshana (Sankhya, Yoga, Nyaya, Vaisheshika, Mimamsa and Vedanta).

2)    In a general sense, smriti may refer to any text other than shruti (revealed scripture) that is revered as scripture within a particular sect. From the vast body of sacred literature, shastra, each sect and school claims its own preferred texts as secondary scripture, e.g., the Ramayana of Vaishnavism and Smartism, or the Tirumurai of Saiva Siddhanta. Thus, the selection of smriti varies widely from one sect and lineage to another.

See: Mahabharata, Ramayana, Tirumurai.

(See also: Smriti , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Inspiration

The belief that human actions of extraordinary insight, worth or power are due to inspiration - an inflow of psychic force, life-giving breath. The idea of inspiration in Christian theology may be traced to Hebrew prophecy and to Greek philosophy.

The most important theological problems of inspiration concern the subjects, the sources, the means and the criteria of true inspiration as distinguished from false, rather than the reality if inspiration itself.

The question of the proper subject of inspiration - whether a person, a community or a book may properly be said to be inspired - has been greatly confused in history by getting involved in the problem of church authority,. thus the doctrine of the inspiration of scriptures was largely developed to secure the Roman church against Protestantism when the Protestants made claims the inspiration for their special leaders.

The doctrine that ecumenical councils or popes are inspired when speaking on matters of faith and morals was developed partly to deal with the Protestants' rigid scriptural “const itutionalism”. The problem of the source of inspiration was raised in Hebrew thought by the appearance of false prophecy, and by the consequent question for monotheism in what sense such inspiration came from God. In Christian theology the questions were to what extent the inspiring principle in the Godhead was distinct from the creating and redeeming principle, in what sense it proceeded from one or both of these. The question about the means of inspiration has been dealt with indirectly and in confusion with the question of subject and criteria.

The orthodox Protestant and Catholic churches have emphasized the importance of Scriptures, of church discipline and instruction as the ordinary means through which inspiration comes.

Mystic and sectarian groups have shown a larger interest in other means - asceticism, the practice of silence, etc. In the Protestant doctrine of the “testimony ~ the Holy Spirit”” which must accompany the reading of the word if there is to be true inspiration and in Roman as well as Eastern Catholic acceptance of monasticism the great churches have made some approach to the interests of the sects and mysticism.

Among the criteria employed by religious thought to distinguish true from false inspiration the most important are:

1)    the consistency of the product of inspiration not only in itself but also and primarily with accepted norms, i. e. , with the moral laws, the “spirit of Jesus Christ,” the Scriptures, the common understanding of the community.

2)    the test of true inspiration is the truth of prediction. This test, which the basis of modern science, has been used apologetically rather than critically, to validate the inspiration of scriptures, as in the argument from prophecy”;

3)    disinterestedness, that is the extent to which personal interests and opinions are absent or negated in the “inspired” utterance; in the extreme form,

4)    Intelligibility might be added as a fourth criterion of the validity of inspiration though not a test of its truth, since the unintelligible cannot be said to be true or false. Also, the Protestant doctrine that the Bible was written by the influence of God. It is, therefore, without error. It is accurate and authoritatively represents God's teachings. It is an illumination in that it shows us what we could not know apart from it. Believers know that the Bible is inspired, because it says so.

(See also: Inspiration , New Age Spirituality, Body Mind and Soul)

Veda: (Sanskrit) "Wisdom." Sagely revelations which

comprise Hinduism's most authoritative scripture. They, along with the Agamas, are shruti, "that which is heard."

The Vedas are a body of dozens of holy texts known

collectively as the Veda, or as the four Vedas: Rig, Yajur,

Sama and Atharva. In all they include over 100,000

verses, as well as additional prose. The knowledge

imparted by the Vedas is highly mystical or

superconscious rather than intellectual. Each Veda has

four sections: Samhitas (hymn collections), Brahmanas

(priestly manuals), Aranyakas (forest treatises) and

Upanishads (enlightened discourses). The Samhitas and

Brahmanas (together known as the karmakanda, "ritual

section") detail a transcendent-immanent Supreme-Being

cosmology and a system of worship through fire ceremony

and chanting to establish communication with the Gods.

The Aranyakas and Upanishads (the jnanakanda,

"knowledge section") outline the soul's evolutionary

journey, providing yogic-philosophic training and

propounding a lofty, nondual realization as the destiny of

all souls. The oldest portions of the Vedas are thought to

date back as far as 6,000 bce, written down in Sanskrit in

the last few millennia, making them the world's most

ancient scriptures.

See: Aranyaka, Brahmana, shruti,

Upanishad, Vedanga.

(See also: Veda , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Dove Bird symbols play a prominent part in cosmogonic systems. In the Biblical deluge, as a blend of cosmic and precosmic allegories, Noah sends out first a raven, symbolizing darkness which was regarded as prior to light; and then a dove.

In the Chaldean version, Noah is represented by Ishtar or Ashtoreth -- a lunar goddess corresponding in some respects to Artemis and in others to Venus -- and the dove is a symbol of Venus, which is also found in Greek mythology. In several nations the dove also symbolizes the soul.

In Christianity, the dove is a symbol of the Holy Ghost, who appears in that form to Jesus at his baptism. It is also often one of the four sacred animals which denote four important human principles along with the bull, the eagle, and the lion.

These four animals in Greek mystic mythology are symbols respectively of the planets Venus, the Moon, Mercury (or Jupiter), and the Sun; but it is more properly here a seraph or cherub, the fiery-winged serpent or Agathodaimon. As a symbol of gentleness and love it is frequent in the Hebrew scriptures.

(See also: Dove , Mysticism, Mysticism Dictionary, Occultism, Occultism Dictionary)

shruti: (Sanskrit) "That which is heard."

Hinduism's revealed scriptures, of supreme theological authority and spiritual value. They are timeless teachings transmitted to rishis, or seers, directly by God thousands of years ago. Shruti is thus said to be apaurusheya, "impersonal," or rather "suprahuman."

Shruti consists essentially of the Vedas and the Agamas, preserved initially through oral tradition and eventually written down in Sanskrit. Among the many sacred books of the Hindus, these two bodies of knowledge are held in the highest esteem. For countless centuries shruti has been the basis of philosophical discussion, study and commentary, and this attention has given rise to countless schools of thought. It is also the subject of deep study and meditation, to realize the wisdom of the ancients within oneself.

Most mantras are drawn from shruti, used for rites of worship, both public and domestic, as well as personal prayer and japa. It is a remarkable tribute to Hindu culture that so much of shruti was preserved for thousands of years without alteration by means of oral instruction from guru to shishya, generation after generation. In the Veda tradition this was accomplished by requiring the student to learn each verse in eleven different ways, including backwards. Traditionally shruti is not read, but chanted according to extremely precise rules of grammar, pitch, intonation and rhythm. This brings forth its greatest power. In the sacred language of shruti, word and meaning are so closely aligned that hearing these holy scriptures properly chanted is magical in its effect upon the soul of the listener.

See: Agamas, smriti, Vedas.

(See also: Shruti , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

Sanskrit (Sanskrita): (Sanskrit) "Well-made; refined, perfected."

The classical sacerdotal language of ancient India, considered a pure vehicle for communication with the celestial worlds. It is the primary language in which Hindu scriptures are written, including the Vedas and Agamas. Employed today as a liturgical, literary and scholarly language, but no longer used as a spoken vernacular.

(See also: Sanskrit , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

tantra: (Sanskrit) "Loom, methodology."

1)    Most generally, a synonym for shastra, "scripture."

2)    A synonym for the Agamic texts, especially those of the Shakta faith, a class of Hindu scripture providing detailed instruction on all aspects of religion, mystic knowledge and science. The tantras are also associated with the Saiva tradition.

3)    A specific method, technique or spiritual practice within the Saiva and Shakta traditions. For example, pranayama is a tantra. Tantra generally involves a reversal of the normal flow of energies. Its perspective is that the inner self is most important, and outer life is secondary. Tantra causes the life force to flow up through the sushumna. Many are the methods for overcoming the unovercomeable. Fallen into the hands of the unscrupulous, these techniques become black magic (abhichara).

(See also: Tantra , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

sexuality: Hinduism has a healthy, unrepressed outlook on human sexuality, and sexual pleasure is part of kama, one of the four goals of life.

On matters such as birth control, sterilization, masturbation, homosexuality, bisexuality, petting and polygamy, Hindu scripture is tolerantly silent, neither calling them sins nor encouraging their practice, neither condemning nor condoning.

The two important exceptions to this understanding view of sexual experience are adultery and abortion, both of which are considered to carry heavy karmic implications for this and future births.

See: abortion, bisexuality, homosexuality.

(See also: Sexuality , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)

three worlds: The three worlds of existence, triloka, are the primary hierarchical divisions of the cosmos.

-       Bhuloka: "Earth world," the physical plane.

-       Antarloka: "Inner or in-between world," the subtle or astral plane.

-       Sivaloka: "World of Siva," and of the Gods and highly evolved souls; the causal plane, also called Karanaloka.

The three-world cosmology is readily found in Hindu scriptures. In the major Upanishads of the Vedas we find numerous citations, with interesting variations. Verse 1.5.17 of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad states, "Now, there are, verily, three worlds, the world of men (Manushyaloka), the world of the fathers (Pitriloka) and the world of the Gods (Devaloka)..." Later, verse 6.2.15 refers to the two higher worlds as the Devaloka and the Brahmaloka. The Katha Upanishad, verse 2.3.8, omitting the world of men, lists the Pitriloka, the Gandharvaloka (world of genies or elementals) and the Brahmaloka (world of God). Another perspective of three worlds is offered in the Prashna Upanishad 3.8, which lists the world of good (Punyaloka), the world of evil (Papaloka) and the world of men (Manushyaloka).

Scriptures offer several other cosmological perspectives, most importantly seven upper worlds (sapta urdhvaloka) and seven lower worlds (sapta adholoka), which correspond to the 14 chakras and make up the "world-egg of God," the universe, called Brahmanda. The seven upper worlds are Bhuloka, Bhuvarloka, Svarloka, Maharloka, Janaloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka. The second, third and fourth comprise the subtle plane. The highest three comprise the causal plane. The seven lower worlds, collectively known as Naraka or Patala, are (from highest to lowest) Put, Avichi, Samhata, Tamisra, Rijisha, Kudmala and Kakola. From the Saiva Agamic perspective of the 36 tattvas, the pure sphere, shuddha maya - the first five tattvas - is subdivided into 33 planes of existence. The "pureimpure" realm, shuddhashuddha maya - the seven tattvas from maya tattva to purusha - contains 27 planes of existence. The ashuddha ("impure") realm - of 24 tattvas - has 56 planes of existence.

See: chakra, loka, Naraka, tattva (also: individual loka entries).

(See also: Three worlds , Hinduism, Body Mind and Soul)