Stories from the Bhagavata Purana: Part I

            There’s a fascinating Hindu creation story in the Bhagavata Purana which Swamiji recently brought to my attention.  The Bhagavata is a rather long Vaishnava work, mostly detailing Vishnu’s (as Krishna) various incarnations but containing a wealth of other stories.  The 8^th Skanda, or Canto, called “Withdrawal of the Cosmic Creations” is particularly interesting to me, as it contains the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk.  You may have heard of it before, but I’d like to analyze it in a bit more depth.  It’s an important story, often told in a simplified form to children, but it is also a rich source of traditional exegesis, as well plenty of fodder for my own more modern interpretation.  I’ll retell part of the story here, and hopefully we’ll get at some of the underlying archetypal currents.  Before I get to the Milk story however, I’d like to start with the opening of the Canto, which superficially seems to have rather little to do with the rest of it (other than establishing the setting), but is very valuable in its own right.

            The Canto begins with the depiction of a setting much resembling Paradise, or the Primal Garden.  It is a mountain of three peaks rising out of an Ocean of Milk.  In this “garden” there is perfect harmony, lots of beautiful flowers, and peace among the inhabitants.  This peace is largely due to the power of the Elephant King Gajendra, who protects the small animals from the larger.  One day, he comes across a pool of refreshing water, and being a family man, brings his family along for a dip and drink on the hot day.  Being lost in the thoughts of his family, his foot is grabbed by a crocodile in the water.  All the other elephants come to help, but they can’t drag Gajendra out, as none is as at home in the water as the Crocodile.  Gajendra, realizing that no one can help him, surrenders himself to the Supreme One, and in so doing so is saved, the Crocodile being cut in half by the Lord’s power.  He then goes about the island praising the Lord, doing mantra and sacrificing, etc.  He then receives the further grace of remembering his past incarnation (something not normally allowed to animals) as a ascetic yogi who in meditation failed to rise to greet an ancient Rishi (seer), and was thus cursed by him to incarnate as an elephant.  He is then taken up as an associate of Krishna, and is allowed to ride upon the back of Garuda, the King of the Eagles.

            The story completely shifts course after this, but before I go further, I want to take apart what we’ve already seen.  Firstly, the Garden is the primal creation, the world before the Fall in the Abrahamic religions. It represents a state of innocence, and we can interpret the myth of the Fall as an awakening to consciousness - the eating from the tree of knowledge, prompted by that wise old serpent (that's the gnostic interpretation anyway).  In the Bhagavata, there's a similar "bliss in ignorance" (as we see, the elephant does not really know his own nature at first), and everything appears harmonious and without conflict. 

            As we have seen, the harmony is partially based on the efforts of Gajendra, the elephant King.  Things appear orderly, but we know there's more in the world than the innocent elephants know, and not all of it is good. The elephant is the traditional Indian symbol for the earth element and the root chakra, being large, physically powerful, and as immovable as a mountain. The elephant is stability, has ties to our roots (an elephant never forgets), and here the King of the Elephants is also described as a house-holder, connecting him with family life (the in-group, or tribe).  It is this that gets him in trouble, the text tells us.  By enjoying his family he is distracted and fails to notice the danger in the water.  He is, we might say, unconscious of it.  Water here is a crucial symbol, one which C.G. Jung never fails to connect to the unconscious and the irrational part of us that lurks under the surface.  It is an ambivalent symbol, as the unconscious is so incomprehensibly vast.  It is the nourishing, sustaining, life-giving water, the font of renewal (baptism), the creative power, as well as the keeper of our secrets, the place where our Shadow dwells, and can be full of unexpected dangers, symbolized by the Crocodile.  Gajendra brings his family to the water to rest and relax, to restore from the hot day.  Water also represents the feminine or relational quality (usually unconscious in men), which appears as Gajendra’s distraction by the familial relationships.  He is unable to see what lurks under the calm surface.  We may remember the Greek Narcissus, who caught his own image (the reflection in his unconscious, his persona) in the water, was fascinated and drowned.  Here, the elephant, the strongest of beasts, is caught as well, and begins a mighty struggle to extricate himself.  But, not being a water animal (the conscious ego is not the native inhabitant of the unconscious), he can’t free himself under his own power.  Neither can outside forces help him.  It is only by surrender to a higher power, a Redeemer, which Jung would call the image of the complete Self (not in the sense of the soul or atman, but in the sense of the totality of the psyche, conscious plus unconscious), that he is able to get free.  We might say that he then “gets some religion.”  His further grace of remembering his past incarnation is also worth commenting on.  He was once human, and because he was too lofty a yogi (who couldn’t even bother to pay attention to his surroundings – life on Earth), was given an animal form, specifically the symbolic animal of the Earth.  In other words, he is made to descend.  But by his struggle in the waters, he is uplifted, and his ego is understood and transcended. He ceases to identify merely with the conscious ego, but with more of his whole Self.

            The lowest chakra is the Muladhara, or "root support" Chakra, and in Hindu mythology the world is said to be supported by elephants, and they symbolize Earth.  The second chakra is connected to water, and is emotional and fascinating (sex is an important association).  So we see here Gajendra stepping up into the second chakra, symbolized by being pulled into the water.  After his struggle, he dedicates himself to spiritual work, what we might call tapas.  This is connected to the internal flame of motivation and purification (Sulphur in alchemy), and the fiery 3^rd or egotic chakra.  By grace he is given knowledge of past lives, which effectively overthrows the limited egotic point of view (psychologically, we might say he becomes aware of other 'selves').  He recognizes that he is a high soul, who, because of past karma, has been brought low (to the earth).  By this, he is upraised by Krishna, who is said to rule the heart, and is given the privilege of riding upon the back of the Eagle King Garuda, a clear symbol of air. Air is the element of the 4th or heart chakra.  We may say, in total, that the story of Gajendra is the story of a man who rises high spiritually, but who is forced to “come back down to earth” before he may once again ascend, this time higher than before.  For many of us, this is what working with the chakra system is like.  It makes you start at the beginning, to get humble and dirty down in the gritty earth, before we can rise up again on the back of Garuda the Eagle. 

            I bring up the chakras because I’ll be starting a 7 week Chakra Cycle in my Sunday 10am Open Level Flow with Meditation class next week (4/10).  I hope to include a post on each of the Chakras as we progress through each, and it is helpful to understand them as symbols associated with very real psychic contents.  Stories like the above can be very useful in understanding the psychic processes that can result from meditation on these powerful symbols.  As this post has gotten lengthy, I’ll break it up and discuss the Ocean of Milk next time.