You may have heard of Creatio ex Nihlo (creation out of nothing), but have you ever heard of Creatio ex Lactis (creation out of milk)? That’s my subject for today – the story of the Churning of the Ocean of Milk, which is usually understood as a creation story but has much more to it than that. It is a bit more elaborate than the Gajendra story, so please pardon the length of the post. First, my synopsis (complete text here):
Picking up where we left off in my last post, the paradise-like mount Mandara (Meru) floats in an ocean of milk. After the Gajendra tale we discussed, the devas (“shining ones,” or Gods) and the asuras (demons) end up fighting a terrible war. The Supreme Deity (Brahman the absolute, symbolized here as Vishnu) calls up Shiva and Brahma (the creator god, not to be confused with Brahman, the impersonal absolute) and suggests that to stop the war they convince both sides to join forces for a truly epic task: churning the ocean of milk to find the mythic amṛta (pronounced ‘amrita’), or nectar of immortality. Mṛta means death, and when you add an ‘a’ in Sanskrit, it reverses the meaning (like theist becoming atheist). The amṛta then is the essence of life itself, the divine ambrosia which makes whomever drinks it immortal. There are parallel European myths, such as the Norse Idunn with her youth maintaining golden apples, and more closely the ambrosia of the Greek Gods, with which there is a clear linguistic connection.
Who doesn’t want eternal youth? Demons and gods both are excited about the prospect, so the war is quickly suspended and both the good guys and bad guys team up to churn the ocean. Vishnu’s great serpent (called ananta, or "endless") uproots the great mountain so that they can use it as the dasher to churn the milk, and he also acts as the rope they use to rotate the mountain. The mountain immediately starts to sink, but Vishnu is there in a pinch and holds it up by becoming a giant turtle. The assembled forces then begin to churn the ocean.
The first thing that happens is that an intense heat is generated, so that the gods can barely continue. Also, the churning awakens the various nasties living in the milky “waters” – crocodiles and serpents especially. The workers appeal to Vishnu, gives them the strength to persevere.
Now the churning starts to bear its fruit. Although in the story 14 different things come up, I'm going to limit myself to talking about the main three. First comes the hālahala, a terrible fatal poison which threatens to spoil everything and poison every living thing on earth. Desperate, they turn to Shiva, who, being so holy, and so self-contained and perfected, offers to drink all the poison up. When he does so, it turns his face blue permanently. A few drops of course spill, which become the venom of poisonous animals. That’s just how these creation myths go.
Now that the poison is gone, the crew gets back to work, churning away for thousands of years. The next thing to come is Lakshmi, the great goddess of fertility, wealth, and essentially all worldly goods and material happiness. Immediately everyone gets distracted, presumably because of her sheer sexiness. Most forget the amṛta entirely, even starting to fight over her. Vishnu solves this problem, upraising Lakshmi to his side as his wife. With her enthroned in heaven, everyone can get get back to work.
Finally, the amṛta comes out in a pot carried by the divine god of medicine, and no sooner does it arise than it is stolen by the asuras, which of course starts another war. The devas eventually win, destroying the asuras and the nectar is rescued and the gods become immortal. Creation also arises out of this churning (Lakshmi, etc).
Now lets get into what all this means. Swamiji’s narrative was what got me started on this, so I’ll give that first: the churning is yogic meditation, which first brings up poison, or impurities and complexes, to the surface of the mind which can only be absorbed by a yogi whose non-attachment, austerities, self-control, and self-understanding are like unto that yogic archetype Shiva. Then comes Lakshmi, which represents the Siddhis, the “perfections” or “powers” that come to the yogi as he nears the goal. These are traditionally said to be distractions from the path as it is tempting to use them for worldly gain and can lead the yogi to a great fall. We see this in the churners forgetting their work when they see the beautiful Lakshmi. The worldly powers must be offered up to higher ideas and wedded to God; in other words, used only for spiritual purposes, if at all, so that the churning can continue. Lastly comes the nectar itself, knowledge of the Self, the immortal part of us, which we might call the immortal soul.
I must say, I love this interpretation, as it certainly follows the process of meditation, but reading the actual text I feel the need to add to it my own thoughts. I've been reading a lot of Jung lately, so it's going to be heavily psychological. You may recall from last time that the Ocean of Milk can be seen as the Unconscious, and that its an ambivalent symbol containing both our primal fears and issues (crocodiles and other reptiles), as well as the nectar of immortality itself. The mountain is an earth symbol, stability, and here also I’d say consciousness, which is dislodged from its thrown by the serpent of wisdom, and nearly drowns. Only the intervention of God (self surrender), saves it. The serpent can also be a connection to the idea of kundalini, the shakti or power of consciousness dwelling in the spine. It is kundalini which rises up to activate each of the chakras. The churning first brings uncomfortable heat, as anyone who has ever examined himself, or for that matter practiced hatha yoga, knows. The heat can also represent tapas, or austerity, the 'heat' generated by the purification of the body and mind. It is characteristically unpleasant and difficult. Only faith in the process gets us over that first hurdle. We get used to it and then we are able to start churning in earnest.
The first things that come up are the complexes, the “issues” we all have under the surface. Complexes are defined by Freud as essentially knots in the Libido, the sum total of our mental energy. These knots “tie up” this energy, and when we work them out, whether through therapy or meditation, the release the energy back into the whole. Jung adds to this that it is as if these complexes (and other psychic contents) seem to act autonomously, and he suggests that consciousness has invested them with a bit of itself. By that logic, undoing these knots is reclaiming and unifying consciousness. Clearly, this isn’t easy, and there’s a reason the poison was said to spread in every direction to destroy everything it touched. Aren’t our own inner demons kind of like that? Think of an irrational fear you might have and how that can poison an otherwise good experience. Think of how jealousy can poison a beautiful relationship. Without self-control and non-attachment, reclaiming these things (“swallowing” them), is nearly impossible.
Ah, but what rewards there are for those who are willing to do the work! Lakshmi herself, all worldly good, comes out of the churning next. In my opinion, the Siddhis of yoga are the increased mental (and physical) power that is unlocked as we work out our physical and mental knots. The more mental (or physical) energy we reclaim, the more “powerful” we become. Of course, if we began the process frustrated with the world, our new-found power may cause us to get lost in it. Suddenly, the things that seemed unattainable become easy to the yogi, be it finding a healthy relationship (now that we’ve left our issues at the door), being physically able to enjoy the body in sports and recreation, or having the concentration and mental power to make lots of money. The temptation is to stop at this point to enjoy our results. It's very common to use yoga as a way to merely “fix” ourselves, or help us function better in the world of men. I don’t honestly believe that there’s anything wrong this – we should be glad for any yogi who is able to digest his own poison. However, this text (and the whole tradition) is emphatic in its teaching that there is more yet available for those who can take their worldly power and dedicate it up to God (marrying Lakshmi to Vishnu). This giving up of the fruits of our labor is called karma yoga, sublimating our worldly activities - work as prayer. We can also consider this in terms of universal archetypes. Lakshmi is the divine mother, the earth goddess, which here ascends to heaven as a divine consort. We see something similar in the Catholic notion of the Assumption of the Virgin. Jung makes a big deal of this in numerous works, and for good reason. Mary, the earthly woman in whom Christ gestates, can be considered the “shadow” of the Holy Trinity which so conspicuously lacks a female component – Christianity’s blind spot we might say. The Assumption of the earthly woman, bodily rather than in spirit, to heaven, has been depicted in art and literature for centuries, but it was not a part of official church doctrine until the 1950s, and then only in response to popular belief, not the church fathers. See Jung’s Answer to Job for a more complete discussion of this.
The last thing is of course the nectar itself, the symbol of the goal, which creates a war again between the devas and asuras. I encourage you to glance back at an older post of mine, “Daddy, why do the Demons Howl,” for a bit about what the asuras represent. We can liken the devas, the “shining ones”, to the opposite, the uplifting and virtuous thoughts of the mind. We may take this war as a final conflict of the opposing forces in the mind, provoked by the end being in sight. It’s a fierce battle, and at its climax, the demons create a terrible illusion of a mountain from which falls burning trees, rocks, etc, and this nearly causes the lines of the devas to break and run. But at the last moment, the supreme Lord himself appears on the battlefield, and the illusion instantly vanishes. It’s an intriguing moment: the illusion is specifically a mountain, which seems again to be a symbol of stability, and probably the ego itself. We can call this the illusion of a stable ego, which the demonic forces exist only in relation to. You can look at it this way – “demonic” ideas, as symbolized by the asuras, are given power only because we mistake the ego as the whole Self (taken either in a Jungian or Vedantic sense). The thought to steal or possess is only possible in relation to the ego, which feels itself special and deserving of possession. In other words, we can look at the egotic asuras as selfish motivations and the limited attitude of the individual ego. We can only justify selfish behavior when the ego appears dominant and stable. If the ego is seen as illusory, then how do we justify gratifying its desires? So too here, as the Lord, i.e., the true Self in the religious sense, or as a symbol for the totality of the psyche (in the Jungian sense), destroys at last the illusion so cherished by the asuras, and allows the gods victory.
Interestingly, this victory is not as complete as it first appears. Even after the asuras are slain, the Supreme One causes them to be revived. There will be later wars between the two factions, and this appears to be God’s desire. The lesser gods have faith in that plan, but don’t always understand it. The demons don’t get it at all, even possibly thinking God on their side (like all egoists) and they continue on their destructive path. I’m not going to go too far into it, but after the churning story, Bali, the greatest of the demons, even invades heaven, taking over earth and heaven. He is tricked into giving Vishnu in one of his forms 3 footsteps of his new realm, whereupon Vishnu reveals to Bali his true celestial form, with one step covering the whole earth, with another heaven. Bali, enlightened by the vision, offers his own head (ego), “a man’s most prized possession” as he puts it, as a place for his third step. He becomes changed thereby, and tells the rest of the demons to retreat. To paraphrase “The same Supreme Lord that helped us before (revived us) now wishes for our defeat. We cannot therefore win by any means, and we must therefore retreat until the time is right for us.” This is a wonderful change of events. Bali, the demonic general, comes to a new understanding of himself and his type in the relationship to the whole (psyche). Both the devas and the asuras are changed by this conflict, and a new order is given to the world. To me, this can be just as easily read as saying a new order is given to the mind.
In a way this esoteric interpretation is actually a full reversal of the popular meaning. Meditation and many forms of mysticism actually seek to reverse the process of creation, and if you think about it, that’s really what this is describing. The undivided Ocean of Milk is not the primordial unconscious, but the unconscious we start with when we begin to meditate: a mixture of poison, power and nectar. Through the churning we separate out what the years have added to the psyche, trying to get at the immortal primal self or soul that underlies it. The power and the poison are like nature and nurture, creating the content of the ocean, while the nectar is our bare essence. If anything, we start with the amrita, and acquire the poison through our experience. This “creation” myth esoterically interpreted is actually its opposite, a myth of “uncreation.” I can’t help but think of the gnostic ascent, in which as the soul ascends upwards it sheds the influence of the planets (symbolical of the personality traits), getting lighter and lighter until only the bare soul stands before God.
As I’ve covered most of this Canto, so its fitting that I end with its final image: Vishnu incarnated as a giant fish. I’ve been reading Jung’s Mysterium Coniunctionis, and he dedicates some space to fish symbolism, emphasizing the unblinking quality of its eyes. This appears in two forms, either the constellated form (many eyes, often appearing as stars), and a singular form (the eye of God). Given the aquatic nature of this whole chapter, and thereby its connection to the unconscious, we can describe the various forces of the psyche that appear in it as the constellated unconscious; the autonomous complexes and forms which have to be resolved, i.e., fight it out, that their energy may be reclaimed. If you’ve seen the movie Inception (which I heartily recommend), you may remember the moments where the unblinking eyes of the “projections” turn upon the dreamer – that’s the constellated unconscious. The ocean of milk here is separated (as light from darkness) into the poison, the powers, and the nectar. The differentiation requires a new order to be created; paradise cannot be regained once we have tasted the fruit and we have to find a new wholeness, and perhaps a new relationship with ourselves. A battle must be fought in the mind for dominance, aka unification, of the world. And at the end the text presents as its last image of the chapter something that seems to have little to do with the rest of the story – God incarnating as a giant fish, with its unblinking eye, the eye of God. This, as Jung would no doubt agree, is a symbol of the Self, the totality, now swimming dominantly in the ocean of the unconscious, whose unblinking gaze the newly reconstructed ego (like the enlightened Bali) can never again hide from. The Self has become One whole, One mind, One God, and though the battles go on, even the generals of the forces of evil now know that there is a place for the good and the evil in the hands of God.
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