INSTITUTE FOR PLANETARY SYNTHESISINSTITUTE FOR PLANETARY SYNTHESISP.O.Box 128, CH-1211 Geneva 20, SwitzerlandTel. +41-022-733.88.76, Fax +41-022-733.66.49, E-mail: ipsbox@ipsgeneva.com, http://www.ipsgeneva.comPURANAS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONPART 4 page 1 of 2 pagesText of discourses by Dr. E. Krishnamachaya, originally published in MY LIGHT, the magazine of the World Teacher Trust, IndiaTo the questions of Maitreya, Parasara began to answer. The answer forms the text of the Vishnu Purana:Well, by your questions I am reminded of what my grandfather Vasista once said. There was a time when Viswamitra invoked some demons against my father. The demons came to devour my father. Instantaneously I got furious and started to perform a sacrifice for the destruction of the demons. In my sacrifice hundreds of those demons who wandered at night were reduced to ashes. When the destruction was being done on a large scale then my grandfather Vasista called me gently and said: Enough with your anger, my boy. Conquer your spite. The demons are not at fault. They are induced by Viswamitra. If at all a fault lies, it lies with the spite of Viswamitra and the vengeance of my mind (these are the true demons). It is destined that your father was to die in the hands of those demons induced by Viswamitra. Things occur in due course and fools grow angry. Great people have no spite towards anyone (persons are only physical bodies against which spite is as useless as insane). My boy who is going to be killed and by whom? Everyone experiences the fruit of his own action. Great fame and spiritual force gained through time and difficulty are destroyed by anger. Anger carries away man from enjoyment and liberation as well. Sages of a high degree always neutralise their anger. Do not be given to it. Enough with your burning the demons who are helpless and above fault. Better stop the sacrifice in the middle. Positive people wield strength in forgiving. Sweet is the consolation that I got by such a great man. I placed weight in his words and abstained from sacrifice. He was too pleased with my simple way of understanding.Pulastya, the son of Brahma and the elder brother of Pulaha, came there at this juncture (Brahma is the four-faced manifestation of the Lord and he presides over the creation of the universes. He is born in the lotus which sprouts from the navel of Vishnu, the deity of pervasion and presence. This means the faculty of creation unfolds from the faculty of pervasion of presence. The two faculties are intertwined. Pulastya is the son of Brahma. He is one among the seven great seers who preside over the bigger cycles of time. He is also among the seven creative lights of the cosmos. Along with other groups of creation a set of demons also came down from him representing a stage of evolution). Vasista honoured him and Pulastya settled. He understood the whole situation and talked to me: You abstained from great spite and took to forgiveness by the word of your Guru. This disposition makes you know all branches of knowledge. Take this boon from me. I am not angry that you have destroyed my children. Even in your spite you did not root out my children completely. I therefore confer upon you another stories of the moulds which occur during the making of the worlds. Hence the creation, in all its phases, passes through these moulds). You will know the highest object of the Devas as it is. Your mind stands pure by knowing the technique of cooperation and non-attachment of karma. Through my favourable attitude you grow above doubt regarding the riddle of karma. Then my grandfather added: All that is uttered by Pulastya will come to pass.The whole episode which happened to me previously came to my recollection when you questioned me, Oh Maitreya! I, with such a boon conferred upon me, will completely answer your questions. I will narrate you the eternal story of the whole existence as it is. You listen well to whatever I say. (Parasara begins with the first principle of Vishnu Purana, called Vishnu): The universe emerges from Vishnu (Vishnu is the consciousness of the eternal pervasion or omnipresence. He first emerges as the personality of the Cosmic egg. The egg floats in space-time. The egg is filled with him who is also beyond the egg and around it even before the egg is emerged). Vishnu is the cause of the emerging and merging (of everything from his subjectivity into the objectivity of Himself as the observer). Yet he is also this universe in essence (this universe is Himself in essence and itself in manifestation. It is like the body of a man which is himself in origin and which is his precipitate out of himself).CHAPTER IIThen Parasara utters significant words in praise of Vishnu. The prayer is to raise himself and the listener upto the level of the object of prayer. This is so because the person praising is the consciousness which praises. The consciousness in essence is the omnipresence which includes Vishnu in all His aspects. By raising himself to Himself, He will be able to speak out through His impersonal expression when the text runs above the human error.Parasaras prayer: I bow down to the Immutable, the Pure one! To the eternal, the Universal Soul, the concept or ever One, to the Omnipresence and Omniscience of Vishnu, I bow down. To the Luminous egg that is expressed by the mystic word, Hari, the giver of peace, I bow down (the Luminous egg which is also called the golden, sun-shine-coloured egg is the first unit of creation which emerges from the Omnipresence of Vishnu. It is the emergence of a presence from The Presence). To the dweller of the Universe (as essence) and the One who crossed the creation, existence and merging, I bow down. To the one of many shapes, to the soul of the subtle and the gross, who is both manifest and unmanifest and who is the cause of emancipation, I pray. This highest soul of omnipresence is the very root of the universe. The creation, existence and merging of the universe are from, within and into Him. He is the basis of this creation and He is to the atom what an atom is to the Universe. He is to the Universe what the Universe is to the atom. He is in all beings and has no fall into self-forgetting. He is the first person (I AM) of all persons. Wisdom is His shaping and He is the purest and Supreme in essence. He is the existing content in the universe for which He is also the container, though the universe causes to us the illusion of the different things. In the creation he is the Creator. In the existing things He is the existence. In the act of merging He is the destroyer of all shapes. He is never born, in Him all are born. He has no wastage or loss and hence He is the eternal IS.I bow down to the Lord and tell you everything as it was told before by Brahma, the child of the Lotus. Brahma transmitted all this wisdom when he was questioned by Daksha and other great sages (Daksha is one of the Prajapatis or the Devas who preside over cycles. He is the first awakened Deva from the slumber of subjectivity which is called Prakriti or Aditi). The sages who received the wisdom from Brahma along with Daksha narrated it afterwards to King Purukutsa on the shores of the river Narmada. He narrated to Saraswata and he transmitted it to me.