Hindu Mythology - Worlds

Worlds

Hindu mythology defines fourteen worlds (not to be confused with planets) – seven higher worlds (heavens) and seven lower ones (underworlds). (The earth is considered the lowest of the seven higher worlds.) The higher worlds are the seven vyahrtis, viz. bhu, bhuvas, svar, mahas, janas, tapas, and satya (the world that is ruled by Brahma); and the lower ones (the "seven underworlds" or paatalas) are atala, vitala, sutala, rasaataala, talatala, mahaatala, paatala.

All the worlds except the earth are used as temporary places of stay as follows: upon one's death on earth, the god of death (officially called 'Yama Dharma Raajaa' – Yama, the lord of justice) tallies the person's good/bad deeds while on earth and decides if the soul goes to a heaven and/or a hell, for how long, and in what capacity. Some versions of the mythology state that good and bad deeds neutralize each other and the soul therefore is born in either a heaven or a hell, but not both, whereas according to another school of thought, the good and bad deeds don't cancel out each other. In either case, the soul acquires a body as appropriate to the worlds it enters. At the end of the soul's time in those worlds, it returns to the earth (is reborn as a life form on the earth). It is considered that only from the earth, and only after a human life, can the soul reach supreme salvation, the state free from the cycle of birth and death, a state of absolute and eternal bliss.

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Famous quotes containing the word worlds:

    Say first, of God above, or Man below,
    What can we reason, but from what we know?
    Of Man what see we, but his station here,
    From which to reason, or to which refer?
    Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
    ‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.

    Alexander Pope (1688–1744)

    Silent rushes the swift Lord
    Through ruined systems still restored,
    Broadsowing, bleak and void to bless,
    Plants with worlds the wilderness;
    Waters with tears of ancient sorrow
    Apples of Eden ripe to-morrow.
    House and tenant go to ground,
    Lost in God, in Godhead found.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    The exercise of power is determined by thousands of interactions between the world of the powerful and that of the powerless, all the more so because these worlds are never divided by a sharp line: everyone has a small part of himself in both.
    Václav Havel (b. 1936)