Meanings of PURUSHA SUKTAM:
Om= Name of God = World. Experienced as a+u+m.
Experience of waking state is "a', dream is "u",
sleep/death is "m"
1. Sahasra seershaa purushah
God has 1000 (a very large number) of heads.
Because all heads belong to the world=God
Sahasrakshah sahasra paath
1000 eyes, 1000 feet. All eyes, feet belong to
Sa bhoomim viswato vritvaa
Covers the earth from all sides as sky/space
Yet he exceeds by 10 digits the whole world.
(exceeds finite space and time)
The world with all its teeming life and light is
considered to be God. But the concept of God exceeds
it too. The word "exceeds" implies finiteness of the
world, which is measurable in size (space and time are
not infinite, they are closed, measurable).
2. Purusha eva idagm sarvam
God is all this world of experience indeed
Yat bhootam yat cha bhavyam
Which has gone before and yet to come
Uta amritatvasya isanah
Yes, God is the controller of immortality
Yat annena atirohati
unlike food, is not consumable.
Even if the world were to come to an end, God would not
end, because it exists beyond the world; the world is
God's creation. Who created God then?
Creation implies that there was nothing "before" and
something came into being "after". "Before" and
"after" are terms which have a meaning only with
respect to time.
Do we look at a book and say, it is born at this
corner and died at this other corner? The book is not
flowing, like time is flowing. If we scan it through
a slot then it does simulate the behavior of life and
The word "creation" is in the domain of flowing time.
Since God exists as pure existence beyond time, the
concept of creation does not apply to God, which is
We can and should ask what created the world; because
the world of experience has had a beginning and it will
have an ending in time; it is flowing in time.
The implication is that existence can have two
modes: "unaware" and "aware". The "unaware" state
contains the "aware" state. "Unaware" is like the
center watching the "aware" circle. Without the
center, the circle cannot be; yet it is not a part of
It is the awareness of God, the life of God, which
expresses itself in space, time and matter. Pure
existence, unaware of its existence, looks like
non-existence. It is like zero, Shoonya. Yet it is
capable of manifesting aware existence. How?
Let us look at the example of zero. Zero can just be a
zero; it can also be a sum of equal and opposite
attributes (3.1416 + (-3.1416)). Any number of such
pairs of opposites (duals) can come out of the original
zero; yet, it does not lose its potency to create fresh
pairs, it is not exhausted, it is not consumed. The
zero is not like food, which is consumable.
There is simply no way we can distinguish a "pure zero"
from an "impure zero" that came as the sum of a pair of
equal and opposite attributes. The best we can say is
that they are mutual attributes.
These philosophical questions are further explored now.
3. Tripat oordhva udait purushah
Over and above three parts of measured God
Paado asya iha abhavat punah
One more part remained however
Tato vishvang akraamat
The three parts covered the world of perception
Sa ashana anashane abhi
Those which are consumable and un consumable.
The relationship of God to the manifested world is
like that of a circumference to the diameter of a
circle. Three diameters does not measure the
circumference fully, some unending part .14159......