Patala : nethermost of the seven regions below the earth ruled by Vāsuki.
... XVIII), where he tells us of the Indus dividing near the city Patala into "large rivers both of which retain the name of Indus as far as the sea." 2 By "mouths" Arrian means not precisely the places of immediate entry into the sea, for he speaks of the divergence of the mouths, thus implying the high-up common point of parting at the city Patala, and he speaks of the large delta to which this city gives... when conveying names from the Greeks to the Indians and yet correctly convey from the Indians to the Greeks the Indian l by mentioning such names as the Greeks wrote down as Peukelaotis, Sangala, Patala, Malloi, Glaukanikoi, Phegelas, Kalanos. The historian Curtius (XII), recording the meeting between Alexander and the Indian prince Omphis (Āmbhi), actually says that an interpreter was procured, but... thus implying the whole triangle made by that point and the points of entry into the ocean. Arrian's "mouths" are simply the two main oceanward branches of the lower course of the river from the city Patala sufficiently distant from the sea and they do not preclude offshoots from the branches within the delta which also empty into the sea. We become sure of the non-preclusion when we read in the ...
... the path of the spiritual consciousness. Earth and Patala Patala simply means the subconscient below the Earth—the Earth being the conscious physical plane. You had asked the other day about the subconscient, what it was. In the vision you describe you were shown the universal Page 153 subconscient in the figure of Patala, a place without light of consciousness and, because... bottom. The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous. "Patala" is a name for the subconscient—the beings there [ in a dream ] had no heads, that is to say, there is there no mental consciousness; men have all of them such a subconscient plane in their own being ...
... name and nature and motions of Love, here in the 'Descent to Hell (Patala)' passage, we see things actually happening, and we become almost participants in the action. It may, perhaps, be said that this 'descent' , into Hell is more Greek than Hindu, recalls vaguely Hades and Tartarus and the Circles in Dante than the legendary Patala of Indian mythology. Nevertheless, merely as a poetic projection... worlds - or nether worlds - the passage must rank among the most unforgettably vivid in the entire Sri Aurobindo canon. Ruru's faltering steps take him to the hopeless, the immutable country, Patala, and he becomes aware of strange and hideous shapes, and he comes at last to a world of mad or maddened human voices, and pale faces, and princes, priests, and women too: Then Ruru, his young... Of sunlight, little fragrances of flowers; Then from your spacious earth in a great horror Descend into this night, and here too soon Must expiate your few inadequate joys." 32 Patala has its mansions too, many regions, divers gradations of suffering, and Ruru makes his dismal progress; at one place his human heart half bursts with the "burden of so many sorrows", and he understands ...
... suicide is condemned, are the worlds of deep darkness & suffering at the other pole from the worlds of the gods, the world of light and joy which is the reward of virtuous deeds. Patala under the earth, Hell under Patala, these are Asuric worlds: Swarga on Page 212 the mountaintops of existence in the bright sunshine is a world of the gods. All this is of course mythology and metaphor,... associate the self with this gross body and the vital functions or the base, vile & low desires of the mind, then the soul remains long in a tamasic condition of darkness and suffering which we call Patala or in its acute forms Hell. If the ideas and impressions uppermost are such as to associate the self with the higher desires of the mind, then the soul passes quickly to a rajasic condition of light ...
... t in fact though not in express terms. You had asked the other day about the subconscient, what it was. In the vision you describe you were shown the universal subconscient in the figure of Patala, a place without light of consciousness and, because universal, therefore without bounds or end—the dark unconscious infinite out of which this material universe has arisen—it is walled with darkness... bottom. The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous. "Patala" [ in an experience described by the correspondent ] is a name for the subconscient—the beings there had no heads, that is to say, there is there no mental consciousness; men have all of them such ...
... Page 300 Magic Carcotaca all flecked with fire. A more eleborate triumph in the same genre is the sense Sri Aurobindo creates in us of that Underworld itself, "Hopeless Patala" where in vague sands And indeterminable strange rocks and caverns That into silent blackness huge recede, Dwell the great serpent and his hosts, writhed forms, Sinuous... citation would be one that allows a Page 304 thematic comparison in general with some of those we have listed for gross incarnativeness. Over against "Magic Car-cotaca" and "Hopeless Patala" from Sri Aurobindo's Love and Death we may put a few lines from his Savitri, holding again a vision of Supernature. A perverse paradoxical religion in the worlds of anti-divinity behind the veil ...
... seized Rāvana (too). (42) Seated in their aerial cars, gods and Gandharvas (celestial musicians), great Nagas (semi divine beings having the face of a man and the tail of a serpent and said to inhabit Patala, the nethermost subterranean region), as well as Rsis (the seers of Vedic Mantras), devils and giants and eagles remaining in the air, they all witnessed at that time the com bat of the two heroes... the Yaksas as also the fiends, the Nagas (serpent demons or semi divine beings credited with the face of a man and the tail of a serpent, and said to inhabit the nethermost subterranean region, Patala) and the Rākshasas looked on that major conflict, it continued the entire night. (65) The contest between Śrī Rāma and Rāvana ceased neither by night nor by day, not even for an hour or a moment ...
... grey waste He came, glad of the pain of passage over, As men who through the storms of anguish strive Into abiding tranquil dreariness And draw sad breath assured; to the grey waste, Hopeless Patala, the immutable Country, where neither sun nor rain arrives, Nor happy labour of the human plough Fruitfully turns the soil, but in vague sands And indeterminable strange rocks and caverns That ...
... trailokyadrishti was promised for the day, especially in samadhi. The first step was to attach a perception to rupas seen of their meaning & circumstances. Subsequently in samadhi a series of visions of Patala occurred, brief but some of them representing continuous incidents & scenes, eg, a ghat of many hundred steps descending to an abysmal river, small watersnakes darting through a river,—all the scenes ...
... movements are still uncertain and comparatively rare. The rupa is increasing in frequency & richness of content. Later on the Shakti in its downward descent entered a layer of the annamaya Patala which had not yet been coerced by the vijnanam; there was in consequence a disturbance, Page 71 a cloud of the old sanskaras flying up and obstructing the siddhi. The finality of trikaldrishti ...
... your life, because those who kill themselves instead of finding freedom, plunge by death into a worse prison of darkness—the Asuric worlds enveloped in blind gloom. THE STUDENT Are then worlds of Patala beneath the earth a reality and do the souls go down there after death? But we know now that there is no beneath to the earth, which is round & encircled by nothing worse than air. Page 121 ...
... idea and its traditions, and the shadow of the Greek underworld and Tartarus with the sentiment of life and love and death which hangs about them has got into the legendary framework of the Indian Patala and hells. The central idea of the narrative alone is in the Mahabharata; the meeting with Kama and the descent into Hell were additions necessitated by the poverty of incident in the original story ...
... flowers still bloom. He felt the bright indifference of earth And all the lonely uselessness of pain. The other passage is imaginative with a weird phantasmal motif: Hopeless Patala, the immutable Country, where neither sun nor rain arrives, Nor happy labour of the human plough Fruitfully turns the soil, but in vague sands And indeterminable strange rocks and ...
... there, abandoning his kingdom on earth. In Love and Death, when Priyumvada dies stung by a snake, 1 The Harmony of Virtue, SABCL, Vol. 3, pp. 154-55. Ruru seeks her out in Patala (Hades), makes a deal with the Lord of Death and returns with her to the earth. The theme is love, and separation, and the power of Love to achieve reunion. But in the Savitri story, the ...
... idea and its traditions, and the shadow of the Greek underworld and Tartarus with the sentiment of life and love and death which hangs about them has got into the legendary framework of the Indian Patala and hells. 26 Vedic Symbolism and The Human Cycle A fundamental difference between the Savitri that began to take shape in 1916 and any version Sri Aurobindo might have written ...
... harmonise them that they shall appear measurable to us and strongly human. They are largely and boldly human, oppressive and sublime, but never Titanic. He loves the earth and the heavens but he visits not Patala nor the stupendous regions of Vrishaparvan. His Rakshasas, supposing them to be' his at all, are epic giants or matter-of-fact ogres, but they do not exhale the breath of midnight and terror like Valmiki's ...
... spirit.. 117 Ruru readily consents to the sacrifice, and so Kama shows the distracted husband the passage to the nether world, ... to the grey waste, Hopeless Patala, the immutable Country, where neither sun nor rain arrives, Nor happy labour of the human plough Fruitfully turns the soil, but in vague sands And indeterminable ...
... heroine returns to heaven, Pururavas has to follow and be united with her there, abandoning his kingdom on earth. In Love and Death, when Priyumvada dies stung by a snake, Ruru seeks her out in Patala (Hades), makes a deal with the Lord of Death's Other Kingdom, and returns with her to the earth. The theme is love, and separation, and the power of Love to achieve reunion. But in the Savitri ...
... poetry. Urvasie and Love and Death, for example, took the romantic epic as far as it could go - and it was to great heights indeed. The scaling of high heaven in Urvasie, the descent into Hell or Patala in Love and Death, the fight for the mountain pass in the later Baji Prabhou: one would almost think that, between them, are comprehended the essence of Paradise, Inferno and Purgatorial Earth ...
... SOMA chakra located above Ajiia. But more important, and better known are the seven sub-Muladhara chakras. They are, in descending order, ATAlA, VITAlA, SUTAlA, TALATAlA, RASATAlA, MAHATAlA, and PATAlA. They are different regions of the underworld leading to hell. It will be remiss of me if I don't speak of NĀDIS, nerves. "The physical nerves" to quote Sri Aurobindo, "are part of the material ...
... to the later mythology. We have nothing to do here with the dwarf Vishnu, the Titan Bali and the three divine strides which took possession of Earth, Heaven and the sunless subterrestrial worlds of Patala. The three strides of Vishnu in the Veda are clearly defined by Dirghatamas as earth, heaven and the triple principle, tridhātu . It is this triple principle beyond Heaven or superimposed upon it ...
... Afterwards there must be the actual experience of the spirit’s wanderings & not as now only subsequent records of them. This I had a long time ago in one or two instances, eg the Chhayamayi vision in Patala; but since then it has been discontinued. Finally, there must be the actual leaving of the body in trance, wholly or partially. There is a better & swifter subjective-objective response in others ...
... does not yet advance at all sensibly but keeps its gains in continuity. It is, however, confined to the dim chhayamaya proper to that low physical nervosity now dominant & typified in some systems in Patala & the astral worlds. The luminous visions occur rarely, & those which come are usually of a gross pranic & trivial kind. Page 477 The translation of experience into terms of vijnanabuddhi ...
... jective in which the subjective element predominates and the personality alone is concerned, the obstruction of the ϒɳ is similarly artificial, not belonging to the earth nature itself, but to the Patala nature into which the old powers have been exiled but from the borders of which they still maintain their opposition. Page 1000 The ideality is therefore obstructed in its progress only ...
... , ostentatiously largehearted like Bali, fiercely self-righteous like the younger Prahlada. But they fall whether great or petty, noble or ignoble & in their fall they are thrust down by Vishnu to Patala, to the worlds of delusion & shadow, or of impenetrable gloom, because they have used the heart or intellect to serve passion & ignorance, enslaved the spiritual to the material & vital elements & ...
... retained, although even when instantaneous, the mind was swift enough to read. The printed page presented itself clearly, but was too fugitive to be legible. Trailokya drishti recommenced with Patala and with shadowy pomps of past or future events upon earth, crowds, kings, generals, tribunals. Jagrat Activity of rupa in jagrat. Fixed shadowy landscapes, a rock by the sea, figures by water ...
... Ganges, the triple and mystic river, who is Mundaqinie, Ganges of the Gods, in heaven, Bhagirathie or Jahnavie, Ganges of men, on earth, and Boithorinie or coiling Bhogavatie, Ganges of the dead, in Patala, the grey under-world and kingdom of serpents, and in the sombre dominions of Yama. Saraswatie, namesake and shadow of the Muse, preceded her in her sacredness; but the banks of those once pure waters ...
... very distorted view of the shape of India and his determination of the positions of places is mostly inaccurate". We may instance some of his "howlers". He 2 puts Barberie inland to the north of Patala which was at the head of the Indus-delta, in contrast to the Periplus which correctly mentions it as a maritime port under the name of Barbarikon on the middle mouth of the Indus. He 3 gives ...
... confined (as I am) by Rāvana of sinful deeds and subjected to persecution (at the hands of ogresses), 0 heroic prince, (even) as Lord Visnu (in His descent as the Divine Boar) rescued Goddess Earth from Patala (the nethermost subterranean region).' " (65) Untying the bright divine jewel for her head, tied in her garment, Sītā thereupon gave it to Hanūmān , saying that it might be delivered to Śrī Rāma (a ...
... too, we have in India many heavenly lokas, Brahmaloka, Shivaloka, Vishnuloka, Janaloka, Goloka, inhabited by various types of gods and spiritual siddhas. We have Hell too in India, an underworld Patala or Rasatala – they are supposed to be seven in number! Our Heavens too are seven. Dante became very curious to know more of the mind of the holy persons - their thoughts and experiences. When they ...
... though not too sure of itself. I follow your advice and take rest from time to time. I am not surprised of the attacks on you — it is a crucial time. It looks as though the whole vital world or patala [subterranean worlds] has taken hold of the Earth. We are very few to understand what is really at stake. (...) More and more India is isolated and encircled. I should think, as Mother said ...
... hundred mighty streams; Nor in the unquiet Ocean vast thy grandiose journeyings cease, Mother, say thy children's dreams. Down thou plungest through the Ocean, far beneath its oozy bed In Patala's leaden gloom Moaning o'er her children's pain our mother, Ganges of the dead, Leads our wandering spirits home. Mighty with the mighty still thou dwelledst, goddess high and pure; Iron ...
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