Creation of the Universe - Part 27

Summarizing Creation Posts (Contd...)

We then went to learn the creation process as per sankhya yoga which are shown through diagram in this post.

Explanation of each aspect from Purusha upto the sense organs have been explained from post 13 onwards.

  

The 4 stages in panchadasi:

4 Stages in Pure Canvas - 

Pure canvas without any beginning and without any end.

The pure canvass as shown in the first diagram  has been been stiffened by starch for making it suitable for painting.

A light sketch in some form on this stiffened canvas is drawn, which is barely visible and indistinctly cognisable as to its real features. 

The lines that have been drawn are filled with ink in different colors as would be necessary to present the requisite picturesque scene. 

4 Stages of Creation

Behind all changing phenomenon in this world, there must be an all-pervading unchanging factor which does not move but causes this creation to move.

The featureless transparency of the universality of Consciousness which existed alone, without any will, now  gets concentrated with  the willingness to create!!

Brahman manifests itself as Ishvara who then becomes Hiranyagarbha, where the subtle cosmos can be faintly seen as an outline drawn to present the actual shape of the visible cosmos.

All the colours and the phantasms that we see in this cosmos is God filling in the variety of ink, as it were, on this outline that He has drawn in the state of Hiranyagarbha.

So these are the four stages of creation, almost similar to the four stages of the painting of a picture on the canvas. 

As per Gita (and as in vedantha), the exposition is as under:

In the sankhya, Purusha and Prakriti, where Prakriti is not different from Purusha but only the primordial matter of the Purusha existing as spirit, are understood to be responsible for the creation,

If that be so, where were this Purusha and Prakriti (or the identity of Purusha as Spirit and Matter) before the creation took place?

Sankhya maintains that purusha and prakriti were / are eternal and were not caused by anything.

Vedanta gives the answer, which aligns with the flow given above:

“Purusha (as described in the traditional sankhya philosophy) and Prakriti are both latent in the Supreme. At the time of creation, they became operative”.

At last, the comparison of vedantha/ sankhya and panchadasi were depicted thus:

  

	SANKHYA	BHAGWAD GITA/ VEDANTHA	PANCHADASI
Primal cause, beyond Manifest and un-manifest	Not explained	Purushottama/ Prabrahman	Pure canvass/ Purusha
Un-manifest cause	Purusha	Purusha and prakriti	Stiffening of canvass- Iswara
Manifest cause	Prakriti and Mahat	Hiranyagarbha	Outline of Drawing-Hiranya garbha
Manifest creation	Ahankara and all Subsequent tatwa	Same as Sankhya	Inked Drawings- Objects created in the universe

 Love.