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THE PHILOSOPHY OF PLEASURE Kāma-loka, "the realm (loka) of desires and their fulfillments (kāna)," is the god of love's beautiful paradise of joys, where men and animals dwell spellbound by objects of the senses. Thus allured, the Self-forgetful bcings remain fixed to the universal wheel of the round of time', doomed to be born again on earth, in the heavens, or in the purgatories of pain, according to the character of their thoughts and desires. For the fruit of desire is destiny, and so the activated individual, linked to the causal round by the delicate but tough and durable filaments of his own desire, goes on froin existence to existencc-earthly, celestial, and infernal-now as man, now as beast, now as a god, unable to break away and into the peace beyond.
Kāma-loka comprises in its lower levels the hells or purgatories of pain, as well as the ghostly region of specters (pretas). the region of giant-monsters that devour beasts and men (rūksusas), the region of the anti-gods or titans (asuras), that ol the goblins (kumbhāņças), the kingdom of the serpentlike water-gods (nāgas), and the domain of the household-deities (aksas: fertility-gods surviving from the Archaic pre-Aryan civilization, who now serve as attendants of the deities Kubera and Siva). The middle realm of men and bcasts is on the earthly plane, while above, still ruled by Kāina (the supreme personification of the allure of the transient world), are the kingdom of the winged birdlike gods of the atmosphere (garudas) and the paradise of the celestial musicians (gandharvas)-the last named being men reborn to the sensual pleasures of the lower heavens, where they enjoy the companionship and love of heavenly damsels (apsarases). The progressively rarefied spheres of the gods are represented as superimposed, one upon another, up the terraced slopes of Mount Sumeru, the great central mountain of the world, which, like a gigantic Babylonian ziggurat-a natural, cosmic tower of Babel-lists its summit into the loftiest spheres of celestial bliss, and then soars beyond. What lies beyond is Brahmā-loka, the realm of formless being and purely spiritual
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