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BRAHMANISM
are no trees, there is only a forest"); or, on the contrary, one can insist, just as well, that ignorance exists only in the many (which is like declaring that there is no such thing as a forest, but only so many trees). The end, in cither case, however, is ignorance, which, according to the mode of the observation, is experienced as multifarious or as one.
The comprehensive, aggregate (samasti) aspect of ignorance is attributed in myths to a personal divine being, who is revered as the creator, ruler, and maintainer of the cosmos. He is supreme consciousness, Brahman, brought under the spell of a personal role, and as such is a manifestation of the finest, highest, most subtle and sublime aspect or level of ignorance and self-delusion.This god-creator, maintainer, and dissolverthis supreme lord (īśvara), is the all-embracing aspect of the lifeforce (which is ignorance) in its evolution and pervading of the cosmos. He is compared to a forest or an all-containing sea.
Vişnu, for example, who through his incarnation in Krsna became the revealer of the Bhagavad Gitā. is represented in Hindu myth as the Milky Ocean of Immortal Life, out of which the transient universe arises and back into which it again dissolves. This ocean is personified as Adi-ścșa, the primordial giant scrpent of the abyss, who carries the unfolded universe on his heads and is the life-giving dragon in the depth of space. Meanwhile, in anthropomorphic form, Vișnu is pictured as recumbent on this serpent. The serpent is both himself and his living couch, and supports him on the surface of the Milky Ocean, which again is himself in his elemental form. For this divine being is the primary life-sap or substance, which evolves and nourishes all the shapes of all the living creatures in the universe. The god is dreaming. From his navel, as from the universal water, the lotus-calix grows on which Brahmā is seated, the first-born of the universe, who is about to supervise the cosmic process of creation. The shining lotus is the flower of 168 16. 37-38.
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