Week 13 Storytelling: Narayan's Apocalyptic Sleep
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Vishnu’s eyelids are becoming heavy, and he realizes that he is growing tired again after billions of years without sleeping. The water levels on the innumerable worlds throughout the universes are steadily rising. Vishnu knows that in a few million years, those waters will grow into raging storms, and all life will be eliminated from the planets. He knows, too, that cosmic disasters like the explosions of stars and the widening of black holes will become more frequent until his droopy eyelids finally close. With Vishnu’s sleep always comes the end of the world. Rather, the end of all the universes.
Vishnu is finally asleep, so he is now referred to as Narayan, and his body floats on an endless bed of unmoving milk. Imagine a soft white ocean with no edges and no land to contain it stretching on forever. All is calm, and Narayan does not dream. Perhaps there is no sense of consciousness within him at all, only perfect peace. He drifts along on the “Remainder,” a serpent that is the only being left after the end of all the universes. Time is still, or rather, the concept of time does not exist. When Narayan sleeps, he, the Remainder, and the ocean of milk are all that are.
Because there is no time, there is no way to tell how long Narayan sleeps. Eventually, though, he wakes up. When he wakes, he is accompanied on the Remainder by all the other gods, including Lakshmi and Ganesha. The universes begin anew, as each time Vishnu wakes, the gods create completely different universes than there ever were before. Time moves normally once more, evolution creeps along its natural course, plants and animals and, depending on the universe, humans, will arise. They will thrive for billions of years until Vishnu grows tired once more.
Author’s Note: This story was inspired by the “7 Secrets from Hindu Calendar Art” Epified videos on YouTube. The second video is on the god, Narayan, who I thought that I had never heard of before. However, Narayan is the sleeping form of Vishnu. I highly recommend watching this video series as I only watched the first two for this unit and felt like I learned something important. The first video on Ganesha dealt with who is “right” or “wrong” in terms of religion, and it was an eye-opening lecture. This one on Narayan talked about the concepts of time and consciousness, among other things. Trying to grasp the Hindu perception of Time was a bit bizarre. The narrator compares Narayan’s sleep to our sleep. When we sleep, we cannot interact with the world around us, so “our world” ceases to exist for a time even though “the world” exists. In Narayan’s case, though, he doesn’t even dream, so he is completely unaware of being at all. I thought it was fascinating that he destroys all of the universes every time he sleeps.
Vishnu confuses me a bit with how many forms he takes. That being said I appreciate that your story clears at least this form up a bit for me. It is an interesting concept to not know you exist yet still effect change onto the world around you. I liked the story a lot, good job.
ReplyDeleteHi Bridget,
ReplyDeleteThis was an interesting story and makes me want to watch those edified videos. I have watched all of them but that one so I hope I have a chance to watch them in the future. That was an interesting concept on sleep and our conscious mind. I have never really thought about it that perspective, how when we sleep the world around us stops to exists as we are focused on our dreams. Good job on the story!
Bridget,
ReplyDeleteThis is such a clever way to see Vishnu and time! I also have been watching and taking notes on the Seven Secrets of Vishnu videos, and I found them exceedingly interesting! Your story put this in great perspective; talking about Vishnu becoming tired makes it easy for human beings to understand (because we are not able to think outside the realm of time). The fact that Vishnu takes so many different forms is so interesting and complicated, and you definitely explained one form in a great way. Keep up the great work, and I hope to visit your blog again soon!