Dear Friends, and most especially dear Mohan Ji,
Continuing with my idea of a cosmic religion in page 9 of this thread (bottom of the page), I will now try to demonstrate my assertion that Hindu temples - in fact, all traditional temples - fully reflect it.
I pray the Lord to guide me in this endeavor. And dear Mohan Ji, please forgive any inexactitudes.
Love and blessings to you all,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
About Hindu Temples (Part 1)
There is something that can always be seen on top of virtually all temples of whatever religion throughout the world: a monumental tower crowning the temple and, in some cases, constituting it in full, so that it will always be visible from afar. This latter feature can be seen for example in the Asian pagodas and more particularly in the pyramidal structures scattered all around Central and South America, these latter so reminiscent of the “gopuram” - those huge and most beautiful tower-like structures crowning the majority of the Hindu temples in India.
The other feature, unseen from the outside but equally omnipresent in all temples of, again, whatever religion and from all over the world, is the presence of a most recondite precinct or sancta sanctorum - known in the western tradition as “the Holy of Holies”, the second or interior portion of the tabernacle. This precinct is supposed to contain what amounts to a representation of the divine - in fact, its “physical” presence - and can be equated to the soul of an individual in a microcosmic sense, and to the center of the world in the macrocosmic one. It is only accessible to the highest priests and their assistants and around it are usually one or more concentric, less sacred precincts that are correspondingly accessible by the other priests and finally, in the case of the outermost one, by the common adepts or general people. A perfect example of this configuration can be found in the so-called “Triple Druid Precinct” (see my post describing it in page 4 of this thread).
To say it from the start, both these omnipresent features express the idea of either the world axis or the world center or both, with the accent put on either the first or the second in some cases but - in most of them - indistinctly on both.
This is something that you can perceive almost intuitively as soon as you are “in the secret”, so to speak, over and above any consideration of “heaven-likeness” and other more or less fantastic interpretations - down to the most aberrant of all, which some of them indeed are. And this occurs because this notion is the expression of the highest truth. To put it simple, this is the way it works.
And the Hindu temples are no exception, as they all have both the mentioned features. There may of course be one or two apparent exceptions among the magnificent temples shown in page 9, like Sri Hoysaleshvara Temple in Halebidu, Karnataka, India, which nowadays is lacking a definite tower but is said to once have been crowned by an overall structure now disappeared. Besides, this temple of itself resembles a mountain - most probably Mount Meru, the most revered sacred Mountain for Hindus, and itself a representation of the world axis and the center of the universe.
Sri Hoysaleshvara Temple, Halebidu (Near Hassan), Karnataka
So I have chosen, a little by chance, three most beautiful temples to case-study (with information mostly obtained from Wikipedia) from the overall selection - kindly provided, as you know, by dear Mohan ji - in page 9 of this thread. They are more or less at the center of the selection.
The first one is the Brihadeeshwar temple in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu (see photo below), the largest temple in India. Built by the Tamil emperor popularly called Rajaraja Chola I in compliance of a command given to him in a dream, an axial and symmetrical geometry rules it. And among other things worth mentioning, it was meant to display the emperor’s relationship to the universal order.
Brihadeeshwar temple, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu
“The karuvarai, a Tamil word meaning the interior of the sanctum sanctorum, is the inner most sanctum and focus of the temple where an image of the primary deity, Shiva, resides. Inside is a huge stone linga Literally the word Karuvarai means "womb chamber" from Tamil word Karu for foetus. Only priests are allowed to enter this inner most chamber” (my underlining). (Wikipedia)
My main point here is Shiva lingam is a most ancient symbolic representation of the world axis, that equally ancient notion of an axis that traverses all worlds which eternally revolve around it, while it itself remains eternally immobile. You may imagine the entire material universe(s) rotating around the Shiva lingam at the temple’s sancta sanctorum (in fact, being spiritually fed by it)! As said above, this can intuitively be perceived if only you are open to the possibility.
In addition, some assertions in the relevant sources suggest this fact against the variegated opinions of many scholars, even Hindu ones. And my personal opinion is that its enormous importance to the religiosity of India is sufficient indication that it cannot be otherwise, since, as you may be aware of by now, this notion is the only one that perfectly complies with the most profound requisite of objective greatness and, at the same time, the highest spirituality.
As said by Lord Krishna, offering a most akin statement in Bhagavad Gita (7:7):
“O conqueror of wealth (Arjuna), there is no truth superior to Me.
Everything rests upon Me, as pearls are strung on a thread.”
A statement that can of course be read like this:
“O conqueror of wealth (Arjuna), there is no truth superior to Me.
Everything rests upon Me, as innumerable worlds rotating on an axis.”
In addition, "...the Hindu Puranas state that Shiva-Linga is the source of the universe” [in fact, this is another esoteric assumption equally concerning the ancient notion of a world axis]. “The Skanda Purana reveres it as the Supreme Being, in whom the universe originates and into whom it finally melts.” (Wikipedia)
Thank you,
Luis Miguel Goitizolo
(To be continued)