The Hidden Worlds

All religions teach about places we go to after death. Scriptures describe the two main places we may enter as heaven and hell. Heaven is a beautiful and divine place and a place where only righteous people live together with angelic beings and God. All things good and enjoyable are experienced in Heaven. It is a blissful place free from suffering. Hell on the other hand is a dark place. A place of torment, pain and suffering. The company in hell consists of those who lived sinful lives on Earth. It is obviously a place to avoid. This is generally used as a motivation by many religions to persuade its followers to live by the tenants of their religion and to do good to earn their place in heaven. According to Hinduism sum of the quality of our actions on Earth determine whether we go to heaven or hell.

In Hinduism heaven is swarga and hell is naraka. Hindu Scriptures also advise us to avoid hell through living a righteous life. However in Hinduism the fear of hell is not as pronounced as you can find in Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam). This is because hell, even if one falls into it, is a temporary state. In Hinduism it is known that no one will be lost in hellish regions forever. All souls will eventually reach Godhood and be immersed in heavenly bliss. This eventuality comes to us through the process of reincarnation. In this chapter we will be exploring the second Hindu belief:

Hindu scriptures and epics usually refer to the entire spiritual and physical universes as contained within the three worlds. These three worlds were created by God. They exist one within the other in different dimensions. The veil created by maya hide these worlds from one another and keep the life in each of these worlds more or less independent from one another. These three worlds are:

The first world is the Bhuloka. It is the physical plane consisting of Earth and rest of the seen universe.

The second world is the Devaloka. The world of the devas and asuras. In this world the devas are angelic beings and asuras are demons. Living in their astral bodies, beings here are mostly discarnate people and animals living while they wait for rebirth into the Bhuloka. The Devaloka is divided into heaven and hell.

The third world is the Brahmaloka. This is the highest heaven. This is the abode of God and his mighty mahadevas, or archangels. The Brahmaloka is called differently by different sects of Hinduism, for instance the Vaishnava’s call it Vaikuntha, while the Saivites call it Sivaloka.

Bhuloka is our home while we live in our physical body. The Bhuloka was created by God for us as a place to learn through experience and grow through wisdom. In all its grandeur we can see the magnificence of God through the beauty and orderly forces of nature that is all around us. A waterfall, the mighty ocean, the myriad of animals, the kindness and sacrifices that people perform, seeing all this one can easily say that there is Heaven on Earth. On the flip side there are the ravaging forces of nature, volcanos, hurricanes, disease and the meanness and cruelty that on human can subject another to. Seeing all this one can also say that Earth is a hellish place. This is the experience of the Bhuloka. In the Bhuloka duality within creation is most apparent. Love and hate, joy and sorrow, generosity and miserliness, humility and arrogance, all these forces coexist in the Bhuloka side by side.

The Bhuloka consists of Earth, the planets, stars and other galaxy. It is a huge world indeed. Here our senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and tasting are dominant to our perception of reality. The bhuloka is also called the gross plane, because this is the densest of the three worlds. The energy of God that gives rise to physical matter is most dense in the Bhuloka.

The Bhuloka has a very important purpose in the evolution of our soul, or atma, back to Godhood. Our scriptures extol the greatness of being born as a human. We need the Bhuloka for God Realization. I asked Gurudeva, my guru, about the purpose of the Bhuloka, he replied, “We need the physical body in order to achieve complete God Realisation. In order to realise Parabrahman for the first time we need the physical body, because this is the body that has the fire that can dissolve our ego into God consciousness.” It is interesting that God has created the path to oneness with him in such a way that the same forces that causes us anger, jealousy, greed or hatred are what we need in order to Realise God. It doesn’t mean that we must get angry or jealous to realise God, instead when we practice self control and conquer these forces within us we develop the will power necessary to steady the mind, concentrate it and allow our awareness to pierce the veils of anava, karma and maya and soar into God Realization.

In the Heaven worlds life is naturally blissful, so the impetus or need to realize God is not as pronounced as in the Bhuloka. Having realized God in the Bhuloka, one can continue to have this experience in the Heaven worlds. But if one has not had this experience in Bhuloka first, it will still not be possible in the Heavens.

Devaloka is the world of the devas. Deva means the shinning one. The Devaloka exists within the Bhuloka. There is a part of the Devaloka that is a duplicate of the Bhuloka. Just as our astral and mental bodies are similar in looks to our physical body, a part of the the Devaloka is an astral duplicate of the Bhuloka. However the Devaloka is larger than the Bhuloka, it has many more regions that do not correspond to the Bhuloka. The astral world is organized according to consciousness and is divided into planes of consciousness. There are two major regions in the astral plane. The Heaven or light filled places or swarga is one, and the other is the dark part, or Hell, naraka.

On Earth, which is part of the Bhuloka, duality is coexistent. This means that in any given city you will be able to find temples, businesses and even vice dens side by side. A saint may have a thief as a neighbor. In the astral plane, only people of like minds coexist. That means in a plane of goodness, you will only find good hearted and kind people, and in the plane of jealousy, you will find only jealous people tormenting each other with their antics. In the astral world my guru has also described that there are separate heavens for people of different faiths. There is a Christian Heaven, Islam Heaven, Hindu Heaven and so forth. However there is no competition for superiority amongst the religions. This is because the veil of maya is thinner here and people of all faith experience the same truths and can openly see the wisdom of all religions. In these different heavens the cultures and practices of the religions and different persuasions are developed and brought down to the Bhuloka.

We experience the Devaloka when we dream and during life after death. When we dream, we temporarily detach from our physical and pranic bodies and experience the freedom of being in the Devaloka. After death depending on the quality of our consciousness at death we enter that initial corresponding area of the Devaloka. Which is why tradition advises loved ones to perform a religious vigil over a dying relative, singing devotional songs and talking of God. This will help them enter the heavenly realms of the higher Devaloka. For those who have achieved moksha, they will have the freedom of permanently living in the Devaloka, freed from the cycle of reincarnation. From here they guide humanity and are given other tasks. They will eventually migrate to the Third World or the Brahmaloka. For those who are still subject to reincarnation the Devaloka is a place to rest a while and prepare for the next birth.

In the Devaloka, we may have direct access to God's direct Presence (such as seeing or hearing God) and the Mahadevas. In the Devaloka when God or the Mahadevas come down to the temples they appear personally who can be openly communicated with. With the guidance of the Mahadevas and highly mature devas we decide on the karmas we will take along with us for the next birth, choose our parents, place and time we want to be born.

The Devaloka is also a place of learning. Here we can learn about any subject. There are great inner plane schools for religion, the arts and sciences. Highly intelligent devas of similar interest, most of them, between lives on earth will confer and plan to bring down innovations that are thought up in the Devaloka. Innovations in culture, discoveries of new scientific laws and inventions, all have their source in the Devaloka. If you read the biography of many scientists you will find that the moment they discovered their theory or invention was a sudden stroke of genius when suddenly all the pieces fell or that they may have had a vision or a dream that inspired them to the discovery. These are all signs of intervention from the Devaloka by devas helping the person. The devas are also able to help give solutions to problems we are facing in our lives.

The temple is a place where we can communicate with the devas. The devas can listen to our mental prayers easily in the temple. When they receive the prayer they will dispatch it to a group of devas or Mahadevas in the heavens who can best handle the divine petition. The temple is a special place, where the three worlds can communicate with each other. Such communication cannot happen everywhere even though the inner worlds are within the the Bhuloka. This is because the veils of maya separate the worlds from one another creating a barrier between the worlds. Because of this barrier the devas and Mahadevas cannot see us all the time. We are only visible to them when we go to the temple or some other sanctified place of pilgrimage where the doors within the barriers between the worlds are open to one another. Through these doors communications can flows clear and smooth. This is an important role and service that the temple and its ceremonies play, to open up the heavens to us and keep it open.

The inhabitants of the Devaloka are souls, just like us, except they only have their astral and mental bodies, having shed their physical and pranic bodies at death in their last earthly life. Also just like on earth where we share this planet with many types of other creatures–animals and plants, so too in the Devaloka there is an abundant variety of life forms and more so then in the Bhuloka. This world is a magical world. Travel is not impeded by distance nor does it take time. If you want to go somewhere all you have to do is think of the place and you find yourself there. If you desire something it appears to you that very moment. There is no weight and therefore no falling. However all the experiences in the Devaloka are as real and concrete as is our life in the Bhuloka. There is no such thing as hunger nor pain (this is in heaven of course, the opposite being true for hell). You can still eat if you want. All you will derive out of it is the pleasure of eating. The astral body and the elements of this world derive all their sustenance from the spiritual prana that comes directly from God.There is also no day and night here, and no need for sleep. Communication can be spoken or through telepathy and language is no barrier. Many of the devas in the Devaloka and the asuras in naraka are in the second world temporarily, waiting to be reborn on earth.

Brahmaloka, is the highest heaven, where lives God as Paramatma, the Mahadevas and other highly evolved souls in their self-effulgent bodies. “A world of light and bliss that is filled with wonderful spectacles indescribable,” is how my guru related his experience in this world to me. It is a vast world, far greater than the Bhuloka. It is the domain of our soul, for in this world the soul lives without any other of its bodies but by its pure soul body, the anandamayakosha.

The Brahmaloka lies deep within the Devaloka. From the Brahmaloka God and the Mahadevas can travel back and forth to the Devaloka and the Bhuloka. Many highly evolved devas can also temporarily release themselves from their astral and mental bodies and go to the Brahmaloka and return. From the Bhuloka the Brahmaloka is a very subtle place to experience. Even if we go there in our dreams, we seldom if ever remember it. However if you wake up very fresh and awake from a sleep that seemed dreamless, it is because you had come from the Brahmaloka. The Brahmaloka can also be experienced when one has mastered the art of meditation and is well acquainted with the soul body. When the chakras in the throat, the visuddha chakra, the ajna chakra in the forehead and the crown chakra or the sahasrara chakra, bloom in consciousness one begins to experience the Brahmaloka through meditation.

The Brahmaloka is a place that is very different than the Devaloka. There is no corresponding areas in the Brahmaloka that has a counterpart or duplicate in the Devaloka or Bhuloka, though there is a connection between properly consecrated temples and the Brahmaloka. Through this connection in the temple, God and the Mahadevas appear to us and shower blessings to us. The time cycles that are experienced in this world is vast or galactic in its scope and not related to the Bhuloka or Devaloka. The bondages of the soul or the forces of anava, karma and maya are very subtle, almost non-existent compared to the Devaloka and Bhuloka. There is also no dark or lower region to the Brahmaloka. This is a very stable world with regard to change and without the intellectual pulls of the astral body and instinctive impulses of the physical body awareness is free from ignorance.

Mahadevas are a class of the inhabitants of this world. Mahadevas or “the great devas,” are highly evolved and mature souls created by God to guide the activities of Creation, Preservation, Destruction, The Veiling and Revealing of Grace. (The Five Powers of God; click on insight link below to learn more). The Mahadevas are the intimate helpers of God. Lord Ganesha, Lord Murugan, Lord Indra, Lord Varuna and Lord Hanuman are all Mahadevas. The scriptures say that there are 330 million Mahadevas. Mahadevas are souls created by God and will eventually merge back into God. Only our one Supreme God is uncreated and exists eternally. The devas in the Devaloka serve the Mahadevas. The Mahadevas also assist us in our needs in life using their infinite intelligence and wisdom to guide us to the proper path in life that will eventually lead us back to God. We can worship the Mahadevas, just as we worship God, but we do not worship the devas. The Mahadevas do not need to be born on Earth, but they can travel anywhere in the other worlds using their powers. We feel the presence of the Mahadevas easiest in the temples, for in the temple the three worlds are open to one another.

Hinduism does believe that just as the world was created from God, it will one day return back to God. The process of dissolution of the entire universe is called mahapralaya. However mahapralaya is not for billions of years yet. According to Hindu cosmology, the universe both physical and spiritual emanated from God. It was a gradual process that took billions and billions of years to become what it is today. This belief is confirmed by modern science. There is no theory in Hinduism where God created the world in a few days. Bhuloka is governed by vast time cycles known as the yugas. A cycle of yugas consist of the sat yuga, or the golden age of enlightenment; the treta yuga, the age of spiritual excellence; the dvapara yuga, the age of the dawn of ignorance and kali yuga, the dark age of ignorance. According to many contemporary rishis including my guru, we are now in the phase where the kali yuga is coming to an end and a new sat yuga is slowly dawning. However the sat yuga may only be in full effect in a few centuries. The cycle of each yuga lasts about a couple hundred thousand earth years. Earth is going to be in existence for a long time yet to come.

Mahapralaya is also a gradual process that begins with the contraction of the universe back to its source and this takes billions of years. Mahapralaya is when all the worlds will be absorbed back into God and only God will exist until He issues forth creation again. Dooms Day belief can be found in Christianity and Islam. It is their Judgement Day. It is a time when God will violently destroy the world and all in it. Then all the dead will be raised back to life and they will be judged according to the lives they lived on earth and their faith and sent to Heaven or Hell accordingly for eternity. There is no such belief in Hinduism.