Four Faces of Lord Bramha – Key to Deepen the Meditation

Those were the days when I used to look at every thing from either intellectual point of view or sadhana point of view. I used to think I would be able to grasp the ultimate reality with this puny intellect. Oh Boy! how wrong one can be? So, this article is a translation from the scribbles from those days. I started reading Ramcharitmanas at that time and instead of getting soaked in devotion for Lord Rama, I was trying to find the link between the upanishadic thought, vedic tradition and Puranic texts, without any first hand knowledge using my limited intellect. So, the interpretation I am going to provide doesn’t have any factual basis. It is a product of my own imaginative mind after contemplating upon this question again and again. However, this interpretation did help me to deepen my sadhana a bit . So, what it’s worth, I am sharing it here with an intent that it might help a beginner like me to deepen their own sadhana.

Tulsidasji in Ramcharitmanas describes the Creator as ” Ubhaya Prabhodak Chaturdubhashi”, Ubhaya prabhodak means the one who illumines everything, and chaturdubhashi means he maintains the duality through his four faces( by creating four illusions). This got me into thinking that here tulsidasji is referring that one consciousness creates four separate illusions and this creates duality. What are these four illusions and I started observing everything around, what differentiates one thing from another? After contemplating upon this thought it occurred to me that name, form, time, and space are the four illusions that separates one reality from another. So, name, form, time, and space are the four faces of Creator. 

How this interpretation helped me in sadhana ?

I realized that chanting a mantra is just a name part of this reality, and if the other three aspects are not taken care, the mind gets distracted easily. However, we can take care of all the four aspects of the one reality that is name, form, time, and space, then we can increase our focus span gradually.

To deal with space part of the reality, we can fix our gaze internally at any particular point, it can be eyebrows, or heart, or navel, or nose tip . Fixing our gaze helps us to create a kind of space for what we are going to focus upon.

To deal with time, it’s good to first understand the concept of time, time is the distance between any two events, if there are no two events, we can not comprehend time, so, fix a rhythm for your chanting, and try to chant a mantra in a particular rhythm, a set rhythm helps us to fix the time part of the reality.

If you are focussing on a mantra, then chanting your mantra will be a name/word part of that one reality, however, chanting a mantra creates a sound and they are very deceptive and can distract you from what you are chanting, for example, it can take you to a place where you heard this sound sometime, maybe a temple or any other place and before you notice, you are distracted 🙈🙈🙈. This obstacle can be overcome by fixing a form part of the reality.

So, to deal with form, try to also visualize your mantra physically over time, for example if we are chanting Aum then visualizing Aum coming towards you and fading away and then again coming towards you and fading away, let us fix the form part.

Taking care of all these four aspects make us more mindful of our distraction and we can recognize the distraction as and when they come quickly and increase our span of concentration over time.

Once again, my sincere apologies that I tried interpreting the meaning of the scriptures and their symbology with this limited intellect but I thought of sharing this thinking the technique that came out of this might be of some use. 

Faults are all mine, any good belongs only to Lord alone 🙏🙏🙏

Jai Shree Hari 😊😊😊