| 1. Naraka (Sanskrit) In mythology, a place of torment, a hell, but such popular understandings are but exoteric blinds. The narakas are rather worlds in the spheres of matter, the globes of the planetary chain. They are called thus because they are rupa (form) worlds as contrasted with the arupa (formless) spheres of spirit. The narakas are generally regarded as 21 in number, as in the Laws of Manu. "These 'hells' are called vivifying hells because . . . any being dying in one is immediately born in the second, then in the third, and so on; life lasting in each 500 years (a blind on the number of cycles and reincarnations). As these hells constitute one of the six gati [jatis] (conditions of sentient existence), and as people are said to be reborn in one or the other according to their Karmic merits or demerits, the blind becomes self-evident" (TG 225) |
