Shiva, another name for It, Brahman, is the still masculine power. And She Parvathi the play. The unmoving desires to play with itself, and so the abstract became concrete, and mountains rose, and the swift, lisping, gurgling rivers, so that the crops could flourish, and the humans, the cows and the elephants bathe in the flowing waters. And seeing their own faces (in the waters), ask themselves the question: Who is it that sees? Does he who sees seen by that which sees back? Or is it just play? The question needs the answer. Would Shiva in his Himalayan retreat, by Lake Manasarovar, have the answer? The water mirrors both the faces. Is, ap, water then the meaning? Is water flow? And when it does not flow, say in the Manasarovar, Lake of the Mind, is the lake not water? Water is just water, pure water. ‘Salila eko drasta dvaito bhavati.’3 Is meaning then the face without face? So, the snout that asks the question to the snout below seen in the water, realizes, in meaning there is no snout, and meaning is just life, goh. So the cow, goh, becomes, light. And Ganesha, the lord of wisdom, has an elephant’s head, snout and all. The question asking the question back is poetry. Kratyantu kratyavaha (Rig Veda 10.64.2), ‘The Poetic thought sees itself seeing.’

Since we have the mountains and the waters, the trees and the moon, man and woman, why not play? So we give names to objects. Namadheya, like we give names to chess pieces: the horse, the elephant, the fortress, the prime minister or raja, the king. Now the names are made of phonemes, graphics of breath. Hence, to name precisely, we must modulate our breath. That is Yoga. Suppose then, the yogi modulates his breath with such strictness, precision, as the word would say itself to itself totally—such a vibration then be its true, whole name.

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Imagine then, sitting by some Mount Meru, in the Manasarovar of my mind, I vibrate the sound of the object, what would happen, what should happen? Since the object is vibration, and I vibrate the vibration of the object, would not the object appear and say: Look, here I am. So, pure naming is pure creation. Therefore it is said: first there was the word Vac and—Vac created the world. Poetry now becomes the paradigm of the creator creating universes. You see, we are once again playing. The game, any game is a paradox, and paradox puzzle, and puzzle poetry.

Brihaspate prathamam vacho agram, yat prauratha namadhayam dadanam

(Rig Veda 10.71)

When Brihaspati, (of the family of Angirasa) the first of Speech, and the foremost

The sages uttered giving the unnamed a name.

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There is in the same Rig Veda, a magnificent, famed fable. It is called Purusha Sukta, the hymn of Primal Man.