Chapter two – The king enjoys material life but gets bewildered by his wife
Have you heard of the city of nine gates, dear reader, and understood its real purport? If not, then I will decipher the metaphor. But first let me tell you how our hero, king Puranjana whom you met in the previous chapter, lived his life filled with happiness after marrying his wife. Yet at the same time he fell into illusion and came under the control of his queen, like a man under the control of his mind and its material intelligence.
Indeed, whatever she did, he imitated, and wherever she went, he followed. Thus he was captivated by his wife and treated like a pet animal that dances according to the order of its master. How strange it seems to me that a man of such overt strength can be so easily controlled by a woman with her covert strength. And that is how nature works it seems. Men are given muscular strength but weak minds, while women are given minimal muscle but strong minds. And with those minds they dominate almost every man on the planet.
Or if a man is not dominated by a woman, who knows that he is addicted to seeking pleasure with her, then he is dominated by his own feminine mind. The outer physical body may be male but the inner mind and emotions are feminine. And the converse is true in a female body. Her mind is strong, like an iron lady, and she will use words and wit to win over the weaker man who is so easily controlled by his desires for pleasure with her. It takes all one’s effort to master the balance between ones male and female sides in every human, regardless of physical gender.
And so our tale continues, where the mighty king Puranjana was easily defeated by the beautiful queen of the city of nine gates. You already know this city of nine gates, dear reader, for seven gates are on the surface and two are subterranean. Five lead east, one to the north, one to the south and two to the west. If it’s not obvious to you yet, then I will reveal to you the mystery, but first let me tell you what happens to our hero step by step.
It was hard for king Puranjana to give up his wife’s company but one day he had the desire to go out hunting in the forest. He thus gathered up his bow and unlimited amount of arrows, two of which even had explosive tips. In ancient times, long before the dawn of our modern western understanding of history, which only goes back about three thousand years, kings and military warriors were trained in the martial arts on a level not familiar to us today. Although the ancient texts reveal to us some of the features of that life in apparently simplistic terms, like the use of horse and chariot, or bow and arrow, still people possessed more subtle sciences of which we have already long forgotten due to the inevitable degradation of time.
For example in previous great ages, many hundreds of thousands of years ago, planet earth was inhabited by human civilization under the influence of far finer galactic or cosmic influences that we find ourselves under today. Back then the human race had finer gifts and skills of a more subtle nature, which one might call magic. The priests and sages had mystic powers and so did the military generals. Trained by their priests, these generals and kings could use subtle weapons, powered not by fire or the explosive gunpowder and combustion engines of today, but by mantra.
Therefore king Puranjana had what might be called explosive arrows, which were activated by chanting the appropriate mantra as the arrow was released from the bow. In this way he could kill more than one target at a time, or target one specific individual among a mass of people, all without the explosive chemistry we use today to perform such feats.
In fact mechanical combustion machinery that we use today is considered to be a lower class of power, used by the residents of lower level planetary systems. On the higher level planetary systems the residents can travel at the speed of the mind across galaxies, without using such mechanical vehicles at all. Since our earth planet is considered somewhere in the middle – between the higher and lower planetary systems and their extra-terrestrial civilizations – we occasionally become influenced by the one or the other, at different times in the galactic history of the multiverse.
Nevertheless, wherever and whenever we may find ourselves in the material creation, all are places of birth and death, even if old age and disease is eradicated in the higher planets. Or so it is described in the ancient Sanskrit texts from which this tale emerges. So during those historic times, now long forgotten, our king, being a powerful military general, was trained in the use of mantra weaponry and thus took his arrows out with him to hunt in the forest near the city.
King Puranjana rode out on his chariot, consisting of two wheels and one axle, three flags, one reign, one driver, a sitting place, two poles for a harness, five specific kinds of weapons, seven coverings and decorations of gold. It moved in five different styles to avoid five different types of obstacles. All of this is described in the ancient Purana. I simply recount to you the narration as I heard it. But there is more, which I will narrate in the next chapter which follows on the heels of this one, so stay tuned dear reader, for the best is yet to come.
(images pixabay)