Infinite Regression: Mahabharata and the Matryoshka

The Infinite Mahabharata

a talk by Michael Dolan, B.V. Mahayogi

Here's a partial transcript of today's Video Tutorial. You can read while you watch the video.

The Greatest Story Ever Told

Vyasa is the author of Mahabharata. He is the greatest story-teller ever.

And Vyāsa tells us the greatest story ever told. The literature of the Western world including the Bible, Homer, and Shakespeare are eclipsed by the Mahābhārata. 

At 100,000 Sanskrit verses it is longer than those three combined. And no western literature can touch the deeper themes of the Mahābhārata which include both karma and dharma, the arrow of time and the creation of the universe, as well as ethics and the path to enlightenment. As a history Mahābhārata includes the stories of all the great kings of India since the beginning of time.

If its themes are profound, the structure of the Mahabharata is in fact infinite. It involves a number of different frame stories; so many in fact that the reader becomes lost in a kind of alternate universe in space and time. Arjuna found that a day with the gods may last 10 years of time on earth, thus discovering relativity a thousand years before Einstein.

And reading the Mahābhārata we discover ourselves as time travelers as well. And travel in time is possible not only physically, but metaphysically--as we find ourselves unravelling the past lives and karma of so many of the characters. The work contains so many digressions and frame stories used to illustrate its greater themes that we find ourselves wandering through a hall of mirrors whose images reveal the vertiginous phenomenon of infinite regression.

The literary techniques pioneered by Vyāsa later permeate such oriental narratives as the 1,001 Nights of Scheherazade which employs a number of frame stories in an almost infinite regression. We all know the story of the virgin girl who entertains a sadistic and murderous king with her tales of adventure. The thousand nights contain a number of “frame” stories or “stories within a story.” But why a thousand and one?

Jorge Luis Borges reminds us that the "One" night in the title refers to the night on which, exhausted, Scheherazade can't think of another story to tell. She has entertained the king for a thousand nights with her stories. But she will be raped and murdered the moment she runs out of tales.

On the 1001st night, she begins again. She tells the king her own story: "Once upon a time, there was a girl named Scheherazade," and when she comes to the part where she is asked to entertain the king, she begins again with the first story. She discovers the infinite story within a story.

Scheherezade creates a Möbius strip of tales, an endless loop where every thousand nights, she recapitulates her own story. Borges called the 1001 nights a labyrinth of labyrinths, a circular novel of endless concantenations, an infinite and circular story, "un cuento circular y infinito."

.With his use of frame stories, Vyāsa’s Mahabharata anticipates the 1001 Nights by over a thousand years. While long at 100,00 verses, the Mahabharata is not an infinite. But the text doubles back on itself like a Möbius strip through its different versions. There is the original version of Vyāsa, called “Jaya,” an Ur-text of some 5000 verses. This has been edited by Vaishampayana who gives a more expanded version at the snake sacrifice of Janemejaya, a descendant of the Pandavas who is determined to destroy all serpents in revenge for the death of his father, the grandson of Arjuna who was the grandson of Vyāsa.

Vaishampayana’s version is repeated by Suta or Sauti or Suta Goswami before the assembly of sages at the forest of Naimisharanya after the dawn of the Kali age. And Vyāsa returns to edit Suta’s version and give us a final version. So Vyāsa gives the final version of the tale told by Suta who learned from Vaishampayana who learned from Vyāsa. The Mahābhārata shows a Borgian espejismo, or "infinite and circular regression," in far more subtle ways, not only through space and time, but through its description of karma.

If the Mahābhārata story folds into itself in infinite regression, it teaches an understanding of karma through its very form. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction,” says Newton. Searching out the original cause of all action involves a different form of infinite regression, one that looks at karmic cause and effect.

Karma, the endless cycle of action and reaction, of psychic cause and effect is one of the great themes of the Mahabharat. Vyāsa’s genius demonstrates that any one human story is a story of infinite regression. We all live a tangled series of lives. Each life has a certain dependence on the actions and reactions of our former life. And even as we live off the reactions of our past life, we create new karma for our next life.

Karma is not infinite in an absolute sense. The soul is eternal and will one day escape the circle of birth and death. But karma binds us in that circle, the Möbius strip of action and reaction. The sisyphean task of birth, death, and rebirth is not eternal, but it is endless as long as we refuse to seek out immortal life.

Vyāsa’s shows his genius as a story-teller dealing with the problem of karma. A hero, cursed in a former life, struggles through the karmic reaction in this finding a happy ending only in the next. A villain, blessed with good karma from his last life, squanders his chances and is reborn in misery. Vyāsa’s time frame goes beyond a single life and may include multiple incarnations. His exploration of karma reflects the wheel of birth and death itself. Heroes become villains, friends become foes, and foes become friends.

Vyāsa teaches that to ferret out why we are in a particular situation according to our karma is subtle: it involves the action and reaction of our past life. Salvation will be found when we halt the cycle of repeated birth and death and find harmony in yoga.

As the narrative found in the Mahabharata often contemplates the actions and reactions that take place over a number of past lives its scope in time and is infinite. This Vyāsa’s achievement much more ambitious than any other epic.

One of the principal characters, Bhishma, for example has taken his birth as the result of a curse; he's being punished for having stolen the mystic cow of the sage Vasistha. And so, often before we can proceed in the action of the story, we pause to contemplate the back story and past lives of the characters and heros. just as we think we know a particular individual in the story we discover the past life of that character. The whole effect is that of a Russian doll, a Matryoshka. We open a larger doll only to find a smaller doll within, one that contains a still smaller doll. It is as if we are sitting in a barber's chair looking at the mirror before us and seeing the mirror behind us as the mirrors revealed an infinite number of selves. The effect of infinite regression allows us to contemplate our place in the universe as an individual soul passing through a myriad number of incarnations.

The temporal planes found in Mahabharata easily eclipse the Bible, Homer, or 1001 Nights; not only is there a cast of thousands of characters, but our understanding of their past and former lives is endless in scope.

The study of Mahābharata began before the birth of Alexander the Great and continues today. It is not the story of a thousand or even a million and one nights, but the perpetual story of karmic incarnation and reincarnation, billions of days and nights long.

And even when the narrative of the Mahābharata does not venture into the past lives of the protagonists in the battle of Kurukshetra, the constant digression into the ancient dynasty of King Bharata continues the effect of infinite regression.

Besides being a great story-teller, Vyāsa is also India’s greatest prophet. In his prophesies, Vyasa foresees the decline of human civilization throughout the Iron Age of Kali Yuga. He saw the emergence of whole civilizations based on greed and exploitation. He knew that coming wars would create much more horrific bloodshed than Kurukshetra and predicted the coming of the atomic age.