RESOLUTE are the disciples of the master. They stand and watch as he performs a fire ritual before them. He casts oblations into the fire, and the gods come to meet him. They greet him in all due manners, in accordance with the religious precepts, asking of what service they might be to him.
The master asks them to take his disciples to the Higher Realms and put a test for them. Now the disciples cannot see what is happening, and to them it looks as if their master is talking to the sky itself. And little do they trust in the words of their master regarding the other realms that exist in their world. Perhaps this is why their master sought to test them.
The gods agree to his request, and the disciples, unbeknown to them, float alongside the gods whom they cannot discern and fly high into the sky. The blue changes to black, changes to white, and then to gold. They float in a space where the air wafts with the scent of milk and Svyamhaḥ.
What seems like kine, goats, sheep, and swine can be seen grazing the endless pastures of that realm, though much larger in size and more radiant they are – and all about them sways a golden haze that extinguishes their shadow and only begets light.
They see the tallest of the mountains, the tallest of the trees, and the multitude of celestials that live and sport about with not a care in the world. And now in view of them are the gods that have spirited them to this realm glowing radiantly like all else but with greater effulgence.
At last, the disciples know that they are in the Realm of the Gods and that their master has not gone mad. But it seems that is not what their master is trying to convince them of for the test they are to take seems of a different nature. The gods bring them to an inverted tree, the roots of which reach high into the sky, past what could be understood as a firmament, and its long branches stretch along the horizon.
Here, the gods present them with the task of collecting a certain number of figs from the tree. Now the disciples, not understanding what this entails, laugh hysterically.
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The gods simply smile, and the disciples then approach the tree and try to collect the figs. But as they do so, they see they cannot simply put the figs together and hope that they have the correct number in a pile. For adding the third fig into a pair begets two. This one dilemma has them wrestling in their heads how it is that they can come to three figs. The gods surely want more, but the disciples care not to end the task unless they can logically work out this conundrum.
And so they spend what could amount to days and weeks near that tree, collecting figs and piling them in different assortments, combining and removing till they understand how it is that the realm is “counting” them. But they cannot figure out any inherent logic behind this for the amount that is added to or removed from the figs seems arbitrary, irrespective of how many there are or how they are combined.
They eventually supplicate to the gods and ask what the answer to the riddle is. The gods smile and begin collecting the figs, passing the figs among each other as more are collected. They begin combining and removing them in what can only be seen as random, and when the figs are piled, the disciples count them numerous times over and find that indeed there is the amount the gods request of them.
It dawns on them that there is never any rhyme or reason to what the gods ask of them or what their master has related before concerning the Higher Realms, for the logic that exists in that realm is different from their own; it is not a place they can discern with their intellect, being much like a source of such things rather than a result.
They ask the gods to forgive them for their arrogance, but they simply laugh and say that they have expected as much. They explain that they had, at one point, spirited their master away here as well and put him to the same test and he like them failed, but unlike his students, he was much afraid of what could happen to him were he to fail, so he toiled at the tree longer than any of his disciples had, but he too eventually gave in, and the gods kept him in that realm for some time teaching him various things till he became wise in all manner of disciplines. And when his time had come he had descended back to Ārhmanhaḥ to become a teacher to his disciples that now stood in the same place like he once had.
The gods then look my way and smile at me as if they wish to tell me something, but I hear nothing uttered – and all at that moment seems irrational to me.