The 11th House: The Relationship between Devas and Lokas

by the Editors of Astronoesis

Paper V09P

3-LETTER CODE: ASN

TOPIC: Astronoesis

SUBJECT: Nature

SUBSUBJECTS: 11th House, Deva & Loka, Hinduism

ORIGINAL LOCATION & FILE NAME: nas11th.doc

CONTENTS:

Reversal of subject-object relationship in 11th house; deva assimilates loka to itself

Comparison with empirical plane (12th house)

Redefinition of loka in spiritual context: purified mind, unembodied imagination

Process of spiritual contemplation: mind absorbed into deva

Hierarchical structure of devas: 1) vertical stratification; 2) horizontal differentiation

BOOKS QUOTED FROM OR REFERENCED:

• Krishnachandra Bhattacharyya, Studies in Philosophy, Vol. 1, "Studies in Vedantism"

• Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi

REFORMATTED by IT, MW 2025

NOTES:

• RETYPED ASTRONOESIS ENDNOTE (V09P).

• This short endnote/paper was originally written (by Editors) as an Endnote for Astronoesis, and rejected by the publisher for the book. The Astronoesis class would revisit this endnote whenever we studied the System of Nature in Astronoesis.

THE 11TH HOUSE: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN DEVAS AND LOKAS

In the 11th House are the planes of existence or lokas. Normally we conceive of a subject or soul being situated within a loka or place (object). But K.C. Bhattacharyya (in paras 33-36+ in "Studies in Vedantism," ch. 2 "Vedanta Metaphysics"), writing of the god-intelligibles (devas), reverses this relationship, when he writes that: every deva demands a loka.

What appears as the distinction of subject and object in the empirical plane (12th house), in which the subject has primacy and the object must be taken in, has as paradigm the loka and deva. But in the 11th house case, the deva (as the correlate of the object), assimilates the loka to itself. Therefore loka in this context must mean the location for the spiritual vision--i.e. the purified mind of the aspirant, corresponding to the unembodied imagination or, as Ibn 'Arabi would put it, the Heart of the gnostic (see his Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi). This organ of perception is the location or loka in which the deva, the shining one, is made manifest. In other words, once the mind is prepared (i.e., in a proper place or loka), it is absorbed in contemplation into the deva, not the other way around.

The Devas or Intelligibles have distinct strata such as we have indicated by levels of the World-Idea, grades of reason-principles corresponding to grades of life or soul. Bhattacharyya also asks whether the devas are also distinguished transversely or individuated into ideas of individual souls. If the latter is the case, this would correspond to each Soul having a certain lineage or linkage to an idea, or of an individual participating in a more universal idea, which is embodied as individual sages, or remains principially as the idea of a Star or Sun.