Young Krishna & the Universe in His Mouth

#230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic – Human Voices Wake Us

An episode from 5/18/26: Tonight I read about the bear in folklore and mythology from two books everybody should have on their shelves: the Taschen Book of Symbols and the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols. Browsing through either puts you in contact with our best stories and, with the Taschen book, some of our best artwork.Next, I read Lord Byron’s (1788-1824) apocalyptic poem Darkness from 1816. You can read more about the volcanic eruption that inspired poem, and produced the “year without summer,” here.Finally, I read a few passages on revelation and the religious experience from the rabbi, theologian and civil rights activist Abraham Joshua Heshel’s (1907-1962) God in Search of Man: A Philosophy of Judaism.The best way to support the podcast is by leaving a review on Apple or Spotify, sharing it with others, or sending me a note on what you think. You can also order any of my books: Time and the River: From Columbine to the Invention of Fire, Notes from the Grid, To the House of the Sun, The Lonely Young & the Lonely Old, and Bone Antler Stone. I've also edited a handful of books in the S4N Pocket Poems series. I also have a YouTube channel where I share poems and excerpts from these books, mostly as YouTube shorts.Email me at humanvoiceswakeus1@gmail.com.

1. #230 – The mythology of the bear, and Byron gets apocalyptic 31:45
2. #229 : Mother Earth and myths of mining and agriculture 43:25
3. #228 – What Ted Bundy did on July 14, 1974 36:51
4. #227 – The Great Fire of London and the destruction of Jerusalem 33:02
5. #226: The Vitality and terror of cities 32:10
6. #225 – The invention of the wheel, and the power of storytelling 22:42
7. #224: Let's talk about William Blake 31:20
8. #223 – How to write two novels at the same time, with Charles Dickens 20:51
9. #222: Seamus Heaney – 10 Essential Poems 01:07:41
10. #221: Volcanoes, Plagues & the Childhood of a Kabbalist 26:19

One of my favorite stories from Hinduism comes from the Bhagavata Purana, on the childhood of Krishna:

….One day when Rama and the other little sons of the cowherds were playing, they reported to his mother, “Krishna has eaten dirt.” Yasoda took Krishna by the hand and scolded him, for his own good, and she said to him, seeing that his eyes were bewildered with fear, “Naughty boy, why have you secretly eaten dirt?” Krishna said, “Mother, I have not eaten. They are all lying. If you think they speak the truth, look at my mouth yourself” “If that is the case, then open your mouth,” she said to the Lord Hari [Vishnu], the God of unchallenged sovereignty who had in sport taken the form of a human child, and He opened his mouth.

She then saw in his mouth the whole eternal universe, and heaven, and the regions of the sky, and the orbit of the earth with its mountains, islands, and oceans; she saw the wind, and lightning, and the moon and stars, and the zodiac; and water and fire and air and space itself; she saw the vacillating senses, the mind, the elements, and the three strands of matter. She saw within the body of her son, in his gaping mouth, the whole universe in all its variety, with all the forms of life and time and nature and action and hopes, and her own village, and herself. Then she became afraid and confused, thinking, “Is this a dream, or an illusion wrought by a god? Or is it a delusion of my own perception? Or is it some portent of the natural powers of this little boy, my son? I bow down to the feet of the god, whose nature cannot be imagined or grasped by mind, heart, acts, or speech; he in whom all of this universe is inherent, impossible to fathom. The god is my refuge, he through whose power of delusion there arise in me such false beliefs as “I”, “This is my husband”, “This is my son”, “I am the wife of the village chieftain and all his wealth is mine, including these cow-herds and their wives and their wealth of cattle.”

When the cow-herd’s wife had come to understand the true essence in this way, the lord spread his magic illusion in the form of maternal affection. Instantly the cow-herd’s wife lost her memory of what had occurred and took her son on her lap.

Translator Wendy Doniger also notes that this story “is a motif based upon a much earlier myth from the Mahabarata [3.183-190, and the Matsya 167]: the sage Markandeya was floating in the cosmic ocean after the dissolution of the universe, when he came upon a young boy sleeping under a banyan tree. He entered the mouth of the boy—who was Vishnu—and saw within him the entire universe, whereupon he came back out of Vishnu’s mouth.”