The Vedic metaphor of Indra’s Net

Each jewel of Indra’s Net includes the reflections of all the other jewels; the significance of this symbolism is that each entity in the universe contains within itself the entire universe. This idea, rather than positing interdependence among separately existing entities, asserts that the whole does not owe its existence to the coming together of... See more

Indra’s Net ‘symbolizes a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the members of the cosmos’. He adds that ‘the cosmos is, in short, a self-creating, self-maintaining, and self-defining organism’. Furthermore, there is no theory of a beginning time, and such a universe has no hierarchy. ‘There is no center, or, p... See more

The net is said to be infinite, and to spread in all directions with no beginning or end. At each node of the net is a jewel, so arranged that every jewel reflects all the other jewels. No jewel exists by itself independently of the rest. Everything is related to everything else; nothing is isolated.