Square 33: Plane of fragrance (gandha-loka)

Square 33 in Leela is the Plane of fragrance, gandha-loka in Sanskrit. Here the senses are refined: smell, the sense of the earth element, is transformed into a subtle and pleasing fragrance, and even the body's odours are purified. It lies in the fourth row, Attaining Balance, just after the Plane of balance, and it is a plain square with no arrow or snake.

What square 33 means

Johari describes the Plane of fragrance as the place where smell is transmuted into divine fragrance and the body's odours are purified. It is the first of two squares in the heart row about refined senses. The point is not to give the senses up but to let them become finer, so that what once drew the player down into craving now becomes a way of perceiving beauty.

Gandha is Sanskrit for smell or fragrance, and loka means plane. In Indian thought smell is tied to the earth element and to the first chakra, the very beginning of the board. Meeting it again at square 33, purified, shows the movement of the whole game: the same energy that began as basic survival returns, in the heart, as delicacy and appreciation.

Fragrance follows balance on the board for a reason. Once the lower desires have quietened at square 32, the senses no longer need to grab. They can simply receive. The teaching is practical and close at hand: a player can notice what actually nourishes the senses today, rather than what merely stimulates them, and let attention become as light as a scent. Even a single breath of a familiar scent can be enough to bring the mind home.

On the board

The Plane of fragrance is a plain square in row 4, with no arrow or snake beginning or ending here. A player arrives by an ordinary throw, a 1 from the Plane of balance (32), a 2 from the Plane of sanctity (31) or a 3 from Good tendencies (30). From 33, a throw of 4 lands on True awareness (37), whose arrow rises to the Plane of bliss at 66; the other throws stay in the heart row or move into row 5.

The Bhagavad Gita and this square

Its verse is Gita 7.9, where Krishna is the pure fragrance of the earth: learn to notice the Divine in simple things, the smell of rain, a flower, a fresh morning. The Mahabharata episode is Bhima's search for the Saugandhika lotus, a journey set in motion by a single fragrant flower.

Krishna is the pure fragrance of the earth. Learn to notice the Divine in simple things: the smell of rain, a flower, a fresh morning.

Gita 7.9 · Bhima seeks the Saugandhika lotus

Questions to reflect on

• What is nourishing my senses today?
• Which smell or small sensation brings me back to the present?
• Where do I seek stimulation when what I need is something subtler?