Meru is the axis of the Puranic universe. It stands at the centre of the world, golden, of enormous height, with the continents arranged around it in concentric rings and the celestial bodies circling its summit. The gods dwell on its heights, and the four faces are described as being of different substances, which is offered as the reason the four surrounding regions differ in character. Searching for it on a map is not a productive exercise, and the tradition has generally not encouraged one.
The reason is that Meru is an axis before it is a place. Its structural role, an immovable centre around which everything else revolves, is repeated at every scale the tradition builds at. The shikhara of a temple is explicitly a mountain, and the sanctum beneath it sits on the vertical line the tower marks. The bindu at the centre of a yantra occupies the same position in a flat diagram. The bead on a mala that is not crossed is called meru for exactly this reason.
The scale that matters most in practice is the human one. The spine is treated as Meru in the body, with the same vertical structure, the same centre, and the same sense of everything else being organised around it, which is why yogic practice is so insistent about an upright and steady spine and why the central channel runs along it. The whole family of correspondences is the working out of the principle stated as yatha pinde tatha brahmande, as in the body so in the cosmos.
Meru is one shape the tradition uses at every scale it works on, from a mountain to a mala bead to your own back. To see the principle that licenses the repetition, explore more of The Living Sanatan Timeline.
Part 73 of 100 — Series I: From the Beginning
Series I: From the BeginningThe Five KoshasIndexFAQThe Timeline