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Kathopanishad: The Science of the Inner Life
Kathopanishad: The Science of the Inner Life by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 12 July 2013 20:00
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Introduction
The Kathopanishad may be regarded as a most appropriate introduction to spiritual life in general. The story with which the Upanishad begins provides the proper foundation for commencing a study of the science of the higher life of man. From the exoteric ritual of the performance of sacrifice and charity by sage Vajasravasa, the Upanishad takes us to the spiritual longing of the seeker, Nachiketas, which moves along a definite pattern of development. The three boons requested for by Nachiketas from Yama represent the terrestrial, heavenly and spiritual realms of attainment. In the movement from the outward liturgy of Vajasravasa in the world to the inner aspiration of Nachiketas for spiritual values, we have the first step taken towards the higher consciousness. The second step is the rise from temporal relationships to the universal significance of all things found in the all-comprehensive Vaisvanara, known also as Hiranyagarbha in his higher manifestation, and as Virat in his lower universal form, represented in the second boon granted by Yama. The third step is the ascent from the universal to the Absolute, which is the third boon asked for by Nachiketas, but most reluctantly granted by Yama, after subjecting Nachiketas to a severe test in the form of supernormal temptations of sense and ego, to which even the best minds cannot but succumb when placed in favourable circumstances. The Upanishad now leads us on to the theme it intends to propound.
The path to perfection can be trodden only after encountering several threats and temptations. The example of Nachiketas shows that he was even cursed to death and tempted severely in his attempt at adhering to righteousness and truth of the spirit. In the process of the search for truth, the subjective propensities and objective tendencies show their heads in concrete forms and either tempt or threaten the aspirant. For an aspirant of weak will advanced spiritual practices are very near impossibility. A person believes in what he sees and experiences and not in what he does not see and does not experience. He has love for certain things and fear for certain others, because he has a faith in the value of those things, as they are the objects of his direct experience. He, however, does not believe in supersensuous realities, because they are not the objects of direct experience. Love for comfort and hatred for pain and sorrow pull the aspirant from two opposite sides, and he is left at sea. It is here that the strong weapon of will and discrimination should come to one’s help. One has to clear the way in the midst of these oppositions which are inevitable in one’s struggle for transcending one’s individuality in the Absolute. The individual modes try their best to persist in appearing again and again, and to bar the gate to Truth. It is hard to recognise the faces of these thieves in the form of friends, who deceive the aspirant every moment and frustrate all his aspirations. The objects and states of every plane of consciousness have to be rejected, as they are objective, and one has to resort to the Infinite Subject which is divisionless fullness. One should realise that anything that is achieved as the result of desires and actions shall vanish one day or the other, and that the only thing ever enduring and worth knowing is the one Self in all. Nachiketas persisted in his aspiration for Truth, in spite of the most formidable temptations, and in the teeth of the refusal of Yama to impart knowledge to him. Finally, Yama initiates him into the mysteries of the Self_._
The Good and the Pleasant
The good is one thing and the pleasant is another. They have different aims, and they drag a person from different directions. Of these two, he who chooses the good obtains blessedness, but he who chooses the pleasant falls from his aim. The good is that which leads one to God or the Absolute. It gives the freedom of Moksha or liberation from Samsara. It is not pleasant, because it is against body-consciousness. It destroys what is pleasant and, hence, is rather painful. The pleasant, on the other hand, is intimately connected with the body, and prevents a person from choosing the good. One falls down from one’s aim if one chooses the pleasant, because one shall never be able to possess the pleasant objects for ever, and, also, these objects are false appearances and not real existences. All pleasant things shall vanish, and only the good shall remain. One cannot pursue the good and the pleasant at the same time, even as light and darkness cannot be perceived in the same place. One who chooses the good should reject the pleasant and take refuge in the supermundane Truth, though it is invisible. The good does not come quickly, though the pleasant may do so. The Real is the unseen. One who pursues the Real attains the blessed state of eternity, but that short-sighted and dull-witted person who pursues the pleasant is separated from the objects of his desire, and he shall mourn for their death and take birth for their sake.
Both the good and the pleasant come to a person. But the wise man discriminates between the two. The wise one prefers the good to the pleasant, and the stupid one chooses the pleasant, for the sake of protecting and fattening the body and ego. All run after the pleasant alone and not after the good, because the pleasant is connected with the present limited life. The good is not longed for, because it is transempirical. The good and the pleasant are opposite to each other, like the two poles. One cuts the tree of Samsara, and the other waters it. Those who justify sense-enjoyments are blind men guided by blind philosophies and they fall into deep pits. All enjoyment is mere friction of nerves. It does not merely bring pain but is the very form of misery itself. A sensation cannot be called bliss, and all worldly experiences are sensations. Those who believe in the reality of this present world alone and do not care for the existence of another plane of life get attached to this world, and, thus, have to experience births and deaths, incessantly.
The Nature of the Self
The Atman, being the presupposition of all acts of understanding, feeling and willing, is not known to any individualised knower, and so it appears as a mystery, a Wonder of wonders, awe-inspiring. To many, this Atman is difficult to hear of, to many others, even when heard of, it is difficult to understand. Wonderful is the teacher of this; blessed is the obtainer of this; wonderful is the knower of this, who is taught by a blessed teacher. The Atman cannot be known if it is taught by an inferior teacher, even if it is thought of in various ways. Only when the Atman is taught by one who is identical with the Atman (i.e., a Brahmanishtha), it can be known, because the Atman is subtler than the subtlest and does not come under any of the logical categories. The Atman cannot be known through logic, but it can be known when it is instructed about by one who has realised it. The wealth of the universe, its resources and powers, are insufficient as means to the realisation of the Atman, for the permanent is not reached by the impermanent. The Atman is reached when the whole universe with its contents is abandoned. Even the source of the highest happiness, the basis of the world, the end of all desires, the state of fearlessness, the praiseworthy great being, viz., Hiranyagarbha, is not worth having. Rejecting all these, that Atman which is very difficult to know, which is seated in the innermost cavity of the heart, the attainment of which is attended with great dangers, should be known by abstracting the senses and the mind from their respective objects and resolving this energy into Self-consciousness. Knowing this self-luminous being, the hero casts off both joy and grief. He rejoices in the bliss of the Self, because he has attained the highest object of attainment through hearing, understanding and contemplation of this subtle Truth. It is different from what is done and what is not done, different from past and future, and is of the nature of immediate knowledge. All the Vedas speak of the glory of this. All penances point to the greatness of this. All observe continence for the attainment of this. This supreme state is denoted by the word OM. This is the Supreme Absolute. After knowing this, whatever one wishes for, becomes one’s own. This is the supreme support; knowing this support, one glories in the region of the Absolute.
This omniscient Atman is not born, nor does it die. It has not come from anywhere, and it has not become anything. Unborn, eternal, perpetual and ancient, this Atman is not killed when the body is killed. Birth is the process of the production of an effect from a cause, and hence, it is the process of transient becoming. For the same reason, death also is a process. The processes of birth, life and death are impermanent and, therefore, they are denied in the Atman. Ceaseless consciousness is free from all change. Change is the character of phantasmal presentations. Changelessness is the nature of the Atman. This Atman does not come from anywhere, and it has not become anything else, because coming and becoming are, again, transient processes. It has not ceased to be itself. It does not decay or suffer diminution. It is the most ancient and the newest of all. An object becomes new when its constituents are changed and set in a different condition. The Atman exists even prior to and later than the newest of objects. It exists together with everything, and also after everything. Nothing newer and other than the Atman can ever be produced. In other words, the Atman is whatever is, was and will be. Hence, it is indestructible. It neither kills anyone nor is killed. It suffers from nothing, because it is untouched like ether. It is free from the experiences of Samsara. It is bodiless, and hence relationless. Non-becoming or changelessness is the one character which denies of the Atman all phenomenal natures. The Atman is subtler than the subtlest and larger than the largest. It is situated as the central being of all. Free from thought and action, one beholds it through the cessation of distraction and attainment of tranquillity, and becoming sorrowless, rejoices in the glory of the Atman. It is the subtlest of all, because it is limitless. It is possible to know it through the practice of hearing, contemplation and meditation, after getting oneself freed from desires and actions, and separating oneself from objects, seen as well as heard of. As long as the mind shakes and the body gets agitated, it is not possible for one to know the Atman. Perfect satiety of the mind, the senses and the body is absolutely necessary before the attempt at the vision of the Self. Those who have desires and passions are prevented from the realisation of the Self.
The Atman, lying down, goes everywhere. Sitting, it moves far. It is the bodiless among all bodies, it is the permanent among the impermanent. It is the great omnipresent being, knowing which the hero does not grieve. It is not possible to know this Atman through debate, intellectuality and study. It is attained through a relationless immediate method in which the Self is both the subject and the object of attainment. One who has not ceased from bad conduct, who is restless, whose mind is wandering, who has no peace within, cannot know the Atman through any amount of thinking. The Atman is beyond all knowledge and power conceivable in the world. Death itself is swallowed in it, and all processes are put an end to.
The Soul and Its Chariot
The conscious principle within is the lord of the chariot. The body is the chariot, the intellect is the charioteer or the driver, the mind is the reins, the senses are the horses, the objects of the senses are the roads. This chariot is useful either to drive down or drive up. The body is dragged by the horses of the senses in different directions. The driver is responsible for the movement of the chariot, and this is the intellect, which can either understand or misunderstand, and consequently either ascend with the chariot to the Abode of Vishnu or fall down to the mortal state. Whatever is done through this body, consciously, is done, ultimately, by the intellect. It is the principle of egoism, desire, activity, birth and death. It is the factor which brings pain and pleasure, unity and separation. The doer or the enjoyer is a strange mixture of consciousness, mind and the senses, because, independently, none of them can be either a doer or an enjoyer. This shows that doership and enjoyership are illusory; their constituents have no independent existence. The knowledge of this chariot and its contents is to be obtained before attempting to drive the chariot. One whose intellect is bad and uncontrolled, whose mind is weak and impure, cannot control the horses of the senses, and they will run riot in different directions. He does not attain to the Supreme, but enters Samsara. One whose intellect is steady and brilliant, and whose mind is strong and pure, can control the horses of the senses, and drive the chariot to the supreme state of Vishnu, and is never born again, having reached the Highest Consummation of life.
The Gradation of the Categories
The objects of the senses are grosser than the senses, which, again, are grosser than the subtle rudimentary principles which actuate the senses. The subject which is characterised by the senses is always superior to the object which is bereft of consciousness, because the subject is subtler than the object. Only that which is subtle can pervade and comprehend what is gross. The mind, however, is subtler than even the subtle principles which preside over the senses, because the mind is the synthesising agent and the real operator behind the diverse sense-functions. The mind is nearest to consciousness and, hence, it has the greatest power over all that is an effect and that which is inferior to the mind in subtlety. The mind is naturally fickle in character, and hence, it is not useful to the individual in acts like steady knowledge of anything. The intellect is subtler than the mind, and it is free from the fickleness which the mind is infected with. Intelligence in its aspect of determination is found only in the Buddhi or the intellect. The highest faculty of knowledge in the individual is the intellect.
The intellect, however, has certain defects, in spite of its being the most precious possession of an individual. The intellect always functions on a dualistic basis. It can have no knowledge except by connecting the subject with the object. Unfortunately, contact is not the way of acquiring perfect knowledge of anything. This means that the intellect cannot have perfect knowledge, unless it ceases from working on the basis of duality. With duality there is no real knowledge and without duality there is no intellect at all. Therefore, perfect and complete knowledge is not given to the human being. It is only the cosmic intelligence or the Mahat-Tattva that can have complete knowledge, because it is free from the perception of duality. It is the collective totality of all principles of intelligence in the universe, and, therefore, outside it there is nothing. The cosmic intellect is not the understander of anything external to it. But it knows itself as complete in itself. Thus, the Mahat is superior to the individual intellect. The Mahat is characterised by omniscience, and omniscience necessitates the acceptance of a cause of omniscience. This cause of even the Mahat is called the Avyakta which is superior to the Mahat. The cosmic intellect exists buried in a potential condition in this Avyakta. In fact, the Avyakta is not an existent something but only the possibility and the explanation of the appearance of the Absolute as cosmic intelligence, etc. Superior to the Avyakta is the Purusha. The Purusha is the same as Brahman, beyond which there is nothing. This is the Supreme Goal.
The Purusha is described as the supreme destination of all the individuals. The word ‘destination’ may give rise to a doubt that it is possible for one to move towards the Purusha, even as a person may move towards a town or a village. In the case of movement towards a place, destination has got its literal meaning, but, in the case of the attainment of the Purusha, it has only a figurative meaning. The Purusha which is to be attained is not different from the one who attains it. It is the knowledge of the Self which is signified by the word, destination. Movement is an action, and knowledge is not action; in movement we have to do something; but in knowledge, we have to do nothing. A literal movement towards the Purusha is not possible, because external to the Purusha there is nothing. Movement is the function of the Pranas, the senses, the mind and the intellect. But knowledge is not the property of any of these. Hence knowledge is different from movement or any kind of action. If one can go to or move towards anything, one can also come back from it. Action always implies reaction. But the Srutis declare that there is no return to mortal experience after the attainment of the Purusha. This shows that the attainment of the Purusha is the same as existence which is eternal, and not an act which is temporary. The Sruti says, “They go by the pathless path”, which means that the path to perfection is not like a lengthy road situated in space but a state of consciousness within. It is quite obvious that one cannot have the awareness of oneself through any amount of external struggle, even as a sleeping person cannot know himself except by waking into consciousness.
The Atman is subtler than every conceptual being. Therefore it does not shine before the organs of knowledge. The cognitive organs can know only what is grosser than themselves and not what is subtler. This Atman is beheld only by the subtlest condition of the intellect, viz., the steady intelligence of a Sattvika character in which alone the consciousness of the Self can be reflected. The Atman is known only by the most careful seers who have the subtlest sense of perception and the most acute and penetrating intelligence freed from the shackles of desires and actions. In fact, even the principle of the creator of the universe, himself, is an object when compared to the Brahman-consciousness. Therefore, even the creator is less than Brahman. The knowers of the Atman constitute only a minority of the individuals, because of the difficulty of the transfiguration of oneself from mortal experience in the world to nonrelational Absolute-Experience. The principle which is nearest in subtlety to the Atman knows it the best and those that are subtler know it better. The senses have the least knowledge of the Atman. The mind has a better knowledge of it. The intellect knows it still better. The cosmic intellect supersedes even the ordinary intellect in knowledge. It is the cosmic intellect that has omniscience, because of freedom from the obstructions of objectivity. The state transcending omniscience is the Absolute or Brahman.
The Process of Withdrawal
The energy that is spent by the senses should be conserved through the stoppage of the activity of the senses. When the senses are prevented from their functions, there is a natural revolt of the senses, as a reaction to the attempt at their subdual. The reason for this revolt is that the energy that is withdrawn from the senses is, usually, not utilised well. No energy can rest in suspension, without being used; it shall find a way out. Hence the totality of sense-energy should be dissolved in the mind, so that there may not be any chance or possibility of its being expressed once again through the senses. But the mind also, being an organ which is an extrovert in nature, may project itself again through the senses, if the energy is allowed to stay in the mind without being utilised for a purpose. Generally, forced stoppage of sense-activity without proper discrimination results in nervousness, excitement, confusion and ultimately a kind of mental aberration. For this reason, the energy of the mind should be spent in the process of purifying it and transforming it into the purity of intelligence. The character of intelligence is not dynamic energy, but unruffled consciousness. Consciousness does not require itself to be spent out, because there is nothing subtler than consciousness. But, when the mental energy is transformed into the intellect, it remains in the individual in the form of a dynamic power. Power is always objective and tends to motion. Power cannot rest in itself and so forces itself out in some way or the other. The intellectual energy should therefore be reduced to universal consciousness or Mahat, where there is no danger of power getting itself externalised. The Mahat should further be reduced to the Santa-Atman or the Absolute Self which is free from even the possibility of objective consciousness. This is the ultimate Goal. The drift of the whole statement is that all ideas, names and forms, actions and their results, have to be resolved into their Source, by a knowledge of its absoluteness.
The Path of the Seeker
The Sruti says, “Arise, Awake! Through obtaining men of wisdom, know it. A sharpened edge of a razor, hard to tread, a difficult path it is – thus sages declare.” The individuals of the universe are all sleeping persons or dreamers in the night of ignorance. They are exhorted to wake up to the day of knowledge. The path of Sadhana is beset with great dangers. The Sadhaka has to experience sorrows and very unpleasant conditions in the process of the transformation of the individual into the Supreme Reality. Knowledge arises, in the beginning, not through mere self-effort, but through the company of the wise, the result of which is accelerated by the effects of past meritorious deeds. Self-effort takes the form of an intellectual undertaking, and the intellect being very strongly influenced by internal convictions and experiences of the individual concerned, the effort is many times not well directed. Every right effort should be preceded by right thinking, and no right thinking is possible as long as the individual is controlled by personal prejudices and desires. Hence the need for the company of the wise, which shall break open the fort of preconceived notions in the individual. Further, the path is a very difficult one to tread. The search for Truth is attended with many dangers. The Sadhaka is likely to be tempted, opposed, misled or held up on the way. The inner propensities take concrete forms and present themselves before the seeker because of his attempt at concentration of mind. Concentration is a death-blow given to mental desires, and hence the latter rise up with all might to put an end to the practice of concentration. Moreover, Sadhana is the method of the disintegration of the personality consisting of the five material sheaths. These sheaths include within themselves the substance of the entire universe. Therefore, when the aspirant turns his face against these sheaths, he is actually acting against the lower natural current of the whole external universe of manifestation. Here lies the danger of the practice. The objective powers of the universe rebel against the internal consciousness, and though this consciousness is more powerful than any objective power, it does not appear to be so because of its non-manifestation. The aspirant seems to be defeated, because his condition is one where the external tendencies are opposed and the internal Self is not known. Hence, he has no help until a higher state is reached, though he is unconsciously being led higher by the law of the Absolute. It is in this helpless condition of the absence of knowledge that the power of the result of previous discriminative practices raises the individual above the material entanglements. The object of knowledge is too subtle to be easily known, and the object of the senses is too gross to be easily avoided. This is the reason why there is every likelihood of the seeker’s falling back into relative experience. But there is one great helping hand which pushes forward every Sadhaka, in spite of the several oppositions before him. Every bit of action that is done as a Sadhana for perfection produces such a power that it can never be destroyed by any material force of the universe. When a Sadhaka is opposed by an external power, the impression of the previous practice urges him forward, and this forward march is another act which adds another fresh stock of power to the already existing one. Every step taken forward adds more power to the previous stock, and the cumulative effect of Sadhana-Sakti becomes so great that it is able to overcome any external power. The subject is always more powerful than the object, because the subject is conscious and influences the object. The knower has a power over the known. The fact that the knower has the power to know the entirety of Nature shows that Nature is subservient to the knower. If the knower were less than the known, it would never have been possible for the knower to have complete knowledge of anything. Knowledge of everything means transcending everything in quality as well as in quantity. The path to perfection is, therefore, the way to the expansion of the localised being into limitless existence. Since every being is essentially consciousness, it is possible for everyone to become the greatest and the best, and exist as the Absolute, in the end.
The Liberation of the Individual
When that which is soundless, touchless, formless, changeless, tasteless, eternal, odourless, beginningless, endless, greater than the cosmic intellect, the permanent being, is known, one is liberated from the mouth of death.
That which is characterised by qualities like sound has to modify itself, because these qualities are not absolute values, but valid only relatively. That which is not absolutely valid cannot exist eternally. All relative values serve a purpose only in respect of particular times and conditions. That which is ever enduring does not exist in relation to another thing or condition, but is self-sufficient. That which has no beginning may have an end, and that which has no end may have a beginning. But, Brahman is beginningless and endless. That which has a beginning is a product, and every product, being conditioned by its cause, is limited. It has to resolve itself into its cause, because the effect cannot have a nature different from that of its cause. But that which is beginningless and endless is neither a cause nor an effect. Hence, it is transcendentally real. The Atman is Kutastha-Nitya, eternally real, as distinct from the elements which are Parinami-Nitya or changefully real. By knowing such Atman, as being identical with one’s own Self, one gets liberated from the jaws of death. Death consists in the presence of Avidya (nescience), Kama (desire) and Karma (action) within. Avidya is the cause of Kama and Kama is the cause of Karma. Karma is the cause of birth and death. Hence, death is situated within, and not without. The cause of change which gives rise to birth and death and different experiences in life is present in the mind in the form of the necessity to transform oneself from one condition to another. The fact that there is imperfect knowledge, imperfect power and imperfect joy in an individual, shows that perfection can be attained only by transcending this imperfect condition. This process of transcending oneself is called change and death. It is not possible to become unlimitedly perfect as long as the consciousness of limitedness is not negated. Deaths, therefore, are the processes of purification of the soul for immortality.
Self-Control
The senses are always projected outward to their respective objects. Therefore, no individual has a consciousness of the Self. By aspiring for immortality and turning the consciousness to itself, within, the Atman is beheld. It is not possible to have, at the same time, the consciousness of both the subject and the object. The subject can know itself only when it does not cling to the object. When the object is known fully, the subject is entirely forgotten. Because true bliss is found in the subject alone, this bliss is never experienced as long as the subject is not known, i.e., as long as there is consciousness of an object. The whole universe is the object of the subject which is Consciousness. Self-realisation, thus, is the absorption of the consciousness of objectivity into the Consciousness not infected by thought or affected by any object. The doors of the senses and the intellect have to be closed if the light is to be beheld within. The light of the Self is dissipated, ordinarily, because of external consciousness. These rays of consciousness should be collected and centred in one thought or one idea of one nature. This practice puts an end to external awareness and makes the mind break its boundaries and expand itself beyond the limitations of causation. Further, when concentration is practised, all Rajas is put an end to, and there is the revelation of Sattva through which the bliss of Truth is reflected. Bliss always comes after knowledge, and knowledge is always accompanied by power. This means that meditation is the way to perfect knowledge, power and bliss, which know no decay.
Since it is evident that worldly consciousness and Divine Consciousness do not co-exist, it is also clear that sensuality is the opposite of Self-knowledge. Sense-knowledge is natural to the individual, whereas Self-knowledge is extraordinary. This is the reason why everyone is by force made to experience the Anatman or something objective. They are children who follow the course of the objects of the senses. They fall into the wide-spread net of destruction. Those who have consciousness of the Immortal do not ever seek it among things impermanent. The cause of destruction or death is wide-spread, i.e., it is everywhere. The meaning is that the outward conditions necessary for the destruction of something are made manifest by the corresponding conditions in the thing to be destroyed. Since all desires are connected with their respective objects and not with the entire existence, it is not possible for one who desires, to escape death. Death is the process of the extension of one’s consciousness by casting off the obstructing factors, viz., limited experiences. The spiritual heroes do not find Reality among shadows, because the Infinite Subject, viz., the Atman, never becomes an object of itself. This Self does neither increase by good action nor decrease by bad action. Its glory is eternal, because it is independent of all externals. The wise ones, therefore, have no desire for anything at all, for they do not find anything as valuable as their own essential consciousness. They experience every objective condition as an intense opposition to what is absolutely Real, and cast it off as pain. In short, absorption into the Self is the same as absence of sense-experience and the negation of thought in pure awareness.
The Self has the knowledge of every kind of existence. This knowledge, however, is not the pain-giving temporary knowledge acquired through contact, but the knowledge of every fibre of being, in essence. Every constituent of existence is known by it in the most perfect manner, because all these constituents are parts of itself alone. Its knowledge is knowledge of itself, and is not separative knowledge which is possible only in terms of space, time and causation. Hence the Self is omniscient and, therefore, absolutely perfect.
Whatever is here, is there; and whatever is there, is here; he goes from death to death, who perceives diversity here. The substance of immediate existence is the same as that of remote existence. Persons move from place to place in search of things, because of the ignorance of the fact that everything can be found everywhere. The different forms of experience do not mean that they are really different. These differences belong to the cognitive organs or the modes of knowledge, and not to the objects of knowledge. The whole universe of creation is a gradual unfoldment of one substance alone. Through meditation on the Reality of oneness of substance, it is possible for one to actualise or make manifest anything, at any place, in any form. Truly, there is no diversity here. Those who perceive diversity due to the defects of the inner organs experience birth and death, as they have to conform to what they believe in. What one intensely believes in, that one experiences, because every belief pertains to an aspect of reality. But, because individual beliefs are partial, the experiences corresponding to these, too, are partial. This is the reason why desirers or perceivers of duality and multiplicity do not have absolute experience, but are caught in the meshes of the effects of their own desires. Meditation should, therefore, be practised in the form of the affirmation of the divisionless being which is full, and which includes everything. This is the same as meditation on one’s own Self.
Even as water that is dropped by rain on the top of a mountain runs here and there, and is wasted, one who perceives manifoldness and follows different paths runs to waste with them. But, even as pure water poured into pure water becomes pure water alone, the sage who knows the Self as one whole being becomes the whole being itself, without dissipating his energy. Whenever there is a thought of something, energy is at once sent to that thing, whereby the energy is spent out. Weakness and distraction are caused by spending out energy in contemplation of external objects and states. But, true withdrawal from thinking of externals means complete conservation of energy and the dissolution of it in Self-consciousness. The mind should not be allowed to follow diverse methods of practice, as, thereby, it distracts itself and attains nothing substantially. But, when it follows one method of practice, concerned with one goal, and concentrates itself completely on this goal, it integrates itself and becomes identical with the Absolute.
A person does not live by Prana or Apana, but he lives by something on which Prana and Apana, also, depend. The Pranas serve a purpose to another of which they are auxiliaries. They are made up of parts, they are inert, they are actuated by another conscious principle. A person lives by the conscious Spirit within. The Pranas move the senses, because they themselves are moved by internal consciousness. This means that all life belongs to the Atman, and all values also belong to it. Even as fire which has only one form appears in form corresponding to the media through which it burns, this Atman, which is one, appears in form corresponding to the form through which it manifests. Even as the sun who is the eye of all is not sullied by the defects of the eye, the one Atman, the Self of all, is not sullied by the defects of the world, because it is transcendental and unconnected with objective experiences. The Atman, the controller of all, the Self of all, is really the essence of all the diverse forms of existence. Happiness belongs to those who realise the Self within themselves, not to anyone else, who is busy with the externals. The peace belonging to those is eternal, who realise the Self within, the eternal among all impermanent beings, the one consciousness beyond all ordinary consciousness, and the one goal of all aspirations and desires. Peace does not belong to anyone else. The sun does not shine there, nor the moon and the stars; these lightnings, too, do not shine; what to speak of this fire! Every thing shines after Him who shines. This whole universe is illumined by His Light – the Great Being.
The Tree of Samsara
The tree of life has its roots upwards in the unmanifest, which, again, is rooted in the Divine Being; its branches spread below as the manifested universe. This tree is inclusive of great miseries like birth; old age, grief and death. It appears to be of a different nature every moment. It is now seen and now not seen, like a jugglery or water in the mirage, or the city of the clouds. It can be felled down like a tree, and it has a beginning and an end, like a tree. It is essenceless like the sapless plantain tree. It is the cause of great doubts and confusions in the minds of the non-discriminating. Its true nature is not ascertained even by aspirants after knowledge. Its meaning is found in the original essence of Brahman which is ascertained in the Vedanta-Sastra. This tree has grown out of the potency of ignorance, desire and action. It has come out of the sprout of Hiranyagarbha, who combines in himself cosmic knowledge and action. The branches of this tree consist of the various subtle bodies of the individuals. It has a proud stature through being watered by the desires and cravings of the individuals. Its buds consist of the objects of the mind and the senses. Its leaves consist of the knowledge that is obtained from scripture, tradition, logic and learning. It has the flowers of the impulses for sacrifice, charity, austerity, etc. Its essence is the experience of pleasure and pain. Its root is fastened tightly, because of the constant watering through the intense longings for the different objects on which all individuals depend. It is inhabited by several birds called individuals from Brahma down to inanimate matter. It is full of tumultuous noises like those of weeping, shouting, playing, joking, singing, dancing, busily running, and such other sounds created by the experiences of exhilaration and grief, giving rise to pleasure and pain. This tree can be cut down with the strong weapon of detachment consequent upon the realisation of the identity of the Self with Brahman, through hearing of the Vedanta texts, contemplating on their meaning and profound meditation thereon. This tree shakes, being blown by the wind of the various desires and actions of the individuals. Its different parts are the many worlds inhabited by celestial beings, human beings, beasts, demons, etc. The beginning of this tree is not known. It extends everywhere and its form is incomprehensible. This tree is ultimately based on the pure essence of self-luminous consciousness. The enigmatic character of this tree is accounted for by the incomprehensible nature of Brahman in which it is rooted. This tree is essentially unreal, because it is experienced as a modification. The Sruti says that all modification is only a play of speech, a mere name, and therefore false. This Brahman which is the reality behind this universal tree is transcended by nothing, and other than it there is no reality. This whole universe works systematically, being controlled by the Supreme Life-Principle, viz., Brahman. This Brahman is like a great terror, like an uplifted thunderbolt, because none can transgress its law. Its rule is relentless, and anyone who tries to go against its law, reaps intense sorrow. But, those who know the Truth of Brahman become Immortal. By fear of this Supreme Being fire burns; by fear the sun shines; by fear Indra and Vayu perform their functions; by fear death does its duty. Fire, sun and the other, principles of the universe, including the process of change and death, are the different phases or aspects of the one Brahman. Hence, they are all united in its self-identical nature which never ceases to be. It is not possible for any individual to live according to his personal inclinations without obeying the law of the Infinite. A part cannot exist independent of the whole; the part always should and does partake of the nature of the whole. Hence, everyone is controlled by this whole, viz., Brahman.
If knowledge rises in a person before the death of this body, he shall attain liberation and will not be born again. Rebirth is the result of the absence of Self-knowledge and the presence of desire at the time of casting off the physical body. Therefore this Atman has to be realised in this life itself, so that the pain of another life may be put an end to. Among all the different regions of existence, the human region is the best suited for the purpose of the attainment of Self-knowledge. No doubt, the region of the creator is better than the human region and is nearest to Brahman-knowledge, but the individual has to spend a long time in its attempt to reach the region of the creator and then to acquire Self-knowledge. In the human world, the Self is experienced as something like a reflection of an object in a mirror. But in the region of the creator, the distinction experienced between the true Self and the phenomenal self is like that between light and darkness. Therefore, here, one has the highest spiritual experience. But, in other worlds, the attainment of Self-knowledge is not possible, because the inhabitants there are either absolutely devoid of knowledge or engrossed in external enjoyment or sunk in great grief, or not possessed of the required instruments for effort towards Self-realisation. The human being, therefore, should try to attain Self-knowledge here itself, and not after going to another region.
The Practice of Yoga
This Atman is not seen through the eyes, nor is it perceived through any of the other senses, as it never becomes an object of itself. It is known only when the centre of personality is dissolved through the absorption of the factors causing individuality, viz., the mind and the intellect, into the Atman. Equanimity of inner vision is the same as spiritual knowledge, and it cannot be had as long as the mind and the intellect function in their own fashion. The Atman cannot be sought in external conditions, but it can be known and realised through a reverting from externals to eternal being. It is this introversion that enables one to enter into the very substance of being. This state of spiritual equilibrium is attained when the five senses of knowledge rest together with the mind, and when the intellect does not perform its functions of objective knowledge. Yoga consists in the withholding of all individual functions, beginning from the physical body and ending in the intellect, and the directing of the whole energy to the apperception of consciousness. It is, in other words, a steadying of the power of consciousness and making it rest in itself, in the state of perfection and motionlessness. Yoga and Jnana differ from each other in the sense that the former is the negative process of the annihilation of personal consciousness, whereas the latter is the positive realisation and experience of infinite consciousness. In a general sense, Yoga may include Jnana also, if Yoga is taken to mean the method of the attainment of the Brahman. In the practice of Yoga, one should become very vigilant, and not become proud or heedless. Yoga comes and goes. It does not rest for long, unless great care is taken in the maintenance of that consciousness of Oneness. Yoga is the separation from contact with pain. In this state, the powers working through the external senses and the internal senses are made to go back to their source, viz., the power of Self-consciousness, where they rest in perfect peace. The noise of the senses ceases, and, as a consequence of this, pain and sorrow also are negated.
Brahman should be conceived of as existence, between the two logical conceptions of existence and non-existence. Existence is the correlative of non-existence, and, hence, even non-existence may appear to have as much validity as existence. But the conception of non-existence, though logically deducible, is practically impossible, as the conception of Brahman as non-existence involves the negation of the consciousness of one’s own existence, also. Therefore, Brahman should be known as existence, though from the highest standpoint this, too, is a limited conception. As far as the human being is concerned, the conception of existence is not limited in the ordinary way, because, it is not possible to set boundaries to existence. The idea of existence leads to the realisation of the transcendental Truth which includes and goes beyond the ideas of existence and non-existence.
When all the desires that are lodged in the heart are cast off, the mortal experiences the Immortal, and one becomes Brahman, here itself. Moksha is the realisation of that which exists always and everywhere. Therefore, it can be realised at any place, provided the obstructions to this realisation are removed. These obstructions are desires for objective experience. Removal of desires is the same as the destruction of mind. The realisation of the Self does not involve a movement towards any external condition, but it is the extinction and transcendence of personality in the Absolute. It is like a drop dissolving in the ocean, or rather, the ocean itself becoming aware that it is ocean.
The Yogavasishtha makes reference to two methods of overcoming and transcending the mind, which is the stuff of individuality – Yoga and Jnana. Vasishtha defines Yoga as Vrittinirodha or inhibition of psychological functions, and Jnana as Samyagavekshana or right perception. Generally, Yoga is to be understood in the sense of that Integral Method whereby the individual is attuned to the Supreme Being. It is neither a creed nor a tradition, but the law governing the universe, and made manifest in the conscious activity of the individual. Yoga is the process of the evolution of the finite to the Infinite, consciously and deliberately systematised, and thus accelerated. In Yoga, the experiences of several future possible lives are compressed into those of one life or the least possible number of lives. Yoga is, therefore, nothing out-of-the-way or unconnected with the normal life of man. Truly, it is the only normal life, and a life bereft of the consciousness of Yoga, in some degree at least, may be said to be below the normal. To be forced to be something and to act in certain ways, instinctively, without the conscious and volitional activity of oneself, is not the glory of man. Yoga is to know the real relation which man bears to the universe as a whole, and to the Divine Being which is his Higher Self. Not to know this relation is to grope blindly in darkness and to be merely confined to the animal consciousness of subhuman beings. Yoga is not cutting oneself away from the reality of life in the world, but it is the understanding and realisation of the real meaning of existence in order to live a life of the essential freedom and bliss of one’s deepest consciousness. In other words, it is to be a friend and citizen of the whole universe, to feel oneself in all beings, to absorb into oneself the whole constitution of the universe, to be the Soul of the universe. This is the meaning of Yoga, understood in its general sense.
But Yoga has also a special and particularised meaning, as mentioned by Vasishtha. This is identical with the technical Yoga system of Patanjali. It consists in the inhibition of all the modifications of the mind-stuff. In this system, the faculty which plays the most important part is the will, not so much the understanding or the feeling. By sheer dint of determination and decision based on faith in the holy tradition and the instructions of the teacher, one fixes one’s consciousness on the ideal of one’s attainment. All Vrittis or psychoses are resolutely banished from consciousness by resort to various methods, such as thinking of the opposite of the obstructing psychosis, cultivation of virtuous qualities, practice of the abandonment of objects and enjoyments both seen and heard, complete restraint of the senses, fast, continence, positive love for all beings, truth-speaking, non-covetousness, cleanliness of body and of internal motive, contentment. with what one obtains independent of effort, austerity, study of sacred scriptures, recitation of the Name of God, prayer, self-surrender, steady posture of the body, harmonisation of the vital energy, etc. By these methods the Yogi withdraws his senses from their respective objects, and concentrates his mind on the Supreme Being. Before the attainment of actual concentration on God, one may pass through various lower stages of concentration on grosser objects which are more easily comprehended and taken as means of steadying the activities of the mind. Thus, with a negative method of abstraction of the functions of individuality, one attains That which is at the background of all individual functions.
Jnana is Samyagavekshana, or right vision of things. It is to behold the world as it is really, not merely as it appears to the individual functions of knowledge. It is to fix the consciousness on the Universal Substance, of which all things are made. Jnana is the knowledge that the Self is the All, and that All is the Self. This Self is not the individual subject of knowledge, but the Self of the whole universe, the Consciousness to which the whole universe can be reduced. Jnana is to experience nothing objective, nothing external to one’s consciousness, and to have the direct realisation of Eternity and Infinity. Jnana is the constant awareness of the Immortal Brahman. This awareness has an empirical as well as an absolute aspect. Empirically, it is called Brahmabhavana or Brahmabhyasa, which consists in ceaselessly thinking of and feeling the presence of Brahman, speaking of Brahman, discoursing with one another on Brahman, and totally resting in the consciousness of Brahman, in all activities of life. In its absolute aspect, it is to be merged in Brahman, to be in the state of perpetual Samadhi or Kaivalya, to be perfectly free from the consciousness of a second to oneself, to glory in the Absolute, and to be supremely blessed. This latter stage follows the former logically, when all the impressions of past actions are experienced and destroyed, when the body drops, and the individual enters the Absolute, as a river enters the ocean. This ‘entering the ocean’ is, of course, an analogy from the human standpoint, for, really, there was never a river, never is, and never will be. There was, is and will be only the ocean, and the ocean has to know that it is. Only the Absolute can be, and is, and liberation is the consciousness of the Absolute. Yoga and Jnana aim at this supreme beatitude.
Additional Exhortations from the Mundakopanishad
The Mundakopanishad, as far as its contents are concerned, is, in many respects, a sequel to the teachings of the Kathopanishad. The one supplements the other, the Katha furnishing information on the earlier stages of spiritual endeavour and the practice of Sadhana and Yoga, and the Mundaka going further into the details of the practice and the nature of final liberation in the Absolute. The initial instruction in the Mundaka is that a search for Truth should be launched upon after one carefully examines the character of the world of sense and of works, whereby a distaste for objects spontaneously arises in the mind on the knowledge of the fact that nothing of the realm of impermanence can be an adequate means to the realisation of the permanent or the everlasting, there being no conceivable link between the two patterns of experience. Upon arriving at this stage of understanding, the student goes humbly to the Teacher, who is well versed in the sacred lore (Srotriya) and is established in the wisdom of Brahman (Brahmanishtha). To such a well-prepared disciple does the Master offer initiation into the divine mysteries.
The first experience into which the student is introduced is that of the Cosmic Being – Virat: “The heavens are His head; the sun and moon are His eyes; the quarters are His ears; the Vedas are His speech; the air is His breath; the universe is His heart; the earth is His footstool: – such is the great Soul of all beings.” From Him do emanate Time and Space, gods, men, beasts, birds, food, relationships both perceptional and social, rules of conduct, bodies and worlds. This Supreme Being is all this universe: one who knows this secret hidden in the cave of one’s heart tears asunder the knot of ignorance.
To reach Him, the way is meditation. In a symbology, the method of meditation is described. “The Pranava (OM) is the bow; the self is the arrow; Brahman is the target; this target is to be aimed at by one well trained in vigilance and one-pointedness of attention; then does one become one with Brahman, even as the arrow merges into its target, well hit.” “By taking hold of the mighty weapon of the bow of the wisdom of the Upanishads, one should fix on it the arrow sharpened with continued contemplation and worship; the bow is to be bent and drawn forth with the force of an ardent yearning for the goal; thus, do you hit that target of the Imperishable Brahman, my dear!” When this is achieved, when the soul unites itself with Brahman, Brahman is seen everywhere. “The immortal Brahman is in the front, Brahman behind, Brahman to the right, Brahman to the left, Brahman above, Brahman below; all this universe, is just this Brahman, the Great, spread out everywhere.”
Though this is the highest form of spiritual practice prescribed in the Mundaka, it also provides us with a slightly lesser and easier technique intended for those who are of more moderate endowments. “God and the individual are like two birds perching on the same tree. These two birds are of like plumage and are eternal friends. One of these two eats the sweet fruit of the tree, and is bound; while the other merely looks on eating nothing.” “Though seated in the same tree, the individual is sunk in grief due to impotence caused by delusion; when he beholds the other, the adorable one, the master, he becomes freed from sorrow.” The contact of the soul with objects brought about by desire for them is the eating of the forbidden fruit. The Lord supreme is God, by a vision of whom the soul is lifted to the exaltation of immortal existence. Such a soul which is free “rejoices in itself, sports with itself, and its activity consists in the realisation of universality.”
“But he who runs after desires, cherishing them in his heart, is born in those respective places where he can fulfil the desires; whereas of him whose desires have reached their consummation (on account of sublimation), all desires melt away here itself (in the realisation of infinitude), due to having attained to perfection of the Self.” Having attained Him, the Supreme Being, the sages, satisfied in knowledge, with perfected consciousness of the Self, free from all desires, serene in being, the heroes – they attain to everything, from every side, fixed in and united to that which is everywhere.” “All the faculties of the individual vanish into their sources, all the presiding deities of one’s faculties merge into their original forms, and all actions, and the individuality of the self – all these reach communion with the Supreme Imperishable.” “As the flowing rivers, casting their names and forms, become one with the ocean – so does the knower, freed from the bondage of name and form, attains to the Highest Divine Being.”
The lower and the higher means of reaching the Supreme Reality, the ways of difference, equality and union, are all to be found here concisely explained. At the lowest stage, the soul seems to be totally severed from God and the world, and the ultimate Fact appears as a collaboration of three real entities. But the possibility of such a collaboration implies an underlying organic connection among them; else, there would not even be a notion of there being three entities. The knowledge of this organic sameness of character hiddenly cementing the three points into a harmony of existence is a higher realisation. But harmony and equality and sameness do, still, retain a lurking element of difference in their constitution. And all difference is a tacit admission of a unity implanted beneath it. Without the admission of this unity, the very concept of difference defeats itself. The highest realisation, thus, is the communion of the soul with the Absolute, as rivers become one with the ocean. From the figure of the two birds, which are only friends, we come to the knowledge that they are capable of reaching sameness (Sarirya) of nature in their essentiality, which means that they were never wholly different in character, except artificially. From this uniformity of structure, again, the realisation rises to the status of supreme independence.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Introduction to the Upanishads
Introduction to the Upanishads by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 11 July 2013 21:15
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I made a brief reference to the natural difficulty that one may feel in understanding the subject of the Upanishads, that difficulty being the nature of the Upanishad discussion itself. It is the subject of the Atman, as this boy mentioned just now, but it is easily said than really understood.
All our educational technology these days, as education is generally understood, concerns itself with objects of perception and intellectual understanding. The Atman is not a subject which can be perceived through the sense organs, nor can it be understood intellectually by any kind of logical acumen, the reason being that the Atman is yourself; it is not somebody else. In all courses of knowledge and procedures of study, you place yourself in the position or context of a student, and you consider the world of objects outside as subjects of observation and experiment and study. In your education you do not study yourself; you study something other than your own self. You go to a college or university, and you have themes like mathematics, physics, chemistry, sociology and what not. All these themes which are so well placed before you in great detail are external to yourself. Everything that you study, anywhere, is outside you. You don’t study yourself in any course of study that has been made available to you.
But the Upanishad is a study of yourself. Atmanam vidhi is the great oracle of the Upanishad. Know thyself and be free. It is something astounding to hear that we can be free by knowing our own selves. It is said because of the fact we have a feeling generally in the work-a-day life of the world, that we become free only when we know the world outside. We study sociology, history economics and what not, external studies and empirical observations, for the purpose of acquiring freedom in life. The more are you educated, the more you seem to be free in human society. But the Upanishad says this knowledge cannot make you free. It is only the knowledge of your own self that can assure you true freedom.
The reason for this opinion of the Upanishads is also very deep-rooted. How is it that freedom is embedded in you only and not anywhere else? I mentioned to you on the very first day that this particular something which the Upanishads call Atman is not a prerogative of any particular individual; it is not something that is in you only, it is the pure subjectivity of all things. The deepest essence of anything and everything in the universe is what is called the Atman. So the study of the Atman is not the study of the self of some person, Mr. So-and-so and all that; it is the study of the self of every Mr. So-and-so, so on and so forth. Everything, everyone, all things are a pure subjectivity in them. There is an I-ness or a feeling of self-identity even in a tree which grows according to its own predilection for the purpose of its own survival. The instinct of survival is present in each and every living entity, perhaps even in non-living elements like an atom. They maintain identity of themselves. Atman may be said to be the characteristic of self-identity of everything. You cannot become other than what you are. You are something, and you want to be that thing only, and you cannot be something else. A is A, A cannot be B, this is the law of identity and logic. And everything is what it is; nothing can be other than what it is. This peculiar inherent tendency of the maintenance of self-identity in all things (you have to listen to me carefully every word that I speak), this inherent tendency in everything in respect of the maintenance of that vehement form of self-identity consciousness is the Atman.
It is the Atman not merely as a force that causes this impulse of self-identity in things, it is also a consciousness of their being such a self-identity. You are what you are, but not only that, you are also aware that you are what you are. So it is existing and it is also conscious that it exists. So the Atman is existence; it is also consciousness. Now, what sort of existence? The existence of the fact that it cannot be identified with anything other than itself. This is the characteristic of pure subjectivity. For no reason can you become somebody else. Rama cannot become Krishna, Krishna cannot become Jesus, Jesus cannot become Thomas, and so on and so forth. A particular thing is just that particular thing for the reason that it is constituted of characteristics that make that thing only that thing. This cohesive element which brings the parts of your personality into the centrality of apprehension, awareness, is the work of the Atman.
To repeat once again what I told you a few minutes before, this tendency is present in everything and everyone. Therefore the study of the Atman is not study of something somewhere – it is the study of everything. I hope you catch what I’m saying. The study of the Atman is the study of the essence of everything anywhere because of the fact everything everywhere has this Atman. There is an Atman in all things in the sense that they maintain an identity-consciousness of themselves. So the Atman has a peculiar characteristic of being just what it is; that it to say, it cannot be an object of anyone. The self-identity aspect of consciousness, which is the Atman, cannot become Anatman, to put it in the Sanskrit language. The Atman cannot become Anatman. The Self cannot become not-Self. The subject cannot become the object. Consciousness cannot become matter. You cannot become somebody else.
This is something that will follow from a proper analysis of the nature of what is called the Atman, the great, grand, magnificent subject of the Upanishads. Inasmuch as this is something which you have never heard in your life, something which nobody else taught you anywhere in any educational institutions, something that cannot be included in the curriculum of any kind of science, arts, or humanities in the ordinary sense of the term, this is an astounding thing that you are hearing. That is the reason why the Upanishads are insisting that it is a secret knowledge; it is not a subject for public oration. It is secret because it cannot be understood by any amount of scratching your head. The reason is, you are studying yourself as a basic principle, this “yourself” not being a person, this physical body-mind complex, but the principle that is the principle of all things.
So the study of the Atman is the study of first principles. The Atman philosophy is the fundamental philosophy. When that is known, you have known the secret of all things. It is the vital spot of every individual, of anything in the universe. This knowledge is not communicated by mere reading books in a library; it is possible to acquire it through hard discipline.
The mind of the human being us usually characterized by three defects, and any kind of self-discipline implies the avoiding of these defects somehow or other, the stubbing out of the defect-ridden personality of the individual. In Sanskrit this three-fold defect of the human mind is called Mala, Vikshepa and Avarana_._
Mala means dirt, something like a thick coating over a clean mirror, preventing reflection of light in it. Dirt is that which covers the essential nature of an object, like a thick coating of dust, etc. on a mirror. There is some such thing covering the mind of the human being also, on account of which correct knowledge is not reflected in the mind, as a mirror that is covered over with dust will not reflect sunlight. So some step has to be taken in order to see that this dirt of the mind is scrubbed off.
The other defect of the mind is known as Vikshepa, that is fickleness, inability to concentrate on anything for a long time, instability is the basic nature of the mind. It will think twenty things in one minute and will not be able to fix its attention on one thing even for a few seconds. These are the superficial aspects of the defects of the mind.
But there is a deeper defect known as Avarana_._ It is like a thick veil over the mind, a black curtain, as it were, which prohibits the entry of the rays of light into itself totally. The Atman being pure subjectivity, the impulsion of the mind to move outward in the direction of sense objects, is an anti-Atman activity taking place in the mind, a movement towards the not-Self. Any psychic operation, any modification of the mind in the direction of other than what the Self is, is to be considered as impelled by some dirt in the mind.
Sometimes the mind operates like a prism which deflects rays of light in various forms and in various hues. It is up to each person to consider for one’s own self what are the thoughts that generally arise in the mind from the morning to the evening. You may be doing anything, but what are you thinking in the mind? This is what is important. The thoughts which take you wholly in the direction of what you are not, and engaging your psychic attention on things which are not the Self – these things should be considered as a serious infection in the mind itself.
When basically everybody is what one is, and even when you are operating in the direction of a sense-object so-called, through the perceptive activity of the senses, what is actually happening is that one location of this Universal Self (it is universal because it is present in all beings), one particular psycho-physical location of this Universal Self tries to impinge itself upon another such location in the form of an object outside. It considers another thing as an object wrongly because of the movement of the Atman-consciousness through the eyes, through the various sense-organs.
There is a tendency inherent in the human mind by which the pure subjectivity which is the consciousness of the Atman is pulled, as it were, in the direction of what it is not, and is compelled to be aware of what it is not in the form of sense-perception. Not only that, it cannot be conscious continuously of one particular object – now it is aware of this, now it is aware of another thing. It moves from object to object. The tendency to move in the direction of what the Atman is not, the impulsion towards externality of objects, is the dirt or Mala as it is called. The impossibility of fixing the mind on anything continuously is the distraction or the Vikshepa. The reason why such an impulse has arisen at all is the Avarana or the veil. These three defects have to be removed gradually by protracted self-discipline coupled with proper instruction. It takes its own time.
Usually, you must have heard, there are techniques of yoga practice known as Karma, Bhakti and Jnana; or Karma, Upasana and Jnana. Karma is activity, work, performance of any kind, discharge of one’s duty, you may say. This impulsion of the mind to move always in the direction of objects outside is due to a desire that is present in the mind to grab something from outside and make good a particular lacunae that it feels in one’s own self. This tragic movement of the mind in the direction of objects for the purpose of fulfillment of selfish desires can be obviated only by a certain type of activity called Karma. Karma does not mean any kind of work, but a specific kind of work. Everybody is doing some work, everybody is busy in this world – but it does not mean that they are doing Yoga in the form of work. Work becomes Yoga only when it is free from the impulse of selfishness behind the performance of work.
When you do a work, you must put a question to yourself – what is the reason behind your engaging yourself in that work? Is it because some extraneous or ulterior motive is there behind that work? Or is it done for mere self-purification? You must distinguish between work done as a job and work done as a duty. A duty may not apparently bring you a material benefit at the very outset, but it will bring you an invisible benefit. That is why duty is adored so much everywhere and people say you must do your duty. If duty is not so very important, but only remunerative job is the only thing that is important, then insistence on duty would be out of point.
Everybody says duty must be done, but what is duty? Work done as duty can alone purify, no other work can purify the self. It is not any kind of labour that can be regarded as Karma yoga. Now, what is this duty that you are talking of which is going to chasten the personality of the individual, purify it? Briefly it can be called unselfish action. It is a work that you do for the benefit that may accrue to a larger dimension of reality and not merely to the localized entity called your own individual self.
When you serve people, you are to bear in mind always the reason why this service is done at all. Mostly, the reason is buried underneath. We have social reasons, political reasons, economic reasons, and family considerations when we do any work in the form of service of people. But service which is spiritually oriented is not a social work or a political activity, or it is not connected even with a family maintenance. It is actually a service done to your own self.
How is it? You may put a question. In what way is service of people, for instance, a service to my own self? Because you have to remember the few words that I spoke to you a little before – your essential being is also the essential being of everybody else. So the people that you see outside, the world of space-time even, is a wider dimension of the selfhood which is your own pure subjectivity. This is a subject which is a little difficult to understand, to be listened to with great caution and care. The service that you render to others, even to a dog let alone human beings, even manuring a tree for its sustenance, taking care of anything whatsoever, is not done with any kind of ulterior motive, much less even the consideration that it is something outside you.
Work becomes purely a spiritual form of worship – only the character of selfhood is introduced into the area of this performance of work, and into the location of the direction towards which your work is motivated. You are serving your own self when you serve humanity. People gibly sometimes say, “Worship of man is worship of God.” It is just a way of saying without understanding what they mean. How does man become God? You know very well no man can be equal to God. So how to you say that service of man is equal to service of God?
So merely talking in a social sense does not bring much meaning. It has a significance that is deeper than the social cloak that it bears, namely, the essential being of each person is present in each other person also. So when you love your neighbor as yourself, you are loving that person not because that person is your neighbor in the sense of a nearby person, but because there is a nearness which is spiritual and not merely social. The person is near to me as a spiritual entity, as part of the same self that is me, rather than a nearness that is measurable by distance of yards or kilometers etc.
The spiritual concept of work is the great theme of the Bhagavadgita, which is another subject. The whole theme of the Bhagavadgita is how we can conduct our activity in the sense of a transmutation of all its values into spiritual worship. Actually, service is not service done to anybody else – that term ‘else’ must be removed from the sentence; it is service done to a larger area of one’s own self. This idea can be planted in one’s own mind by doing service of any kind, whether it is service of Guru, service of mankind, or work even in an office without laying too much emphasis on the salary aspect, etc. If the administration is well managed, the salary will come of its own accord – you need not cry for it; and this universe is a well-managed organization. It is not a political system which requires amendment of laws and regulations constantly. Everything is systematically ordained, and therefore you need not have any doubt in your mind whether you gain anything at all by doing service in this manner. When you serve your own larger self, which becomes largest when it is a service done to the universe as a whole, virtually you are serving God, because the largest self is God. And it is an expanded form of your own self – this is the point to be borne in mind. This has to be borne in mind again and again because of the fact that this is the subject of the Upanishads.
So this dirt of the mind, so-called, the Mala or the impurity that compels the mind to move in the direction of sense objects, this dirt can be scrubbed off by work, hard work, service, labour – let it be, but done in the spirit of a service done to a larger self of one’s own self. Then work becomes worship and Karma becomes Karma Yoga.
A discipline of this kind was instituted in earlier days when it was obligatory on the part of students to serve their Masters and learn under their tutelage. Narada, a master in all the arts and sciences conceivable by the human mind, went humbly to the great divine sage Sanatkumara, as we have recorded in the Chhandogya Upanishad. “I am unhappy, Great Master.” “What have you learned already, Narada?” “All the things in the world, all the sciences, astronomy, physics, psychology, axiology, aesthetics, ethics, civics, astrology, economics, politics, religions, philosophy – there is nothing that I do not know. But I have no peace of mind.”
The great master said, “All this that you have learned is only a word; you have not gone to the depths of things – the Atman has not been studied. You have only collected words, names, information about the outer structure of things, the name and the form complex of things has been made available to you by your studies that you have enumerated just now, as a series of learnings.”
Likewise in the Upanishads we have instances of great seekers humbly moving towards sages and saints for the purpose of making themselves fit to receive this knowledge. Even after achieving considerable success in purifying the mind of this dross of the tendency of the mind to move in the direction of objects of sense, by duty, by service, unselfish work, the mind will refuse to concentrate on this subject. It has, as I mentioned, very fleeting ideas, one is this that I have been enumerating just now.
The other is incapacity to fix itself on anything for a long time. You try to think of something for a long time, continuously – let us see what happens. Go on looking at this tree and thinking this tree only and nothing else, after a few minutes you will think of another tree nearby. You will think of the mountain in front. You will look at the river; you will look at all the buildings, and people moving about. Distraction is another malady of the mind. How will consciousness rest itself in its pure subjectivity which is the Atman if this fickleness continues for a long time and then makes it impossible for one to be aware of anything other than what it outside?
But there is a greater danger, namely, the inability to know why this discipline is to be undergone at all. What for is all this study, Sir, finally? What do I gain? You bring a business mentality once again – what do I gain by way of profit? The mind of the human being is made in such a way that it will not undertake any kind of work, project or activity unless it is told that something will follow. This is exactly what the Bhagavadgita has condemned – you should not expect anything to follow from the pure subjectivity aspect of the work because that which follows, as it were, is a futurity which you are trying to inject into the presence. You are creating a conflict between the present and the future. Naturally there is a difference between the present and the future when you think of the future possibility of the attainment or obtaining an objective far ahead in time as a fruit accruing to the work that you are at this moment doing at the present. But the Atman is a present, it is not a future.
The reason or the rationale behind this study, this activity, is something beyond reason itself. The reason behind the need for study for the nature of the nature of the Atman – you have to say this reason is super-rational. What can be more important than your own self? Is any burden of material value superior to your own existence? Has the world any meaning minus you? Let your existence be isolated completely. You will find that the world will stand as a series of zeros or ciphers unless there is a single stroke of a figure that makes sense and which is the Atman who does things.
There is a screen covering the consciousness of this pure subjectivity in oneself – that screen is called Avarana, the third defect of the mind. Dross – physical impurity, is removed by Karma Yoga or performance of unselfish action. The fickleness of the mind is subdued by Upasana or devout worship. And Avanara or the veil is removed by Jnana or wisdom of life. The Bhagavadgita is a standard gospel on the art of Karma Yoga, unselfish spiritual activity. The Epics and the Puranas highlight the path of devotion, Bhakti or Upasana, love of God. Upanishads deal with Jnana or wisdom of the ultimate reality.
So, this teaching that is going to be imparted to you is not to be taken as a diversion from the ordinary regime of life, but a very serious matter which will polish your personality, chasten your individuality and make you a perfect individual, not only in your own self but also in human society. The teaching in academy of this kind is a spiritual discipline, it is not just intellectual information.
So I have told you something briefly about the nature of Karma Yoga or unselfish action, performance of duty for duty’s sake, as a standard method laid down before us by the ancient master for cleansing the mind of all dross of extraneous desires in the direction of objects of sense; and Upasana is the love of God that you evince in your own self by daily worship performed in whatever way you would like to carry on.
When you conceive the Supreme Being, you have in the beginning a spatio-temporal imagination of that Being. God is very big, very large, very far away, very great, adorable; you offer your prostrations to that Almighty as something lovable. Even the Upanishads sometimes refers to the Supreme Absolute as the most lovable. Vanam means adorable; that Being is the most adorable. That thing which you call God, that thing which pulls your attention in its own direction, that which is the ultimate reality of things, that which is the Self of the cosmos, is the most magnificent, beloved, lovable, beautiful, most essential of all beings. And one who loves this Ultimate Being as the most lovable, is loved by the whole world. You attract things towards yourself because you are attracted towards that which is everywhere. This is the best way of making friends in this world. You need not read Dale Carnegie and all that. If you are attracted towards that which is everywhere wholly and souly, the entire world will be attracted towards you as a natural consequence of the attraction that you feel towards that Ultimate Reality. This is how you can honestly love it, if you want to be loved by others. How can you expect love from anybody if you yourself have no love for that which is the essence of all things?
Worship or Upasana is conducted in many ways, by ritualistic methods, as we have it done in temples or on alters in one’s own house, by Japa or recitation of the Divine Name, by Japa Sadhana, by prayer which is offered in the form of actual articulation of voice or even mentally, or study of scriptures. All these constitute part of Upasana, adoration, the feeling of love for that which is supremely divine.
All this process will have to be carried on for a considerable period of time in order that the fickleness of the mind may be subdued. Otherwise, if you give scant attention to this difficulty in the mind, you will find that you will not be able to appreciate the methodology prescribed in the Upanishads for the realization of the Atman. You will not only not be able to do this, you will also have a difficulty in even knowing why this meditation is carried on at all. Because many people honestly feel or may feel a difficulty in knowing what will happen to them after attaining God. Everybody knows that one has to attain God, but what will happen to you afterwards? You cannot answer this question easily because you have still a defective understanding of what you are, and therefore there is a defect persisting even in your attempt to know what will happen to you at that time. However, by protracted practice of Upasana, by worship, by Japa Sadhana, by Svadhya, by Jnana, and your own notion of God whatever that notion may be, the fickleness of the mind comes down. It will be attentive afterwards.
After having sufficiently undergone this discipline by which the distraction of the mind is subdued and also the impulse towards sense objects is curbed, you can become a good student of the Upanishadic philosophy.
In the Upanishads, three disciplines are mentioned which are equivalent to what I mentioned to you as Karma, Bhakti and Jnana, namely sacrifice, austerity, and Gurupasakti, approaching a master for teaching. Sacrifice in ancient Vedic terminology meant, of course, the offering of holy oblations in sacred fire, but sacrifice may also mean offering mentally anything that you would like to dedicate to God. There can be externally performed sacrifice or Yajna, or a mentally conceived Yajna or sacrifice. You can be charitable by a gesture outside, or you can be charitable in your own feeling. A charitable feeling is more important than a charitable gesture. I am not trying to dilate upon the subject of sacrifice now, as many of you may know what it actually means, and also as it is not the main subject of our study.
Austerity is very important. Tapas is the pre-eminent prescription of the Upanishads for self-control, which means actually the inhibition or abstraction of the tendency of the mind to move towards things other than the self. Austerity or Tapas can be performed or carried on gradually by systematic adoption of graduated methods. The first thing you can do in your life towards performance of austerity is avoidance of luxury and go-lucky attitude. Have or keep with you only those things which are necessary for you, and don’t keep those things which are not essential for a reasonably comfortable existence. This is the first step that you can take in austerity. Something is necessary for you under certain given conditions, okay, granted. But more than that you need not ask for. Eating, sleeping and comforts of any kind have to be within the limit of the exigency that you feel under the conditions that you are living, for the work that you are doing, etc, etc, and beyond the limit you need not go. This is the first step that you may take towards austerity.
Austerity is physical, verbal and mental. You have to be restrained not only in your physical appurtenances but also in the words that you speak and the acts that you do. That is, it should not cause any kind of disharmony, incongruity in the atmosphere, and towards that end you may manipulate and adjust yourself ably for being a humane individual, a good person, in the sense that your presence does not cause conflict with anyone. In eating and in other well-known comforts of life, you maintain a minimum to the extent that it is absolutely essential. Here also a note of caution has to be exercised, namely, austerity does not mean torture of the body, nor does it mean indulgence. The path of the spirit is a via media; the golden mean is the path of spirituality.
We have the well-known incident often cited by people in connection with the event that took place in the life of Buddha, or perhaps it is also connected with Raja Janaka’s life. Some angels were playing a stringed instrument and they were saying, “Tune not the sitar too high nor too low. If the string of the sitar is tuned too high, it will not give music, it may even snap. If it is too low, it will make a dull humming sound, it will not give music.” Neither this extreme nor that extreme is the path of the spirit. Any kind of suffering is to be avoided. Over-indulgence also is to be avoided. Therefore, austerity is also a cautious exercise of one’s demeanor in respect of one’s own self as well as in respect of others.
So the Upanishad prescribes sacrifice, Yajna, as one method or means of self-discipline, and the other method being austerity, self-control. Self-control is actually taking all necessary steps available for oneself to enable the mind to fix its attention on the root of its own existence, the Self that is behind the mind, the real you that is so valuable to you. When it is a question of yourself, you would like to abandon everything else for the sake of yourself, meaning thereby that the importance that you attach to yourself, for some reason or other, surpasses the importance that one feels to anything else in the world.
So, sacrifice and austerity; and then you have the most important teaching again, the third one, study under a teacher, a competent master who has trodden the path, who knows the pitfalls, who knows the difficulties, who acts like a physician with you. With these methods the dirt of the mind is scrubbed off, the fickleness is brought down, and the veil covering the Atman is lifted gradually, and the light of the sun of the Pure Spirit will shed its radiance automatically from within one’s own self; knowledge will arise from within you. This is why it is said when you know yourself, you know everything. Know thyself and be free: Atmanam vidhi.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Doctrine of the Upanishads
The Doctrine of the Upanishads by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 10 July 2013 20:46
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Human life is a composite continuum of varying phases of consciousness, of different processes of thought. It comprises a few links in the long chain of development, a few rungs in the lofty ladder of evolution. It is a series of conditions, becomings, events, which ever stretch beyond themselves and point to something remote, something wider and yet unattained. Life is, therefore, an ever-increasing organisation of consciousness, never resting in itself, never satisfied, but always hoping to be completed in a state of existence which is dimly foreshadowed in the present experience of the individual. Every condition of experience appears to be real and complete when it takes the role of being the one immediately above that which is directly being experienced in consciousness. It reveals its unsatisfactory character when it becomes the content of immediate experience. Unachieved ends seem to promise fulfilment and perfection, but they become pointers to another unachieved state when they are actually experienced. This shows that life is only a step, a stage, means, and not the final goal, destination or end of endeavour. Every lower stage of life appears to be unreal in a higher stage, though no stage is unreal from the point of view of its own temporary existence. Though all stages are real in a sense, they have differing values, and so we are to admit degrees in reality. The higher includes and transcends the lower; the higher is the fulfilment of the lower, and the sense of satisfaction is more in the higher than in the lower. The aim of life is to experience in immediate consciousness the highest state of reality, i.e., the Ultimate Reality, where all aspirations find their consummation and the supreme purpose of life reaches its realisation.
Philosophy starts with the recognition of the inadequacy of the present state of life. It is the outcome of the discovery that something beyond human life does exist. Dissatisfaction with what is presented to the empirical consciousness is the source of all speculation and spiritual effort. The method adopted in realising the Supreme Being is dependent on the conception of it which one has. The conception of reality is a form of the mental consciousness objectified as the complement of the subjective need or the extent to which incompleteness is felt in the depths of the individual. Thus, conceptions of the nature of reality are bound to differ from one another, as different persons feel dissatisfaction in varying intensities. We have, therefore, to consider the views which directly influence the methods of approach to reality.
Existence and Value
The problem of reality has direct bearing on that of existence and value. Existence is what is independent of everything else, different from relations of every kind. Value is the nature of existence as it is related to a perceiving subject; it is the manner in which an external existence becomes a content of an internal consciousness. An object as cognised or perceived is, therefore, a value, and not an existence as such. But the true nature of the object, without being related to a cogniser, is its existence. The problem of perception involves the determination of the nature of existence and value. For, on this depends the worth of perceptive knowledge. What do we really perceive? Is it only an illusion, an error, or is it a fact in itself? Do we grasp phantoms in sense-perception or do we have real and genuine knowledge of anything truly existent? The investigation of this phenomenon of the relation between existence and value, truth and error, leads one to various kinds of metaphysical and epistemological speculations. The Upanishads synthesise all empirical views of reality, dive deep into the facts of experience and proclaim what is most authoritative, direct and in harmony with the various phenomena of the universe. To understand the exact value of the philosophical position of the declarations of the Upanishads, we may proceed from the first views of things held by those who depend on what is given on the surface of human experience.
Naive Realism
There is a theory which is generally termed naive realism. According to it, what is perceived through the senses is the true nature of the object thus perceived. The datum of experience is identical with the reality that is presented to the perceiving consciousness in the form of the external object. There is no difference between object as perceived and object as it is in itself. The universe of objective perception is really in the very form in which it is experienced through the senses. The universe is material in nature, diverse in form and even mind which is the perceiver is a kind of modification of cosmic matter. This is, in other words, the materialistic view of reality. The great defect of this view is that it cannot account for the fact of error in perception. What is meant by erroneous knowledge? What is wrong perception? Why is it that sometimes we are unable to know things as they are, but are made to take a phantom as the given in experience? How can the perception of water in a mirage be explained, if what is experienced through the senses is the same as what is in fact externally in the world? The theory that reality is material and is as it is experienced individually is untenable for various reasons. That which is really material cannot be assimilated into one’s consciousness, and what is thus not assimilated cannot be known by the consciousness on account of there being a gulf between the experiencer and the experienced.
If mind and consciousness are products of matter, they must be inherent in matter. What is not in the cause in some form or the other cannot be produced as the effect. If the cause is matter, the effect also would be matter. If mind and consciousness are facts of experience, and if they are said to be effects, they must have a conscious cause, too. How can something arise from nothing? The attempt to merge the entire individual experiencer in a material universe is bound to end in failure. Epistemologically and metaphysically the theory of naive realism is found to be unsatisfactory on account of its inability to explain facts of consciousness and experience of matter by consciousness.
What is the relation between the experienced object and the experiencing consciousness? Taking for granted that the object is material and is different from consciousness, we would be obliged to fall into a chasm of the unceasing difference between the given in experience and the experiencer. What is it that exists between the experiencer and the experienced? According to crude realism, it can be neither matter nor consciousness. For, if the relation is material, it would be indistinguishable from the object; if it is conscious, it cannot be separated from the subjective experiencer. If it is neither, the relation remains unexplained, unless a purely arbitrary and unwarranted neutral stuff is brought forward as the explanation thereof. If the subject and the object are totally different from one another, there cannot be knowledge. Nor can it be said that the subject and the object are of identical nature, and this nature is material, for materiality being not the same as consciousness, there cannot be apprehension of anything on the supposition that the experiencer is material in nature. Matter is unconscious and it cannot know anything.
Naive Idealism
There is another of reality which goes by the name of naive idealism. It is the view that what is experienced is the same as the real, and that this real is identical with the idea of the individual subject. This is equal to merging the whole cosmos in the idea or the consciousness of the individual. All the substance of the earth and the heavens is my idea; you all are contained in my conception or notion. There is no cosmos independent of the subjective idea. The world is the projection of the experiencing subject.
This view is quite good as far as it is confined to the private reactions which the subject manifests towards the objects of the universe in consonance with the interests which the subject cherishes on account of the presence of various kinds of desires and impressions imbedded in itself. But when this theory is taken to be metaphysical one, i.e., a theory of reality, it falls to the ground. It cannot be said that an individual can perceive external objects even if there is nothing at all outside in the form of some degree of reality. There cannot even be an appearance of externality if there is no support for this appearance. Appearance presupposes reality. Further, it is not true that the individual experiencer has full control over what is experienced outside as the universe. Experience shows that the individual is bereft of knowledge of and power over the vast universe and that the other individuals of the universe are not in any way inferior to their experiencer as far as their status as existence is concerned. All exist in the same degree of reality in a particular plane of existence; otherwise, there cannot be subject-object-relationship. If the subject is more real than the object, there cannot be interaction between the two, and there cannot be knowledge. This proves that the external universe is not subservient to the ideas of the subject. It has an independent reality which no individual can deny. The knower and the known are in the same status, on a parallel basis. There is no difference in degree of truth between the experiencer and the experienced. The theory of naive idealism, or subjective idealism, is not tenable.
Critical Realism
The theory of critical realism is that the percept of the individual is neutral and the real object presented in experience is different from the percept. The datum in experience through the senses is different in quality and reality from the true object which is in the external universe. There is thus a dualism between the actual percept of the senses and the reality behind the sense-experience. There is what is called the universe of the subject and the universe independent of experience by the individual. Reality is not known through sense-experience. What is known is private to the individuals and what is there in fact in the universe is quite a different thing. Reality, therefore, cannot be known through means possessed by the individual. We are given an epistemological trinity and a metaphysical indeterminism. There are some who take this real as material in nature. That the metaphysical reality cannot be matter has already been shown.
Objective Idealism
Objective idealism is an epistemological dualism, and it differs from critical realism in holding that the true object of experience is a Cosmic Mind or Universal Thought. This Universal Mind is independent of individual minds. Empirical perception is the form taken by subjective consciousness, but the reality behind this perception is the Universal Mind. The nature of the Universal Mind cannot be known through individual perception. Reality is different from appearance. It is necessary that the individual should expand its consciousness to universality in order that it may be enabled to experience Reality.
God, the Universe and the Individual
These considerations lead us to the problem of the relation of God, the universe and the individual. It must be remembered at the outset that all processes of reasoning proceed from experience-experience of the individual self. ‘I am’-this experience does not require any other proof outside itself. It is self-evident. All proofs are the results of and developments from this indubitable fact. The consciousness of my existence as an individual at once brings into my notion the existence of other individuals in an external universe. ‘I am’ means ‘you also are’, i.e., ‘the world also is’. The being of the world is the correlative of the existence of my individuality. There cannot be a subject without an object of experience. The world is the necessary implication of the individual.
But the position, as it is known to us, of the individual and the world does not explain all matters that arise out of this position. Thinking beings, capable of reflection, become eager to know the relation between the world and the individual. What is the cause of this world? How am I connected with the other things of the world? What is my duty here? Questions of this kind crop up in the minds of several persons. And these questions cannot be answered by anything that is the content of sense-experience. But the need for a solution of the difficulties that arise out of the appearance of the world and the individual is stringent. The solution can be arrived at by higher synthesis brought about through the deeper consciousness implied in ordinary experience, the consciousness which becomes the direct experiencer in such higher contemplations. The link between the world and the individual should be either of the nature of the object or of the subject. The objective universe is seen to be material, and if this is taken to be the nature of the relation between the world and the individual, it would be another name for another part of the universe. In other words, there would be no such thing as relation. And, at the same time, the zeal with which one identifies the universe with the experiencing consciousness should not lead one to subjective idealism; for the defects of this view have been pointed out. Somehow, we are made to feel that this relation should be conscious, and yet it cannot be identical with the subjective consciousness. The relation between two things cannot be any of these two things. It must be a third thing. Otherwise there would be no perception of difference. Difference is a third category, and there cannot be knowledge of this difference without an underlying unity between the knower and the known. Absolutely unrelated things cannot become correlatives of each other. The higher synthesis which is in consciousness should therefore be transcending the empirical distinction between the subject and the object. The world and the individual should be included in this higher consciousness, and yet, none of these should lose their intrinsic worth in it. If we are able to establish this universal conscious relation between the world and the individual, we have established the existence of God. God is the necessary postulate which alone can explain the true nature of the various phenomena of the universe. The order, the system, the regularity and harmony of the universe cannot find an adequate explanation without the admission of this all-comprehending Being, which we term God. It does not matter by what name we refer to it, but it has to be admitted in order that we may be consistent in our explanation of the consistency that is in the universe. Our deepest reality is an irrefutable consciousness, and it asserts itself in every one of our endeavours to give an account of experience, subjective or objective. Without consciousness, there can neither be a universe nor an individual. Nothing can be, if consciousness is not to be. All value and existence come to a nought when consciousness is abolished from the field of experience. Supreme Intelligence or Consciousness has to be equated with the Sovereign of the Universe-God.
The conception of God in the Upanishads is of special significance. The God of the Upanishads is the Antaryamin, the Indwelling Presence in the Universe. This God is different from the God of the Nyaya and the Vaiseshika philosophies, who is entirely cut off from the universe of manifestation; the God of the Yoga philosophy, who has no intelligible relation to the principles of Purusha and Prakriti, and is not the ultimate goal of the aspirations of individuals; or the God of certain theistic schools, who is different from the manifested universe and the Jivas, though he is considered to be omnipresent and the existence of everything. The God or the Ishvara of the Upanishads is the Absolute-Individual, the only Person or Purusha, whose form is all that was, is and will be, who transcends the threefold time and is beyond spatiality and its concomitants. In this Great God are comprehended the possibilities and the potentialities of all the Jivas; in him are also all the actual forms of the Jivas. He is the Goal of knowledge and power. He is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. He is, to the universe, the highest representative of Satchidananda, Brahman. He is the universe and he is all the individuals. Different from this God, there is no universe, no individuals. Ishvara is Brahman from the cosmic standpoint. Brahman is Reality unrelated. As long as the Absolute is experienced as an object by differentiated individuals, it shall appear as a material universe of changing forms, a not-self contending with the self. Differences cannot be annihilated in individualistic perception. Only the Experience-Whole can reveal the reality of the indivisible Absolute, whose essence and existence is Consciousness, Eternal, without any relation to external appearances.
The Upanishads, it is true, do not give us a systematic account of reality. They are collections of statements of Truth in its various phases. These statements are made not by one but several seers in different Upanishads. We have to study the Upanishads carefully and thoroughly in order to gather a philosophical system from them. It is the genius of Acharaya Shankara that for the first time evolved a consistent system out of the diverse declarations of the Upanishads. It is the argument of Shankara that reason should not be unbridled, but should conform to the intuition expressed in the Upanishads; reason can be made use of till its limit is reached, but beyond this limit the Shrutis or the words of the spiritual preceptor alone are the support. Reason has, therefore, a value, but within certain limits. Tarka (discussion) and Anubhava (experience), Yukti (reason) and Shruti (revelation), logic and intuition, should go hand in hand. As long as it is possible to make use of the power of reason in determining truth, it is one’s duty to use it; but when its limit is reached, it should be abandoned. Any further use of it would lead to error and not truth. We cannot conceive of a greater respecter of reason than Shankara, and yet no one could be more conscious of its defects and limitations. Reason and faith in the intuitional declarations together become the royal road to the realisation of Brahman. The lower truths are useful until higher truths are realised. The higher truth includes the lower in a transfigured condition.
An attempt at attaining to the truth of experience takes us through two ideas-the subjective and the objective. The subjective idea considers things as purely mental or idealistic. The universe, according to it, is an externalised form of mind or idea. But, it will be clear that this is not a tenable position. Experience shows that the object of consciousness is not more real or more unreal than the experiencing idea or consciousness. If the idea of the perceiver is to externalise itself as something in the universe, there must be a basis for it. We have objective perception in dream-experience. We have a dream-space, a dream-time and dream-objects. It may be said that all that we perceive in dream is an idea. But, if we critically examine this position, we shall notice that there is something deeper implied in the argument than what is apparent. What is the meaning of dream? It is known that, in dream-experience, there is a dream-subject together with dream-objects. I become the perceiver of the dream-objects in my dream. But is this dreaming individual identical with the waking individual?
I become a subject in dream; and I am a subject in the waking state also. The question that we have to put here is: Is this dreaming individual who is different from the dream-objects the same as the waking individual who is different from the objects of waking experience? If we think carefully over the issue, we will find that they are different from each other. The waking individual contains within himself the dream-subject as well as the dream-objects. It is the waking subject that has externalised his ideas as the dream-subject and his universe. When we wake up we find that not only the dream-universe is not there, but the dream-subject, also, is not there. The dream-subject and the dream-objects are unified in the waking subject. This can give us a clue to the relation of the individual to the universe. Even as the dream-subject is different from the dream-objects, this waking subject is different from the waking universe; but even as the dream-universe is not created by the dream-subject, so the waking universe is not the product of the waking subject. And, even as the subject and the objects in the dream state are resolved into another subject in the waking state, the waking subject and the waking universe are resolved into another subject which is Purushottama or Virat. Ishvara contains in himself all the objects and subjects. The universe is the objectification of the Cosmic or Universal Consciousness, and not of any individual mind.
Ishvara is the Soul of the universe, the Cosmic Self, the Cosmic Mind, who is the efficient and material cause of the individual minds; the individual has no independent existence apart from Ishvara; God includes in himself both mind and matter. Brahman (the Absolute) is Ishvara divested of cosmic relations, and Ishvara is Brahman in relation to the cosmos.
When we started philosophising, we came across three principles-God, the universe and the individual. We have advanced further and have found that God must include within Himself the universe and the individuals. He is not merely a relation, but true existence. He is That which resolves into Itself the universe and the individuals.
But, if, in God, the universe and the individuals are merged completely, why is there perception of difference? I cannot say that I am the same as the world that I see. This question can be answered by making a distinction between the human view of the universe and the divine view. We look at the universe in terms of space, time and causation. The moment we think, we think in terms of these three terms of knowing. Everything is involved in these three links. We imply in the fact of our thinking, our being individuals. We think of something in space; space objectifies experience. When we try to introduce a relation among these principles, i.e., God, the universe and the individual, we have already created difference. The difference implied in their conception is the very basis of our processes of thinking. How can we think of the nature of the Divine Being without objectifying it in space? This is why the Upanishads hold that Ultimate Truth is transcendental. The mind of man cannot think of anything independent of objectivity. This is the fundamental error in human perception. God transcends space, time and causation. In order to think of God, we have to transcend these limiting factors. And we cannot do that. The moment we try to avoid these things, we avoid our own existence. The thinker ceases to exist in the attempt at transcending relativity of perception and experience.
Philosophy leads us up to a certain stage of thinking; not to the Ultimate Truth. Philosophy trains the intellect in order to recognise its own limitations. It can only make us understand how much we can know in the universe and what we cannot know. The limit of the reasoning power is revealed by philosophy. But the Upanishads do not stop there, with mere reason or with understanding. They reveal the relation among the principles of God, the world and the individual. Only Aparoksha-Anubhava, or immediate experience, can reveal the truth of this relation. It is non-relational experience, without a relation between the perceiver and the perceived. It is not like man conceiving of God, but God knowing that he is. ‘I am’-this is the knowledge of God. Here differs the knowledge of God from the knowledge of man. Man knows: ‘I am; and others also are’. But God’s experience is not like that. When He knows, ‘I am’, nothing else exists. This ‘I’ includes everything; there is no space, time or causation for Him; it is pure Consciousness.
The distinction that is ordinarily made between Ishvara and Brahman can be traced finally to the Upanishads. Though the rigid distinction which is made between these two metaphysical principles in the official Vedanta philosophy of Shankara and his followers cannot be found in the Upanishads clearly set forth, there is no doubt that the basis for this distinction is in the Upanishads themselves. Brahman is described sometimes as Purusha-Vidha which can, without difficulty, be identified with the Divine Being constituting the three phases of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat. The Upanishads, however, do not show much interest in distinguishing between Ishvara and Brahman, and the reason for this it is not hard to seek. It is our extreme attachmeht to the process of logical thinking that leads us conceive of Ishvara as somehow distinguished from the Supreme Brahman. For all practical purposes, this distinction need not be made, for it is not necessary. To us, who think as individuals situated in space, time and causal relations, the Absolute appears as something which must have some kind of connection with the universe of our experience. We take the universe of objective perception for granted, and then argue that there must be an Absolute beyond the universe. We cannot disregard the universe, for we see it before our eyes and experience it; and we cannot also abandon the Absolute, for without it all experience seems to become self-contradictory and meaningless. We have also to retain our own individuality, for we do not see any difference between our being and our individuality. We want everything, we want also difference, and we want consistency and logical perfection! We are aiming at Truth, but to get at Truth we make use of methods which are inconsistent with Truth. This explains our failure in grasping it in its completeness. The distinctions among Brahman, Ishvara, Jagat and Jiva are not fundamental; they are relative to individual experience. And the Upanishads, which concern themselves with Truth as it is, and not merely with the logical truth arrived at through speculation, would quite obviously not pay much heed to these relative distinctions created by individual experience. When Ishvara is directly realised, and not merely established by reason, it will be found that Ishvara sheds the relative attributes imposed upon him by the individuals and thus coalesces with the Absolute, Brahman. Brahman appears as Ishvara; it does not become Ishvara. And it appears as Ishvara to the Jivas. When Jivahood is transcended, Ishvarahood, also, has to get cancelled, for the latter is only the correlative of the former, and neither of the two can have irrelative existence. The Absolute alone is; Ishvara, Jagat and Jiva are not absolute existence; they are relations within the Absolute, and independent of the Absolute they cannot be. The Absolute is the All. This is the central doctrine of the Upanishads. But this purport does not easily make itself explicit in any of the proclamations of these texts. They are highly mystical, suggestive and intricate in the manner of their expressions. Nevertheless, this is the outcome of their long discourses, when they are well distilled and properly coordinated.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Mandukya Upanishad
The Mandukya Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 9 July 2013 21:15
*READ MORE \* The Mandukya Upanishad
Yesterday we observed that the human individual is a microcosmic specimen of the entire creative process of the cosmos. The layers or degrees of reality which constitute the composition of the universe of creation are also to be found in the human individual in the form of the Kosas or the sheaths, as they are called – physical, vital, mental, intellectual and causal-known in the Sanskrit language as Annamaya Kosa, Pranomaya Kosa, Manomaya Kosa, Vijnanamaya Kosa and Anandamaya Kosa. These are the five layers of objectivity which, in a gradational form, externalise consciousness. The grosser the sheath, the greater is the force of externality, so that when consciousness enters the physical body we are totally material in our outlook, physical in our understanding and assessment of values, intensely body-conscious, and know nothing about ourselves except this body. It is only when we go interior that we have access to the subtler layers of our personality – not otherwise. The Taittiriya Upanishad dealt with subject of the five layers, known as the Kosas; and the Mandukya Upanishad, which is another important Upanishad, sometimes considered as the most important, deals with the very same Kosas in a different way, namely, by the elucidation of the involvement of consciousness in these Kosas.
The five have been classified into three groups – the physical, the subtle and the causal. In the waking state in which we are now, for instance, the physical body is intensely operative and we always think in terms of physical body, physical objects and physical sensations. This physical sensation is absent in the state of dream, but three of the Kosas operate in dream. In the waking condition, all the five are operating, concentrating their action on the physical body mostly. In the dream state the physical body is not operating, but the vital, the mental and the intellectual sheaths are active. The Prana is there, the mind is there, the intellect also is there also in a diminished intensity. We breath, we think and we understand in the state of dream. That means Prana, Manas and Buddhi all are active in the state of dream, minus the physical element, namely the body consciousness. In the state of deep sleep, none of these are active; neither the body is operating there, nor the mind, nor the intellect, nor is there any consciousness that we are even breathing. The consciousness is withdrawn entirely from all the sheaths – physical, vital, mental and intellectual. There is only one sheath that is operating in the state of sleep – that is the causal sheath, called Anandamaya Kosa in Sanskrit.
In the waking condition the senses are very active, physically and materially. The Mandukya Upanishad tells us that we enjoy, experience and contact things in nineteen ways in the waking state. Consciousness has nineteen mouths through which it eats the food of objective experience. What are these nineteen mouths? They are the five senses of knowledge – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching. With these five sensations we come in contact with things in the world outside, and enjoy them with actions and reactions produced thereby, by means of such sensory contact. These five mentioned are called senses of knowledge – Jnanya Indriyas. They are so called because they give us some sort of knowledge – either of sight, or sound, or taste, or smell, or touch. Apart from these five senses of knowledge, there are five organs of action; they do not give us any independent knowledge, but they act. The hand that grasps is one organ of action. The speech that articulates words is another organ of action. The feet that cause locomotion or movement are also organs of action. The generative organ and the excretory organ also are two of the active elements or organs of action. They act, but they do not give any new knowledge. Whatever idea, knowledge, experience, etc. we may have through any one of these organs of action comes through the sensations already mentioned, namely, the Jnana Indriyas. Even when the organs of action act and we are conscious that they are acting, this consciousness is available only through the Jnana Indriyas and not separately though the organs of action, which do not give additional knowledge. It looks as if we have some sensation even through the organs of action, but actually it is not so. The sensation, the experience of the action of the Karma Indriyas as they are called, arises on account of the simultaneous action of the Jnana Indriyas or senses of knowledge. These five senses of knowledge and five organs of action make ten mouths of consciousness.
Then there are the five Pranas – the Prana, or the vital energy in us, operates in five ways. When we breathe out, expel breath, the Prana is acting. When we breathe in, when we inhale the breath, the Apana is acting. The Vyana is a third form of the operation of this energy, which causes circulation of blood and makes us feel a sensation of liveliness in every part of the body because of the operative action of the bloodstream, which is pushed onward in a circular fashion throughout the body by the action of a particular function of Prana, called Vyana. There is another action of the Prana, which is Udana; it causes the swallowing of food. When we put food in the mouth, it goes inside through the esophagus and it is pushed down by the action of a Prana called Udana. Udana has also certain other functions to perform. It takes us to deep sleep. Our ego consciousness, our individualised consciousness is pushed into a state of somnambulism, sleep; that also is the work of Udana. Udana has also a third function to perform, namely the separation of the vital body from the physical body at the time of death. Three actions, three performances are attributed to Udana. There is another, fifth one, Samana, which operates through the navel region and causes digestion of food. It creates heat in the stomach and in the naval region so that the gastric juices operate and we feel appetite. Hunger is caused and food is digested by the action of this Samana. So, there are five Pranas – Prana, Apana, Vyana, Udana, Samana.
Five senses of knowledge, five organs of action and five Pranas make fifteen. There are four functions of the psychic organ. The internal psyche, which we generally call Manas or mind in ordinary language, has four functions. In Sanskrit these four functions are designated as Manas, Buddhi, Ahamkara and Chitta. Manas is ordinary, indeterminate thinking – just being aware that something is there. Manas is the work of the mind. Buddhi determines, decides and logically comes to a conclusion that something is such-and-such a thing. That is another aspect of the operation of the psyche – Buddhi or intellect. The third form of it is Ahamkara – ego, affirmation, assertion, ‘I know’. “I know that there is some object in front of me, and I also know that I know. I know that I am existing as this so-and-so.” This kind of affirmation attributed to one’s own individuality is the work of Ahamkara, known as egoism. The subconscious action, memory, etc., is caused by Chitta. It is the fourth function. So Manas, Buddhi, Ahamkara, Chitta – these are the four basic functions of the internal organ, the psychological organ.
So, we have five senses of knowledge, five organs of action, five Pranas and four operations of the psyche, totaling nineteen. These are the mouths through which consciousness grasps objects from outside, and we feel secure and happy because all these nineteen things are acting at the same time in some form or other, with more emphasis or less emphasis. Any one can act at any time, under special given conditions; and inasmuch as any one can act at any time, it is virtually saying that all are acting at the same time. Therefore we are objectively conscious through the nineteen operative media of the individual consciousness acting in the waking condition. We are aware of this vast world of sensory perception, and we go on contacting these objects of the world through these media.
It is also mentioned, in this connection, that we can conceive this form of perception in a cosmic way. Cosmic consciousness can be conceived to be operating in this manner in a cosmic waking condition. In the same way as we are individually conscious of objects in our waking condition, in a similar manner we can conceive that the universal consciousness is awake to the world of daylight. The whole universe is the object of the consciousness of a consciousness in its manner, similar to an individualised, circumscribed world becoming the object of our individual consciousness in the waking state. The waking state is called Jagrat-avastha-Jagratsthan. Technical words are used, which may be remembered or not remembered. For instance, Visva is the word used to designate consciousness in the waking, individualised state. Our consciousness, the Jiva-tattva, this individuality of ours at this moment of waking, is called Visva. This very waking world of universal expanse in space and time, animated by a universal consciousness, is called Vaishvanara, or sometimes the word used is Virat. There is a consciousness pervading all things, as we know already. If this consciousness, which is universal and hidden behind all things, is to be aware of the whole cosmos as we perceive in our waking condition, that cosmic awaking or awareness of the whole universe may be regarded as Virat-tattva-cosmic consciousness of the whole physical world, the entire cosmos of physicality.
We have heard that Sri Krishna manifested the Viratsvarupa before Arjuna. In the Purusha-Sukta we also have some sort of description of the Cosmic Being conceived as animating the whole physical cosmos. By ‘physical cosmos’ we have to understand here not merely this physical earth, but all the layers of externality which are computerised, as it were, into fourteen categories known in Sanskrit as Bhuh-lok, Bhuvah-lok, Svah-lok, Mahah-lok, Jana-lok, Tapah-lok and Satya-lok. The whole cosmos, in all the levels of its manifestation, is at once an object of the awareness of this Cosmic Being. Such an awakened, waking state, as it were, of the cosmic consciousness is Virat, also known as Vaishvanara in the language of the Upanishads. Individually, the microcosmic aspect of this Virat is Visva – your own or my own waking experience as it is available just now, for instance.
Through nineteen mouths we experience objects of the world in this waking condition. We can conceive for our own intellectual satisfaction that the universe operates also in this manner, and God-consciousness, imagined to be operating through this waking condition everywhere, is an expanded form of our individualised consciousness. While we in our waking state know only certain things, God as the universal consciousness knows all things at the same time. This is briefly a description of consciousness involved in the waking state; a total physical perception in which the consciousness is involved is the objective world of waking state of consciousness.
In the dream state something else happens. The actual physical world which is seen and contacted through the sense organs in the waking state is absent, but by an action of the mind it looks as if it is present even in the dream state. Without the assistance of the gross senses and the organs of action which are active in the waking condition, the mind alone concocts, imagines, projects a world of its own in the dream state, and we see a world in dream. We exist there in the same way that we exist in the waking state. We can see ourselves now, seated here, in the waking state; in a similar way we can see ourselves observing certain things in the dream state also. There is a dream ‘me’ in the same way as there is a waking ‘me’, and there is a dream world. We see all sorts of things in the waking state – mountains, rivers, sun, moon, stars, and people of all kinds. We can see all that in the dream world also. There is space, time and externality in dream, as we have also in the waking state. The difference between the waking and the dream is that the mind has created this entire world of external cognition and perception of its own accord, without the existence of physically external objects or the physical sensations. There, also, nineteen mouths are operating. We have dream eyes, dream ears, a dream nose, a dream tongue that tastes, dream touch; and dream legs, dream hands, dream organs of every kind. We run in dream with the legs, we eat a good meal in dream, we can even live and die – even that experience is possible in dream. One can feel that one is born, or one can feel that one is dead. One can observe one’s own cremation in dream. All kinds of fantastic things can be experienced in dream. A new world is projected by the mind – space, time, causation, objects, people, all blessed things. They are in the dream world because the psyche is operating through the vital energy, the mind, the intellect in a diminished form, not in an active way. The only difference is that the physical body is not there as an object of awareness. Sometimes people sleep with open mouths. If a few particles of sugar are put on the tongue of a sleeping man, he will not feel the taste of it, because his mind is withdrawn. The mind is the main operative organ which causes sensations of seeing, hearing, tasting, etc. Even the ego will react in dream. If somebody calls us, either in dream or in sleep, by a name that is not ours, we will not listen to it. We will not wake up. If John is sleeping and he is called as Jacob, he will not wake up. John must be summoned as John only. That is, the ego is so intensely identified with this particular name-form complex that it is acting even there in a submerged condition of dream and sleep.
So, the nineteen mouths of the waking condition are psychologically projected by the mind in the dreaming state also, and there also we have all these experiences, every blessed thing, as we have in the waking state. The Mandukya Upanishad is a study of these states. It is said that if one properly understands the Mandukya Upanishad and its implications, one need not read any other Upanishad afterwards. Mandukyam ekam eva alam mumukshunam vimuktaye – For the sake of the liberation of the soul, one Upanishad is sufficient, the Mandukya Upanishad, provided it is understood properly in its deep connotations. We should not just read it only to understand of the lower meaning of it. The suggestion given by the Mandukya Upanishad is to take one’s consciousness deeper and deeper into the very root of one’s personality – from external sensations, from body etc. to what one really is in one’s deepest essence.
There is a third state, called sleep, where not only are we not aware of the body, but even the psychological functions are not there. The mind does not think, the intellect does not decide, and we do not even know that we exist. Our existence itself is abolished, as it were; a nothing. It is a nothing of which we are not even aware that it is a nothing. To be aware that it is a nothing is something, but even to be not aware that it is a nothing – that is pure nothing, unadulterated. But, what is happening there? Are we dead? No; very much alive. Who told us that we are alive in sleep when we call it nothing and our awareness is totally obliterated by something? We are totally oblivious of all things happening there. When we did not even know that we are existing, how do we come to the conclusion that we were alive at that time? Nobody told us. We ourselves conclude, “I am the same person now that I was before I slept yesterday. Therefore I conclude that I must have been existing in sleep. Today I am not another person – I am the same person that I was yesterday. Therefore I must have existed in sleep.” But how do we know that we are the same person? We may be another person; every day we can change and become somebody else. This does not happen. A continuity of consciousness is maintained between yesterday’s experience and today’s experience. Is this not interesting and surprising? We are very certain, cocksure that we are the same person today that we were yesterday, and our consciousness is continuing even through the sleep condition, making us feel we are existing today in the same way as we existed yesterday. That is to say, we did exist in the state of deep sleep. The proof of it is only our conviction that we are the same person today as we were yesterday. We have a memory of having slept.
Now, if consciousness must have existed in the state of deep sleep, we must have existed as consciousness only. We did not exist as a body, mind, intellect, or anything else. We did not know even that we were breathing at that time. We did exist as consciousness only. So, do we believe that our essential nature is consciousness? Because minus all these appurtenances of body, mind, intellect, etc., if we can exist nevertheless, why should we imagine that we are the body, mind, intellect, etc.? If I can exist minus something, then that thing from which I am withdrawn is not me, really speaking. If I can be safe without something, that something is redundant. So body is a redundant thing; mind, intellect also are not us. We are pure – Shuddha Chaitanya, as they call it – Pure Consciousness. In that state we existed. There is no other thing which can be regarded as an attribute of our being in that condition. Consciousness was our essential nature. What were we conscious of? Conscious of nothing; conscious of consciousness only. It was a consciousness of existence, about which we heard something sometime back. It was not a consciousness of something, it was a consciousness of consciousness existing. We were aware that we were aware – that’s all, nothing more than that; nothing more, nothing less. It was being-consciousness; and we were very happy, therefore it was bliss also. We know how happy we are after having gone into a good sleep – happy – and we would like to continue the sleep, would we not?
So free we were in sleep that we would like to go to sleep again. All the botheration and turmoil of this world is no more there. “Let me go to bed and forget this devil of this world,” we feel sometimes. So in this state of deep sleep we existed as Pure Consciousness; Sat-Chit-Ananda was our real nature in the state of deep sleep. This consciousness which was Sat-Chit-Ananda was not merely inside the body, as we may wrongly imagine once again after having deduced this wonderful conclusion that we were Pure Consciousness. It is a wonderful conclusion indeed that we are essentially Pure Consciousness. But again we may commit the mistake of thinking that we are inside the body. Pure Consciousness is not inside anything – it is all things. We have already concluded in our earlier sessions that consciousness is all-pervading; it cannot be confined to one individuality only. To be conscious that it is only in one place and not in another place is to accept virtually that consciousness is in another place also. Otherwise how would consciousness know that it is not in some other place unless it has already been there. So the negation of consciousness in some other place is actually an affirmation of it in that place. Negation is determination. Therefore, what is the second conclusion that we draw by this analysis? That in the state of deep sleep we existed as Pure Consciousness; not the little consciousness inside the body, but the pervading consciousness which is everywhere. Cosmic consciousness was there. Universal consciousness was our essential nature in deep sleep. But why is it that we are not aware of such a condition? We come up like fools, as we went also like fools in the state of deep sleep. When we wake up, we do not come like a wise person. Same idiot went, same idiot comes back. What is the matter, in spite of these wondrous conclusions? There is a peculiar operation which is catching hold of us. The impression and the impact caused by this operation is the reason why we come up like fools though it appears that we were not really fools.
We have passed through various lives; we have taken many births. This is one link in the long chain in the births that we have undergone, maybe thousands in number. In every birth we think something, feel something and do something; and every thought, every feeling and every action creates an impression in the psyche. The psyche is nothing but the individualised center of consciousness. This impression is nothing but a remnant of a desire remaining after a particular experience. If we see something, we would like to see it again. If we like something, we want to continue that liking again and again, as much as possible. The like and dislike, so-called, which is the basic operation of the mind of the individual, creates an impression in the mind, a groove, as it were, and creates a compulsion in the psyche to repeat that experience already had earlier. This goes on day after day, every day, and we pile up impressions, one over the other, so that these impressions heaped in that manner, one over the other, become something like a thick cloud covering of consciousness. This happens in one life; but if many lives are taken in this manner, what would happen? Complete darkness like an eclipse of the sun or an utter midnight – like experience when there is monsoon season, even in the waking condition, even in daytime. This thing is weighing so heavily upon us that it does not permit us to be aware that we were aware in the state of deep sleep.
So the transcendental being that we really are in the state of deep sleep is almost a negation of our existence, because of the heavy weight that is sitting upon us. Suppose I give you a very good lunch, very tasty, and five quintals of heavy weight I keep on your head at the same time – will you enjoy the food? Very tasty thing, but the five quintals on the head – unless that is removed, this eating has no meaning. So our own experience of transcendental awareness in deep sleep does not have any signification for us on account of the heavy weight of Karma potentials which compel us to think only in one way, in a stereotyped fashion – like blinkers, as it were – and we cannot think in any other way. Any number of lives we may take, births and births we may pass through, but we are the same person. We do not become different because we are whipped by the desires which were produced by earlier impressions; and as a horse being whipped and compelled to move in one direction only, we are forced to think in only one way – this space, this time, this causation, this object, this person, this me, this somebody else.
The Mandukya Upanishad gives this analysis of our basic nature. But it is said that we will attain Moksha by knowing this knowledge – Mandukyam ekam eva alam mumukshunam vimuktaye. How would we get Moksha by knowing this? It is also added that we are the same foolish persons; we have never become different. This foolishness of ours can be removed by the gradual practise of Yoga. The suggestion of a particular kind of Yoga that is made by the Mandukya Upanishad is the recitation of Pranava or Omkara. It has a simple way, a very easy means of meditation to tell us, not complicated – the recitation of Pranava. OM is the Pranava or the Omkar which is a blend of three syllables, letters – A, U, M. A-U-M becomes OM. When we chant OM, when we articulate the vocal organ in the recitation of OM, all the parts of the vocal organ act simultaneously in such a way that they may be supposed to be uttering every letter at that time. All language is supposed to be included in OM because of this reason. All the articulatory process takes place in the recitation of OM, if we can properly observe it.
The Visva, as I mentioned, is the name given to the waking consciousness. Dreaming consciousness is called Taijasa, sleeping consciousness is called Prajna. The transcendental consciousness is the Atman. So, Visva, Taijasa, Prajna and Atman are the designations of the very same consciousness involved in the physical body and physical sensations, involved in dream perception, involved in sleep, and not involved in anything. In a way, the letters of the Mantra OM – A, U, M – are identified by the Mandukya Upanishad with these three states; A is waking, U is dreaming, Ma is sleeping and OM is Atman. “OM is the name of the Ultimate Reality,” says Patanjali in his Sutra. The name of God is OM – He has no other name. As God is all-pervading, His name also should be all-inclusive. We do not call him ka ka, ga ga, abcd. It is an inarticulate universalised vibration. It is not actually a letter or a word, but a vibration. OM is to be chanted for the sake of the removal of this dross accumulated in our psyche in the form of impressions of past Karmas. Merge waking in dream, merge dream in sleep and merge sleep in the Atman. Draw the consciousness gradually from waking to dream – that is to say, draw it from the waking body consciousness to the psychological consciousness, and from that to the sleep consciousness. How do we do this? In the beginning we have to be seated in a suitable posture and slowly articulate this beautiful name of God, which is OM or Pranav.
The scripture says that, in the beginning, the Vedas did not exist. In the Krita Yuga, the golden age as we call it, the Vedas did not exist; only Pranava existed. That religion was not Hinduism, Christianity, etc. Hamsa was the name of the religion of Krita Yuga. Hamsa means just love of God. It is not love through some ‘ism’ – this community or that community – no communities existed in Krita Yuga. It was total man loving total God, and OM was considered as inclusive of all the three Vedas. From Akara, Ukara and Makara, Prajapati is supposed to have extracted the Rig Veda, Yajur Veda and Sama Veda. The three Padas of the Gayatri Mantra are supposed to be extractions of the three Vedas, and are also supposed to be embedded in A-U-M, so that all the Veda is inside OM – all three Vedas.
To practice this meditation according to the Mandukya Upanishad, be seated properly, without distractions, and chant Aauuuummmmm. Take a deep breath and then chant Aaauuuuummmmmmm, Aaauuuuummmmmmm, Aaauuuuummmmmmm, Aaauuuuummmmmmm, Aaauuuuummmmmmm. When you recite OM like this, don’t you feel a sense of satisfaction inside? In a few seconds you will feel the difference. You feel as if you are a different person altogether. You are not the same body; you were not even aware of that body for two seconds. It was melting, as it were, gradually melting. Every day practice this chant for fifteen minutes, in the morning and in the evening. You will feel as if the body is melting. Actually, physically, it may not melt; the sensation of melting may arise on account of the withdrawal of consciousness from the body. It will withdraw itself from even the mind, and it will withdraw itself from even your personality consciousness. By the chant of OM only you can enter into the bliss of the Atman, is the teaching of the Mandukya Upanishad. All Yogas are combined in this. So do this practice yourself when you are alone somewhere, under the tree, or at the Ganga, or at the temple, or in your room – wherever you are. Sit for a few minutes and chant in the same way as I told you, with a sonorous sound, beautifully, calmly, creating an equilibrated vibration in your personality. You will forget all your worries; you will feel happy inside. You will feel a tingling sensation in the body, as if the consciousness is slowly getting withdrawn from body. This is the practice of the Yoga of the Mandukya Upanishad. God bless you.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Fourfold Vision of Life
The Fourfold Vision of Life by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 8 July 2013 20:51
*READ MORE \* The Fourfold Vision of Life
A more in-depth perception of life is the blending synthesis that has been achieved in ancient times in a concept known as the fourfold aim of human existence.
The aspiration of the human soul cannot be equated with any kind of philosophy or objective evaluation – material, social, or otherwise. The soul of man refuses to be equated with anything in this world. Though it has a connection apparently with all things in the world, permeating all conceivable values of life, it also stands above all available values. The aims of human life have been summed up in a very well thought-out pattern of aspiration designated as Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha.
All values in life which are materially construed are known as Artha. Anything that can be contacted through the sense-organs is Artha. Anything that can be possessed as a property is Artha. Anything that is contributory is considered as a material value. This is Artha. Artha is a Sanskrit word meaning an object of perception, a content of consciousness; that which is the end result of any kind of sensory activity is Artha. Kama is the psychological value of human life. Dharma is the human value which at the same time surpasses itself, reaching beyond itself in a superhuman grasp of a cosmic principle.
An intelligent investigation into the structure of this pattern, namely, the coming together of Artha, Dharma, and Kama, will reveal to us the profundity of this research and its final finding. The spiritual value of life, we may say, is what generally people consider as Moksha, a difficult term to properly understand in its linguistic form or even in its philosophical content. The evaluation of human life is actually from this point of view an evaluation of all life. When the human individual rises to the level of a spiritual aspiration, the human ceases to be a limited individual social unit but an embodiment of a call which is above all individual values or social relationships.
The concept of the values of life as Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha is a masterstroke of genius of the Indian soil particularly, which did not exclude from its consideration even the lowest calls of human nature, but were not satisfied with any of the calls of human nature. While all our desires are permissible in one way, none of the desires is finally permissible. While all that we need and call for, and every thought, every feeling, every vision of life is a permissible and valid evaluation of things from their own point of view, yet none of them is final. All phases of the vision of life are valid from their own point of view – every religion is a right religion, a correct vision of things, every faith is valid in its own way, every vision is complete, every viewpoint has a validity of its own – anything that you think is a valid thinking. But it is inadequate.
Here is the necessity for a charitableness that we have to manifest in ourselves while affirming our own points of view. My point of view and your point of view and everyone’s point of view is a correct point of view, but none’s point of view is a whole point of view. There is something beyond any vision of things, though every vision of things is self-centered and appears to be complete from its own stage, level and operative angle. There is thus a necessity to live a cooperative life. The life that the world expects from us is not so much competitive as cooperative. Things in the world do not argue one against the other; they do not compete in a business fashion, but agree to accept their own limitations and also agree to expect the correlative aspects of their inadequacies from other things in the world, other people, from everything. Everyone is sacrosanct, everyone is holy, everyone is complete, every human being is as valuable as any other human being; everyone is equally valuable, there is no inferiority or superiority among people. Human life is a ubiquitous, equally distributed valuation of aspiration to exist, but no individual human life is complete in itself.
This is to sum up the viewpoint that is placed before us by the pattern called the fourfold Purusharthas – Dharma, Artha, Kama, Moksha. They are not four aims of existence; they are the fourfold vision of a single aim of existence. We are materially located in this body, we are psychologically operating through the mind, we are socially existing in the midst of people; we are also vehicles of an eternity that is permanently acting for the fulfillment of itself in self-realisation.
Om purnam adah, purnam idam, purnat purnam udacyate;
purnasya purnam adaya puram evavasisyate .
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Katha Upanishad
The Katha Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 7 July 2013 16:01
*READ MORE \* The Katha Upanishad
These are the sentences which the great master Lord Yama spoke to Nachiketas, the great student whose story occurs in the Katha Upanishad. Certain incidents caused the ascent of the student Nachiketas to the Lord of Death – Yama. He could not meet the Lord when he went there, and for three days he had to stand at the gates of the palace of Yama, not eating and not sleeping. After three days the great master returned and asked for pardon, “My dear boy, you are Atithi, just come to my place, and unfortunately I had to make you stand here without eating and sleeping for three days and nights. As a recompense for this pain that I have caused to you unwittingly, I ask you to choose three boons from me.” The boy Nachiketas said, “I am glad that you have offered to give me three boons.” “Yes, please ask.”
“Now I shall ask for the first boon. When I return to the world from your abode, may I be received with affection by my father, by the world and by everyone.” This boon has also a special, mystical significance. Though the words of the Upanishad are couched in some sort of an epic, mythological style, the borderland of universal knowledge is the death of the human personality. The great Lord Yama, here in the context of the Upanishadic teaching, may be regarded as the Lord over the borderland between the empirical and the transcendental realms. Death is the greatest teacher. Ordinarily even the very notion of death shakes our personality, and we learn the wisdom of life only when we are on the verge of dying. Until that time we are mostly ignoramuses. When we are drowning in water and there is no hope of coming out, when death is immanent and there are only a few more minutes left, or we have lost everything that we considered as our own, at that time we learn the wisdom of life. When everything is gone and nothing remains – even the ground under our feet is shaking – at that time we know what life is made of and what the wisdom of life is.
When Nachiketas asked for this boon as a student of the highest mysticism conceivable, we may understand from this request of Nachiketas that when we return to the world after the attainment of the wisdom of life, the world becomes a friend. At present the world is not our friend – it stands outside us as a glaring, tearing reality of which we have very little knowledge. The world is very heavily sitting on us; too much is this world for us, many a time. We dread it. We cannot consider anything in the world as our real friend because it has its own laws and regulations, and we are obliged to abide by these laws and regulations. It compels us to obey its dictates and mandates. But it suddenly changes its color and becomes part and parcel of our personal life. Jivanmukta is the name that we give to the transmuted personality of the spiritual seeker. Nachiketas may be regarded as a Jivanmukta, especially having contacted that great master of knowledge, Yama himself. “When I return to the world after having seen you, the abode of wisdom, may the world receive me with affection. May there be nothing dissonant, incongruent, disharmonious in this world, and may there be a communion of spirits and purposes between me and the world.” This boon is granted at one stroke. “Yes,” said Yama. “It is a simple thing for me. You shall have what you asked for. Now ask for a second boon.”
The second boon is something more complicated. It is deeper than the one mentioned earlier. “I have heard,” said Nachiketas, “that there is a mystery called Vaishvanara, having known which, one becomes all-knowing, omniscient. May I be blessed with this boon.” “Yes, I shall initiate you into this mystery of the supreme wisdom of the Vaishvanara, the Universal Reality.” The necessary initiation process was carried out.
“Now ask for the third boon.” This was a crucial issue that Nachiketas raised when he asked for the third boon. “What happens to the soul after death – after the death of this body, or it may be after the death of the individuality itself – in either case, what happens to the soul?” While Yama, the Lord, was very eager and quick in the response to the questions of Nachiketas, in the case of the third question he was not willing to say anything. He said, “You should not ask this question. Nobody can understand what it is. The gods themselves have doubts about this matter. Therefore a young boy like you should not raise a question of this kind. Ask for better things – gold and silver, long life, health. The emperorship of the whole world, and a long life, as long as this world lasts, all the wealth of the world, all the glory, all the majesty and magnificence of an emperor of the world I shall grant you. Do not ask this question.”
Nachiketas said, “What good is this, what is the use of this long life? What do you mean by “long life”? How long will it be? One day it has to end. So anything that has to end is to be considered as short. It may be long from one point of view, but it has to end one day. Even if it is millions of years – after millions of years, what happens? It stops. Then why do you call it “long life”? It is short. All the life put together is futile and petty. I do not want long life. And what is the good of all the glory and majesty and the beauty and the enjoyments to which you have made reference? What is enjoyment to a person whose sense organs have worn out? As long as the sense organs are vigorous, things look beautiful, tasty and worthwhile. When the senses wither away, who will enjoy the world? So why do you tempt me with these offerings? ‘Ask for better things,’ you said. What can be better than the knowledge of this mystery of the soul after its departure from this body, this tabernacle?”
Yama was cornered like this from all sides and he found that there is an impossible student in front of him. Yama might have been testing him, the mettle of the student; whatever be the case, it is also an indication as to the difficulty in knowing what the soul is. The answer, however, does not come abruptly from Yama, though he finally agreed to give the answer.
What he says is, there are two ways available for every person in this world – the way of the good and the way of the pleasant. The good is called Sreyas, the pleasant is called Preyas. There are two roads along which we can tread. We can choose what is good, or we can choose what is pleasant. It is proper for a person to choose the good. It is improper for any person to choose the pleasant, because the good does not always look pleasant, and the pleasant is certainly not always good. That which is pleasant is nothing but the reaction of the sense organs in respect of objects outside. The pleasantness is only in the sensations. If we scratch our body there is a little sensation of pleasure, but itching is necessary in order that the scratching sensation may be pleasant. Unless there is itching, there will be no sensation of pleasure when scratching. If we are not hungry, no lunch can be delicious. If we are not healthy, the world looks stupid and meaningless. If the senses are not vigorous, nothing looks beautiful – everything is ugly and black.
So, what do we mean by pleasant experiences? There is no such thing as a pleasant experience as such, by itself. It is only a relative condition created under the circumstances of an action and reaction process taking place between the sense organs, the mind and the objects outside. Would anybody pursue this path which is utter foolishness? He who pursues the path of the pleasant will fall short of his aim. It is good that we follow the good. We understand to some extent that the pleasant is not actually something existent in the objects outside – it is only a sensation, a reaction of the sense organs, and therefore unreliable to the hilt. Will an old person, in a dying condition, have a pleasant experience of anything in this world? The senses are dying completely; there is no appetite of any kind. If pleasant things are really pleasant, they should be pleasant even at the last moment of our departure. Where is the pleasantness at that time? The condition of our body and mind and sense organs determines what we call pleasant; and also, what is pleasant to us need not be pleasant to another person. If there is real pleasantness in things, there should be pleasantness for all people equally. Why should it be attractive to us and not attractive to another person? Why is it that what we like is not liked by somebody else? This shows there is no such thing as pleasantness in anything. The pursuit of the pleasant therefore is a folly on the part of any individual.
The good is the proper path. What is the good? While we know something about the pleasant, what is the good, then? “I will not follow the path of the pleasant; I will follow the way of the good. But I should understand what is good.” This also is a little difficult question. The ultimately good is to be considered as really good. He who will help us at the time of the death of this body is our real friend. That which will come with us when we are departing from this world is our real comrade. Anything else is not our friend. That which appears to be good now and is bitter tomorrow may not be considered as good. We should be always good. As they say, “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” So also is the case with the good. The good should be always good, like a well-meaning mother. Nothing in this world, as far as the objectivity of things in the world is concerned, can be regarded as always good. There is nothing in this world which can be considered as always good. It appears to be good for some time only, for some reason. We have covered ourselves with blankets because it is cold; it is good to have a blanket over the body. But will it be good always, all the 12 months, all the 365 days of the year to cover ourselves with blankets and woolen clothes? No. It is relatively good, under certain conditions only; under other conditions, it is not. All appetites, all needs, all requirements, anything that we consider as necessary – all these are relative to conditions, circumstances prevailing within us as well as without us. Therefore, nothing in this world can be regarded as finally good.
Yet, there is something that is the good of the soul of an individual. That which is permanent can be regarded as good; and as things in the world are transient and passing, they cannot also be regarded as finally good. We also pass away as far as our body is concerned, but the soul will not pass away. Therefore that which is commensurate with the needs of the soul of a person may be regarded as really good – and there is nothing in this world which can feed our soul. The world can feed our sensations. Our mind and intellect and ego can be fed by the diet of this world. But the soul is suffering. The soul is hungry. Its appetite cannot be met properly by anything in this world, because the impermanent cannot satisfy that which is permanent, and the permanent cannot be obtained through that which is impermanent. That is, that which is relatively good cannot be set in tune with the soul which is ultimately good. So one has to follow the path of the good.
Now, here the good does not necessarily mean an ethical instruction that is being given or imparted to Nachiketas. “Here is a good person.” When we make a statement like this, we mean that in conduct and character and behaviour the person is socially adaptable to conditions, and therefore we say, “Here is a good person.” But the goodness that we are referring to here in the context of the Upanishadic teaching is a spiritual good. It is not a conditioned good – under such circumstance we have to behave in this way, under another circumstance we may have to behave in another way. If this is the mandate of ethics and morality, all ethical and moral instructions stand relative to circumstance. But the metaphysical good, the spiritual good, the ultimate transcendental good is that which is good for the soul. It is not good only for some time, or only for some people, or only for certain conditions – it is good for all conditions and all times and for all individuals. This is the soul, and Nachiketas was asking what happens to the soul.
A wavering answer comes forth in the Katha Upanishad to this great question. A complete, satisfying answer can be found in certain other Upanishads, such as the Chhandogya and the Brihadaranyaka Upanishads. Tentatively Yama tells Nachiketas that when the body is shed, one takes rebirth. One can become anything according to the thoughts and the feelings entertained by the person during the tenure of this life. Our thoughts and feelings will congeal into a solid substance, as it were, of the personality which we will assume in the next incarnation. The process of incarnation is actually the process of the evolution of things. As I mentioned sometime earlier, the evolutionary process is the process of the cessation of one condition to bring about the birth of the subsequent condition. Something has to die in order that something may be born. If nothing dies, nothing will be born. There will be no transformation and no improvement of any kind if death does not take place. Many parts of the body have died in order that we could become this adult personality that we are now. If evolution is something worthwhile, death is also worthwhile. Unless some previous condition dies, the new condition cannot be born. So everyone will be reborn because of the fact that the birth of a body, such as this body of ours which is now with us, is the instrument manufactured by the psychological organ within us for the fulfillment of its needs, desires and wants.
Our desires have no end. We cannot count our desires. Though today, at this moment, we may feel that our desires are half a dozen, when these half a dozen desires are fulfilled we will find that another half a dozen will present themselves forth, and there will never be an end to this. Infinite are the desires of man due to the infinitude that is hidden in the recesses of the being of man. Inasmuch as the longings, desires and needs of the mind are infinite, a finite body cannot be a suitable instrument for the fulfillment of all these desires. An infinite series of incarnations may be necessary in order that infinite desires may be fulfilled through these instruments. What are the instruments? This body. What kind of body will we assume in the next birth? It will be exactly commensurate with the thoughts and desires that we entertain at this moment. Whatever thought enters our mind at departure, at the time of death, that will concretise itself and will be extracted out of our personality like butter being sucked out of milk. Will we be entertaining a hope that at the last moment we will have a suitable thought, and now we can think whatever we like? No. The last thought is the fruit of the tree of life that we have lived in this world. We cannot have one kind of tree and another kind of fruit. So, whatever kind of life that we have lived through this body in this sojourn of our existence in this world, that will become the solid substance of the thought that will occur to our mind at the time of departure of this body. So do not be foolish enough to imagine that now we can live a merry life, and there is no need to bother as to what will happen to us because the time for the passing has not come – there are many years remaining, so we shall think a good thought at the time of going.
Two mistakes are committed by this kind of imagination. Firstly, it is not true that many years are ahead of us – no one can say that. So no one should entertain the idea that only after fifty years we shall have the need to think a good thought, because it is said that the last thought determines our future. But who tells us that we will be living for another fifty years? It may be another fifty minutes, or even less. The second mistake about this thought is that the last thought is nothing but the essence of all the thoughts entertained in this life, so a person cannot be a good person at the time of dying and a bad person previously. Whatever goodness that we entertained in our thoughts and feelings will congeal – as whatever was in the milk, that alone will come out as butter. We cannot get butter from a substance other than milk.
So Yama, in one sentence, says that everybody will take birth if Self-realisation does not take place before passing. If we realise the Self before the end of this life, no birth will take place. Why? Because the need for birth will not arise. Why do we take birth? Because we have a necessity to fulfill the desires that we could not fulfill through this tabernacle. The desires were many, the body was feeble and finite, and an infinite number of desires cannot be fulfilled through a finite, feeble instrument such as the body. So another body, another series of bodies has to be undergone. But in the realisation of the Self, which is universal in its nature, desires get extinguished. There is the Nirvana that people speak of. Nirvana is the extinguishing of the flame of life. This flame, which is the transitory movement of the succession of human desire, vanishes; it is extinguished completely. This is Nirvana that is taking place.
If there is even a single desire, rebirth is unavoidable for the fulfillment of that desire. If we have fulfilled all our desires in this birth itself and nothing more is left, that would be good for us. All our desires melt here itself in the light of the Self. No desire can stand before the blaze of the knowledge of the Self. As the cloud of mist cannot stand before the blaze of the sun, this muddle of the cloud of desires cannot stand before the light of the Self, which is the Atman.
Therefore the question raised by Nachiketas is, what happens to the soul after death. The answer is that ordinarily rebirth takes place, and most people in the world are ordinary people because everyone has a desire of some kind or the other. Everyone is filled with egoism and a self-assertive nature, and therefore everyone will be reborn. Even if we are reborn, it is good to be reborn in a more advanced circumstance. If we live like a tree, we may become a tree. If we live like an animal, we may become an animal. If we are humanitarian, we will be reborn as a very good human being. But why should we not live like an angel? We can live like a veritable god in this world, and we will be reborn as an angel, a divinity in the heavens. We will enter the heavens – we may go to Brahma-loka. But no entry of any kind will be there if the Self is realised. “Athakamayamanah, yo’kamo niskama apta-kama atma-kamah, na tasya prana utkramanti, brahmaiva san brahmapyeti,” says Sage Yagnavalkya to King Janaka in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. In the context of the transmigration of the soul, Yagnavalkaya mentions here that whatever one’s wish is, that will be fulfilled.
Remember very well that no wish of ours, even the pettiest, will be unfulfilled. If we think that we want something, it shall come to us. If it is a very strong desire, it may be fulfilled in this life itself. If it is a mild desire, we may have to take time for the fulfillment of that wish – it may be the next birth, or after two or three births. What happens to the person who has no desire? Now I shall speak about the man, the person who has no desire of any kind, who is bereft of any desire, who has fulfilled every desire, who loves only the Self. Only he who has love for the Universal Self can be said to have fulfilled all desires; every other person has some extraneous desire. Such a person, when he departs from this body, what happens to him? He will not depart. We generally say the soul departs. In the case of the Self-realised soul, no departure takes place. It sinks then and there into the Absolute like a bubble in the ocean. When the bubble in the ocean bursts, it does not travel some distance – it dissolves itself into the bosom of the sea, then and there. There is no space and time movement of the soul of that great being. He becomes one with the very existence then and there, here and now. One neither has to go to heaven nor to Brahma-loka, nor to the Garden of Eden – nothing of the kind, because the question of going arises only due to the concept of space and time. A timeless eternity, which is the true essence of the soul of a person, does not travel to any place. He melts here itself into Pure Existence. The soul is the Absolute, and therefore it enters the Absolute. This is what we gathered from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. So much detail cannot be found in Yama’s answer in the Katha Upanishad, but many other things are casually mentioned by way of a tentative elucidation of the answer expected by Nachiketas from Yama.
The Katha Upanishad is a most beautiful Upanishad. It is worth committing to memory, if possible. There are some Ashrams in India where the residents of the Ashram are expected to recite it the whole day. It is, first of all, a very pithy introduction to spiritual life. The very first chapter of the Katha Upanishad is something like the first chapter of the Bhagavadgita. It places before us the conditions preceding the quest of the spirit, as we have it in the first chapter of the Bhagavadgita. The second chapter of the Katha Upanishad begins with similar circumstances, as in the second chapter of the Bhagavadgita; and as the Bhagavadgita goes on, so also does the Katha Upanishad. There is some resemblance, people think, between the Bhagavadgita’s approach to things and the approach of the Katha Upanishad. Literally also, from the point of view of the Sanskrit language, it is melodious and artistic – a lyrical beauty is there. A very fine, melodious style is the passage of the Katha Upanishad. Inasmuch as it touches our soul and is relevant to our own predicament at the present moment, we seem to be something like Nachiketas. We are perhaps searching for an answer of the same kind. Nachiketas expected three types of boons, and we perhaps also expect the same thing, in some way, in some measure. The Katha Upanishad is the best introduction, equal to the Bhagavadgita and all the Upanishads.
So, with these words, the major point that is raised in the Katha Upanishad may be said to be complete. Something more about the Upanishads I shall try to touch upon at another time.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Adhyatma Vidya
Adhyatma Vidya by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 5 July 2013 21:38
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[Swamiji leads the audience in chanting]
The Upanishads are well known as what is known as adhyatma vidya, meaning thereby, an insight into the Self, the wisdom of the Self, knowledge of the Self – an experience which cannot, in any manner whatsoever, alienate itself into other than what it is. Our experience in this world today, normally speaking, is involved in what can be designated as anatman, the non-Self as it is called, because it is our daily experience – an experience of what we are not. We see the world; we see people; we see human relations. And, all that we can consider as ‘life’, in today’s parlance, is far removed from the true Self.
The characteristic of a Self is what usually eludes the grasp of the sense organs in their search for the Self, of a true satisfaction of themselves. In this world of anatman, or non-Self, we are actually searching for the Self – very mysteriously, maybe very unfortunately. Though inasmuch as the world appears as an object of our sense organs, it has to be considered as an anatman, or a not-Self. The intention behind our pursuit of the anatman is actually the pursuit of the Atman. Unknowingly, groping in the dark as it were, we are searching for our own selves, and search for the Atman in a locality where it is not.
The characteristic of the world has to be distinguished from the characteristic of selfhood. This peculiar distinction between the two principles is what becomes difficult for the mind and the senses to grasp. And it is precisely this difficulty that compels the senses, together with the mind, to run in a direction totally opposite to the Self – though for the purpose of the grasp of the Self only. In the commentary on the Brahma Sutra, Acharya Shankara, perhaps while expounding the meaning of the fourth sutra, he makes a reference to three kinds of ‘selves’, to which we have made some reference earlier in our sessions.
That is to say, there is a self which we pursue through the sense organs, which is the object-self – the vishaya, the anatmantatva, the gaunatman as it is usually called, the secondary self. An object of affection is also an object of such attraction and self-identification, in an empirical way, that it mostly passes for the Self. The object of love, which is called the gaunatman – is apparently a kind of self for that state of affairs where the concerned object is erroneously attempted to be identified with the true Self – erroneously because of the fact that what is outside the Self cannot be identified with the Self.
The outsideness of the object is the difficulty involved in the actual possession, identification, and the expected enjoyment thereof. All objects which are beloved to the sense organs are incapable of that identification which they are actually expecting in their adventure or pursuits. The sense organs externalise the consciousness: parcaci khani vytranat svayambhus tasmat paran pasyati nantaratman. The force of the movement of the senses is so very powerfully extrovert that the consciousness, which otherwise cannot be so extroverted, is charged with this velocity of movement in an externalised fashion; and the Self also moves – as it were, though not really – in the direction of an outside object; envelops it, as it were, in terms of the activity of the mind, and is supposed to feel itself in that object in a totally inverted fashion – topsy-turvy fashion. The king, acting as a fool, as it were, in a drama – the Atman becomes the fool, to some extent we may say, in a metaphorical style, when it begins to behold itself in what is itnot. The whole of our life in this world is this picture of dramatic activity of the sense organs – a tomfoolery, we may say. This is the whole of life. It is the pursuit of a twofold non-_Atman_. On one side it is known as the gaunatman, to which I made reference just now – the object of attraction, love, affection, attachment; then this body, which is called the mithyatman.
This is the whole of life in the world. All our projects and plans of work in the world, throughout the day and the night, concern themselves with values that are related to the physical body, which is the mithyatman, and related to all things connected to the body, namely, the gaunatman. The protection of this body, the ego-individuality, and the protection simultaneously of everything that is connected with this bodily individuality – we may say family circumstances, for instance, and every other related object and condition conducive to the satisfaction of the ego-individuality – is the picture of empirical life.
In one sense, we may say this world is a dream. It is a dream because it is a drama played by consciousness in the same manner as it plays it or enacts it in the well-known dream world. An otherwise impossible phenomenon takes place, namely, the projection of a Self in the location of the non-Self. It is well known that the Self cannot become the non-Self. The very meaningattached to the word ‘Self’ is such that it cannot become what it is not; and non-externality is the characteristic of the Self. Consciousness cannot become unconsciousness. It cannot see itself as a distant object, separated by space and time. That is, beholding consciousness as an object of itself, as it were, is an impossibility, logically speaking; according to common sense also it is contrary. But such a thing happens in dream. The perceiver of the dream becomesthe perceived object also – a well-known phenomenon, into which region we need not traverse now.
A similar structural involvement takes place in the waking world. The structure of dream is the same as the structure of waking. That is, the pattern of the operation of consciousness in dream is similar to the pattern in waking. There has to be a location which perceives; and that perceiver has to be a centre of awareness. There has to be another thing that is outside, which is the object thereof. And there must be a medium of perception: pranamana, a pryatakshana for the time being. The same is the structure of waking awareness. There is an object that is known in the world with all its contents; and there is a subject: yourself, myself, everyone from one’s own point of view is the perceiver of the world. But, the perceiver is neither the gaunatman nor the mithyatman.
The body is constituted of the five elements: earth, water, fire, air, ether – prithvi, jal, tejo, vayu, akash. The object that is perceived also is constituted of the very same elements. It is as if a material embodiment collides with another material embodiment. In the language of the Bhagavad Gita: gunah guneshu vartante. The three gunas of prakriti, which constitute all bodies, subjectivity as well as objectivity, are unconscious in their nature. Prakriti is non-conscious. And all the bodies constituted of the prakriti – the physical body of ours, and the embodied form of all objects – are equally constituted of the gunatraya: sattva, rajas, tamas. By an analysis of our experience, we will know that neither the body nor the mental operations are actually the conscious principle. A consciousness that is responsible for the vision of life is not that body, not even the mind. The avasthatraya vishesana will tell us that, though in the waking condition we appear to be physically conscious, we are not so conscious in dream; there is only a mental operation taking place. But in the deep sleep state, even the mind subsides, but we exist still. We exist – just that much onlyand nothing more can be said about ourself in that state: asti tevo bala dhavya. That particular essentiality of our being, which is the true self of ours, can be designated only as asti – It is.
What were we in the state of deep sleep? We were!But what were we? What were we at that time? The definition of that particular state is impossible because there is no quality or adjunct which can be associated with that condition, which was just be-ness. But, it was a state of be-ness associated with awareness. We are generally unconscious in the state of sleep. But, the usual well-known analysis and comparison of the waking state with the sleeping condition brings out the fact that the memorythat we have of our having slept the previous day is accountable only on the acceptance of the fact of there being something like consciousness even in the state of deep sleep. Because, no memory is possible unless there was a preceding experience, and experience is always associated with consciousness. Unconscious experience is unthought of.
So there is a mysterious stifled consciousness, as it were, in the state of deep sleep; that is our essential nature. It is because of the fact of our having sunk into that essential nature of ours in sleep, we feel refreshed and vigorous when we wake up from sleep – strong in ourselves, more strong than we would feel even with a good lunch given to us, because the nearer we go to ourselves, the happier we are, and the more comfort it is that we feel in ourselves.
What is the illustration amounting to? The point that is made out here in the analysis of the three states is that we are neither the body, nor the mind; we are pure Awareness. But, what are the characteristics of this awareness? It has only one characteristic, if at all we can call it one – namely, indivisibility. It cannot be divided into parts. There cannot be a fraction of consciousness; it is a whole by itself. The imagination, even a supposition of there being such a thing as a fraction or a division in consciousness, implies the presence of consciousness – even in that gap that is so imagined. The finitude of consciousness is unthinkable because a consciousness of finitude implies the acceptance of the exceeding of that consciousness beyond the fact of finitude. The awareness of finitude is the acceptance of Infinitude.
This analysis is the proof of the fact of our essentially being infinite in our nature. Our true being is astitva – pure being, which is one with consciousness. It is sat and chit – not ‘and’, but sat-chit – as an indivisible compound. And that being-consciousness, which we are, which is the true Self of ours, which is not the gaunatman and which is not the mithyatman, is not merely beness-consciousness, sat-chit, it is also indivisible in nature. That is to say, it is non-finite. It is not located somewhere. It is not true that it is inside our body. It is ubiquitous – all-pervading – because the notion of its being in one place is impossible unless it exceeds itself from the very notion of that finitude. Because of this fact, it is unthinkable how consciousness can become an object and can become a gaunatman, which is actually what is happening in daily life. This is the reason why we say the world is like a dream. Because, in dream, the actuality of selfhood becomes an apparent externality of objecthood; the apparent nature of the object-perception in dream makes it a dream. Otherwise we would not call it a dream at all; it is a reality by itself. The dream character of what we call ‘dream’ arises because of it being impossible for a perceiving consciousness to become other than what it is. Because consciousness is infinite, it cannot become an object of itself. Infinitude cannot have an object before it.
Thus, on this foundation of an analysis of the indivisibility of consciousness, the infinity of consciousness, it will follow – the infinitude of the perceiver of anything in the world. Thus, the world cannot stand as an object in front of consciousness. But, it has stood as an object; we see it before us. But, if it can be conceived as a really existing thing there, in front of our perceiving consciousness, as an object thereof, certainly we should describe this world as a dream object, because having known that our true perceiving awareness is infinite in its nature, the world cannot stand before it as an outside something. So the outsideness of the world is dreamy in its nature but it has a reality of its own from another point of view – namely, the astitva, which is the character of the infinitude of consciousness, is at the back of even the so-called appearance of the world.
Appearance cannot be there unless there is a reality behind it. The so-called analogy of the snake in the rope points out that the appearance of the snake is possible only if there is the reality of the rope. So, there is something real even behind the appearance of the world. That is the thing that summons consciousness in the direction of sense-perception – raga-dvesha. It is the Infinite actually that is summoning the Infinite in all forms of perception, even love and hatred. This is a psychological blunder actually taking place in usual perceptions, which are afflicted with sorrow from beginning to end, due to which reason this world-perception is characterised by Maharishi Patanjali as a kleshta vritti. It is a painful operation of the psyche, painful because of the fact it is wrongly beholding things – not as they are, but as they are not.
Apart from these two mentioned: the false Atman – namely, the gaunatman, and the mithyatman – the bodily individuality on the one side that is the mithyatman and the external object which is the gaunatman, there is a third one which is the true Self, called mukhyatman. This is the true Self into which we apparently sink in the state of deep sleep. The unity with this Self is the work of yoga. When we say “we have to practice yoga” and “we want Self-realisation”, we are aiming at the realisation of God. When we make statements like this, we are actually, knowingly or unknowingly, referring to this Universal Self which is within us and without us. It is within us as our knowing consciousness; it is without us as the basis for the appearance of all the forms: nama-rupa prapancha.
Asti, bhati, priya, nama and rupa are supposed to be the fivefold features of everything in the world. Asti means ‘be-ness’ – ‘be’ – everything ‘is’; bhati – everything is known; priya – everything can be a desirable thing. It has a name because it is nama. It has a form, and it is rupa. But the nama and the rupa – name-form complex – is not the real character of anything.
The particular configuration of personality is due to a peculiar permutation and combination of the three gunas of prakriti. And the combination factor changes from one time to another time, from one birth to another birth, from one cycle to another cycle, so that no individuality can be said to be encased in a particular formation only. Hence, nama-rupa prapancha is not a final reality, it is a fluxation; it is a transitory movement; it changes from moment to moment – not merely from day to day; it is a continuous flow – like a flame of a lamp or the movement of a river, as they usually say. The world, which is visualised as a medley of names and forms, is not the true nature of it. But the astitva and the bhatitva and the priyatva – the satchidananda rupa, as we call it, the true universality that is behind the diversity of forms, is the true Self. So even when we look at things, we are actually looking at the universal Self – wrongly, because we behold it through the sense organs.
When consciousness, when spirit, is beheld through the sense organs, it may look like material objects. But, it has to be beheld through itself. The soul has to behold itself through itself, by itself, and cannot be visualised through any external instrumentality, because thereby it is ceases to be what it is. When the Self is attempted to be beheld through sense organs, it becomes anatman – it is an object – and you are an object for me, and am I an object for you in ordinary sense perception. But, basically, we are ripples and waves, as it were, of a vast sea of awareness which is commonly present everywhere, that is – asti, bhati, priya, satchitananda svarupa. The unity with it is yoga. Various systems of practice have been advocated for the purpose of this communion of the apparent form of ours with the true form of ours.
The apparent form is infested with various components which are the building bricks of the individuality of a person: the body, which is made up of the five elements; the pranas; the sense organs; the mind, with its different functions; the buddhi, the intellect; and there is a causal sheath inside called anandamaya kosha. The consciousness is hidden inside, as it were, covered with a bushel, by a smoke, completely smothered by the activity of this accretion so-called, which is the well-known pancha kosha: annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya, anandamaya. The extrication of our true Self from involvement of these accretions is the work of yoga. The schools of yoga differ in the manner of the handling this particular matter.
One thing is common among all the yogas – namely, it is necessary for every student of yoga to realise the error committed by consciousness in its involvement objectively, through names and forms. So, freedom from raga-dvesha is supposed to be the first step in the practice of yoga. Love and hatred is a psychological error, because there is no point in our loving anything individually exclusively, or hating also anything exclusively, because of the well-known fact that all forms which we love or hate are configurations of same triguna of prakriti: rajas, sattva, tamas.
This segregation of forms into the desirable and the undesirable is the work of the peculiar operation of karmic potencies in our body, in our mind, in our pancha-koshas, namely – prarabdha karma. A particular potential called prarabdha is said to be responsible for the manufacture of this body, this body-mind complex. It is so manufactured, so constituted and so formed, as to be fitted into the structure of certain objective relations only and not to all formations in the world. This is the reason why certain persons have certain likes and certain other persons have certain other likes. So there is no universal like or universal dislike known anywhere. It is totally a relative apprehension of the psyche of people.
Knowing this fact, it is essential for the yoga student to gradually learn the art of what is known as pratyahara, or the withdrawal of the powers of the sense organs, together with the mind, in order to centre it in the Self. The difficulty in the practice of this art of self-withdrawal is well known because the senses are vehement in their nature: indriyani pramathini haranti prasabham manah. Wind-like, gale-like, tempest-like, tornado-like – the senses force the consciousness to go out of itself and behold itself in something other than itself in the form of objects. The power of the action of the sense-organs is such that it is impossible ordinarily for anyone to be free from this impulse. So when we wake up in the morning, we open our eyes and we look outward. No one beholds anything inward. The eyes, which are instruments of visual perception, are made as the means of the surge of this consciousness outwardly due to the desire to see, desire to hear, desire to smell, desire to touch, and desire to taste.
The whole of our life is a bundle of this fivefold desire. We work hard for the fulfilment of these various forms, the fivefold desire, until the body mechanism gets worn out, it gets rusted, and the psyche, which is the manufacturer of the prarabdha karma, feels that this instrument is of no utility anymore; it is shed. This is what we call death. But the desire is not over. It does not mean that on the death of the body the desire also dies. It is not taking place like that. The desire potential will again erupt, like a tendril of a plant, in another form altogether, and another set of karmas, a new group of prarabdhas, will be taken out from the original sanchita – the abode of karma, the reservoir of karmas – and new birth takes place.
Hence, it is impossible to get rid of this torture of moving in this cycle of birth and death merely by getting on with the world as we generally do. A herculean effort is called for here – day in and day out – with great deliberation of reason, application of the higher reason by analysis, by power of will, by sequestration, isolation, contemplation, even fasting where it is necessary when the senses are very turbulent, and vigilance, day in and day out. ‘Vigilance’ is the most important, is the watchword of the yoga student – vigilance in the sense that he does not become unwary of the movement of the senses, subtly in the direction of their own particular objects, in spite of the great effort of withdrawal, concentration.
By philosophical self-analysis in the manner we have conducted now, the mind can be taught the lesson that it is futile on its part to pursue pleasure in the world – which is not going to fulfil its promises. The world can promise many things, but it can fulfil not a single promise. That is the nature of this world. So is the delusion of life. It is running after these promises which are expected to be fulfilled. Never will any object of desire extinguish the desire thereof: na jado kamah kamana upabhogye nishamyati – the desire cannot be extinguished by a fulfilment of desire. It increases, like flaming fire on which you pour molten butter. The yogi, therefore, is vigilant in the observation of the movement of the senses in the direction of their objects.
Because of the detection of the evil in the attachment to things, the evil of there being no such pleasure as expected in the objects, the evil of there being no possibility of the Self being another object outside itself, and the evil of there being no chance of the indivisible Self being divisible as the subject and the object – detecting this threefold evil, at least, the person becomes vigilant. The yoga of concentration commences with this analysis of the situation of Selfhood – the true Selfhood independent on the gaunatva and the mithyatva thereof; and when yoga commences, there is concentration automatically, spontaneously arising, on the true nature of the Self, the all-pervading nature of the Self.
This is the bhakti yoga method of pouring out love on that which is everywhere – God all-pervading, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent. It becomes bhakti, or devotion, or love, when the devout student pours out the whole of the personality on that deity which is beheld everywhere as one’s own God. The devotee’s God is the only God, because of the fact that there cannot be another God outside that God. Hence, it is an all-consuming object. The divine object of meditation is all-consuming, but the object of sense is not all-consuming. It is a subtle subterfuge adopted by the sense organs to deceive the Self, to defeat its purpose, and to give it nothing in the end, like a dacoit’s operation. But, the true Self which is ubiquitous God Almighty, who is the all-_Paramatman_, all-including Paramatman, is the consuming Self. So the love of the devotee is poured upon an all-consuming, all-inclusive, all-blessing – paramatmatattva, wherein is the analytic method, the Self, or the meditator itself is beheld in the Self that is all-pervading.
The all-pervading nature of the Self precludes a separate existence of the meditating principle. The will comes in as an active force of operation to assist the reason in the meditational practice. So reason, will and emotion or feeling come together as an insight. An intense longing arises in the whole personality at the time of the concentration of consciousness on that great ideal of yoga.
Intense longing is usually not a common feature in our daily life. We long for things, no doubt, but we do not so intensely long for one thing independently of other things. We always exclude certain other things. There is a parochial attachment even in our so-called longing for the worthwhile things of life. But, this longing is not parochial, it is not one-sided, it is not exclusive. Here is an inclusive awakening of the whole of oneself in the totality of one’s being. All the koshas rise up in their cooperative activity with the surge of the Self in the direction of what it actually seeks. It is the Atman seeking Brahman, we may say in one sentence.
The yoga student, in a seated posture, collects the energies which are physical, neural, muscular, sensory, psychic and rational, as well as emotional, together into a menstruum, as it were, converting them into a liquid of operation, and he stands there as a ‘total person’ – strong in will, strong in understanding, strong in feeling and strong in aspiration. The practice has to be continued. How long is it to be continued? – is a question that is raised in some place in the Brahma Sutras. Humorous is the answer: you continue it it till death, or continue it until you attain your attain your goal, whichever is earlier. Anyway, this is to say that sadhana is to be continued forever and ever.
In most cases, the realisation does not come in one birth. Maybe it is possible in one birth – if the ardour is so very genuine, burning is the longing, and insatiable is the desire for God, no other thing distracts the mind, you want nothing else, flaming is the aspiration. If that is the case – so genuine is the longing – the realisation of God, the Self, can occur in this very life. But mostly, the difficulties being manifold: manushyanam sahasreshu kaschidyatati siddhaye – very few in this world will actually feel the need for God, and even among those who feel the need, some one will really succeed in this great attainment; this is a well-known caution exercised to us in the words of the Bhagavad Gita. But tasya ham sulabaha also it is said in one place: “I am easy of approach.” But, to whom is He sulabha? Who is nityayukta, who is perpetually united with that ideal, to that perpetually united spirit, this attainment is easy, simple, and possible in this very life. Because it is our own Self, it has to be not a very difficult affair. It is our Self, it is me that I am pursuing finally. It is not somebody that I am pursuing and I am asking for. How is it difficult for me to know my Self? But, that is exactly the difficulty of it.
The nearer an object is, the more difficult it becomes to understand; and, the most difficult object is myself. I can investigate scientifically the structure and pattern of everything in the world, but I cannot know myself – because there is no means of knowing myself. There are instruments of perception and observation and experiment in scientific fields. Where is the instrument for observation and experimentation of my Self? The higher Self has to act here as the means, if at all you call it a means, to withdraw this lower self into Itself: uddhared atman atmanam. The absence of any external medium or instrument in the operation here becomes the actual difficulty. The Self is the knower, the Self is the seeker, and it is also the sought; here is the difficulty. Most difficult indeed, because the subject and the object are identical here – the one who seeks is also the one that is sought. But it should be easy also, because it is so near. It is an ascharaya, great wonder: ascharyavat pasyati kaschid enam ascharyavad vadati tathaiva canyah. Ascharya – a wonder, this is a great wonder indeed; very difficult because it is very near, it is me only, but very easy because it is me only.
This is the intriguing situation of the true selfhood of a person. Yet, the glory that is ahead of us, the magnificence of it, and the necessity for it, and it being the only Truth of existence, should preclude the possibility of any hindrance on the path, and should enable us to gird up our loins for this purpose. Yoga is ‘all-life’ in one sense. Every form of life is capable of transmutation into the true yoga of the Self. God is pervading everywhere – in every particle of sand, in every nucleus of an atom. That being the case, it should be possible to visualise God in anything and convert any form into the true substance thereof, and transmute our perceptions into an insight of the Self.
Thus is the glory thereof, the difficulty mentioned, and also the quickness of the achievement made practicable because of its imperative necessity in one’s life. Glorious is yoga, and that is perhaps going to be, and it ought to be, the principle occupation of every person in life. Yoga is all-life.
Om purnamadah purnamidam purnat purnamudacyate
purnasya purnamadaya purnameva ‘vasishyate
Om santih santih santih.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Origin of the Valmiki Ramayana
The Origin of the Valmiki Ramayana by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 4 July 2013 21:44
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Srimad Valmiki Ramayana, which is considered as the Adi Kavya, equivalent to Veda itself, is something whose exposition it is rare to obtain. Vedah prachetasadasit sakshat ramayanatmana is a famous verse which makes out that the whole of the Veda has been expounded in epic language by the Adi Kavi Valmiki in the Ramayana. The power, the force, the literary style, the mellifluous movement of the whole theme of presentation and a subtly permeating undercurrent of immortal power in the whole epic of the Ramayana make it an almost unparalleled scripture in the world.
All Sanskrit literature originated in its form as sahitya from the time of Sage Valmiki himself. There was, as we are told, no versification or presentation of any subject in the form of a sloka before Valmiki for the first time uttered words which became a sloka [verse] though what he expressed to all is a shoka [sorrow]. Manishada pratishtatum samagah sashvatisamah yat krouncha mithunadekam sokam avadhim kama mohitam. This seems to be the first verse ever available to us in Sanskrit literature, originated from the mouth of Valmiki Adi Kavi, who uttered these words not as a kavi but as a person in distress at the sight of a fowler shooting an arrow of death-bringing strength to a male bird, krouncha, [dove] which was with its partner. Valmiki felt deeply grieved. “How cruel you are to bring death to a joyfully seated dove.” A curse was imprecated at once by this great sage, which he spoke in anger. That imprecation, that curse, came in the series of these words: manishada pratishtatum samagah sashvatisamah yat krouncha mithunadekam sokam avadhim kama mohitam. Manishada pratishtatum samagah: O fowler, don’t live for long. That means to say, let this be the end of your life. Why? Yat krouncha mithunadekam sokam avadhim kama mohitam: When the male krouncha was with his partner with joy, you killed him. This is the cruelest of acts that one can deal to one who is most innocent. As you have dealt a deathblow to one of the two doves who was most innocent and not deserving of this harm, I utter this word of immediate annihilation of yourself.
When these words were uttered in a state of anger as a curse to bring death to the fowler instantaneously, Brahma the Creator descended and blessed Valmiki, the sage who uttered these words. “Glory to him who has uttered this first verse of glorification of the great Lord.” Where is the glorification of the great Lord in these words? Valmiki never knew that within the words of curse that he uttered there was a prayer to the Almighty Lord Narayana hiddenly present, unwittingly made present inside in the form of a systematic verse of thirty-two letters. Though the obvious meaning of this verse of thirty-two letters is a curse, it had another meaning altogether which was a glorification of Lakshmi-Narayana. Manishada: O abode of Mahalakshmi, is another meaning of these words. Ma means Lakshmi, nishada is one who is abode. Pratishtatum samagah: May your glory be forever and ever.
This is the meaning of this Sanskrit style. You can juxtapose the words this way or that way. In one way it is a death-bringing curse, and arranged in another way the very same words mean glory to Adinarayana. O abode of Mahalakshmi, may you be glorified forever and ever. Why? Yat krouncha mithunadekam sokam avadhim kama mohitam: Because you have been a conduit for bringing an end to Ravana, who was attached in a sensuous manner to objects. You brought an end to this crude way of living. May you live long. May you live long. May your glory be immortalised, O Narayana, the abode of Lakshmi.
“O, you have uttered these words?” Brahma immediately said, “You have started the glory of Rama, incarnation of Narayana, who came to end this tyranny of Ravana. I ordain you to write the whole epic Ramayana story from now onwards, commencing with this great glorification of Narayana.
There is also a secret behind the Adi Kavya Ramayana, which is for every thousand verses, the first verse commences with one letter of the Gayatri mantra. Tapah svadhyaya nirataam tapasvi vagvidam varam, naradam paripapracha valmikih muni pumgavam is the first verse. ‘Ta’ is the first letter. Tat savitur varenyam is how the Gayatri commences; and the next one thousand verses starts with the next letter of Gayatri. The twenty-four thousand verses of the Valmiki Ramayana have hiddenly, within them, at every thousandth verse, a letter of the Gayatri mantra. These verses are sometimes culled out separately as Gayatri Ramayana, and devotees recite it every day.
Valmiki Ramayana is a wondrous, immortal epic with a wondrous, immortal message. May God bless you!
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Devi Mahatmya, Pronunciation of Mantras and Hindu Gods
Devi Mahatmya, Pronunciation of Mantras and Hindu Gods by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 3 July 2013 21:35
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Visitor: Should all the slokas and mantras of the Devi Mahatmya be treated as three separate portions.
Swamiji: This was done because they were addressed to Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati. Were the chapters then spoken from different aspects? No. The three deities are the three stages of consciousness – tamas, rajas and sattva – reached in an ascending order.
Visitor: Are the chapters then suitably written to tamas, rajas and sattva?
Swamiji: No, because they are all one. It is our incapacity to see all three as one that brings in the distinction. It is the same one guna that appears as tamas, rajas and sattva.
Visitor: Then the number of slokas in each portion has no meaning as so many mantras? The numbers vary, unlike in the ashtottara and sahasra – namavalis.
Swamiji: There is no significance in the number as such of the slokas. It is all one continuous mantraof prayer to one deity only.
Pronunciation of Mantras
Visitor: Is it a sin if a mantra is mispronounced due to ignorance or physical defect?
Swamiji: Some people become fanatics and think only their mantra works, and only if pronounced correctly. A devotee in Tamil Nadu used to recite Namah Chivaya (instead of Namah Sivaya) with such faith that he was able to walk on water while reciting Nama Chivaya. One day a grammarian taught the devotee to pronounce the mantra correctly as Namah Sivaya. But with the correct pronunciation, the devotee could no longer walk on water. He fell into the water because he was concentrating on the pronunciation of the mantra and had lost faith in his Guru who gave the mantra. There was a sweeper woman who approached her employer, a proud Namboodiri Brahmin of Kerala, for a mantra she could recite. He was angry that she should ask for a mantra, as she was of a low caste. But she persisted. The Namboodiri yelled at her contemptuously “Go and recite Tapala Curry”, meaning frog curry. The woman took it in good faith and went on repeating the phrase with such devotion that she became enlightened. People asked her who her Guru was, and when she told them they went and praised his disciple’s saintliness and how good a Guru he must be. But the Namboodiri had forgotten all about the low caste woman. Now he remembered the incident and felt sorry for himself; for he was still in samsara while she had become enlightened with the ‘frog curry’ mantra! All these parables emphasise the importance of the attitude or bhava in mantra japa. The attitude is much more important than the mere sound of the word.
Hindu Gods
Visitor: Swamiji, someone with a definite purpose of his own, in order to provoke me into an argument, remarked, “Hinduism is nothing but one god fighting with another!” I knew his mind and so refused to say anything. But what is the meaning of these so-called wars between Vishnu and Brahma, for instance, when Lord Siva vanquishes them both and quells their pride? Lord Siva establishes at the same time that He is the Most Supreme! Is it because in such contexts the Manifested God gets accretions of their level which is lower than that of the Supreme Being? The Puranas and the Epics are full of such incidents of war among the Gods.
Swamiji: The subject-object opposition in time and space, the affirmation of the ego as superior to and supreme over everything, causes the clash, no matter at what level. This clash of the positive and the negative, both of which are inherent in everything finite, produces a spark as a higher synthesis and is absorbed in the higher synthesis. But this level of the present higher synthesis is, again, not the highest. It is still only in the process of evolution into the next higher synthesis. Hence this clash and this spark are repeated, and so is the absorption of the spark into the next higher synthesis, from level to level. This clash or ‘war’ between the gods – deities of the different levels – goes on until the last higher synthesis is absorbed into the Absolute. This process of the sparks getting absorbed thus is explained in the Puranas and the Epics as one god warring with another and a third god conquering (absorbing) both within Itself.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
A Catechism of Hinduism
A Catechism of Hinduism by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 2 July 2013 20:15
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Q: When was Hinduism founded?
A: The word ‘Hinduism’ originated due to historical and linguistic circumstances, and refers to what more properly be designated as Bharatiya-dharma, or Sanatana-dharma. There is no personal founder for Hinduism. People who follow the faith or religion which goes by the name of Hinduism hold that the foundation of this outlook of life, or way of living, is eternal, since the way of life is an expression of the basic law operating in the universe. In fact, what popularly is known as Hinduism is a practical and ethical manifestation in day-to-day living of what should be considered as the inviolable law of existence, both in its immutable form known as satya and operating form known as rita. Hence, the name Sanatana (eternal or ever-present) associated with this inclusive ‘attitude to life’.
Q: Where was it founded, and who founded it?
A: Hinduism is not believed to be founded in any place, since it has no founder.
Q: What were the prevailing circumstances when it was founded?
A: While Hinduism has no founder, and therefore no circumstances can be cited in that regard, students of Hinduism and scholars who are accustomed to do research in its field have usually traced some sort of a logical background of the general structure of Hinduism in the panoramic vision of the Supreme Being as recorded in the Veda-Samhitas, which are supposed to find their detailed promulgation in the Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads. This, if we would so like, may be cited as the circumstance explaining the fundamentals of Hinduism. The Bhagavadgita is regarded as the quintessential summing up of the general attitude to life as a whole.
Q: What are its basic principles?
A: Briefly, the principles of Hinduism may be stated as follows:
- The ultimate reality of the universe is one and not more than one.
- The nature of this reality is spiritual in the sense of Intelligence or Consciousness.
- Therefore, this reality is Universal, Omnipresent, and hence at once Omniscient and Omnipotent.
- Creation is a veritable Body of this All-pervading Almighty Omnipresence.
- The relationship between this reality, which is called God, and the created universe is intrinsic, organic and vital, and not external or mechanistic.
- There are several planes in this creation, broadly classified into fourteen realms known as lokas, all which are inhabited by different categories of beings, right from the lowest level of the physical elements up to the region of the Creator Himself.
- In the sense stated above, the whole universe and all beings are vehicles of divinity and radiant with the immanent Godhead, all potentially having the birthright of attaining union with the Supreme Almighty through gradual evolution.
- The human being is one such created species among the many others which are said to run to 84 lakhs in number.
- Man, thus, occupies a stage in the process of a still higher ascent and he is not the end of creation or evolution.
- The human life is to be organised by the integrating principles of dharma (moral value), artha (material value), kama (vital value) and moksha (spiritual value), the last one mentioned being in fact the infinite value of existence.
- Society is also to be brought into a united force of hierarchy through mutual cooperation by the application of what is known as Varnashrama-dharma, which means the arrangement of society into classes of spiritual power, political power, economic power and man-power, known usually as Brahmans, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra, and the order of life into the levels of education, the performance of the duties of life, withdrawal from personal attachments, and attainment of spiritual illumination, which stages go by the names of Brahmacharya, Garhasthya, Vanaprastha and Sannyasa.
- Every faith, cult, creed, belief, religion or outlook represents a facet or phase of the evolving consciousness in the process of the universe, thus transforming life in the world, nay, life in the universe itself, into a wide family of internally related and mutually cooperating members who have all a system of obligations and duties, excluding nothing but including everything, finally with the purpose of universal spiritual realisation.
Q: Which are its Scriptures?
A: The principal Scriptures of Hinduism are:
- the Vedas, consisting of the Samhitas, Brahmanas, Aranyakas and Upanishads
- the Smritis, of which the most important are of Manu, Yajnavalkya and Parasara
- the Itihasas, viz., the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (which contains the Bhagavadgita)
- the eighteen Puranas.
Q: Which are the other important books written on it, and who are their authors?
A: The other important texts associated with Hinduism, apart from the basic canons mentioned above, are:
- the Agamas and Tantras (mystical and esoteric texts)
- the Purva-Mimamsa and the Uttara-Mimamsa schools of theology and philosophy
- the writings of the great exponents and commentators in the field of philosophy and religion, such as the Acharyas, viz., Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhya, Vallabha, Nimbarka, Gauranga Mahaprabhu and Krishna Chaitanya, as well as the propounders of the religious schools of Vaishnavisin, Saivism and Shaktaisrm in a variety of ways, which are all too vast to be enumerated here. The latter include the writings of the saints and sages who taught religion in its manifold phases.
Q: What is the method of prayer?
A: Within the fold of the Hindu religion, prayer is mainly an inward contemplative submission before the Almighty felt as an immediate presence. But in popular practice, this inward feeling of presence is usually expressed as recitations or chants of mantras or passages from the scriptures, such as the Vedas, Itihasas and Puranas. Prayer is offered either individually by one’s own self in private, or collectively in a congregation, as it may be necessary. It may be verbally articulated or mentally contemplated with feeling.
Q: What are the rituals?
A: Ritual in the Hindu religion is a manifestation through external performances of one’s inward feeling of worship and adoration of the Almighty. The basic rituals consist of:
- ceremonial worship known as puja, as is usually seen being conducted in temples and shrines
- recitation of the Divine Name, known as japa
- prayer, known as prarthana
- ceremonies connected with the stages of one’s life, the seasons of the year, as well as special occasions or holy days connected with the advent of a Divine Incarnation, the birthday of the Saint, or the departing day of any person.
- The most important duties of a householder are the five great sacrifices known as the pancha-mahayajnas (i.e., the daily service to gods, guests, ancestors, sages, and the lesser creations like animals and birds) and the daily obligatory prayer known as sandhya-vandana, the latter imperative being applicable to all stages of life except of the sannyasin.
Q: Give glimpses of the life-sketch of its founder.
A: Hinduism has no founder, but it adores the great personalities mentioned in or associated with its fundamental scriptures mentioned earlier – for example, sages like Vasishtha, Vyasa, Suka, Valmiki, Yajnavalkya and Uddalaka, and all the propounders of the religion of knowledge, devotion and action.
Q: How and in which countries did it spread?
A: Hinduism has its stronghold in India, especially. But it spread outside India in the East and its impact in such countries and lands as Java, Sumatra, Cambodia and the like is well known to history. Today, a large population of Indians dwells outside India, in many different countries of the world. The way it spreads its message outside has been through its teachers, messengers, propounders and actual living participants, who accomplished this task either by travel or by written message, or through both.
Q: Where are its monuments/places of pilgrimage, and what is their importance?
A: The well-known places of pilgrimage by the Hindus are Badarikashrama (Badrinath), Kedarnath, Ayodhya, Mathura, Haridwar or Kankhal, Kasi (Varanasi), Dvaraka, Avanti (Ujjayini), Puri (Jagannath), Pushkar and Manasarovara in North India, and Kanchi (Kanchipuram) , Ramesaram, Madurai, Tirupati, Srirangam, Tiru-Anantapuram (Trivandrum), Palani, Kanyakumari and many other places in the South. There are several other holy places of pilgrimage associated with deities, saints and sages, such as Somanath, Pandharpur, Alandi, etc. and sources of holy rivers, like Gangottari and Yamunottari.
Q: What influence did it have on Indian Culture?
A: It would not be far from truth if it is stated that the foundational outlook of the entire culture of India is universally-oriented, since its policy has always been an accommodating, inclusive, friendly and absorbing spirit in regard to the different calls of life, whether philosophical, religious, social or political. This is the very forte of the Hindu view of life. Its policies of human relation have contributed vigorously not only to the stability of its internal structure in India as a nation, but also to international relationship as a gesture of perpetual harmony as a unit in the comity of the nations of the world.
Q: What are the moral and ethical codes?
A: In India, life has been always regarded as a process of progressive self-transcendence from the realm of matter (annamaaya-jivatva) to the realization of the supreme spiritual bliss (parama-ananda). Human values and ends in life have been classified into the scheme of the fourfold pursuit (purushartha) of existence, viz., the practice of righteousness and goodness (dharma), the effort towards earning the necessary material values (artha), the fulfilment of permissible desires through honest means (kama), and the endeavour for the final salvation of the soul (moksha). This analysis is based on a broad understanding of the different levels of individuals in relation to the Universe. The other aspects of its ethical and moral codes have been touched upon earlier.
Q: Who are the saints and prophets? Give their brief life-sketch.
A: The Hindus adore the well-known Divine Incarnations of Narayana or Vishnu, viz., Rama and Krishna, who are classified among the gods and are not regarded as humans. The great sages and saints who hold a pre-eminent position are Vasishtha, Vyasa, Suka, Dattatreya, Vamadeva, Yajnavalkya and the like; also, the great devotees associated with devotion to the principal gods popularly worshipped, viz., Vishnu, Siva, Ganesa, Devi, Skanda and Surya; included also are the Acharyas referred to above.
Q: What is its relation with modern science and how does it affect modern man?
A: Hinduism, as a religion of an almost universal inclusiveness, takes into consideration the different levels of not only the evolution of life by stages but also the levels of outlook in knowledge and experience. The question of the relation between science and religion arises due to the assumption that the objective of science and the aim of religion are perhaps different, maybe even irreconcilable. But Hinduism, if it gfis to be understood in the true spirit of its internal structure, is fully awake to the levels of perception and knowledge available to the human individual. The epistemological doctrine behind the philosophy of the Hindu religion recognizes the relative value of sense-perception and rational investigation as avenues of knowledge, though it holds that direct intuition of truth is the final test of absolutely valid knowledge. Science comes under the field of sense and reason, and Hinduism accepts the value and utility of the findings through these means of knowledge in practical life, provided they do not contradict the ultimate value of all life, viz., the realisation of the Universal Reality in direct experience.
The manner in which this attitude of the Hindu religion would affect the life of the modern man should, thus, be clear and obvious. That is, the spirit of Hinduism is so accommodating that it does not reject the matter-of-fact value or the practical effectiveness of the findings of modern science. The most interesting outcome of this general outlook of Hinduism is that in its concept of the degrees of reality in the several planes of existence as manifestations through varying levels of density, any degree of reality- such as the relation of scientific findings to human life in general – is part of the total outlook of Hindu philosophy and religion. Thus, one should say that Hinduism as a religion introduces a new spirit of positivity and enthusiasm even into the field of science rather than look upon it as something alien to itself.
Q: What are the recommended duties for man?
A: Man has a duty towards himself as a physical, psychological and spiritual embodiment, as also to the family, the community, the nation and the world at large. Man has a duty to the whole universe of which he is an integral part and from which he can never be separated organically. The primary duty of man is abidance by the law of the universe, which determines the lower relative laws applicable to the lesser levels of life in the world, one’s own country, community, family, and personality.
Q: How does it influence universal brotherhood and tolerance towards other religions?
A: Hinduism should be considered as the great friend of man, in the sense that it has no enemies. In this sense, again, its influence on others is one of a true friend, philosopher and guide. It accepts and holds as valid every faith and every religion in its own field and context and operational jurisdiction, in the light of its origin and circumstances of the place to which it is related and the historical and cultural background of the people in whose midst it arose. It takes things as they are, from their own points of view, and accommodates itself in them, bearing in view the basic fact that all thought and action originating from anywhere is like a river which has to find its destination in a single ocean, the ocean of all-existence.
Q: How is religion related to the practical life of man?
A: Religion is veritably the art and the science and the way of the practical life of man in the world. Hence, no question arises as to the relation between religion and life.
Q: Is religion one of the essential functions in life?
A: Religion is the homage which the finitude of man pays to the Infinitude of existence. Hence, true religion is not a ‘function of life,’ but ‘the whole of life’.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]