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Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad Part 2
Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad (Part 2) by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 26 February 2014 16:52
*READ MORE \* Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad
Part 2
The Isavasya Upanishad announced at its very commencement what we may call the doctrine of being, the philosophy of God. Now it has something to say about the doctrine of work, or the philosophy of action. Normally, from the point of view of human thinking, the characteristics of God do not seem to be compatible with the impulsion to action. Precisely to remove this misconception, the Upanishad immediately takes up the question of the necessity to work – necessity arisen merely because of the existence of a God, of the type described earlier.
One may wonder what is the logic behind the assumption that the impulsion to work automatically follows from the nature of the Supreme Being. On a cursory glance at the super-abundance of the might of the omnipresent God, it may appear that any kind of work, or action, is a contradiction of God’s being. But the point made out here is, that it is not only not a contradiction, but an obligatory consequence that follows from the nature of God. “Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam” has been said earlier. Now the Upanishad mentions, “kurvann eveha karmāṇi jijīviṣet.” Life is identified with action, while God is identified with omnipresence. Can we see a connection between omnipresence and action?
The reason why there is a propulsion to act, a motivation to do anything whatsoever, is to be recognised in the nature of God’s existence itself. Nothing of value can survive, except on the basis of the characteristic of God. If God is the only reality, all value that is real also has to have some relevance to God’s existence. If work or action has any value at all, if we can recognise any meaning in the work that people do in the world, then it must be in consonance with the nature of God, which is all value and all reality. In fact, as the Upanishad would tell us briefly, and the Bhagavadgita would explain in greater elaboration, the impulsion to act arises not from any psychological centre. It is not my mind or your mind that is just thinking in terms of a project or an action. Its basis is somewhere else. The philosophy behind it, the foundation of the very impulsion to act, is not in the instrument of action. It transcends the instrument. The mind and the body of the human individual, for instance, may be said to be the instruments of action. But instruments themselves cannot be causes. The causes are interior, precedent to the agent of action as well as the instrument.
It has been reiterated in the Bhagavadgita that inactive, no one can exist. But its meaning is not easy to understand. Why is it difficult to be inactive? Its answer has to be found in the first verse of the Isavasya Upanishad. The impulsion to act arises through the instrumentality of a human individuality, which, again, has a remote aim in front of it, namely, a furtherance of the evolutionary process. There is an incessant transformation taking place in the constitution of every little being, inanimate matter included. All things are constituted of minute parts, which tend towards the formation of a new constitution altogether, indicating, thereby, that the constitution of the present form of the individuality is inadequate and would not suffice for the fulfilment of the purpose of evolution.
Birth and death are also processes included, involved, in the evolutionary process. The sudden coming and the sudden going of forms look like births and deaths of individuals. But, in fact, nothing suddenly comes and nothing suddenly goes, even as a fruit does not suddenly ripen. Though, suddenly, one morning we see a mango ripened in the tree, it has not ripened on that morning. It was working for that purpose from several days earlier. The ripening was made visible to our eyes only on the outer surface on a particular day, but the process of ripening was going on from the inside of the fruit. In a similar manner is anything and everything in this world.
Events do not suddenly arise like upstarts. We sometimes say that an unexpected event has taken place, an accident has occurred. Actually, unexpected events are really to be expected events. That they are not contents of our awareness at the present moment, cannot make them unexpected. The fructification of a particular cause brings about an effect, which we call an event that takes place in the world. But, as in the analogy of the ripening of the fruit, we see only the ripened colour of the fruit at a particular moment of the day, not being cognizant of the processes that preceded the vision of this ripened fruit. The occurrence of a particular event is a sudden occurrence for all practical purposes from the point of view of our vision. But it has been propelled into the form of this event or occurrence by the forces that were preparing themselves gradually days before, months before, years before, or even ages before. Any event, any occurrence, any activity, anything that happens anywhere, at any time, is a visualisation in concrete form, through space and time, of what is actually not in space and time.
The occurrences in space and time are caused by factors which are themselves not in space and time. Causes of illnesses are supposed to be far beyond and beneath the outer surface of their appearance; not only illnesses, every occurrence, for the matter of that. The birth of things and the death of individuals, which we generally call sudden comings and sudden goings, are actually gradual processes. Right from the time of our birth, we have been preparing to die. There is a maturation, a ripening of the fruit of this physical body for the dropping of it after some years. But the mind is so much attached to this particular form of the body that it cannot visualise the antecedent causes that are the reason behind the coming of the body at one time and the going of it at another time.
We look at things purely from an empirical point of view. We see things with our eyes. Very rarely do we think with our minds. Even thinking with the mind is not always sufficient, because with any amount of thinking we cannot know why we are born at all and why we should die, because the mind is tethered to this body. Even when it thinks, even when the ratiocinating process takes place, logically speaking, it is physiologically conditioned thought, socially conditioned mentation, economically conditioned volition, and bound by various factors like family attachment, etc., so that a wholly impersonal thinking is far from the reach of ordinary human individuality.
The little fruit that we see slowly emerging from the tip of a little branch of a mango tree has not suddenly appeared there. The entire sap that fills the whole tree through all the branches and twigs has been getting mature slowly through the process of time in the direction of the formation of this condensation, which is called the fruit. A little bit of it is visible one day, and we say, “Oh, the season has come. Mangoes are appearing on the tree.” They have prepared themselves to appear in that manner long, long before they actually become visible to the eyes. The fruit is actually in the very sap of the tree. It is not hanging somewhere on the top, though it appears to be somewhere, practically disconnected from the vital function of the tree. The entire tree is filled with the fruit, and therefore it is that we find the manifestation of the fruit and the flower everywhere in the tree.
In a similar manner, the whole circumstance into which one is born is conditioned by every kind of experience. All the processes of our life, all the joys and sorrows, everything that has happened, everything that is yet to happen, including the length of our life in the world, all of these have to be seen in a seed form in that particular causative factor that has been the reason behind our coming into this world. When a child is born and an old man dies, it does not mean that something suddenly has taken place. A vast sea of causes has been pushing the waves of these conditions that gradually concretised themselves into the birth of an individual and matured into the further action of the decay of that formation and the death of the individual.
Similar is the case with every kind of action, every work, every event, every occurrence. The omnipresence of the Ultimate Reality, about which the first verse of the Upanishad told us so much, and on which we dilated a little bit earlier, implies that everything has to move towards it. We noticed that every part that belongs to a whole is not only conditioned by the nature of the whole to which the parts belong, but the whole also determines the very function and the manner of the working of the parts. I mentioned last time the analogy of the working of the physiological organs. The characteristic of our physical body as a whole will decide how each limb of the body will work. The parts of the body are conditioned by the intentions of the whole.
Likewise is the activity that takes place in all creation. It is not that only human beings work. There is activity taking place in all levels, subhuman as well as superhuman. In the Bhagavadgita, again, we have this statement, that neither on earth nor in heaven can we find anything that is free from the operation of the properties of prakriti, known as gunas. “Na tad asti pṛithivyāṁ vā divi deveṣu va punaḥ, sattvaṁ prakṛiti-jair muktaṁ yad ebhiḥ syat tribir guṇaiḥ (Gita 18.40). The propulsion to work, is the cause originating from the rajasic quality of prakriti. The stability that we sometimes experience in our life, is the work of the tamas of prakriti. The balancing of forces between rajas and tamas, is sattva. All that is born, gods in heaven, human beings on earth, whatever be the created being, everything is composed of these three gunas.
Sattva, rajas and tamas are not merely abstract qualities, like the colour of a rose or the whiteness of a flower. These three gunas, as they are called, are properties of the very substance of the world. They constitute the brick and mortar of all things, living as well as non-living. The weight of the body, its substantiality, is the tamas thereof. The agitation, causing impulsion to movement of any kind, is the rajas there. And any kind of satisfaction that we feel in our mind, is the sattva prevalent in the mind. If we are always agitated and there is no satisfaction of any kind, we are never happy at any moment of the day, it will mean that there is no sattva working; only rajas is active. But if we feel sleepy and lethargic and very heavy in our personality, it would mean that tamas is predominant.
Sattva, rajas and tamas being the constituents of the human individuality, they propel the individual to work and act in a particular direction. It is impossible for the rajas element to keep quiet without some movement; the element of rajas in our personality will compel us to act. Na hi kaścit kṣanam api jātu tiṣṭaty akarmakṛt, kāryate hy avaśaḥ karma sarvaḥ prakṛti-jair guṇiaḥ (Gita 3.5). Everyone shall move. The atom shall move, the sand particle shall move, the solar system shall move, the planets shall move, every cell of the body shall move. Why shall they move? The reason is the constitution of the universe itself. The centre of the universe is like a magnet, which pulls everything towards itself.
We have estranged ourselves from God. The fall of the individual from the ‘Garden of Eden’, the headlong sinking into empirical existence, samsara, mortality, is the upside-down vision of the individual, opposed to the vision of the Universal. The separation of man from God is the cause behind every kind of work. The necessity to work, the need for action, arises on account of the restlessness of the psychophysical individuality, caused by the isolation of it, the finitude of it, and its aspiration for breaking through the fortress of this finite individuality.
“Which is better, meditation on the Universal Absolute or devotion to a personal God?” was a question raised by Arjuna at the commencement of the Twelfth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. One would have certainly expected the Lord to say that contemplation on the Absolute is the best. He, of course, did not cease from saying that. But He added that this is a difficult type of meditation, impossible for those who are conscious of the body. Those who are immersed in the consciousness of the body cannot have, at the same time, a consciousness of Universality. The personality-consciousness with which we are infected will also compel us to visualise the Universal in the form of a personality. If we are impersonals, our contemplation also will be impersonal. But who are we to think in an impersonal matter, when we think only through this body and all the conditions associated with it?
Hence work, or action, becomes a natural characteristic of finite formations of every kind, whether they are organic or inorganic. Thus, the second mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad says that one should wish to live in this world by the performance of work that is designated in the light of what was mentioned in the earlier verse concerning the omnipresence of God. Work becomes obligatory, not because we are going to acquire any ulterior fruit out of it, though some fruit may accrue in a different way. The intention of the work is not reaping the harvest in the form of the fruit, but the participation of individuality in the structure of the universe.
Part 2 (Continued)
Work is actually a longing for the Infinite. We are asking for God, even when we are propelled to work. Only if we are conscious of this fact can we convert work into yoga. We say many a time that work is worship. How does work become a worship of God, unless it is a love for God? The whole personality is crying for God. It is a yelling out for the Almighty in this sorrow-stricken world, where bodies and minds of people are sunk deep in the nether regions of sorrow. We are stretching our arms as high as possible, to reach out to that from where we have come, from where we have fallen. Our desires and our actions are both indications of our longing for That which is above us. Every desire – however binding it may appear on the surface, however meaningless it may sometimes be – is nevertheless caused by some power at the back of the desires, which originates from our dissatisfaction with this personality, and from our inward longing for the Universal being, from which the finite parts have been severed.
Our thoughts, our desires, our feelings, and our actions are different forms of the manifestation of this inward anguish that arises due to our separation from God. Hence, there is no such thing as mere work in a secular sense of the term. Work is a spiritual longing that originates in the deepest recesses of being, even in the form of an unhappy service. As long as this finite existence continues due to the prarabdha karma (causative propulsion) behind it, the impulsion to act also will persist. The body moves in a given direction, and we call it work. The mind moves in a given direction, and we call it thought. The feelings move in a given direction, and we call it desire. But all these movements, whether of the body, the feeling, the mind or the will, are ramifications of a single impulsion to move towards a wholeness of experience, God-Being. The jiva is crying for Isvara. Therefore, says the Upanishad, by work alone can you attain salvation, so long as you are bound to this body, because the means of contacting God is conditioned by the type of embodiment in which one is lodged. If it is purely a mental existence, it is one kind of action. If it is a physical embodiment, it is another kind of action.
As long as we want to live in this world – it is said to be ‘a hundred years’, a word used in the Upanishad indicating a very long life – we have to work. Nothing can be more valuable than life. One should not cut off life. The Manu Smriti says, “You should not extol, you should not condemn, but you should get on with the conditions that prevail according to the circumstances into which you are born.” In the light of the all-pervading nature of Isvara, God, do your duty.
The word ‘duty’ is a specialisation of the Bhagavadgita. In the Isavasya Upanishad there is just a mention of action or work. By doing alone should you wish to live in this world. “Kurvann eveha karmāṇi jijīviṣet śataṁ samāḥ,
evaṁ tvayi nānyatheto’sti na karma lipyate nare.” Evaṁ tvayi: there is nothing else that you can expect in this world. That is to say, we cannot expect complete cessation from action in this world. But we may be afraid that action may bind. Karma is supposed to react in the form of a nemesis. Are we not acquainted with an old saying that every action produces reaction? Yes, it is true that when a finite action is propelled in the direction of a finite fruit thereof, a reaction is set up in the direction of that agent of action from the fruit that is expected. But it is not so in the case of every action, because it need not necessarily proceed from a finite source. Finitude is a limitation of consciousness itself, and so consciousness bound to the finitude of existence can contemplate only a finite fruit that can accrue to it. And anything that is finite, is binding. So the cause, the ideation behind the performance of any work, should not be motivated by the finitude of consciousness, but by an infinitude of consciousness. Because of the fact that God is all-pervading, īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam, it is necessary for us to work, not because we have to expect anything in the form of a remote result that is to follow, but because action is a necessary characteristic, an automatic reaction produced by the finite mind and body, as long as consciousness continues to be in the mind and the body.
When work gets exhausted by the withering away of the momentum that caused the work, and the desire that was at the back of the work also ceases, the transmigratory life also will cease. Birth and death will be no more. The coming into being and the going, as we call birth and death, are caused by the desires that arise in terms of finite existence, finite fruits. So we are disciplined by means of this work, or action, in two ways. On the one hand we have not the freedom to sit quiet without doing anything. This kind of freedom is not there, because it is the nature of the body and the mind to work. The mind and the body form part of a cosmic whole, and therefore they always move in the direction of that whole. So everyone is impelled to work.
We cannot ask for freedom from work. But at the same time, we cannot work in the manner we would like. It is a prescribed form of attitude that has to be maintained during work. That is to say, the work that we perform is not a means to an end. It is an end in itself! Our work will be unsatisfactory, if we consider it as a means to an end. Suppose we work only for salary’s sake, our mind will be only in the salary, and not in the work. Also, if there is anything ulterior beyond the actual performance, the performance will be poor. The discipline of action is not a means to some other goal that is to be attained. The very essence of karma yoga is that action is an end, and not a means.
It is difficult to conceive this objective in our mind, because we are not accustomed to think in this manner. How can work be an end in itself? It always brings something. If we sow a seed, a fruit comes up. If we do some work, we will get wages. We know all this that happens in this world. But have we ever seen somebody working for nothing? Here is a novelty of the philosophy of work, it being the principle that all life is a studious participation in the purpose of the creation of God. It is a participation in the work of God. It is a cooperation in the structure of the universe. It is not an agent individually working for his own or her own purpose. It is a movement towards the Self-realisation of the cosmos.
The cause that is at the back of any kind of action is multifold in its nature. That is, when we think we have done the work, or we shall be doing the work, we may be under the impression that only we are responsible for the kind of work we are contemplating to do. We are not the only ones responsible for the work. The motivation comes from various other sources, also. Not knowing this fact is the reason for the bondage of the soul. If we impute everything to ourselves, naturally we have to become bound by the very fact of that imputation that we have ignorantly done. If we have done the work, we reap the fruit thereof. But actually we have not done the work. It has been forced upon us by certain circumstances which condition the whole creation.
Adhiṣṭhānaṁ tathā kartā karaṇaṁ ca pṛthag-vidham, vividhāś ca pṛthak ceṣṭa daivam caivātra pañcamam (Gita 18.14). Five causes are there behind every occurrence. Not merely the action that you do or I do, but every occurrence, every event, everything that happens everywhere has a fivefold cause behind it. So we cannot say that some particular thing alone is the cause. “I went out in the rain; I caught a cold.” That is only a manner of speaking. We have not caught a cold merely because we went out in the rain. Though going out in the rain and drenching ourselves is one of the causes, there were also susceptibilities of various other kinds, which were the causes of catching cold.
The fivefold causative factor mentioned in the Bhagavadgita shows that no particular individual can be regarded as the sole agent of any particular action. The whole world is at the back of every action. The physical body conditions action to some extent. An elephant can do one kind of work. The ant does another kind of work. The human being does a third type, because of the limitation of the physical conditions.
There is also the intention behind the performance of an action. The nature of the intention will decide to some extent the nature of the performance also. The instruments that are used in the performance of an action will also decide upon both the quantum and the quality of the action that is performed. There are various other distracting factors, which are associated with the main intention. They also condition the action in several ways. But above all these things, daivam caivātra pañcamam, the will of the Universal Being, is the final deciding factor. If the ruling power does not wish, no other lieutenant can execute an action. Even the success of the projection of a particular intention, the working of the body, the manipulation of the instruments, etc., should be considered as permitted processes by the central organisation. God’s Will is supreme. The real worker, the real agent is God Himself.
If God is the only agent of action, all work automatically becomes the nature of a worship. There is no need of any commentary on this point. If there is only one agent in the whole world, only one action takes place; there are not many activities taking place. We say that many things are taking place. History is a chronology of many activities. But they are not many activities; they are many ramifications of a single thing that is taking place. There is only one work performed by one person in the world. If this is so, work cannot bind. Who will bind? The individual agent has gone off. He has evaporated into the Supreme Agent. All these declarations suggest and indicate that inasmuch as all performance of every kind is engendered by the centrality of the universe, God willing, no individual karma can be permitted in creation. Nobody individually does anything. There is no individual agent. Therefore, karma cannot bind, action cannot bind.
This is a theoretical foundation behind the practical suggestions given to us in greater detail in the Bhagavadgita, which gives a large scripture, as it were, on the method of working in the world. It is something like a vast commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad.
We are likely to go to extremes in our thoughts. We either think of God independent of creation, or of creation independent of God. This will be mentioned in the context of our study of those verses which say that vidya and avidya should be combined. Vidya and avidya should not be considered as two different factors. Knowledge and action are supposed to be contradictory to each other. This is a mistake in thinking. They have to be blended. It is necessary that knowledge should blend all action. An action should be guided by knowledge. They are the obverse and reverse of the same coin, as it were. Knowledge and action are not two different things, or processes, taking place. They are one and the same thing that is moving. On one side it looks like illumination, knowledge; on the other side it looks like action.
Here is the sum and substance of the Isavasva Upanishad, as far as the first two verses go. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is supposed to be a large exposition of the intentions of the Isavasya Upanishad. The Purusha Sukta of the Vedas and the Isavasya Upanishad sum up the intentions of a disciplined living, the philosophy of living, and transmuting every work into not only a worship of God, but also a meditation proper. Contemplation and action have to go together. Not only have they to go together, contemplation itself has to become action, and action itself has to become contemplation. The work of God is the same as the existence of God, and the existence of God is itself the work of God. God does not work with hands and feet. The very existence of the sun is the activity of the sun, and the activity of the sun is identical with the existence of the sun. So in a higher sense, action becomes knowledge, and knowledge becomes action. Existence is becoming, and becoming is the same as existence.
A very lofty thought is adumbrated in the Isavasya Upanishad through its few verses that sum up the intentions of all the Upanishads, practically: how we can conduct ourselves as instruments of God in the work of this world. We are not merely instruments in the sense of some independent entities guided by something else, but are actual fingers of God operating. We are the fingers of God working. We are not just fountain pens with which He writes the book of life. We are more than ordinary instruments. We are vitally connected parts of that stupendous whole.
Sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṁ tat sarvato’kṣi-śiro-mukham, sarvataḥ śrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati (Gita 13.14). Its hands work everywhere, Its feet are moving everywhere, Its eyes see everywhere, It hears through all the ears. Whether it is the Bhagavadgita or the Upanishad, or our logical conclusion, they all converge at the same point of it being necessary for everyone to be perpetually in a state of contemplation and action, meditation and work, which will be for our blessedness, both here and hereafter.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad
Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad (Part 1) by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 25 February 2014 17:03
*READ MORE \* Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad
Part 1
The first two mantras of the Isavasya Upanishad are supposed to give us in a few words a perfect philosophy of life. There are thinkers who feel that if none of the Upanishads becomes available at any time, and if only these two verses remain, that will sustain the world of philosophy.
What this Upanishad in its commencing mantras tells us at the very outset is something which we always forget, but which has to be kept in mind constantly if there is to be any meaning in our living in this world. What it makes out in the beginning is that there is the same invisible content pervading all things, connecting everything with everything else, and bringing about a relationship of all diversity, whatever be its nature – organic or inorganic, living or non-living. Whatever be the nature of the diversity of content, irrespective of this nature of diversity, a mysterious link brings them together into a perfect formation and leaves nothing unrelated. Right from the highest heaven to the lowest atom conceivable, everything is taken notice of, and all these things are put in their proper position.
The manner in which things are put in proper position is called organisation. Where such a thing is not done, it is chaos and a medley, a pell-mell, a presentation of meaninglessness. The relation that this unknown content manages to maintain is proportionally manifested. It does not strike everything with the same blow. The prick of a needle by a physician varies in its intensity from the hammer of a blacksmith or the axe of a woodcutter, etc. We have examples of difference in the manner of the placement of values. Yet everything is connected. The brain, the heart and the lungs, and the limbs of the body are placed in a position of unitedness. This is something known to us in our daily life. But they are not just chaotically related. They are in their different particularities placed in the proper context. The different limbs of the body perform different functions, one not overlapping the other, one not repeating the function that the other does, yet not contradicting the function of the other.
Such a relation is maintained throughout the variety of creation, presenting a beautiful picture of perfection that this creation really is. The different kinds of work that the limbs of the body perform do not create ugliness in their performances. We know what the teeth and the tongue do, the ears and the eyes do, and the legs and the feet, fingers, and so on do. Even the hairs on the body have some function to perform. But irrespective of a distance apparently being there between their functions, all of them look perfectly all right. The feet are as beautiful as the nose and the eyes and the face. Their position is the one that is intended for us. When a particular thing occupies a position intended for it, it looks beautiful. When it does not occupy that position and occupies somebody else’s seat, it is not beauty.
Incidentally, it appears to us that beauty is not a solid substance which we can touch with our fingers. It is an arrangement, a pattern, a relativity of adjustment and a proportionate recognition of values, bringing all these values into a completion, such that the whole which they constitute gives a magical touch of perfection to every little part of which the whole is made. The whole gives its beauty in a requisite proportion to every part which belongs to it, and of which it is constituted. The different limbs of the body look beautiful because they cooperate with the wholeness of the organism, which we call this body. Any particular part of the body which does not so cooperate hangs unconnectedly with the system. Its beauty vanishes in a second. A hair that is severed from the head has no beauty. It has a beauty only when it is stuck to the head, in the place where it has a position. Even the nail on a finger has its beauty. It loses its beauty when it is cut off from the finger. Isolated parts, unrelated to the whole to which they really belong, become ugly, redundant, unnecessary things, contingent aspects, and not anything contributing to vital life.
The meaning of life, in this light, appears to be a participation that is called upon everyone in relation to that organisation to which each one belongs. Extending the analogy of the physical body to larger organisations, we will feel that we live only when we participate in a larger-than-ourselves. When we do not participate in a system to which we necessarily belong, we do not really live. We just hang on. There is a difference between hanging on and actually living. A paralysed part of the body may hang on, but it is not living. It is not a part of the body. It exists. We can see it hanging lifelessly, as it were, to no purpose.
The life of a person comes to no purpose when the participation expected of that person in the context of the whole to which that person belongs is absent. The society of human beings is an organisation, and everyone belongs to human society as long as one is a human being. The very finitude of human organisms compels them to participate in a system known as society. There is no necessity for a perfected individual to participate in anything. But the perfected individual is a misnomer, because that which is perfect cannot be an individual. Anyone who is an individual, human or otherwise, is, therefore, not perfect in any sense of the term. Thus, considering even the lowest category to which one belongs in a conceived wholeness, the human individual has to participate in the organic activity of society.
The word ‘society’ has several connotations. It includes within its compass any activity, performance or evaluation necessary for the maintenance of this group called society. We need not go into the details of the issues that may rise from its definition. In every endeavour, project, adventure, work or activity necessary for the continuance of the human individual to sanction the survival of the human personality in order to achieve this perfection, the participation of the individual in society is necessary. An anti-social person cannot be a happy person. An unsocial person will be privately suffering the sorrows of finitude, and cannot enjoy the delights of participation.
Why should we feel happy in participation and feel miserable when we do not participate? The necessity for participation of the limbs in respect of the organism arises because of the necessity for the survival of the body itself. Disorganised limbs of the body disintegrate the body; the organism perishes. It decomposes itself, and is no more there after some time. The parts also die together with their non-cooperation with the whole. It does not mean that a non-cooperating individual will survive, even as a non-cooperating part of the body will not survive, together with the death of the whole to which it belongs, and with which it does not cooperate.
In this analogy, human society becomes an organism of a larger type, wider than the physical body which requires to be maintained by this cooperative participation of individuals for their own equanimous welfare. The participation is not complete merely with a social participation. It is not true, finally, that we live only because other people help us and our friends are charitable to us. It may be that in a social organisation, in a setup of human society, there is a mutual give-and-take policy of people, and they appear to be contributing to mutual survival and existence in a satisfactory manner. But this is only a surface view of things. Irrespective of the fact that social cooperation is necessary for our existence, that is not the whole truth. We do not live merely because of the goodwill of other people. There is something more about things, which escapes the notice of the common eye.
The geographical system of the universe, the astronomical pattern, the solar system, to take only one instance among many other things, conditions us. Human cooperation or no cooperation is irrelevant to the working of the planets and the operation of the solar system – which gives breath to our life, which pumps blood through our veins, and makes the heart pump and the brain think. Cosmic mysteries are beyond human imagination. Who pumps the blood and works the heart? Incessantly there is operation. Even when we are in deep sleep, the breath does not cease. Who pushes the prana like bellows even in the state of deep sleep, when we contribute nothing to the working of the breath? We are nowhere there. Who moves the breath and keeps the body warm and alive, even when cold sleep supervenes? Have we ever thought about the mysteries of the working of the heart? Why should it work? It moves without rest even for a moment.
Have we ever seen motion without a momentum? Unless there is something to propel the motion, motion is inconceivable. Where is the propelling force behind the motion of the heart and the action of the brain? We may be under the impression that the brain thinks and has knowledge. If the brain has plenty of knowledge inside of it, the skull of a dead man also will have knowledge. The propulsion of intelligence is elsewhere than in the cells of the brain, or the parts of the body.
Social life is transcended by universal life. That organisation is a larger society than the human society that we can imagine in our minds. The larger world before our eyes is itself a society of its own kind. The mountains and the rivers and the trees, the shrubs, the flowers, even stones and particles of sand, are not there unnecessarily, for no purpose. To consider these as unnecessary things would be to regard the tip of a fingernail as an unnecessary encumbrance of the body. The nail is not an encumbrance, though it is not doing great work for us. Yet it does some work, if we carefully think over the matter.
Unnecessary things cannot exist in this world. Their importance can be recognised and visualised only when we have the insight to probe into the circumstances of their existence, and the part that they play in a larger society of life – wider than the human, and even the organic as it is conceived – in a cosmical setup. The wind that blows, the rays of the sun that impinge upon the earth, the cool balming radiance of the moon in full-moon night, the scintillating movement of water in a flowing river, the waves of the sea, are not inconsequent occurrences. They are tremendously responsible performances taking place, as is the case with the performances in our own body. This system, which is physiological, sociological, cosmological, can be understood only on the acceptance of a living principle pervading all things, a life that is indwelling the parts, which look like physical entities.
Do we know that the life we seem to associate with our own selves is not capable of identification with any part of the body? I live, you live, and someone lives. I am alive. It is a great joy to feel that I am alive. This joy of the feeling that one is alive does not come from the nose, from the fingers, from any part of the physiological system. This is an instance of the presence of an unknown content operating beneath and behind visible particulars, which are otherwise physical in their nature. Our own personality is an example here. Our feeling, our joy, our satisfaction of having lived in this world, or of living in this world, is an unknown thing operating within the physiological setup we call the body. This very same link is bringing satisfaction in human society in the form of friendship, cooperation, a system of coming together or a get-together, a larger organisation of a nation.
International organisation, whatever it be, gives a satisfaction. It gives a satisfaction not because of the heaps of bodies that form that organisation, but because an unknown element operates in and through the media of these individuals which appear to form the members of this organisation. An organisation is not a bundle of members, just as our life is not a heap of these physical parts. Many people sitting together do not make a society, just as a heap of legs, hands, noses and eyes do not make a man; and so is the case with international organisations and world systems. The physical part is the secondary aspect thereof. There is an unknown element pervading everything.
Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam: a ruling principle pervades the whole Cosmos. ‘Isa’ is the word used in the Upanishad. A controlling, restraining, determining, harmonising, and satisfying principle is Isa, or Isvara. All these aspects are present in it. It gives life to all things. To be alive is the greatest satisfaction, and minus life, nothing can be called satisfaction. Merely to exist is a joy. Sat is chit, as they say; existence is consciousness. Consciousness itself is joy, as it is told us. The gesture of conscious participation in this working of a cosmic content is itself a joy unknown to the sense organs.
The joy of living is not a sensory happiness. Suppose we are sick for some days and suddenly we regain health; don’t we feel a satisfaction? The regaining of health is felt as a kind of jubilation, “Oh, I am happy today. My disease has gone.” A new life has entered into us when we are healthy. That new life is joy. That joy has not come from contact with sense objects. The joy of healthy existence is not a sensory joy. It is super-sensory in the sense that it arises from the totality that we are, the organism that we are, and not the contact that we have. Mostly we think that we can be happy only if we come in contact with things. Where is the contact in being alive? Minus all contacts, a healthy man is happy. A strong man is happy, a powerful man is happy, in spite of the absence of any kind of external contact. This joy, this satisfaction, this delight, arises not because of the limbs which constitute the organism, but because of a life that is present in the organism.
This life, the so-called ‘I’ or ‘me’ that we speak of in our own selves, is not any of the parts of the body. No limb of the body has the right to say ‘I’. “I am coming.” When we make a statement like this, no limb of the body is making the statement. It is a principle that is making this expression. That is what we are! We are a principle rather than a person, an operation rather than a solid existence, a force rather than a material content, an invisible thing rather than a visible thing.
We will be wondering, that we are really an invisible thing. This so-called person sitting here, apparently visible to the eyes, is really an invisible something, making itself felt through the so-called physical body. Such a thing pervades the whole cosmos. It does not pervade merely living bodies. Even the so-called inanimate elements are sustained in their existence by the operation of this force. It is inactive in some forms, active in some other forms, and merely equilibrating in certain other conditions. These three states are called sattva, rajas and tamas.
A mere participation in existence, as in the case of a stone or any inanimate matter, is tamas predominating. Yet the aspect of existence is present there, which is the characteristic of that connecting link pervading the universe. It is existence. The stone exists. At least to that extent, it participates in the Cosmic Reality. But it does not know. In the higher species, the aspect of understanding manifests itself gradually; dimly in plants and animals, and more perspicaciously in the human being. Human beings like us exist like a stone, but we also know that we exist. The stone exists without knowing that it exists. A human being exists with knowledge that there is such an existence. I am aware that I exist. Now, mere knowledge of the existence of something also is not adequate to the purpose. We cannot survive for a long time merely by being aware that we exist. We should also be happy, delighted, composed, satisfied, and feel a sense of freedom inside. If the sense of freedom and satisfaction is absent, but we are simply aware that we exist, it is not sufficient.
So the whole Reality is not manifest in existence such as a stone or a rock, though some part of it is manifest there. But in us, a larger degree of Reality is manifest, because it is known that it is. There is rajas – intellect and rational activity. We may be full of education, knowledge, information, academic qualification, but we may be incomplete persons nevertheless, due to absence of peace inside the mind. An educated person may be bankrupt in inward peace because while the tamasic element of existence and the rajasic element of understanding are there – the fact of this individualised existence is there – the sattvic quality of joy is absent.
The ananda aspect of Reality, the bliss aspect of Truth, has also to manifest itself in order that this consciousness of existence can fulfil itself and become complete. So we have to exist. We also have to know that we exist, and we also have to be happy that we know that we exist. This happiness of knowing that we exist is the bliss of the consciousness of existence. Here we are face to face with the great dictum, Reality being sat-chit-ananda.
Such a thing is pervading the whole Cosmos: īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam yat kiṁ ca jagatyāṁ jagat. Living or non-living, known or unknown, visible or invisible, potential or manifest, whatever be the nature of existence, everything is linked together by this unknown content, the supreme organisational principle, call Him God, Isvara, the Supreme Absolute, or the Universal Atman.
Be happy by knowing this. The Upanishad says, merely by knowing this, be happy. But puny man, with his frail intellect, will ask the question, “How can I be happy by merely knowing this matter? I want to enjoy the objects of sense. I want wealth. I want property. I want a house. Without this, where is joy? A mere knowledge of what you have told me cannot make me happy. I want to grab, possess, hold as my own, and become a property-holder.” Do not make the mistake of imagining like this.
Possession does not make us happy. It is the consciousness of possession that makes us happy. Unconscious possessions are no possessions. Do not covet wealth in this world, because wealth, the so-called property, is nobody’s actually. We want to grab somebody’s property and make it our own. How can we say that anything is ours, and make a statement that we have to possess it in order that we may enjoy it? What made us feel that something is ours? On what grounds is this statement made? No part that belongs to a whole can belong to another part that also belongs to the same whole. This is the logic behind the mistake that we make in desiring any property. As all things are part of a whole, all parts necessarily belong to the whole; but one part does not belong to another part.
We are friends because we are commonly placed in the position of participants in a cosmic purpose. Individually we cannot be friends. Sometimes the individual character asserts itself, and we behave like enemies. We hate each other. We do not always participate and love. The trait of dislike or hatred arises when the individuality in us asserts itself minus its position of participation in a cosmic whole. When we are awakened to the fact of the necessity to participate in a larger whole, we became friends, we smile at each other. But when we forget this aspect and assert this bodily individuality only, we begin to hate each other. Love and hatred, the positive and the negative aspects of psychological operation, arise on account of two different attitudes altogether, organisational and anti-organisational.
The Upanishad is very brief. It does not give us a large commentary. Know this, and grab not property, and covet not any wealth. Be happy. Anyone who has a little common sense, who has the leisure to think deeply over this important issue, will appreciate the meaning of this dictum of the Upanishad that merely by knowing this, we will be happy. Knowledge is bliss. Chit is ananda.
We are not accustomed to this kind of thinking. Our thinking is commercially oriented. It is conditioned by a give-and-take policy, exploitation, and possession of property, as I mentioned. We do not know any other way of thinking except this kind of crude materially-oriented thinking. But divine thinking is free from this trait of the desire to possess external objects.
Is God happy? Or do we think that He is an unhappy person? In Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’, Adam raises a question, “Lord, Thou hast created comrades for animals. Even trees live together. I, poor fellow, have no comrade. You have left me alone.” God, in the world of Milton, says, “Do you believe I am alone? I have no friends. I have no partner. Since eternity I have been alone. Adam, do you believe that I am happy?” This question of God to Adam in Milton’s poem is a question before us.
How can God be happy if He has no property? He has no money. He has no land. He has no house. He has no family. What kind of existence is God’s, if we conclude that it is these things that make a man happy, and minus these he is a wretched individual? God possesses nothing except the awareness of being complete and inclusive of all things. If we can accept for certain reasons that God can be the highest state of bliss irrespective of possessions, connection with property, etc., and just being aware of that perfection only – if only this awareness of being complete, excluding any other external contact, can make God perfect – anyone who wishes to be perfect, likewise has to be godly. And anyone who wishes to be godly, also has to be perfect.
It is futile to imagine that external property can make us happy and enable us to live long. It is the breath that conditions our joy. Have all the gold and silver of this world and let your breath be choked, you will see how happy you will be. Let the organism not work properly. Even the little stupid joy that we seem to be enjoying in this world does not come from the house that we have or the land that we own. It is from an organic, harmonised, aligned function of the body that is the reason for our happiness. The life that is inside us, the principle of life that we really are, when it is operating in a perfectly harmonised way, makes us happy. If disorganisation takes place inside, life struggles to maintain itself in a disorganised society of physical limbs, what can property do? What can friends do? What can anyone do in this world, when we are disarranged in ourselves? How can any kind of arrangement outside help us?
The greatest arrangement is God’s existence. Whoever moves in the direction of this perfect arrangement, which is universal in its nature, also becomes comparatively happy in larger and larger dimensions. A spiritual seeker is happy in himself, in herself, in itself. The confidence has to be there that the perfection that we seek does not come to us by our contact with external things, because externality and perfection are contraries. Perfection is an inwardness of comprehension, and not an externality of contact. A spiritual seeker, a yoga student, should always be aware and be confident of this great truth, and keep it before one’s mind’s eye that the more we grow spiritually, the less we would need external appurtenances for our existence. The less we require friends, the less we require money, the less we have the desire to live in a house, the less we wish to own anything by way of land, etc., the larger we become in our inward dimension and the narrower becomes our contact with external objects. The narrower we become in our inner dimension, the larger seems to be our need to come in contact with external objects. The poorer we are inside, the richer we are outside; and the richer we are inside, the poorer we may appear to outside eyes.
The poorest man is God Himself. One of the qualities of God is utter dispassion. God is known as Bhagavan, one who is qualified with bhaga, dispassion. Many qualities are mentioned. One of them is total dispassion, unconnectedness, unrelatedness to anything, non-possession. ‘Bhole Baba’ is Lord Siva, as people say. Bhole Baba means like a fakir, as God sometimes is portrayed. In a poetic fashion, saints and sages sometimes portray God like a beggar in order to depict this truth of total freedom from the sense of possession and utter disconnection from externality of any kind of space-time objects. Can we believe that such a Being is the happiest of all beings? And can we believe that we also would be equally happy, if we move in the direction of that Perfect Being?
Confidence is lacking. Perseverance is lacking. Power of will is lacking. The powerful senses drag the mind again and again to old ruts of thinking in the direction of old, old habits. “Indriyani pramathini haranti prasabhaṁ manah” (Gita 2.60): A wild tempest may throw a boat on the sea hither and thither by the powerful winds of sensory desire. Covet not; remember this truth. The universe is animated, controlled, directed and sustained by an invisible element, totally unknown to any sensory perception, which is that which makes us feel happy that we are alive. Can we imagine that finally we want nothing in this world except the permission to exist and live? Larger and larger dimensions of this harmony have to be achieved. The physical body is a harmony. Larger societies have been mentioned as organisations. The largest dimension is Universal Existence. The happiness that we can derive by merely being aware of our unitedness with that completeness is unimaginable, unthinkable, beyond the conception of the intellect. It passeth all understanding.
So much magnificent treasure is hidden in a few words of the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad. Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam yat kiṁ ca jagatyāṁ jagat, tena tyaktena bhuñjitha: unattached, enjoy. Unattached, enjoy – that is what the Upanishad says. It does not say, get attached to things and then enjoy. No, tyaktena, by renunciation, by abandonment of the greed to possess things, be happy. Ma gṛdhaḥ kasyasvid dhanam: covet not the wealth of anyone, because the wealth of the world is nobody’s, and no one has the right to posses it. Possession is a misnomer. There is no such thing as property, finally; and one does not want it, also. What we want is a harmony of our life-principle, which appears to falsely get increased in its dimension by contact with external possessions – falsely, not really, because what we can possess can also be taken away from us. When we can be possessed of something today, we can be dispossessed of it tomorrow. What is the guarantee that we will possess the whole world every day? We will be dispossessed of even this body itself. Where is the guarantee of possession?
Concentrate on this great truth, meditate on the great reality of utter perfection, completeness, knowledge and bliss in this universe, inside and outside flooding you through every vein of your body, every cell of your personality, every breath that you breathe. The joy of your life is actually the joy of God that is permeating through you. Reach it with effort, with daily meditation and wanting only That – wanting nothing else.
This is the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Bhagavadgita’s Message of Knowledge and Action
The Bhagavadgita’s Message of Knowledge and Action by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 24 February 2014 16:30
*READ MORE \* The Bhagavadgita’s Message of Knowledge and Action
(Spoken on Gita Jayanti in 1974)
In the history of the culture of the world, the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita may be regarded as the central spiritual message to mankind. These two gospels of the spiritual ideal offset each other, as it were; they give us the art of life in consonance with the eternal on the one hand, and in consonance with the temporal on the other. The problem of the human being is principally one of reconciliation between the eternal and the temporal or, to put it in modern terms, bringing about a harmony between the religious ideal and the secular call of duty. This has been an age-old problem, a question that has never been adequately answered. And the Upanishads, while holding aloft the banner of the magnificence of life eternal, seem to absorb into their bosom all the values that may be regarded as secular and temporal – so that we are faced with a lion’s den, as it were. The values that we regard as dear and near in this world of visible perception all seem to be transmuted into the heart of that Reality which is the central theme of the Upanishads. But man is man, whatever may be his ideal.
Now, while idealism is good and it has to always be there before us, it is essential that the ideal never remain as a future. One of the errors that we may commit in any type of endeavour or effort in day-to-day life is to place an ideal in the future so that the present stares at us and demands recognition in spite of the fact that the ideal is there before us transcending the values of all that is immediately real to our senses, our body, and our social life.
We have to reiterate here that our mistake lies in regarding an ideal as a future. “Then what about the present?” is the question. If an ideal is ahead of us in the far-off future, what has happened to us at the present moment? The conflict that apparently seems to be there between the ideal and the real is born of a miscalculation of religious values, a misinterpretation of the spiritual sense in life, and a thoroughgoing lack of understanding in respect of that which can be regarded as the organic structure of the values of life.
We as human beings are born with a prejudice. The prejudice seems to have entered into our very blood and vitals, the prejudice which insists that the present and the future are divided by a large and vast gulf which cannot easily be bridged, and this gulf that yawns before us between the future and the present is also the gulf that is between the world here and God above.
As I mentioned, in one sense the Upanishads may be regarded as a complete gospel, but the temporal values which necessitate a particular type of action or activity on the part of man seem to assume a new orientation altogether in the light of the Upanishads, and we are faced with a similar predicament as a child would be faced when confronted with a genius of mathematics, physics or philosophy. We cannot say that the child’s values are ignored by the genius, but the child cannot understand the genius, notwithstanding the fact that all the values of childhood are comprehended in the values of a genius. Likewise, the values held as ultimately real by the Upanishads seem to go over our heads and speak a language which we cannot understand. We want to be told in our own language, in the tongue that we speak, and with a sympathy that is consonant with that which we regard as valuable and dear to our heart.
Here comes the Bhagavadgita to comfort us, to console us, to solace us, and to tell us that everything is all right. Nothing is wrong in this world and there need not be despair either in the religious attitude or in the secular attitude. It may be emphasised that here in the Bhagavadgita we have an eternal message of the reconciliation between the empirical and the transcendental, the secular and the religious, the human and the divine, the relative and the Absolute, the visible and the invisible, the matter of fact that is before us and the glorious ideal that is beckoning us with its relentless and resistless force ever since the creation of the world. Now, what is this reconciliation that the Bhagavadgita offers us? What is its message to mankind, to humankind, to everyone? The message is precisely the message of duty because we are faced with a problem of what we are expected to do in this world after we are born.
The whole of our life is one of action. From birth to death we are in a network of activity, some meaningful, some appearing to be meaningless. Even babies we active, though to the adult it may look childish, senseless, idiotic and meaningless. It is activity that seeps into the very essence of our temporal being and we are expected to do something; we are impelled to act and do something or the other from morning till evening, whether or not we are inclined to intelligently understand the implications of an action.
This was exactly what Bhagavan Sri Krishna told Arjuna: You have to act and you will act, whether or not you have an inner inclination to be for it or against it. You have not the right to say, “I shall act”; you also have not the right to say, “I shall not act.” And in a similar vein, the great lawgiver Manu tells us in his Smriti: Neither are you to say, “How beautiful is life, how grand is life, how dear is life,” nor are you to say, “How stupid is life, how idiotic is life, how ugly is life,” because both these statements are born of a misunderstanding. Life is neither beautiful nor ugly, it is neither dear nor dreadful; it is an impersonal presentation of values which we have to take in the way in which it is presented before us at any given stage of life under any given moment or circumstance.
One of the difficulties in understanding the gospel of the Bhagavadgita or any such message is that we are expected to think here in an absolutely reoriented fashion. A new educational value is presented to us. One of the things, or perhaps the most important thing that the Bhagavadgita tells us is that we have to think in a new fashion altogether, and the greatest knowledge conceivable is perhaps the art of thinking correctly. Knowledge does not mean the study of Plato or Kant or Sankara or Ramanuja. Knowledge is the system of thinking correctly, and we are masters of not thinking correctly. Why? Because we have been caught up in a muddle of circumstances whose values we cannot properly understand; and the relationship we bear with whom, we understand much less.
To come to the crux of the whole matter, we cannot easily understand our relationship with the world. This is our difficulty; and therefore, we cannot understand our relationship with other people in the world. Therefore, also, we cannot understand our relationship with God. Everything is a confusion, and this confusion is called samsara. In Sanskrit we have a very beautiful word – samsara. “I am caught up in samsara” means, “I am caught up in a mess, a muddle, a mire, a confused state of affairs,” which is what Arjuna cries out at the very outset in the First Chapter of the Bhagavadgita. “I am confused. I cannot understand what is right, what is wrong, what is proper and improper. What am I to do now?” This is the question which Arjuna posed before Bhagavan Sri Krishna, and every one of us is posing the very same question. What is my duty here? There is only one question before us into which we can boil all other questions of life: the question of what we are supposed to do in this world after we are born. What am I to do, what are you to do, what is anyone to do?
The Bhagavadgita is the answer. It is very difficult to give a complete conspectus of everything the Bhagavadgita says, but we can pinpoint the essential emphasis of the Bhagavadgita in this context, namely, our duty is to harmonise ourselves with the environment in which we are living. Harmony is called yoga – samatvaṁ yoga ucyate (Gita 2.48) – and the action that proceeds from our personality on the basis of this understanding is called karma yoga.
What is karma yoga? It is an intelligent action, not a foolish action; it is an action that is engendered by a correct understanding of all the factors involved in our relationship with the entire atmosphere in which we are placed. This is a very difficult thing. You may be thinking, “What is it that you are saying? How am I to understand the implications of all the aspects of my relationship with the total atmosphere in which I am placed? What is this atmosphere?”
The Bhagavadgita tells us sankhya is to precede yoga or, in other words, knowledge is to precede action. In the terminology of the Bhagavadgita, sankhya means knowledge and yoga means action. We should not do anything without understanding what we are doing, but how are we to understand what we are doing? What is the meaning of understanding? Everybody understands what he is doing. Don’t we know what we are doing? When we get up in the morning, take our tea, go to the bazaar and purchase something, quarrel with somebody, we are doing so many things with an understanding of what we are doing, so what is the Bhagavadgita for? Everyone has knowledge of what he is doing, so in that sense the Bhagavadgita is useless.
Well, this is not the type of understanding that is expected of us. Whenever there is tension in our action, it means we have not understood the nature of our action. If an action that we perform, even if we regard it as a so-called duty, brings about an adverse reaction or sorrow as a result, it means we have not understood it, because the good cannot bring a bad result. Similia similibus curentur, as medical people tell us. There is similarity, harmony, between the means and the end. If good proceeds from us, how can the result of it be bad? How can we cry and grieve as a consequence of what we have done? “Oh, I have done so much good and yet people are abusing me and throwing stones at me.” We have not done good. We may be thinking that we have done good, but there has been a small error creeping into our goodness, on account of which Nature has revolted against us.
The Bhagavadgita says that we must act in such a manner that there is no revolt from any side as a consequence of the action that we perform. What type of revolt can we expect? God Himself can revolt against what we are doing, Nature can revolt, our own conscience may revolt, and human society may revolt. These are the four types of opposition that we can have. We must be harmonised: samatvaṁ yoga ucyate. What is the meaning of samatvam? What is harmonisation? We have to be harmonised with what is visible as well as invisible. The principle of right action is mentioned in the Eighteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita, which also tells, at the same time, what is wrong action.
As we are concerned with the principle of right action, we may consider what the Bhagavadgita tells us in respect of this issue. What is right action? It is that motivation and activity which is based on a proper assessment in proper proportion of the factors that are involved, factors that are contributory to the success of an action. An action becomes successful when the causes of that action are properly harmonised. If the causes of the action are not properly harmonised, there will not be success of the action. There will be only failure.
What are the causes of an action? The Eighteenth Chapter tells us this in one of its verses. We are wrongly under the impression that we are the causes of the action. Everyone thinks, “I do this work. I go there, I come here, I say this, I want this, I do not want this,” and so on. This is egoistic action, as the Bhagavadgita tells us. If we are convinced that we are independently, individually the source of all the activities that proceed from us, we are egoists because we have disregarded all the other factors that were contributory to the action.
Medical people know that 450 or so muscles are working when we stand up on our two legs. When we stand up, these 450 muscles are very active and very conscious that we are standing; otherwise, we will fall down. But who is aware of this fact? We think we are standing, but it is not so simple an affair. Not merely this, the brain is active, the heart is active, the lungs are active, the alimentary canal, the respiratory system – everything is active when we are merely standing up. In that simple act of standing, so many factors are involved that we are unaware of. And to understand the various factors of an action is even more difficult.
The Bhagavadgita tells us that action does not wholly proceed from our personality, though our personality is the channel of the projection of the action. It is only a channel of the motivation of a wider force which is invisible to the senses. An electric bulb is shining here. Can we say it is only the bulb that is responsible for the light? There is a filament inside which is heated up by a force which is called electricity. Where is the electricity? It is coming through a wire. From where has the wire come? It was manufactured by somebody. And who has fitted it? Somebody else. What is its connection with the powerhouse, and who is working there? So many people. What are they doing? With so many machines, many things are done. And how is electricity generated? So many other scientific factors are involved. With all these considerations, we have a little twinkling of light here.
And the Bhagavadgita tells us, “My dear friend, so many things are involved in a single action of yours, of which you are unaware; therefore, you are mostly not successful in your actions.” Adhiṣṭhānaṁ tathā kartā karaṇaṁ ca pṛthagvidham, vividhāś ca pṛthakceṣṭā daivaṁ caivātra pañcamam (Gita 18.14). At least five factors are mentioned among the many others that can be conceived in this context. Adhisthana is the complex of this psychophysical organism. That must be in proper order. The body should be healthy, the mind should be sane. If there is a sick body with jaundiced eyes and an insane mind, what will happen if activity proceeds from it? We know very well the consequence. The adhisthana, or the basis or repository, should be well prepared. And karta is the individualised form of consciousness which is the medium through which action is manifest. In our case it is the intellect from which the ego is inseparable. The intellect should have made a proper judgment beforehand, prior to the conclusion that such and such a step has to be taken in the form of an action. Judgment precedes action. We do not suddenly rush in where angels fear to tread.
Karaṇaṁ ca pṛthagvidham: The various instruments of action are also to be correct. Suppose a scientist in a laboratory is using a very powerful microscope in order to study atoms, electrons, and so on, and goes on peeping into the microscope very carefully throughout the day. But if the microscope is not properly made, and he himself has cataracts in his eyes, what will he see through the microscope? He will come to a very wrong scientific conclusion, and will proclaim this wrong conclusion to the newspapers. Blunderous results will follow. His eyes must be healthy, and his instruments should be properly fitted. Karana is the instrument. It should be healthy and properly made.
Vividhāś ca pṛthakceṣṭā: The motive behind the action also comes. Why are we doing this action? The motive is the moral force, meaning or significance that is behind an action, and it colours the action to a large extent, if not entirely.
Daivaṁ caivātra pañcamam: There is a very, very important fifth factor. As Shakespeare has put it, there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how you will. Whatever be our effort, whatever be our sweating, there is something else that decides the fate of our action. Whatever be the argument of an advocate in a court, the deciding factor is the judge. The judge will hear the arguments from both sides and finally, he is the deciding factor. Now, we will have a doubt in our mind: “Will God decide against my motive? Then it is very pitiable. Suppose I do something and God simply disposes of the entire motive of my action; what is the good of my doing anything? This is a sorrowful state of affairs.”
Samatvaṁ yoga ucyate: Again the same principle of action, harmony, is here called yoga. Harmony is the will of God. This is an essential factor in any kind of successful action. God will not act against us if our will is united with the divine will. The law will not punish us if our action is in consonance with the law. Why should the law punish us? It is because we go against it. We curse the law. “Oh, stupid thing, the law is harassing me.” Why does it harass us? Because we do not know what it means and we do not want to follow its mandates. We have a law of our own, contrary to the prevailing law, so why should it not trouble us? Whose mistake is it?
Therefore divine will, God’s dispensation, is not against man’s motivation of action, and God’s will is the ultimate fruit-yielding factor in all activities of the individual. We sow the seed, manure the sapling, take care of the plant and see that the tree grows, but the fruit comes out of the tree due to the will of a universal power, with which our will has to be united.
What is meant by saying we must be in harmony with the atmosphere and environment of our action, with all conceivable factors, in order that our action may be successful? Can we conceive all the factors? No. We are not sufficiently educated. Therefore, we fail in our action. We cannot exercise our mind to such an extent that we can understand the operation of all the factors involved in an action and, therefore, many of our actions go abortive, producing no result whatsoever. Not merely that, sometimes the result of the action that we performed comes back upon us like a boomerang and we cry, “Oh, what has happened to me? Is this the result of my good deeds?” Well, we must have done a very good deed from our own limited point of view, but we have forgotten to put on the ultimate switch. The powerhouse is working, the wire is there, the bulb is fitted, but we have forgotten to put on the switch, so how will there be illumination?
The ultimate switch is the will of God, and the function of God’s will may be hampered by the obtrusive factor of our egoism. This is what we call Satan in religious language, Mara in Buddhist terminology, or Maya in Hindu parlance – self-affirmation. In biblical parlance we are told that Satan fell from the Garden of Eden. How did he fall? By the affirmation of his ego. “I am equal to God, if not greater than God.” He immediately fell into the nether regions. The greatest devil conceivable is the ego. The Yoga Vasishtha says that ahamkara is the self-affirmation of the individual, contradistinguishing it from the universal will of God. But why should we forget the simple truth that anything that is universal should be inclusive of all that is particular? How comes the need for the affirmation of the individual factor called egoism when the universal is operating? Do we want the ego to operate independently of the universal? Wonderful is this knowledge.
What do we mean by universal? That which is inclusive of all the particulars and individual factors is the universal. When that is operating, why should the individual assert itself separately? That very fact of the operation of the individual independently is a denial of the operation of the universal. This is the mistake that we commit in the performance of any of our actions.
So the gospel of the Bhagavadgita clinches the matter by telling us in its clear-cut language that ignorance of the law is no excuse. “Oh, I did not know it. I am sorry.” We should not say that. If we are sorry, well, we have to bear the fruit of it. We touch the live wire and say, “I am sorry; I didn’t know it is a live wire.” Well, all right, if we didn’t know it is a live wire, now we know it.
To reiterate the gospel of the Bhagavadgita, knowledge, sankhya, should precede yoga, action. The reaction of good and bad does not impinge upon the individual when there is rootedness of the individual in buddhi marga, the yoga of understanding. But we do not want to understand because an understanding in the correct or proper manner goes against the pleasures of the ego and the senses. We are more slaves of the senses and the ego than devotees of God. Though we are chanting through the lips, “O Lord, Thy kingdom come,” how will it come? Nothing will come. Only our sorrow will come. Why? Because what we have sown, that alone can we reap. We sow the seed of thistles and expect a beautiful mango to come out of the plant. Nothing will come. Śreyaś ca preyaś ca manuṣyam etas tau samparītya vivinakti dhīraḥ (Katha 1.2.2) says the Katha Upanishad. Sreyas and preyas are two different things altogether. The pleasures of the senses and the satisfactions of the ego are not always in consonance with the delight of divinity or the bliss of God.
The last verse of the Bhagavadgita, which figuratively tells us that Bhagavan Sri Krishna and Arjuna jointly take up arms against the evil forces of the world, incidentally points out that the individual should be united with the universal. In every one of its actions, in every stage of its evolution, at any given moment of time, we are always in a state of yoga. Yoga is not only in the temple or in the meditation hall. It is also in the marketplace, in the shop, and in the bathroom because we may die in the bathroom itself. Do we think we will die only in the meditation hall? That is a very good thing if it happens, but we may die in the marketplace. What will happen then? We are thinking of stupid things in the shop and at that time our prana goes. What will happen? They say the last thought determines the future life of a person.
Nityayukta is the word used in the Bhagavadgita: Permanently united with that which is true, such a person is called a yogi. Who is a yogi? That person who is hiddenly, perpetually united with the real, that which is true, is a yogi. What is true? What is it that we call the true with which we are supposed to be permanently united? Anything that is contributory to the revelation of the next higher stage of the universal in our consciousness, that is the true as far as we are concerned.
There are stages of truth. There are degrees of reality. And every next degree, every higher stage of it is to be regarded as true from the point of view of the immediately lower one. Ultimately, the largest universal is God-consciousness which, again, is not a bifurcation of the religious or the spiritual from the temporal but a recognition of the union of the transcendent and the immanent at the same time – a difficult thing to conceive, once again. Our culture, our religion, our spirituality always insists on a union of the transcendent and the immanent, God there and God here. He is not only in the heavens or in Vaikunta, He is also in every atom of creation. He is the farthest of the far and the nearest of the near. Tad dure vad antike (Isa 5), says the Isavasya Upanishad. And unless we learn the art of this reconciliation, which is the most difficult thing to do, there will be no joy in life.
Samsara becomes moksha. The very thing that is before us becomes divinity shining before us. The veil is lifted when the sensory interpretation of values gives place to a spiritual interpretation of the very same values. The particularised interpretation gives place to the universalised interpretation. ‘I’ and ‘my’ vanish; He or It takes possession of us totally. Like camphor vanishing in the radiance that its flame shoots forth, leaving no residue, the individual will melt into the Universal. Arjuna will melt into Krishna so that he may finally be the only deciding factor and the Reality. Paśya me yogam aiśvaram (Gita 11.8) says the Viratsvarupa: Look at Me. I am everywhere, and in Me is everything contained. Both the Pandavas and the Kauravas are also there – the friends and the enemies are included, the positive and the negative factors are all fused into a single focus of divine radiance.
Thus, the outcome of all this seems to be that yoga is a very difficult thing. It is not for Tom, Dick and Harry. It is a tremendous sacrifice that we perform and a dying to our little self so that we may live in the Eternal that is in us. Die to live, as Sri Gurudev used to say. And we need not despair in a mood of misunderstanding that when God takes possession of us we shall lose the joys of life. Nothing of the kind. The joys of life are reflections of the eternal bliss, and the reflection is naturally contained, if not completely transmuted, in the original.
The Bhagavadgita anticipates, as it were, the famous saying of Jesus Christ: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” All these things shall be added. They are not going to be removed from us. This is the gospel of true religion, the real spirituality of godliness manifest in humanity, the implanting of the Universal values in every little bit of particular action, mode of thought and speech. This is to bring God down to the Earth, as it were, and to live the life spiritual in the most secular conceivable form of our life. In this sense it is that it can be said that the Bhagavadgita is a universal gospel, not meant for any particular ism or religion but for every created being which aspires to go back to its original source – the gospel of God to man.
With these few humble words may I conclude, simultaneously offering my prayers that the invisible seeing multiple eyes of the Supreme Being bless us all with His abundant grace that we live true to our own selves, which is at once to live true to the values that everyone else also holds as dear, and to the ultimate value that God Himself regards as finally Real.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Gita Jayanti Message
Gita Jayanti Message by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Sunday 23 February 2014 18:25
*READ MORE \* Gita Jayanti Message
(Spoken during Gita Jayanti in 1972)
We can study a text as a historical document come to us from ancient times, forming a link in the development of human culture and civilisation, and we can also study a text as a piece of psychology of the author, a stage in the development of the human mind, so that the particular text to be studied gives us an idea of our present psychological relation to it, and vice versa. The scripture also can be studied as a piece of literature. For example, the Bible and Shakespeare’s writings are considered to be magnificent English literature available to us.
So from what angle of vision are we to study a book, especially when we take up a text like the Bhagavadgita, the Sermon on the Mount, or the Dharmapada? When we study these, we generally introduce into the context our own personality, viewpoints, and the nature of the interest we have at a given moment of time. The structure of the context also depends to a large extent on the mental constitution of the student. A grieved person who is sinking in sorrow due to the weight of samsara, buffeted from all sides with pains of every kind – if such a person reads the Bhagavadgita or the Sermon on the Mount, one particular meaning will come out of it. But a person who has been born with a silver spoon in the mouth and who has never seen pain and never known suffering has another interest altogether, and sees a different meaning in it.
This scripture, the Bhagavadgita – that which is the subject of our worship, prayer and study today – may be taken as a typical representation of religious literature among the many that we have in the world. It is studied, commented upon by countless people, scholars galore, and each one has spoken truths which are not whole truths and yet not untruths because, as I mentioned, the context in which we study the scripture, the circumstances which impel us or direct us to the study and, above all, the state of our mental evolution determine the extent of knowledge or the meaning that we can extract out of such literature as these.
There is a little difference between writings of scholars, poets, literatures, and writings of this kind such as the Bhagavadgita. Kalidasa has written Raghuvamsa and Kumarasambhava, and Vyasa has written the Bhagavadgita. We cannot say that they are on a par even from the point of view of literary merit because scriptures such as the Bhagavadgita contain words which are more than mere linguistic expressions. We are often told, perhaps the Christ himself mentioned it somewhere, that the words he spoke were not words, but spirit expressing itself. It was spirit that came out from the mouth of Christ. They were not words of language. If that was spirit which came out as the wondrous teaching in the New Testament, similar is the case with the words of the Bhagavadgita. It was spirit that was gushing forth, spirit coming in torrential forms and concretising itself through the stages of para, pashyanti, madhyama and vaikhari into visible audible form.
Thus, when spirit manifests itself as force of language and words of wisdom, it becomes a comprehensive manifestation. Spirit is comprehensive. It is not one-sided in any way. While we can speak one aspect of a matter without touching other aspects because of the incompetency of language and the limitations of words, when spirit speaks, it speaks all things at one stroke because spirit and life are identical. Life has no aspects. It is the one thing that we cannot define in our language. What is life? We cannot define it because it eludes the grasp of definitions through linguistic formulae. And if spirit manifests itself as these scriptures, it covers all ranges of thought.
Today when we were doing the sacred svadhyaya of the Bhagavadgita, the 700 verses, I was trying to glance through the meaning of every sloka, and it appeared to me that there is no subject which is not touched there. The only point is, we should have a little time to think over it deeply. Every aspect of human character, human aspiration and human context is touched on in one verse or the other. But if we read it in a hurry just because it is Gita Jayanti and we have to finish it in two hours, we will make little meaning out of it.
The more we study it in an impersonal fashion, the more meaning does it seem to convey to us. As days pass, the more is the depth into which we can enter. Every aspect of psychological question, every philosophical problem, everything that we can call scientific in its strict sense of the term, everything spiritual, social, political, economic, moral, all these subjects are touched on in some verse of the Gita so that, as Mahatma Gandhi used to say, some verse or the other would come up like a ray of light before his mind when he was drooping in a dark cloud covering the sun. There is no verse which will not throw light on some question of life. It may be my question, it may be your question, but it shall have an answer to every question because the Bhagavadgita is supposed to solve the question of mankind. It is not merely the question of Arjuna that was the point of discussion. The Arjuna was only a type of human nature which was taken as symbolic, representing mankind’s foibles as well as longings.
If Arjuna was taken as symbolic of human character in general, seeking its destination which it has lost in the oblivion of ignorance, Krishna would represent the cosmic answer to the individual problem of man. It is actually Iswara-jiva Samvada, Krishna-Arjuna Samvada, Narayana-Nara Samvada, the universe and the individual commingling with each other in a concourse which is deeper than physical sensory perception. What was actually the intention of the Bhagavadgita, we mortal intellects cannot easily explain because, as I tried to point out, if it was divinity that actually manifested itself as the force of the Gita gospel, it should have had intentions beyond the limitations of, and exceeding the borders of, mere human convenience and need.
Human nature, in its completeness and totality, was what was the object of address in the Gita. When we address human nature, we cannot speak merely to its nose or eyes or physiological organs. Human nature eludes the grasp of pure scientific understanding in its logical sense. Divine character, or divine perfection, was addressing human nature in its eternality. Human nature is a type that is eternal; it will not come to an end. Though Mr. so-and-so, Mrs. so-and-so may come to an end one day or another, their types of human nature will not end. There is a difference between logical types and physical patterns. The physical patterns of individuality have a beginning and an end. They die because they have a beginning; they have a birth. But the types of human nature are perpetually there. We have Duryodhanas, we have Krishnas, we have Arjunas, we have every blessed thing always in some part of the world. The psychological pattern of human nature, which cannot be said to have a beginning or an end, which is there as long as the universe lasts, that perpetual figure of human character and human nature was the recipient of this knowledge coming down from the supreme perfection of a blend of eternity and infinity. Thus viewed, the Bhagavadgita becomes a gospel of eternity.
While students of Indology, Sanskritists and grammarians see in the Gita a historical document of linguistic peculiarity, and political historians see in it a feature of the Indian nation in ancient times, people with a more comprehensive vision see in it an eternal gospel for man as such so that it is a gospel for me and for you, for one and all, at all periods of time and in every place or circumstance. The spiritual connotation of a scripture is, therefore, transcendent to the limitations of spatial, temporal and personal idiosyncrasies or peculiarities. It is not meant only for this place, for India only. It exceeds the limitations of space or place. It is not meant only for that particular age in the Mahabharata. That means to say, it exceeds the limitations of time. It was not meant only for Arjuna. It exceeds the limitations of personality. Space, time and individuality do not limit the significance of an eternal message. It is in this context that we are to look upon the Bhagavadgita, especially as sadhakas, seekers. We are not here as students of history or Indology, or politicians or social reformers who are concerned only with a particular given context at a given moment of time. As seekers of truth, we have to see the gospel of truth in the Bhagavadgita.
One of the remarkable features of the Gita is that while each of its verses can be taken as an independent gospel by itself, and even a single verse gives us enough knowledge to ponder over for months together, yet with all these variegated verses which apparently give us independent conclusive messages for humanity, they form a beautiful architectural pattern of beauty and wholeness. There is a pattern of development of the verses of the Gita, like the limbs of a human body. While each limb of the body can be studied independently – eye surgeons study only the eyes, ENT specialists are concerned with only certain parts of the body, there are heart specialists, brain specialists – we cannot forget the context of this part of the body in the setup of the whole organism. The brain is not somebody else’s; it is of the very same person who has also a heart, who has eyes, who has entrails, and so on. Likewise, each verse of the Gita can be taken independently as an object of study or a subject for our thesis, and an object of meditation, psychological analysis, moral self-discipline. For all these purposes we can take every sloka as a guiding light. Yet, all these slokas go together to perform a beautiful fabric of perfection so that we can take the Gita as a single gospel, or we may take it as a variegated gospel for every level of life.
How many rays has the Sun? They say he is sahastra girna or eka girna; we may say he has thousands of rays, or millions of rays, or only one ray. So is the Bhagavadgita. It is a masterpiece not merely of literature but a masterpiece of spiritual profundity and divine magnificence. If Sri Krishna in his cosmic form, or on the eve of his manifestation of the public, spoke the Gita, it was recorded for us by an equally great person, Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa. That is a wonder. The author of its present literary form is as great and as competent in every way as the speaker himself. So we have a beautiful blend of masters – the great master spirit of divinity Krishna speaking the Gita, and the mastermind of Vyasa writing it.
The comprehensiveness of the significance or meaning of the Gita gospel as a spiritual treatise for humanity can be gauged from an oft-quoted verse: krsno janati vai samyak, kincit kunti-sutah phalam vyaso va vyasa-putro va (Sri Vaisnaviya-tantra-sara, Gita Mahatmya 3): The meaning of the Gita is known wholly only to Krishna. Nobody else knows it. Arjuna knows a little bit, and Vyasa knows it, and perhaps his son Suka knows it. The others only hear.
We can make out only the word meaning of a scripture, but that is not the real meaning. It is not only one meaning that comes to the surface if we study a verse of the Gita. It has got many implications, connections and relations; thus, it differs from works such as the Raghuvamsa, the Kumarasambhava or even the Panchadasi. They have only a single meaning, because they are written for a special purpose. But scriptures such as the Gita, the Upanishads, the Veda Samhitas, the Ramayana of Valmiki or even the Mahabharata taken as a whole are not ordinary messages given by writers that we see in the world in plenty. They are not simply writers; they are ambassadors of the spirit who speak in the language of perpetual significance. And thus, we have force and energy induced into us when we study the Gita – much more when we actually contemplate its meaning, and if it is studied in the context in which it ought to be studied.
Sarva shastramayi gita is another oft-quoted saying: Every scriptural meaning we will find in the Gita. Nyaya, Vaiseshika, Sankhya, Yoga, Mimamsa, Vedanta, theism, acosmism, pantheism, transcendentalism, absolutism, devotion, knowledge, concentration, meditation, action, what not – everything we will find there. I don’t think that any one of us here had the patience or the time to read the Gita in such depth. Most people study the Gita as a routine of svadhyaya, parayana, or some people keep it only for worship. They keep it in the puja room and do not open it, keep a tulsi leaf on it and prostrate before it every day. That is also good, wonderful, but that is not enough. It has to be made a part of our life. The Gita is a gospel of life. It is a universal gospel given to Man, capital ‘m’, Man as such, human nature, the type of human character which Arjuna represented. It was not one person that spoke the Gita to another person, Krishna speaking to Arjuna. As I mentioned, the gospel of the Gita exceeds the limits of personality significance. That is why it is sometimes also known as Narayana-Nara Samvada and Brahma-vidya Yoga Shastra.
When we take the whole Gita as a complete gospel it becomes a systematic exposition of the sadhana which we have to perform as seekers of God – the various stages through which we have to pass right from the oblivion of the dark night of the soul, as the mystics generally call it, the condition in which Arjuna was as described in the first chapter of the Gita. The soul gropes in darkness, knowing not where it is and what is happening to it. Right from that condition of oblivion, we are taken systematically to the wondrous vision of the Supreme Being as described in the eleventh chapter of the Gita. From oblivion and ignorance, we go to omniscience and mastery in absoluteness. That is the eleventh chapter. Many things are said which we have to study in detail.
No single commentary on the Gita can be said to touch all the aspects which the Gita must have intended, so it is profitable to read at least half a dozen masters so that we may have an adequate knowledge of the various viewpoints with which the Gita can be studied. One of the most beautiful presentations of this spiritual message of the Gita is the work of Sri Aurobindo, Essays on the Gita – most beautiful. He is one of those who have gone to the very depths of the Gita and given its spiritual message, not merely its historical or political or social message, but the spiritual message for all time. And among the ancient authors, we have the great commentaries of Acharya Sankara, Ramanuja, Madhava, and of later authors also who have written in modern languages. All these are wonderful expositions.
What is the message of the Gita? No one can answer this question in one sentence because we do not know how to express an answer to this moot question. It is like asking what Swami Atmananadaji is. We cannot say he is something in one sentence because there are so many aspects of a human being. Likewise, what is the message of the Gita? If you actually deeply think over the answer to this question, your mouth will be shut. Your silence is the message of the Gita, because you cannot say anything. It is everything and anything. When God speaks, you cannot say what He spoke. What He spoke, how can you say? He spoke everything because it was the Infinite that spoke.
However, beginners as we are on the path of the spirit, we would do well to choose a few verses for our daily contemplation such as ananyāś cintayanto māṁ ye janāḥ paryupāsate, teṣāṁ nityābhiyuktānāṁ yogakṣemaṁ vahāmy aham (Gita 9.22); manmanā bhava madbhakto madyājī māṁ namaskuru, mām evaiṣyasi yuktvaivam ātmānaṁ matparāyaṇaḥ (9.34); sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja, ahaṁ tvā sarvapāpebhyo mokṣyayiṣyāmi mā śucaḥ (18.66); karmaṇy evā ’dhikāras te mā phaleṣu kadācana, mā karmaphalahetur bhūr mā te saṅgo ‘stv akarmaṇi (2.47); ajo nityaḥ śāśvato ’yaṁ purāṇo na hanyate hanyamāne śarīre (2.20). Such verses can be taken as objects for contemplation, themes for meditation.
Or we may take the whole gospel as a single eternal message to us, God beckoning man: “Come to Me.” Sarvadharmān parityajya mām ekaṁ śaraṇaṁ vraja: Abandoning all relativistic modes of conduct which hang one on the other, not independent by themselves, come to the supremely independent root of all beings. Yadā bhūtapṛthagbhāvam ekastham anupaśyati, tata eva ca vistāraṁ brahma saṁpadyate tadā (13.30). When we recognise the rootedness of all variety in that single Being, we have attained to perfection: brahma saṁpadyate tadā.
But how could we contemplate this rootedness of all variety in that single Being? For that, various touches of sadhana are given to us in various slokas of the Gita. There is the moral or ethical side of it, there is the social aspect of it, there is also the political aspect of it, there is the psychological aspect. We cannot simply suddenly jump into it, ignoring these aspects. When we speak to a person, we consider the situation from all angles of vision; then only can we know how to speak, what to speak, and to what extent to speak.
Thus, when we contemplate the context of spiritual sadhana in relation to the gospel of the Bhagavadgita, we have to take all sides into the picture. Otherwise, we shall be one-sided, which is not the teaching of the Gita. Yuktāhāravihārasya yuktaceṣṭasya karmasu, yuktasvapnāvabodhasya yogo bhavati duḥkhahā (6.17). This is a very necessary caution given to us in the Gita as spiritual seekers: Don’t go to extremes. Extreme is not yoga. Extreme in any respect – extremely talkative or not saying anything at all, too much eating or not eating anything at all, always sleeping or not sleeping at all. Neither this nor that can be taken as a part of yoga. We must be normal. Normalcy is yoga. Abnormality is not yoga. We must be normal in every situation in which we are placed.
Bhagavan Sri Krishna himself is a concrete example as to how such a balanced life has to be lived. We cannot say how he lived and how he conducted himself and what attitudes he had in respect of things in general. It was all-sidedness, touching every aspect. There was nothing which he would ignore from his consideration. He was a master statesman, master yogin, master in knowledge, omniscient incarnate, and centre of attraction, love and affection, yet a relentless master who could terrorise even the terrific gods themselves. What God is, no one can say. God is all things combined – mātā dhātā pitāmahaḥ, vedyaṁ pavitram oṁkāra ṛk sāma yajur eva ca (9.17); gatir bhartā prabhuḥ sākṣī nivāsaḥ śaraṇaṁ suhṛt (9.18). What is He not? Everything He is.
So when such a being is the background of the message of the Gita, we could imagine what it has given to us. It has given to us everything. But the only thing is, we must be able to receive the message of the Gita as Arjuna received it. For that we have to place ourselves in the humble position of Arjuna himself. Neither should we be adamant and stick to our guns in saying “I will not fight,” nor should we imagine that we know things well. We have to put on, assume an attitude of humility in the way in which Arjuna himself did. Kārpaṇyadoṣopahatasvabhāvaḥ pṛcchāmi tvāṁ dharmasaṁmūḍhacetāḥ (2.7): I am confused. I don’t know what is truth. When we actually, in this spirit of self-abnegation, surrender ourselves to the eternal source of wisdom, it shall come to us as a Guru. The Guru will come to us.
So on this very blessed occasion of the Jayanti of the Bhagavadgita which, to speak from purely a historical point of view, was given to us perhaps some 5000 years ago at a place called Kurukshetra, that message is echoing in the ears and the minds and the hearts of all students of yoga and aspirants of truth for all time to come. The Bhagavadgita is, therefore, the central text of religious consciousness. It is not the text of the Hindu religion. It is not a text of this religion or that religion. It is a text of the religious consciousness, the spiritual attitude to things, the comprehensiveness of approach that we have to adopt in our conduct in life. Such is the gospel of the Bhagavadgita.
It is well said that the Bhagavadgita is the milk taken out of the cow of the Upanishads. Sarvopaniṣado gāvo dogdhā gopāla-nandanaḥ, pārtho vatsaḥ sudhīrbhoktā dugdhaṁ gītamṛtaṁ mahat (Gita Mahatmya 4). The science of being is given to us in the Upanishads, and the art of living is given to us in the Bhagavadgita. The art of living naturally depends on the science of being. How things are – that must be known first. This the Upanishads tell us: what things are in themselves. Then on the basis of this knowledge of what things really are, we know how to conduct ourselves in practical life. That is the science, the technique, the methodology of living in the world. So the Upanishads and the Bhagavadgita form a group of complementary texts. Both are equally important for study and meditation. They are also known as the Sruti and the Smriti – the Upanishads is the Sruti, the Bhagavadgita is the Smriti.
The Bhagavadgita, located in the context of the Mahabharata, is also an epitome of the Mahabharata teachings. Just has we have 18 chapters of the Bhagavadgita, there are 18 Parvas or sections or books of the Mahabharata. There is some sort of a similarity of theme treated in these 18 Parvas of the Mahabharata and the 18 chapters of the Bhagavadgita – though not entirely, in some respects. It may be that we are not able to understand it properly. The soul’s incipient stage of ignorance and helplessness is described in the first chapter of the Gita and also the beginning Parva of the Mahabharata, the Adi Parva. In the Adi Parva the Pandavas are like children, knowing nothing, kicked from all sides, suffering all kinds of pains and woes, wandering hither and thither like unwanted children. What a pity! This is mankind in its incipient stage. Then there is a temporary rise into prosperity as in the second chapter of the Gita and the Sabha Parva of the Mahabharata. It is only a temporary rise; it is not a complete rise. When we take a series of vitamin pills, we suddenly feel energised, but afterwards will again droop when the pills are stopped. So such energy is suddenly infused in the Sabha Parva of the Mahabharata when Yudhishthira is crowned king after the Rajasuya sacrifice, but all for his woe and suffering later on. That prosperity of Yudhishthira after the Rajasuya was not real prosperity. It aroused the jealousy of Duryodhana and many others, and we know what happened then. In the Vana Parva he fell down once again. We go into the wilderness, suffer, search for light. The human soul is in samsara in this way.
Sadhakas are of this way. When we come to ashrams, we come in this very fashion. In the beginning there is all oblivion, confusion at home; nobody knows what it is. “We shall go to monasteries.” And suddenly there is an enthusiasm. “Oh, now I have entered a monastery, and now I shall take up the practice of yoga.” The second chapter has come. Yudhishthira has become the crowned king, but afterwards it is all gone. There is nothing. In the Vana Parva we are in the wilderness once again, in the jungle. “Oh, God, where it is nobody knows. I have lost everything – lost the kingdom, lost help from people.” But yet, well-wishers come and speak to us, “Don’t bother. It will be all right in the course of time.” In the Vana Parva Sri Krishna himself comes and speaks, “Don’t bother. The time will come, God willing, that justice will be reinstated.” And in the Virat Parva and the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata preparations are made for the coming battle with nature which has not yet started.
The actual battle of life has not yet started. When you enter the ashram, the battle has not yet started. There is only an enthusiastic emotional mood, which will bring you down after some time. But when you are ready, after the proper education that is given to you in ashrams – that education was given in the Vana Parva and the Virat Parva – then divinities come to your aid. All the masterminds came to the aid of Yudhishthira. They didn’t come before that. The battle starts from Bhishma Parva onwards. Bhishma, Drona, Karna, Salya – these Parvas are the Parvas of battle, and they are wonderful things. They are not simply descriptions of a Hitlerian war or any such thing. It is a battle of the spirit allegorically and metaphorically described in epic style – Bhishma representing one character, Drona one character, Karna another character, and Duryodhana a fourth character altogether. This is a battle of characters, types, natures, rather than persons.
Who was Bhishma? Who was Drona? What was their specialty? What was the specialty of Duryodhana? You will study this if you read these Parvas, and how difficult it was to face these people. Different techniques had to be adopted to face each one of them. The same technique could not be used with all people, because Bhishma was different from Drona, and Drona was different from Karna. They were not the same. Likewise, kama, krodha, loba, they are different things, and to deal with them you have to use different techniques. You cannot use a uniform method to deal with every situation. That will not work. You must be a very shrewd person, a very good psychologist, and also a very patient person in this respect. Then comes the real crowning glory of Yudhishthira installed as emperor and blessed with the wisdom of the Shanti Parva of the Mahabharata. Very interesting! All this is to be studied in great detail with a dispassionate mind.
In this wonderful garland of the 18 Parvas of the Mahabharata, the Bhagavadgita hangs like a beautiful pendant. The Bhagavadgita is the epitome of the whole Mahabharata, and we may say the Mahabharata as a whole is a vast commentary on the secret esoteric teachings of the Bhagavadgita. It is said that the Mahabharata is a Veda by itself – pañcamaṃ vedā. The four Vedas are Rig, Yajur, Sama, Artharva, and the Mahabharata is the fifth Veda, perhaps equal to them. Sometimes it is said the Mahabharata weighs heavier than the Vedas themselves. Such is the Kashna Veda, as they call it. Kashna Veda means the Veda written by Krishna Dvaipayana Vyasa.
So we should use all our opportunities, the blessed field created by Sri Swami Sivanandaji Maharaj here for us by his own compassion, in gaining this wondrous knowledge of our culture, this world gospel of the Bhagavadgita, and utilise every moment of our time in this only meaningful duty of aspiring for God-realisation. God bless you all.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Stages of Knowledge of the Yoga Vasishtha
The Stages of Knowledge of the Yoga Vasishtha by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Saturday 22 February 2014 18:56
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The general condition of human life, which may be said to be one of an acquiesced satisfaction with the world we see with our eyes, is a matter for deep consideration. That some sort of an investigation is called for into the nature in which we live in the world is a necessity not felt by many people. We do not feel the need to inquire into our lives because everything seems to be clear to us.
The longings of the heart and the general pressures of human desire are so very well taken for granted as the most normal things in the world that they do not require any special attention on our part. There is practically no event or occurrence in our life that we feel needs a particular investigative attention, so we have been content in living a life of utter abandon to the condition that has taken possession of us – possession to such an extent that, to any thinking mind, it may appear that we have lost our personalities. We have been sold to the conditions that have bargained to purchase us, and our subjection to these conditions of life is such an utter abolition of our independent way of thinking and willing that often it looks doubtful that we have any independence at all.
To be subject to the pressures of internal impulses is what we call the joys of life. The movement along the current of a river is a satisfaction since we have abandoned ourselves to the flow of the current. The upward movement is not a satisfaction or a joy because there is opposition to our contemplated movements. Whenever we oppose our impulses, the joys are cut off.
Thus, a continuous asking for unending joy in the world will automatically mean a total subjection to the will of the master, and that is the world. An utter subject as slave of a superintending authority has, in a way, no fear because there is no opposition. We have no fears of any kind, or so it looks, as long as we are content to move with any demand that is made by our body or by the conditions of our mind. Whatever is demanded is given, and therefore, the mouth of these impulses is shut by a provision of what is required, demanded, asked for from moment to moment.
But this has not been an easy affair. It would not be a simple matter to supply the demands of a source which changes its attitude and types of demand from moment to moment. If a single stereotyped asking is before us, we have enough time to think that this particular thing is what is expected of us.
The world does not seem to be expecting one particular thing from us. Our neighbours, our environment, the people who are part of human society in which we are living are, in a very important sense, hard taskmasters, so that to adjust ourselves to the requirements of these multifaceted atmospheres tells upon our system. To be compelled to adapt and adjust to conditions which change from moment to moment is a great strain on the mind and the body. The freedom that we speak of becomes a total chimera if it is impossible for us to live in the world without a moment-to-moment adjustment with the environment in which we are living. Whether it is hot or cold, we have no say in that matter. We have to adjust ourselves with it. Whether people are friendly with us or otherwise, we have no say in that matter and have to adjust ourselves with that also. There may be a hailstorm of painful conditions on our heads, and we erect an umbrella of protection against the fall of these hails.
There has been a continuous effort on the part of man to survive irrespective of this utter subjection to uncontrollable conditions and circumstances, and these joys, these satisfactions, these pleasures that are doled out to us as from a master to a servant are the immediate outcome of our willingness to subject ourselves to these conditions. As a dog is thrown a little piece of bread, the joys of life are thrown on us by these relentless powers of nature to which we willingly subject ourselves as helpless slaves. Thus is the joy of life.
But, who has time to think? A continuous subjection prevents even the movement of thinking. Time to think is not given. There is no permission given to us to think because to think would be to assert an independence of our own, and that is not allowed. We are perpetual slaves. Thus goes human satisfaction and human life, human misery.
A time comes, says the great scripture the Yoga Vasishtha, when man begins to contemplate the seeds and the very presuppositions of the conditions of subjection in which we are living. At least before going to bed for a few hours we begin to think: “Am I really living a worthwhile life?” This primitive stage of not being able even to think is not really worth any mention, really speaking. That our need for analytic thinking has not been felt is a great credit indeed to our ignorance and the extent of our subjection, because we are happy and we need nothing else. But why are we happy? Because we have sold ourselves. We have become slaves to such a degree that our life itself is in the hands of powers which we cannot understand, and over which we have no say. Such a kind of misery is the involvement of human life. But it is all a joy for the worm that travels in filth because there is an acquiesced adjustment of the biological condition of the worm with the constitution of its environment. We are ready to live with anything; that is enough for us, provided our impulses are gratified.
Thus, there seems to be a final quintessential conclusion of human enterprises, and it is this much: that human life is no independent, indivisible and standing value. It is a moment-to-moment self-adjusting structure which charges itself regularly day to day with the capacity for such adjustment and adaptation. Our body can adjust itself to any temperature and our mind can adjust itself to any environment. If this is not done, if this adjustment is not to be expressed as a gesture on our part, there would be a sudden eruption of a condition in life which would make our life impossible.
So a desire arises sometime in our lives, at least when we are old enough to think: “Have I lived a worthwhile life in the sense of having gained anything which is meaningful? Have I gained anything from this world? Have I lived for any purpose?” These questions cannot arise in early ages because the impulses of life are stronger in youth, impetuous and unrelenting in their behaviour. Continuously we are pressed down on our necks to the need of this subjection to whatever is expected of us by nature and the environment. But the impulses become weak when we become physically old. Neither we can eat well nor drink well. Neither can we sleep well nor can we have any interest in life with such pep and sauce that we discovered earlier in our youth. Then it is that the grey hair begins to speak in a language of investigation and begins to question itself: What have I done in these longish years of my life in the world?
This condition of an incipient need felt for self-investigation, says the Yoga Vasishtha, is called subecha, a desire for the good: “I must do something good. There is no use merely being a servant throughout my life because there is no saying when the life will end, and whatever has been bequeathed to me as a kind of remuneration for my subjection to life is not lasting. It may have its end any moment. What will happen to me, where will I go, who will look after me and where shall I be placed? Am I going to cease to exist after the body is shed?” It cannot be. The conscience does not permit the argument that we shall cease to be when the body is cast off. We think: “Oh, I am doing some good; I shall have my reward.”
Many a time the good deeds we perform do not receive any reward. They may even receive a condemnation. But man feels: “After all, I have done some good. Maybe man has not recognised it, but my conscience says I have done some good. Will I go unrewarded?” The conscience says, “No, I shall not go unrewarded. Where will I be rewarded, if not in this world? This world has given me nothing. It has recognised nothing worthwhile in me; it has exploited me, put me down, harnessed me, utilised me as an instrument, and given me nothing of value.”
The conscience of a human being says that life shall continue after the end of this body. But what kind of life are we going to enter? This is sometimes frightening, sometimes solacing. It is solacing to those who feel a sense of inner conviction that they have really done some good, and they have not done any harm or bad. “Some good I have done knowingly or unknowingly, whether it is publicised or not publicised.” To such a convinced mind there is a solace that life shall continue after the body is shed. “These good deeds, these charitable gestures, these attitudes of service which I have of my own accord demonstrated here which have not been even recognised by people shall receive attention in my next life.” That is a solace for those who are really convinced of having done something worthwhile and good.
But all are not of this type. We go with a suspicion; we go with a fear: “I have done nothing practically. I have perhaps earned a fat salary, but can this be called a good deed that I have performed, that I have had enough money to put in a bank? I have commuted my pension, I have educated my children, and my family is well fixed. Well, that may be. Is this going to protect me in my future life? What shall guard me, take care of me?” It is the law of the other world. What protects us is law, not man, not a human being, not any particular thing. It is a principle we call the law of sustenance of the world as a whole, which is obeyed implicitly, that will take care of us. “Have I obeyed the law, and what is that?” These types of questions arise some time or other in one’s life, and the Yoga Vasishtha says this is vicharana. We go on thinking: “It is now time for me to do something worthwhile. I may perhaps enter a realm after death where a different set of laws operate. It may be a condition, it may be a country, it may be a land of people who may not have any value for the laws of this world, and what I have done to people, to things here, may not have much value there.” Sometimes doubts of this kind may arise.
But there are universally accepted laws which, if obeyed, will stand by us as a large credit balance which shall be carried forward to our ledger books of the next world. These questions arise in us. Is there anything we can think of in our life today which can be really carried over to the other world? Or is whatever we have done in this world meaningful only here, and not in the other world? Is it a currency that is workable only here and it is non-current in the other world? Then this currency is of no value to us. But have we an international currency with us which we can take to the other world also? Have we anything of that? We shall be depressed, dispirited and agonised to receive answers from our own conscience that perhaps we are not yet ready to meet the contingencies of the other world.
This fear will grip us, and it is a purifying fear nevertheless. Such a fear is necessary. Often such fears purify us instantaneously. We rid ourselves of the memories of the past and decide once and for all not to commit an error in the future because of the fright that is immanent which may descend on us the next day, in a few days, in the next moment. An inviolable, ferocious predicament that may come upon us may purify us, cleanse us of our sins due to the repentance that we feel and the decision that we take to be right from this moment onwards. Often they say all sins, mountainous though they may be, can be washed out and discharged, destroyed, burned to ashes by a moment’s decision which is correctly taken: jñānāgniḥ sarvakarmāṇi bhasmasāt kurute tathā (Gita 4.37).
These investigations of the mind, vicharana conducted thus, compels us to set our foot on a right path. I have done many wrongs. I am very sorry indeed, and I shall rectify myself just now at this moment. I shall tune myself to that obedience to that eternal law of God, and thus I surrender myself.
Actually, these decisions of the spirit of the human being which can be even instantaneous, coming flash-like, can be so effective and purifying in their nature that saints, devotees tell us actions piled up in our minds as memories of several lives led earlier will be set at naught by the piercing flame of this repentance and surrender of oneself to God.
The mind, which is usually fat with its egoism of attention to the body continuously throughout its life, the ego which is rendered fat by pampering with the satisfactions of the world of senses, gets thinned out. The Yoga Vasishtha says the ego becomes stout; it puts on weight. It says how the ego becomes fat day by day. The more we are tied to affection to person and things, the stronger becomes our ego and assertive instinct. By acquiring wealth in the world, by becoming more and more rich materially, economically, by holding property, dissatisfaction fattens the ego. By the gaining of the objects of the lower impulses, the ego gets fattened. By these tantalising phenomenal presentations of the joys of life, mistaking the cool shadow under the hood of a serpent for a comfortable place for rest, with such mistaken views the ego becomes fat. The Yoga Vasishtha compares the coolness of Earthly satisfaction to the coolness under the hood of a cobra. Who will take rest under there? Even if we are parched in the hot sun, will we take rest under the hood of a cobra because there is cool shade there? This is the world, and so is the joy of life which will sting us one day or the other, to our own torment and discomfiture, and it is better to guard oneself before such a stage of utter helplessness takes possession of us.
Here the mind is rejuvenated into a new orientation of thinking. Nothing of the world can satisfy us. There was a king called Yayati. The story comes in the Puranas and in the Mahabharata. He was very fond of sensual gratification. He was getting old, but the desire was not waning. He was in a state of grief. “I am old. My sense organs are not strong enough to receive the joys of life.” He went to his children. “Lend me your youth, my dear children. After my satisfactions, I will hand it back.” Nobody was prepared to give his youth. So he cursed them; he uttered some imprecations. One of them, they say, was agreeable to this request. In a mysterious way by tapas, austerity, by a vicarious suffering, as it were, vicarious transference, we may say, the youth of the poor boy was transferred to this old man. He became youthful again, and enjoyed all the pleasures of the senses. But again old age came. When he returned the youth, he was old again. It is said he went to the heavens due to the effect of his sacrifices, and he was not repentant. He was asked: “What have you seen?” “What have I seen? Nothing can satisfy me. There is no end. The pleasures of life have not satisfied me. All the rice and the wheat, all the gold that is on Earth may not be sufficient for the satisfaction of one man.” This is what he said. All the gold and the silver and the wheat and the rice and the sugar and what not, all the things of the world will not be sufficient to satisfy the cravings of even one person in the world. And what about many of us?
Thus one decides in the end, and girds up one’s loins to lead a life that is really recognisable in the higher realms of being into which we have to enter one day or the other. Sadhana is the stage into which we enter after this condition of vicharana. Subeccha, desire for the good, is the first stage. Vicharana, investigation, self-inquiry is the second stage, and the thinning out of the mind, the threadlike condition of the ego which was earlier very fat with these joys as if it is going to break, that tanumanasi condition is one of heightened spiritual practice or sadhana.
What is sadhana? What is spiritual practice? What is it that can save us from these turmoils of the life of sorrow by an inward communion that we establish with the law of God or, we may say, rita or satya, the law of the universe, which is another way of saying that we sacrifice ourselves at the altar of God’s creation. A yajna is performed by our Atman, a yajna which is jnanyajna, a knowledge sacrifice which is a knowledge of the fact that our very existence is inseparable from the creation of the Absolute impels us to surrender ourselves to this all-being. Towards this sense, sadhanas are practiced by japa, by kirtan, by swadhaya, by puruscharana, by dhyana, by tirth yatra, by study of scriptures, by charitable acts, gifts and the like, by holy baths and what not.
When the mind is thinned out, and the ego is famished almost, the light of the Atman reveals itself. The sun, though he is so fiercely brilliant, is clouded completely by thick layers of water particles as if an eclipse has covered the sun. In dark monsoon, even midday looks like night. Such a condition has befallen us. The light that is within us is beclouded by the layers of clouds of unfulfilled longings, desires which have been carried over into our present life from our earlier ones by non-fulfilment, lodged now in our koshas – anandamaya kosha, subtle body, the linga sarira. They are thick, but they have to scud. The clouds have to move by a fierce concentration directed towards this yajna purusha, the omnipresent reality which is the ultimate reason why we have even these apparent joys of life on Earth.
Light flashes when sadhana is intensified, the mind is purified, the intellect is stabilised. What happens? The clouds of desire disperse. Longings for contact with objects of sense break, and affections for things cease. In the light of the fact that our mind, our ego is only a network of longings for external objects, we may very well understand how they break when the desire ceases. As a cloth is made up of threads, the mind is made up of desires. It has no independent existence apart from the threads. So is the mind, so is the ego.
This beclouding mental awareness in terms of objects of satisfaction is not a real hard substantial something. It is a complex interrelated structure, like a fabric; it can be reduced to nothing when the threads of desire are pulled out one by one, and then the clouds disperse and the sun shines. Yoga Vasishtha considers this condition as sattvapatti. Sattvapatti means attainment of a flash of lightning of spiritual awakening. As we see lightning flashes in the sky, we will begin to see the flashes of the spirit before the vision of the mind. And they come and go. That is why they are called flashes. It is not a perpetual radiation like the midday sun, which of course we shall await. But it has not yet come. There are only indications we are moving in the right direction. When we move in the direction of the vast ocean, a cool breeze blows over our face. We are told we are nearing the ocean. When we near the Ganga we feel: “Yes, I am near the Ganga; I feel the coolness of the water.” So symbols will be presented before us in the form of musical intonations, fragrant smells, soft touches and brilliant flashes. This is what yoga scriptures tell us. These are indications that we are advancing in our sadhana. Superphysical satisfactions will present themselves before us, satisfactions which do not necessarily arise by contact of senses with objects, satisfactions which do not require any object at all. An automatic arising of the joy from the Self itself will come in the form of a flash of radiance, sattvapatti.
Then what happens? There is no necessity for the mind at any time whatsoever to long for contact with anything. The thing called the contact ceases because of the inner permeation of the spirit with the very substance of all things. The awakening that has come now educates us into the understanding that our joys are not the products of the contact of mind with objects. They arise from a spontaneous eternal bottom in our own being, and therefore, all longing for contacts ceases at one stroke. Asamsakti is this condition – no contact with anything. It is a condition of non-contact because the spirit has no contact. It is a non-contactual permeating principle, ethereal like the vast space or sky, and it is present in the hearts of all things; and that being the source of joy really, it needs no contact with anything outside for awakening this joy from inside us. Actually, contact of the senses with the objects will then be realised as a malady that has come upon us, a sickness, a sorrow. It is an illness.
What happens afterwards? Glorious descriptions are given to us in the Yoga Vasishtha which will transport us into ecstasy, which will make us dance in joy that such a thing is possible after all. These things which are told to us by these scriptures are unthinkable to our minds – unthinkable, unimaginable, and beyond the comprehension even by the farthest imagination. We shall not be able to live in this world due to the possibility of having such attainments. “What happens then?” says the Yoga Vasishtha. Padartha-bhavana\ is there. A pithy word is used. Matter vanishes; spirit reveals itself. Matter, the so-called hard world of rock, bricks and iron and steel, this world of such hard substances melts into the liquid of the omnipresent light. Matter becomes radiance. We have heard modern science saying that matter is convertible into energy and light. They are inter-convertible. They are inter-convertible because they are made up of the same substance.
The lodgement of the spirit in sleeping matter is awakened to its own self-independence, and it frees itself from these shackles into which it appeared to subject itself, and matter which appeared as a shroud for consciousness becomes an appendage and a glory, a shakti of the purusha, a light of the sun which is no more a shroud for the sun. So the whole world lifts the veil that it was putting on its face to delude us, to make us feel that it is something different from what really is. That veil which the world was putting on to deceive us, distract us and subdue us, that veil the world lifts, and the glory of eternity in this temporal world is revealed before the all-seeing eye of the spirit immanent. The world vanishes into the Supreme Being. Padartha-bhavana – no world, no object is there anymore, or rather, in another sense, it is the recognition of the true padartha, padartha-bhavana. The real substance is discovered by a direct entry and insight into its reality.
The culmination of this process is the melting down of our very existence in this vast sea of eternity. This is the state of moksha, turiya. Towards this great goal we are moving with our little foibles here, with our little deeds, with our ups and downs, with our little sadhanas and prayers. With our little humble efforts in life we are gradually trekking towards this Might of all mights, the Almighty, the glorious radiance of immortal nectar which is awake in us. The very thought of that glorious attainment is possible for us. After all, it is possible for us. If not today, then tomorrow it is possible. “I shall have it and it has to be had!” With this conviction that it must be had and it is possible and practicable, we shall attain it.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Kathopanishad: A Wondrous Epic of the Spirit
The Kathopanishad: A Wondrous Epic of the Spirit Humanity as Yajna or Sacrifice for Perfection by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Friday 21 February 2014 16:07
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(Spoken on June 19, 1972)
The search for truth is an arduous task demanding of us the spirit of real adventure. We have records of such instances where adventurous spirits had to encounter forces which were most unexpected in their search and quest for the unknown. A remarkable example given to us through the Upanishads is the heroic march of that lad called Nachiketas to that unknown mystery which began to work within him in a subtle, inexpressible manner.
In that mystical tale of the Kathopanishad we are given a history of the human spirit, which passes through various stages of suffering, test and experience. It is not all milk and honey that we see before our eyes when we walk the path of the spirit. That it is hardship and also accompanied with a sense of mystery and awe is exemplified by Nachiketas in the philosophical epic that we have in the Upanishad.
There are three or four stages of approach or ascent that we are given in this Upanishad, the stages by which human nature evolves towards its destination. We do not suddenly grapple with reality. We seem to be moving towards it, but the hurdles on the way are umpteen in number. They cannot be counted. The problems and the difficulties, the oppositions that come on the way, differ from person to person, from individual to individual in accordance with the intensity of the aspiration, as also the structural pattern of the individuality of the person concerned. It is like a disease, like a fever which varies from person to person. The character, the quality, and the mode of operation are all different in the various temperaments of human nature.
We are told at the outset that Nachiketas was obliged to confront a mysterious, terrific power whom we mythologically know in India as Lord Yama, the Lord of Death. He was forced to encounter this Lord, and in this story of Nachiketas’ approach to Yama, we are told in the Upanishad that when the lad approached the gateways of the palace of Yama, the Lord was absent. He was not to be seen for three days. Three days and three nights did Nachiketas pass, without even water, waiting for the coming of the Master whom he had to meet, and from whom he had to receive boons of various kinds.
These three days mentioned in the Upanishad are also of great mystical significance. Nachiketas stands for the human spirit, as Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita stands for mankind in its completeness. The human spirit is in search of the Supreme Spirit, and in this quest there is a very peculiar encounter which seems to be unavoidable. The Lord of Death is to be faced before we come face to face with the Spirit Supreme. In this quest of the spirit it is possible to overestimate oneself and underestimate the powers of nature. It is the powers of nature that go by the name of death. They appear to be ferocious powers that work in dissonance with this structure of our personality, so that we cannot face them without a sense of dread. They can simply topple the sun and break the stars. The natural forces have to be released, and man’s spirit seems to be a small spark that is ready to be extinguished before the mighty tempest that nature can blow over it.
Death is the greatest fear that we have before us. Among all the dreads in nature, death is the greatest. The highest punishment is hanging. We cannot conceive of anything worse than that. And the fear that is attended with the concept of death is also associated with the notion of self-extinction. The fear of death is the same as the fear of self-extinction, the abolition of oneself, the complete negation of one’s personality. The cessation of one’s being is what is implied in death.
The father of Nachiketas is supposed to have cursed the boy: “Go to death. The devil be with you!” Some such imprecation was cast upon the lad in a moment of fury by the father, as we are told in the Upanishad. Sometimes we tell people, “Go to hell!” Now, those words were literally taken by Nachiketas. Or, we may interpret the passage of the Upanishad as meaning that Nachiketas actually died. The words of sages have tremendous power. Curses have force, and maybe the lad died because of the curse of the father, which was engendered by anger due to an impertinent remark made by the boy on his observation of an erroneous sacrifice performed in the name of a yajna meant to ensure salvation to the soul.
Now, those three days passed by the spirit of Nachiketas before the palace of Yama have a tremendous significance on the path of the spirit. They are not four days or seven days, but only three days, and Yama is absent for three days. The starvation of the spirit is implied here as, for example, we have a famous saying of Christ given to us in the New Testament: “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” It is not poverty of economic existence, but poverty of the spirit; starvation and fasting of the spirit in its threefold entanglement is what is meant by Nachiketas’ three days of fasting.
We are involved in a threefold manner in this universal concatenation of forces. The threefold involvement is physical, astral and causal. Psychologists know that our bodily personality is not our entire personality. What experiences we pass through bodily or physically in this world of nature is not the entirety of our experience. We are a deeper psychological unit than the bodily experience can reveal to us. We have an astral or a subtle personality which works as the force or the incentive power behind the movements of the limbs of the body. So the bodily or physical austerity that we are likely to perform in the name of ritualistic observances in the name of religion, etc., is one part of the spiritual discipline, no doubt, but it is not the whole of the discipline.
The first day’s fast can be compared to the discipline of the physical nature. The physical nature indeed is to be disciplined, but that is not all, because the physical body is like a cart that is pulled by bulls, energies which are supplied by forces that are inside us. The senses are not the organs of perception. The eyeball, the eardrum, the palate, the nostril, these are not the senses. They are the outer instruments or the mechanisms which are utilised by powers that are internal. So the discipline of the personality has to imply and involve not merely the mustering in the physical forces of the body, but also the bringing together or focusing of the internal nature within us, which is the true man. The true individual is within, and what we see outside is only a contour; it is only a map drawn of the hidden significance which is the mark of our individuality.
The subtle body is called the linga sharira. ‘Linga’ means a mark or a symbol. It is an insignia of what we really are. It gives an idea of our nature. By looking at the face or the bodily structure of a person, we cannot understand the person so beautifully as by the analysis of the internal nature, the linga sharira, the insignia of individuality or personality.
The mind is the index of our nature, as they say, while the mind is the ruler of the subtle body. It is the king in this realm of the astral personality of ours. Unless that is disciplined, fasted down, the body, poor thing, is nowhere. The bodily discipline assumes a significance only when the subtle body, the real force within the physical body, is disciplined. That is the second day’s fast. But that alone will not do. We are much more than what our mind is. This is what ordinary psychology cannot detect, that we are more than what the mind is. Psychology is merely a study of behaviour of the mind, but the mind is not the entire human individuality, as Indian psychology will tell us. While the bodily personality is only an outer crust of our real nature, even the mental personality, the subtle body within us, is not the whole of our human individuality. There is a causal basis of our being which is the repository of forces, the reservoir of energies wherein we can find the seed latently present of all our future incarnations. All the rebirths that we have to undergo in our future lives have their potent seeds in what we call our causal personality, which is invisible to us. We do not see our mind. We see only the bodily behaviour, but by reflection, by inference, by contemplation, we can get an idea of what our mind is. As to our causal nature, we have absolutely no idea.
Unfortunately for us, it is the causal personality that is the real personality. The tree of samsara has its roots in the causal body. It is the root. As long as the root is there, the tree will survive even if the branches are cut off. The mind and the body are only the ramifications of this root of the individuality that is the causal body. The third day’s fast of Nachiketas is the drying up of the root itself, and then the spirit reveals itself before the seeking aspiration in all its might and mane.
But here we may also bring to our mind the three processes of sadhana prescribed by the ancients: karma, upasana and jnana. What I refer to as the fasting of the physical, the mental and the causal nature is equivalent in many respects to the sadhana that we perform through action, through worship or devotion, and through knowledge. These are the three stages of the ascent of the spirit by which the whole personality or individuality is disciplined, focused and concentrated on the knowledge or wisdom that is to be imparted by the Master or the Guru. It is only when this discipline is complete that we are in a position to receive the initiation from the Guru; otherwise, initiation has no meaning. Just as when the electrical installations within a house are complete the power connection is given from the powerhouse – and the connection cannot function when the electrical installation is not complete – so, in some respects, we may say that unless our personality is made ready to receive the inflow of the shakti or the divine power that is injected by the Guru through the process of initiation, there would be no question of the possibility of higher contemplation or meditation.
Meditation is nothing but the implementation of the knowledge that is received at the time of initiation from the Guru. Initiation is only a single act that is performed by the Guru, perhaps in a single minute. It is like striking a match, but we have to manufacture the match. We cannot strike a straw or a bamboo stick because it will not give a spark of fire. The preparation of the matchstick takes all the time, while the striking takes only a second. So is this striking of the match, we may say, which is the initiation that is received by the Guru. This initiation process is a tremendous encounter, though it may be for a short period. This encounter came before this master spirit Nachiketas also. After three days’ discipline of fasting, Yama appeared before Nachiketas.
“My dear child, you have been fasting for three days. I am very sorry. What do you want from me?” asked Lord Yama.
Then we have the real Upanishad describing the history of the march of the spirit to its destination.
What does the lad say? What does the spirit speak? What does Nachiketas beg of Yama? He asks first of all that he may be set in harmony with the law that operates in the world. “May my father not be angry with me, and may he recognise me when I go back.”
This is again a mystical boon which speaks of the desire of the spirit to be in harmony with the different levels of manifestation. The realisation of the Supreme Spirit is at once the realisation of harmony in all the levels of manifestation. Spirit is nothing but harmony, and when the Spirit is realised, there is at once, instantaneously, a realisation of harmony in every realm of manifestation of reality. So there is, first of all, a mystical hint given to us through the first boon which Nachiketas asked for from Yama. “May I be set in harmony with my father, with society, with the world.” Everything is implied. With the universe that is astronomically present before us, the physical universe in its totality may also be implied here in this asking of the first boon, which is physically significant; and that is granted. “May it be so,” said Lord Yama.
Nachiketas is wonderfully set in tune with all human society, people recognise him as a wonderful person, and his father will recognise and receive him with delight and satisfaction when he goes back, forgetting all enmity. That is all wonderful. People will respect him and honour him in this world. That is good so far as it goes, but that is not all.
“What is the second thing? What else do you want, my child?” asked Lord Yama.
“Then, my Lord, may I be initiated into the mysteries of the celestial fire,” said Nachiketas.
Now, this language used in the Upanishads is always mystical, eluding, and its significance is difficult to grasp. The mystical fire is really the celestial knowledge of the heavens which is imparted to Nachiketas by Yama, and this celestial fire is also described in one or two passages of the Kathopanishad itself. It is the Vaishvanara, or the cosmic fire, whose mystery is given to Nachiketas. Lokādim agniṃ (Katha 1.1.15), says Yama. This is not the ordinary fire with which we cook our dinner. It is the fire which burns in the hearts of all beings, and it is the origin of all things.
Lord Yama says, “Into the mysteries of this universal fire, Vaishvanara, whom the Vedanta speaks of as Hiranyagarbha or the creative force, Sutratma, into the mystery of this Universal Being I hereby initiate you, Nachiketas. You shall glory in this universe as long as this universe lasts; immortal shall be your fame, everything shall be your possession, you shall lack nothing, you shall neither sweat nor sorrow, and neither shall you die. You shall be magnificently ruling over the realm of the cosmos as long as the cosmos lasts. Are you happy? Are you satisfied? What else do you want? The whole world is with you, society is your friend, the world is in harmony with you, and the cosmic mystery is revealed to you.”
“No,” said Nachiketas. “There is one thing more. Will you tell me that?”
“What is that?” asked Lord Yama.
“Some people say that after one is absorbed into the Beyond, one ceases to exist. Others say that when there is this absorption into the Beyond, one does exist. Does one exist, or does one not exist when there is this self-absorption into the Beyond of beyonds?”
This is also a very difficult terminology used in the Upanishads: the Beyond. And it is not merely the Beyond; it is beyond the Beyond. “When one is absorbed into that, does one exist or does one not exist?” is the question of Nachiketas.
“Do not ask this question,” said Yama. “Keep quiet. I shall give you everything, other than this. Why do you ask this question – a question which was put by the gods, and to which question an answer has not been given up to this time. Devair atrāpi vicikitsitam purā, na hi suvijñeyam, aṇur eṣa dharmaḥ. (Katha 1.1.21): “Subtle is this mystery, Nachiketas. The gods themselves do not understand it. Ask not this question. Have glory in this world again. I shall give you the longest life, the happiest life possible, and the healthiest life with all the riches conceivable. Why do you ask this question? Ask not this, because this question has never been answered, and shall never be answered. Do not be persistent, O Nachiketas.”
But Nachiketas is equally persistent. “Ah, you want to tempt me with all this wealth and the riches of the world, and a long and healthy life. Take it back. I shall be happy if these wondrous boons that you have granted me are received back by you. Śvo-bhāvā martyasya yad antakaitat sarvendriyāṇām jarayanti tejaḥ (Katha 1.1.26): Lord, you give me satisfaction of the senses? Śvo-bhāvā: They are capable of lasting only until tomorrow. How long will these satisfactions of the world last? Indriyāṇām jarayanti tejaḥ: What are these experiences of delight and satisfaction in this world but forces which wear out the senses? After some time you cannot see, you cannot hear, you cannot touch, you cannot smell, you cannot taste. All the energy has been worn out completely by the friction of the senses with the objects. What is all this long life that you are giving me in this eternity of time? What is long life? What is even the longest life?”
Such is the feeling of Nachiketas. Nachiketas shall not be satisfied with any other thing than this question: What happens to one when he is absorbed into the Beyond? Does one exist or does one not exist?
Well, the best Guru has found the best disciple. It is impossible to evade the question any more. Pointedly Nachiketas presses forward this question. “I shall not be satisfied with any other thing than the answer to this question that I put before you: What happens to the soul when it is absorbed?”
Now, this is, concisely speaking, the initial difficulties which we have to face when we tread the path of the Spirit. We are not to be given this treasure so easily as we imagine. It is literally searching for the golden apple in the garden of Hesperides. It is not easily gotten, and we have to encounter death on the way. Yama comes before us. Yama’s facing Nachiketas is nothing but death facing us and threatening us on the way of the Spirit. “You ask for the Spirit? I shall devour you before you ask for it.”
This happened to all the saints and sages. Nachiketas is only a classical example before us in the Upanishad. We have records even in the case of Buddha. Illumination did not come to him so easily. The first thing was temptation, and then came opposition. Temptation is what is offered. Opposition is death coming over our head, like a Damocles sword hanging over us, and if we are not weaned away from this quest by the wondrous temptations that are offered before us, we shall be punished with death. What shall we do then? The rod of Yama is on our head.
Buddha was tempted in this manner. You can read for your satisfaction and intellectual delight the sixth chapter of Edwin Arnold’s Light of Asia, where Buddha’s experiences on the night prior to the dawn of illumination are beautifully described. All the celestial beauties and delicacies were offered to Buddha – not mortal beauties, but celestial beauties. He had to shun them as mara, and when he was not to be distracted by these temptations, these offerings of magnificences of the earth, threats came, a thunderbolt came, and a sword came. “Do you know what we shall do to you? We shall pound you, crush you, cut you to pieces.” And these threats also are not easy to face. We may read it beautifully in literature, but when the things actually come on us, they will come like a storm. We shall be taken unaware, and we do not know where we are. We shall be thrown to the winds. It will look as if the very ground on which we stand is cracking under our feet.
Here it is that the world seems to desert us completely. The earth and the glories of heaven do not seem to be of any use to us when we are face to face with the terror of nature. It looks as if everything is against us; there is not one single friend anywhere in this world. Such situations will arise, and there, who will help us? The power of discrimination which we have been nurturing for so long through the threefold discipline which we have practised earlier, and the pura-punya, the meritorious deeds that we have performed in our previous life will help us. Dharmo rakṣati rakṣitaḥ (Manusmriti): Our righteous acts and righteous deeds, our righteous thoughts and feelings of previous lives will come and take possession of us, and lead us with a powerful ray of light. No human being will be of any help here. Nothing that is mortal, nothing that is earthly will be of any assistance. We will be alone, naked before Truth, as it were, and in this storm of natural forces we shall be helpless victims. If we can bear this test, the last test of the spirit in its quest for Reality, well, then we are really blessed, thrice blessed.
Nachiketas had to pass through all these stages of severe test, which is all given only in a few verses in the Kathopanishad. It does not mean that the experiences of Nachiketas were so simple as we find them described in the few verses there. They must have been very terrific for him, as they were for Buddha. It is very awful indeed even to think and read about them, what to experience. But these are the experiences that everyone has to pass through – you, I, and everyone. Not one of us is exempted. Everyone has to pass through the same ruts, the same path, the same discipline, the same ordeal of fire, which cannot be escaped. There is no shortcut to Reality. It is all the same beaten track over which people have trodden years and years back, and in future also they shall tread it, and we too presently have to tread the same path. Well, this is the preliminary ground that is laid before the spirit that is now to receive the higher wisdom of the soul’s absorption into the Beyond.
What is this Beyond? Yama does not give a direct answer; he evades the answer, though it looks that he was giving the answer. Instead of giving the answer directly, he says something else. What does he say? The very first thing that Yama speaks is śreyaś ca preyaś ca manuṣyam etas tau samparītya vivinakti dhīraḥ (Katha 1.2.1): “Nachiketas, two things will come to every person – every person, without exception. The good as well as the pleasant, both will come. I have offered the pleasant before you, and you have rejected it. I am happy. I have a true disciple before me. All the best conceivable pleasantries in the universe I have offered to you. You said, ‘I do not want them.’ I am really glad, Nachiketas. Those persons who come face to face with these two forces, the pleasant and the good, have to choose between the two. Do you want the pleasant or the good? The good is not necessarily the pleasant; the pleasant is not necessarily the good. The sreyas is the good, the preyas is the pleasant. Now, what is it that you really want?”
Mostly we would ask for the pleasant, the satisfying, the delightful, the pleasing, and the beautiful. Who would ask for the bitter? The cup of death is bitter, but that is an ordeal that we cannot escape. Nobody escaped it. If we read the lives of saints and sages, we will find that it was at the point of death that they were lifted to the realm of illumination. Everything had to leave them, and they were completely disillusioned of the values and worth of the visible world and senses. Such is the good, which is bitter in the beginning but pleasant afterwards. Bitter is the cup of the spirit and the cup of death. The pleasant is the cup of sensual satisfaction, but bitter is the consequence. Which do we want? Do we want an early satisfaction and a grovelling suffering later on, or would we like to pass through the hardship of training now and then enjoy the delights of the spiritual realisation later on?
The good is different from the pleasant. Now, we mix up the two and mistake the pleasant for the good, and the good for the pleasant. The pleasant is nothing but the kama, or the desire, of the mind. What happens to those people who desire objects of the senses? In the Mundaka Upanishad we have the answer, or perhaps in the Kathopanishad itself we are given the very same answer: kāmān yah kāmayate manyamānaḥ sa kāmabhir jāyate tatra tatra, paryāpta-kāmasya kṛtāmanas tu ihaiva sarve pravilīyanti kāmāḥ (Mundaka 3.2.2). Here is the essence of spiritual life in this single verse. Kāmān yah kāmayate manyamānaḥ sa kāmabhir jāyate tatra tatra: In accordance with the structural pattern of your desire, you will be reborn in such and such a place. There is no hope of freedom for that soul which desires or longs for objects of the senses.
What is rebirth? It is nothing but the materialisation of the spirit in the form of the body in a particular locality of space for the sake of the satisfactions that have been frustrated or defeated in an earlier incarnation. Nobody punishes us. Our own desires punish us. Desires have to be fulfilled. Every desire has to be fulfilled. It will not leave us. It cannot go unfulfilled because a desire is a force. It is an energy that is manifest outside for the sake of materialisation, and if before the materialisation of the force of desires the body is shed on account of the exhaustion of prarabdha karma, what happens? That force of desire which had not been materialised will clamour for satisfaction and drag the soul to those conditions or circumstances where alone it can materialise the desire, and so there is rebirth. It can be in any realm, but it will be that particular locality or circumstance where alone these unfulfilled desires would be fulfilled. Kāmān yah kāmayate manyamānaḥ sa kāmabhir jāyate tatra tatra.
Paryāpta-kāmasya kṛtāmanas tu: If there is no desire, what will happen? If we want nothing, then what is rebirth? Rebirth is only the materialisation of desire. If there is no necessity for the materialisation of desire on account of the absence of desire itself, there is no rebirth. Paryāpta-kāmasya kṛtāmanas tu. Kritatma is one who has fulfilled himself completely on account of the cessation of desire for objects of the senses. Ihaiva sarve pravilīyanti kāmāḥ: Desires melt here itself like camphor that is burnt without any residue. There is a merger of the soul here itself into the spirit. There is no travelling or movement from place to place. The travelling in the realms or the lokas is due to the presence of desire in the mind. When the desires are absent, the soul has no cause to move from place to place in space.
So this is the fate of those who entertain desires, pursue the pleasant, or the preyas. But those who pursue sreyas, or the good, what happens to them? They unite themselves with Reality in every spec of space. It is not a uniting of oneself with any particular object. They spontaneously get united with every atom of space.
In the concluding portion of the Mundaka Upanishad, we have a description of the salvation of the soul. Mysteriously enough, the answers given by Yama to Nachiketas are not direct. They are all indirect answers, only giving a hint to what is intended behind the answers. The whole of the Kathopanishad is a vast history of the evolution of the spirit from stage to stage. Gradually the mind of Nachiketas is led from the lower stage to the higher stage – from the physical to the astral, from the cosmic fire Vaishvanara, and to the Atman itself, whose Self-absorption is questioned by Nachiketas. The entire answer is not to be seen in the Kathopanishad. We have to find this answer in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, where Yajnavalkya speaks to his consort Maitreyi. The question of what ultimately happens to the soul is not fully answered in the Kathopanishad, but the answer is given in the Brihadaranyaka. That is a different subject. We shall not touch it just now.
But Yama gives a tentative answer as to what happens to the soul when it enters samparaya. The word samparaya is used in the Kathopanishad, which means destruction, death, or the Beyond – which means to say, that which is on the other side of this world. After death, what happens to the soul is the literal interpretation or meaning of the question of Nachiketas. Well, this is not really the implied meaning of the question because Nachiketas would not have been so ignorant as to put this question as to what happens to the soul after death. It will be reborn, it is already told. The question was something else. “The Ultimate Beyond” is the word used there. When that is reached by the soul, what happens? Or, to put plainly, when the individual spirit, or the spark of divinity within us, unites itself with the Absolute Spirit, what happens to us? What do we experience? What do we feel?
To this again, no answer comes forth from Yama, but Yajnavalkya gives the answer. Towards that end we are led by Yama by another sort of discipline, which we have to bring to our memory so that we may not be too enthusiastic in any sort of bubbling emotion, as if we are very near Reality. We are far from it, because another severe discipline is prescribed towards the end of the Kathopanishad. That is, a definition of yoga is given there because yoga is supposed to be the path to the Spirit, the way to the Absolute. But what is yoga? Concisely in one verse it is described. Tām yogam iti manyante sthirām indriya-dhāraṇām, apramattas tadā bhavati, yogo hi prabhavāpyayau (Katha 2.3.11).
What is yoga? Tām yogam iti manyante sthirām indriya-dhāraṇām: The fixing of the powers of the senses is called yoga, according to Yama. Yoga is the focusing of the attention of the mind through a discipline of the senses, a conservation of the energy of the senses, and the mustering in of the powers of the senses so that they are fixed on one spot: tām yogam iti manyante. Sthirām indriya-dhāraṇām: The indriyas, or the powers of the senses, as I mentioned, are not the organs of perception. The indriyas meant here are not the eyes or the ears, etc., but the powers behind the action or function of seeing, hearing, etc. These energies have to be concentrated – pratyahara, as we usually call it in yoga. This has to be practised. This is called yoga: sthirām indriya-dhāraṇām.
But this is not a state in which we can remain for a long time: apramattas tadā bhavati, yogo hi prabhavāpyayau. This state of concentration, which is tentatively, temporarily gained by a focusing of the energies of the senses, comes and goes: yogo hi prabhavāpyayau. It has a beginning, and it has an end. Today we may be in a good state of concentration, and tomorrow we may not be in that state. Therefore, a caution is given: apramattas tadā bhavati. In the Sanat-Sujata of the Mahabharata, pramada is described. Pramada is heedlessness, carelessness. Carelessness is veritable death, says Sanatkumara to Dhritarashtra in the Udyoga Parva of the Mahabharata, so here the very same point is brought in by Yama in the Kathopanishad when he says apramattas tadā bhavati: Do not be heedless. If we are careless and go by the notion that we have attained to yoga merely because we were concentrated yesterday for a few minutes, we will be done for. Be careful. It will not last long, even for a few minutes. It will slip out of our hand.
And also the definition is elaborated further in another mantra of the very same Upanishad: yadā pañcāvatiṣṭhante jñānāni manasā saha, buddhiś ca na viceṣṭati, tām āhuḥ paramāṃ gatim (Katha 2.3.10). Pañcāvatiṣṭhante: pancha is the fivefold energy of the senses – the energy of perception through the eyes, the energy of hearing, of tasting, of smelling, of touching. When all these forces are brought together into a single point of focus, what happens? There is conservation of energy. Yadā pañcāvatiṣṭhante jñānāni. Jnanani means jnana-indriyani. Manasā saha: when the indriyas come together with the mind, or rather, when the rays of the mind are drawn back and there is a doubling of the energy of the mind. The mind is weak on account of the movement of force through the senses. The mind gets strengthened on account of the withdrawing of the energy of the mind that usually gets spilt out through perception through the senses: yadā pañcāvatiṣṭhante jñānāni manasā saha. Not merely that, buddhiś ca na viceṣṭati: when the intellect does not oscillate; tām āhuḥ paramāṃ gatim: when that state is attained, you have reached the Supreme State. But we know the highest condition is the non-oscillation of the understanding or the intellect. The intellect oscillates whenever there is the function of judgment or decision.
Judgment is a logical process of dovetailing a predicate with a subject. Whenever we make a statement, give an opinion or pass a judgment, what happens is we connect the subject to the predicate. There is always a separation of two units, and then an artificial bringing together of these two units. We assume a difference between the subject and the predicate, and then try to bring the two together in logical judgment. So this is a defect of the process of ratiocination.
Hence, the intellect is not supposed to be independently a source of wisdom of the spirit. Naiṣā tarkeṇa matir āpaneyā (Katha 1.2.9), says the Kathaopanishad itself. By logical argumentation, this Spirit is not to be gained because logic has its defect. The initial flaw is having to separate two units of a judgment and then having to bring them together. We break the legs, and then bring them together. This is the defect of the logic and ratiocinating process, but the intellect has not to perform these functions. It has to stand by itself as a single lamp, merely illumining but not associating itself with the activities of the senses or the mind. The senses, the mind and the intellect have to come together and form a single energy. That is the Supreme State – tām āhuḥ paramāṃ gatim.
Also, we are told simultaneously there: yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye’sya hṛdi śritāḥ, atha martyo’mṛto bhavatyatra brahma samaśnute (Katha 2.3.14). These are all small verses giving a wealth of meaning, and perhaps the entire system of yoga is pressed into the few words of the verses. Yadā sarve pramucyante kāmā ye’sya hṛdi śritāḥ: When all the desires are liberated from the heart, what happens? Atha brahma samaśnute: The mortal becomes immortal here itself. Not tatra, but atha – not far off in a distant place, tomorrow or afterwards, after death, but now. Eternity is a here and a now. It is not an after, and it is not a tomorrow. It has no space, it has no time; therefore, it is just here: atha brahma samaśnute.
Now, with such elaborate descriptions of the path of the Spirit, Yama gives a sort of answer to the ultimate question: What happens to the soul when it is absorbed into the Absolute? This was the question of Nachiketas. We are led from the points mentioned in the Kathopanishad to the higher reaches given to us in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, which are the crowning glory of culture, we may say, in one sense. The heights which the mind of Yajnavalkya reached are the Himalayas of the spirit, we may say. There is nothing higher than that. No human mind can conceive anything loftier than what Yajnavalkya conceived, and in a tumultuous emotion of having heard something shocking, Maitreyi queries Yajnavalkya. “What are you saying, my lord?”
There is loss of personality when the Absolute is realised. This is hinted at by Yajnavalkya after a long discourse with Maitreyi. What is meant by loss of personality? Is it a loss or a gain? We are not after losses. We are only after gains. Nobody wants to lose what one possesses. But this is a loss of what obstructs the vision of the Spirit. It is something like losing a fever or a cancer in the body. We are not a loser really; we are only a gainer. If a tumour is lost, we do not regard ourselves as losers, really speaking. We are only gaining. Health is gained but illness is lost.
But what does this mean? What is actually the experience? Does one see anything there, or does one not see anything there? “If one sees anything there, what does one see there?” was the question of Maitreyi. Yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati, tad itara itaram paśyati, yatra tv asya sarvam ātmāivābhῡt, tat kena kam paśyet, yenedam sarvaṁ vijānāti, taṁ kena vijānīyāt (Brihad. 2.4.14). Terrifying and bewildering is the answer of Yajnavalkya to Maitreyi. What is one to see there? What does one expect to see there in that ocean of the spirit? Where one has something in front of oneself, one does necessarily see something, but where one has only oneself in front of oneself, what does one see? Does one not see anything there?
For that, the answer is given by Yajnavalkya again in his instruction to Janaka in another context altogether. It is not that one does not see there, but one does not see as one usually sees. Yad vai tan na paśyati, paśyan vai tan na paśyati (Brihad. 4.3.23): He sees, and yet does not see. He sees, and yet it is not an actual seeing through the senses. Why do we say that he sees, and yet does not see? Na hi draṣṭur dṛṣṭer viparilopo vidyate, avināśitvāt; na tu tad dvitīyam asti, tato’nyad vibhaktam yat paśyet: The seer has become one with the seen there. So what does one really see there? We cannot say that one does not see anything there, because the object of seeing is already there. Everything that is to be seen is there; necessarily, therefore, there is seeing. But a mysterious phenomenon has taken place. That which is to be seen has become a part of seeing itself. Then what does one really see? Does one see, or does one not see? Yes, one sees, because all the objects of perception are there intact. And yet one does not see in another sense because that which is to be seen or cognised has become part of the cogniser himself.
These are the crowning answers of Yajnavalkya as if to give a satisfying conclusion to what Yama in the Kathopanishad began in answer to the question of Nachiketas. We pass from stage to stage, from one encounter to another. The path of the spirit is a path of encounter, of facing problems and problems, vistas and vistas, newer and newer visions, and higher and higher integrations of oneself. The integration becomes complete when the object which is to be cognised becomes a part of the cogniser himself. That is the pinnacle of integration.
But the lower integrations are of a different nature altogether. The lesser integration is where we see a harmony around us. It is not actually unity of the object of perception with the perceiving process, which is the last thing to be experienced, but only a harmony or a collaboration of forces. But in the lower stage, still we see a difference of things as if there is nothing connected in this world. Everything is thrown in different places by an invisible connecting link of space, time and cause.
But for gravitation, space, time and cause, etc., there would not be even a conceptual unity or harmony among things. We cannot see a physical unity of things. We have only an imaginary unity, such as what we call social unity, international unity, family unity, etc., which is really not there. It can be broken any moment because it is only a conceptual relationship that has been established by the function of the mind of people. But higher than that is actual physical merging of forces, a creative entering of forces into themselves so that there is an awakening of oneself to the fact that harmony is not merely conceptual or notional as we have in the physical world, but it is creative existence. It really is there. There is a real collaboration of forces. One is connected with the other as threads in a cloth, we may say. Physically we can see the interconnection of threads in a cloth. They are not merely notionally connected, but really and physically are related to one another. However, the highest integration is where the threads themselves get lifted to an awareness of there not being any kind of warp or woof, but a single indeterminate mass of existence, a featureless transparency of Spirit.
Towards that we have to move through these arduous processes of ordeal – the discipline of the body, the discipline of the mind, the psychological organs, and finally the overstepping of the boundaries set before us by the causal body itself, which I said are represented by the three days of fasting by Nachiketas. So from the individual body there is the rise of consciousness to the astral level, from the astral level the consciousness rises to the causal level, and from the causal level the consciousness rises to the cosmic intellectual level, the Mahatattva, as it is mentioned in the Kathopanishad. From the cosmic intellectual level we rise to the cosmic causal level. This is what the Vedanta calls as Ishvara. And from the cosmic causal level, we rise to the Absolute.
All these stages are described in a scattered manner in the Kathopanishad itself, so that we may safely say that the Kathopanishad is a wondrous epic of the spirit before us, a beautiful scripture which I would like every one of you to study with deep concentration.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
Humanity as Yajna or Sacrifice for Perfection
Humanity as Yajna or Sacrifice for Perfection by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Thursday 20 February 2014 17:56
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I am supposed to be here to introduce to you, under the auspices of ‘The Yoga Society’ of this Academy, a way of the assessment of values, which we may regard as a little removed from the usual manner of the human outlook of life, a system of living whose physical expression is the Yoga-Asanas.
We are here to bestow a little thought upon the impact that Yoga can have on human life as a whole and the relevance it has to the objectives of human existence. There is a need for a reorientation of the assessment of values, at least from the point of view of Yoga, and this necessity for re-orientation arises on account of the very nature of Yoga itself. Literally, or grammatically, Yoga means ‘Union’. The definition or the explanation of the word does not go beyond this simple implication, ‘Union is Yoga’. But union with what? And who is to be united, with what? This is not easily explained, and it is left to us to go into the depth of the suggestiveness of this term, ‘Yoga’.
The objectives of life are also the purposes of life. Our culture regards the central aims of existence as the Arthas, or the Purusharthas, to be pursued by every human being. We live in the world for a purpose, and the activities of life are nothing but implementations of various methods for the fulfilment of the objectives of human life. We are after the fructification of our ideas and the fulfilment of our desires. The object is counterposed with the subject. The object, in its general perspective, is the whole world before us. We are facing the world, in front of us, every day, as an object of our consciousness. Matter is there staring at Spirit, and the Spirit within us envisages the movement and the structure of Matter, which is the world in front of us. Human activity or endeavour, in all its phases, may be said to be an act of Consciousness, struggling to establish an adjustment of itself with the structural patterns of Matter. We are daily trying to adapt ourselves to circumstances, physically, socially, politically and in all the fields or vocations of life. The adjustment of Consciousness is the principal motive, the guiding factor behind the various vocations of life in general. This is the Artha which we speak of in philosophical language – the purpose of existence. We pursue the objective of life and try to make it a part and parcel of our experience. And experience is nothing but the union of the object with the subject. The desire of the Spirit or Consciousness gets fulfilled, when it is united with its object, and a desire is nothing but the movement of Consciousness in the direction of the object. The impulsion of Consciousness towards the object that it has set before itself is the aspiration, the longing, the desire; the craving, whatever you may call it. The intention behind this desire is the cessation of the desire itself, and we are supposed to be happy, when the desire is fulfilled. We are in a state of anguish when the desire is not fulfilled. The unhappiness that follows from the propulsion of a desire from our Consciousness can be explained psychologically as a result of a self-aberration of Consciousness itself. We go out of ourselves in the act of desiring an object. I move away from myself, as it were, in the direction of something other than myself, and this is what we mean by desiring anything. The subject alienates itself into the object. The Seer moves towards the Seen. I try to behold myself in something other than my own self, with the basic intention or aspiration to come in union with that which is the so-called object of desire.
There is something interesting about all this movement of Consciousness in the direction of the object. It is not easy to understand why this movement takes place at all. Why should we desire anything, is a simple question that we can pose for ourselves. Why is it that we should be perpetually asking for one thing or the other? How is it that we never remain contented with what we have or what we are? This is a question which takes us beyond the empirical structure or feature of human society. A mere perception of the existent conditions of life will not enable us to give an answer to this question. The phenomena of ordinary human life cannot provide an answer. This question arises from a realm of values which transcends the perceptional ken of our sense-organs. The world that we perceive is the object of our senses. Whatever the senses can cognise or perceive, is the world around us. But the senses are only the external instruments of this propelling force, the desire of Consciousness. There is something deeper and more implicit behind the activities of the senses, which is the reason behind these activities themselves. This basic or fundamental urge, being precedent to the activities of the senses, cannot be explained by the senses themselves. Why we should ask for anything, is a question that the senses cannot answer: well, our mind or the reason may be able to answer. Not so, is the position. Even our reason is incapable of delving into the depths of this mystery. Because, unfortunately, our mind, and even the so-called reason, seems to be working like a handmaid of the senses and doing merely the function of collecting the evidences given by the senses sifting them into a pattern and arranging them in some sort of an order, passing a judgment on the nature of the various reports received through the senses. Though there is a coordinating and synthesising activity exercised by the reason subsequent to the reports given by the senses, the quality of the judgment does not much differ. It does not mean that our reason gives a superior judgment in respect of the world of perception, quite different in every way from what the senses themselves are able to perceive. The mind and the reason seem merely to agree with the basic structure of the evaluation of values envisaged by the senses.
We cannot, therefore, understand what is happening to us by the exercise of the phenomenal reason. We are conditioned by the factors which are at the back of the operation of the reason itself. I had occasion, sometimes back, when I had visited this Academy in this very context, to speak on the other aspects of the subject: how the mind is conditioned by the structure of the universe itself. The universe that is perceived by the mind, the reason and the senses, seems to be weighing heavy upon the mind and the reason in such a manner that the mind cannot think independently of the way in which the world is made. The phenomenal character of the world impinges upon the mind in such a manner that the mind can think only phenomenally. The so-called noumenal implications behind the phenomenal perceptions remain untouched by the exercise of the phenomenal reason. We think in terms of the laws that operate in the physical universe so that we are compelled to be satisfied with being physical entities. But you know very well, physical satisfactions are not real satisfactions. People who are physically comfortable are not necessarily happy people in the world. Which person can say that he is really happy in spite of material possessions that he may have, the social status which he may occupy? Why is it that we are always kept on tenterhooks and we always go on hoping for a better future even when not knowing what that future would be like? How is it that we are always impelled by an urge whose nature is not clear even to our own minds? Is it not true that we are perhaps beckoned by some transcendental meaning in our own selves? Transcendental, because we seem to have no access to that realm. Well, it comes to this, that we do not know our own selves, a very uncomfortable conclusion though. If that is the case, how can I understand anybody else? If the very instrument of action, which is my own personality, is beyond my own self, how could I use this instrument as a tool in the understanding of the world-structure outside? We are unhappy today, as intensely, as people were two thousand years ago. It is a futile patting ourselves on our backs to imagine that we are advancing in civilisation. Where are we advancing, we do not know. Well, it is true, that we are moving, but it is uncertain, in what direction it is. If we are sincere and honest in the investigation of the world situation today, and the psychological condition of people anywhere in the world, we would be in a state of discomfiture, and we should be really sorry to learn that, basically, we have not advanced a whit culturally, beyond what people had to experience and pass through in the ages that are gone by. We are as insecure and unhappy today as the people in the past were. The reason is something that appears to be beyond the investigating capacity of the psychological apparatus with which we are endowed today; and our education has not helped us. Our certificates, our degrees from colleges and universities have not taken us far. We have doubts, the very same misgivings that people had centuries back, and we do not sleep with a satisfied heart. We go to bed with a doubt, get up with a doubt and live our day with a doubt, and at the back of it there is a sense of insecurity gnawing into our vitals. The reason is not far to seek. We have been moving in the wrong direction, under the impression that we are advancing in civilisation, technology etc. We are fond of technological development and industrial revolution and scientific advancement. Very good, all this is well. But where does it take us? What is the objective? What is the Artha? What is it that we are pursuing, and for what aim or end, is a question that we have not posed before ourselves and we have not been able to answer.
We have in one grand hymn of the Vedas, a point given to us, enabling us to contemplate in the right direction. The ancient seers of the Vedas, in their grand contemplation of the cosmos as a unitary structure, visualised the human being as an inseparable part of the cosmos. They viewed the individual as inextricably involved in the purposes of the cosmos. The involvement of the individual in the structural pattern and the purpose of the cosmos implies a sort of obligation on the part of the individual in respect of the cosmos. We have a duty towards the world, towards the universe, in its entirety. This obligation that we are expected to perform in respect of the world outside, is what goes by the name of Dharma. We may translate this term, for the time being, as the law that operates in the world. Any kind of law is Dharma. The essential nature, intrinsic to the substance of a particular thing or object is the Dharma of that object. It is the Dharma of the fire to burn, to give an example; it is the Dharma of the wind to move in a direction, to blow; it is the Dharma of the body, to evolve, to grow, decay and to move towards its cause. The intrinsic nature of anything is the Dharma of that particular thing. The ancient seers emphasised this obligation on the part of every individual, which they designated as Dharma. Now, I must, at the very outset, tell you that Dharma does not mean religion in the commonsense meaning of the term. It is not a belief in God; it is not a worship that you perform in the temple; it is the necessary obedience which you owe to the very nature of things. It has nothing to do with religion in the sense of piety as a super-phenomenal or extra-cosmic attitude in life. It is a scientific truth or principle which has to be accepted on the part of the individual. There is a ‘Dharma’ of the body, for example. The legs have to walk and the brain has to think. The various limbs of the body have to perform their coordinating functions. Every limb of the body has a Dharma in respect of every other limb of the body. There is a cooperating Yajna, or a sacrifice, being performed by every limb of the body.
This term ‘Yajna’ comes into high relief in this context of the great hymn to the Vedas, I made reference to. The central culture of Bharatavarsha, India, may be summed up in one term, ‘Yajna’. You have heard this word uttered many a time. People perform Yajna. They perform Havan; they offer sacrifice, pour sacred ghee in the fire. But, this is only an outward expression, a symbol of the intention behind what is known as Yajna. The performance of a ritual is a spatio-temporal shape given to the inner idea expectation which is the Yajna. I am coming to the point, again. Your obligation to the world, as a whole, is the Yajna. You may ask me, why do you call it a Yajna? Why do you call it a sacrifice? Why do you say that my duty towards my nation is a Yajna? It is a Yajna because of an important factor involved in this process of the fulfilment of duty. In the discharge of duty, whatever be the nature of that duty, we diminish ourselves in one way and enlarge ourselves in another way. The diminution of the assertive or the individuating factor in ourselves is the Yajna or the sacrifice that we perform for the sake of the enhancement of the larger dimension of our personality.
Human society, in the Vedic hymn I mentioned, is envisaged as one single organism. We owe an obligation mutually among ourselves, merely on account of the fact that we live a single life of immanent relationships which obliges us to manifest this inner communion in outward activity, conduct, behaviour etc. Our conduct or behaviour, externally, in human society, is an outward manifestation of the internal bond that is perpetually maintained among ourselves, even without our knowing the very existence of this relationship. We are called phenomenal beings merely because of this fact – phenomenal, because we do not know the ‘noumenal’ implication of our existence. Yoga is the technique, the art, the science of bringing you into union with the noumenal implication of your own self. The phenomenal individuality of yours is brought into coordination with the noumenal universality of your existence. This is something very profound for us to contemplate. Phenomenally, we are cut off from the world. On an outward observation through the perceptional faculties of the senses, we may regard ourselves as men and women, people belonging to different nationalities, age groups, different levels in economic existence, etc. This is not our real nature. Our unhappiness, to reiterate, is our inability to recognise the fact that we belong to a different order of existence altogether, raised above the one in which we seem to be involved today in this world of diversities. Yoga tells you of the great implication of the Vedic hymn which proclaims that, ultimately, finally, basically, we are neither men nor women. We are not even human beings as we understand ourselves to be. We are bits of universal force. We are eddies, waves as it were, in the ocean of Cosmic Power and it is this deeper reality of ours that keeps us ever restless. That is why we cannot sleep a single night with composure in our hearts, because we have lost our mother, our parent as it were. We have been cut off from our own very source. We are sundered completely from our own self. This is ‘Atmaghata’, that has taken place, as the Isavasya Upanishad puts it. These people who have lost the consciousness of the Self, are the killers of the Self, and they go to regions which are Sun-less, dark and torturous, says the Upanishad. This is a way of putting the condition that awaits a person who takes appearance for reality and completely misconstrues the relation of himself empirically with this basic Reality of all things. We have a reality in our own selves which is commensurate with the Reality of everyone else. The Artha that we are pursuing, the objective of our life, the Kama, or the desire that we are evincing in respect of objects of sense, are nothing but the phenomenal expressions of the beckoning of the noumenal Reality within us. It is calling us. The mother is calling the child, “You come”. The universal call is the pull that is exerted upon us in the form of a desire for things in the world. This is the metaphysical meaning, the philosophical explanation behind even ordinary desires or any kind of impulsion from within us to do anything whatsoever, personally or socially, or in any other capacity.
So, Yoga gives us a great message: the message not of any scripture, not of any religion, but the message of the Cosmos, the message that comes from the distant stars, like the cosmic rays, as the modern scientists tell you, which come and impinge on us without our knowing that they are on our heads. The Universe is speaking to us in the language of desire and it tells us that our destination, our central goal of life, is a graduated attunement of our personality with the various degrees of manifestation of this ultimate Reality. The necessity to tune ourselves with the requirements of political administration, the needs of human society, the requirements of even a family or the demands of our own physical personality – all these are the various degrees of the expression of the law of the one Universal Existence. The various duties that we are called upon to perform in the different vocations of life are the obligations that we owe to this one Reality in its various facets. So, Dharma is Universal. It is not a religious term. It is a scientific expression. It is the Law that binds you to the Whole. It is the principle by which the part is coordinated to the completeness of the structure of the universe. Here is the message of Yoga for you, and difficult as it is to contemplate the further implications of this wonderful message, it is imperative at the same time to bear this in our mind every moment of our life, if we are to breathe a breath of satisfaction, if we are not merely to go on cursing our fate, finding fault with things and becoming disssatisfied with anything and everything in life. If it is given us to be happy at least for a moment in our life, if this is a practicable proposition at all, I would tell you that this cannot be, if you are not to be in union with Reality.
Satyameva jayate, is a great motto with which you are all familiar. And what is this Satyam, the Truth? Satyatvam badha rahityam said a great master. That which is ‘uncontradictable’, is the Truth, and if ‘Truth alone triumphs’, it is another way of saying that the ‘Uncontradictable’ alone triumphs. My dear friends, can I put you a question? Have you seen anything in this world which is uncontradictable? Everything is contradicted by everything else. There is supersession of values. Everything is transcended by something else. There is nothing in this world which cannot be negated by a subsequent occurrence or historical procession. It is because of this fact that it is said that there is no Reality in the appearance of this world. The appearance carries Reality, no doubt, the appearance of the world is a vehicle of Reality, but the structure itself is not Reality. We may make a distinction between Nama-Rupa-Prapancha (the world of names and forms) and Vastu-Tattva (essential Reality). The vehicle is the outer, phenomenal, transient expression of a particular degree of Reality and not the whole of Reality, so that at no occasion in the process of human history can you discover the whole of Reality. By a study of human history the entirety of Reality cannot be known because at every moment of human history there is only a partial expression of it and the reason behind the procession of human history can only be said to be the universal impulse within everything to effloresce into the realisation of the destiny of history. The rivers will not be quiet until they reach the ocean. There is roaring and rushing and moving and meandering of the rivers and rivulets. All this noise continues until they reach the sea. So is human history supposed to cease moving when the destiny of the cosmos is reached. This destiny is known as Moksha, a term with which, I believe, you are familiar, again. Moksha is the ‘Infinite Value’ or the ultimate determining factor of the principles that govern the fulfilment of all objectives – of Artha or material gain, and the achievement of Kama or desire both conditioned by a tremendously restrictive discipline, the rule of Dharma. Dharma, Artha, Kama and Moksha – these four aims are so comprehensive that they mean the total Integral Life of all.
Moksha is the Infinite Value. It is not the last value, or one of the four ends of life. It is the Infinite itself. You cannot say that the Infinite is the last end in the long chain of development. It is Infinitude and, therefore, it subsumes within itself all other values. The temporal values, the objects of the world, the desires of life, the various vocations which we pursue, are all subsidiary to our allegiance to this ultimate call of life in its totality which we designate as Moksha, or liberation of the Spirit. The activities in life, in the various fields, and the various aspirations of mankind, whatever be its movements, whatever be the directions they take, all these are the gradual growth of the human personality towards this attainment.
This is the message of Yoga. It is, thus, impossible for a person not to be a Yogi. Tasmat Yogi Bhava, (therefore, become a Yogi), says the Bhagavad Gita_._ This is the message of the Eternal to the temporal. It is not Krishna speaking to Arjuna; it is the Absolute admonishing the relative. Tasmat – therefore, because of the fact that it is impossible even to exist maintaining one’s integrity without relationship with Reality. Just as, without life-breath, we cannot live, without contact with Reality we cannot exist. The values that we seem to be admiring in life, are assertions of this Universal Spirit, and it is the battle between the Spirit within and the material universe without that we call history. It ceases, it fulfils itself, it finds its consummation, when Matter emerges into Spirit, and Spirit unites itself with Matter, so that the subject and the object cease to be two contending parties. They stand as one integrated Principle – the Absolute.
This is the goal of life towards which everyone is moving. ‘You’ and ‘I’, and everyone else, not merely human but even the other levels of existence are all tending towards this mysterious culmination of the values of all life, and what can be a greater call, what can be a more solacing message than this wondrous word that we hear from the adepts who have trodden this path, seen through the vicissitudes of life, and plumbed the depths of existence.
At this auspicious moment, I invoke the blessings of the Almighty upon you all, that, in the words of the great Mantra called the Gayatri, we have our understandings properly directed. We have no other prayer except this, that our understandings move in the direction of Reality. We need understanding and nothing else. Understanding itself is satisfaction. Chit (Consciousness) is Ananda (Bliss). The more you understand, the more do you become happy. It is wisdom that gives you satisfaction and not material possessions. The more you know, the more do you commingle with Reality. The goal of life is wisdom of existence, the knowledge of Reality, union with the cosmos, and this is the ultimate aim of Yoga. It is not merely the ultimate aim, it is also the immediate aim. It is that which is under our very nose, just new, and the step that we have to take now is the step in the direction of Yoga. Life is Yoga.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
On Reason and Higher Life
On Reason and Higher Life by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Wednesday 19 February 2014 17:08
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First of all, it has to be remembered that reason is not everything, and it is futile to work up an apotheosis of reason. This itself is contrary to reason, and it is a prejudiced faith of the human mind which makes it imagine that reason is all. You ask, ‘On what is faith based?’, but I ask, ‘On what is reason based?’ ‘Who told you that reason itself is reasonable?’ Don’t you think that this itself is a faith that you have inherited due to your social circumstances which you yourself condemn on another occasion? That the human mind unquestionably clings to the doctrine of a reason for everything and does not want to accept anything which cannot have a reason shows that the mind is prejudiced; and do you call this rationality?
Secondly, it is not true that everything in creation can be explained by reason, and I do not believe that you will again subscribe to the prejudice that the visible alone is real and there is nothing above what the human mind can visualise. The culture of our land is not based merely on reason, though it is not contrary to reason. The greatness of our culture lies in a super-rational faith – mark super-rational – on which even reason is based; because reason is an offshoot of experience, as inference is based on perception. Our culture is primarily rooted in the great gospel of unselfishness for which you want a reason now. Yes, there is a reason, and this reason is our philosophy. This is our religion, this our aim, and this the fond ideal of all humanity. Without going deep into the reason behind things too much, it is not difficult for us to discover, with even a little of common-sense, that we belong to a wider environment of which we are integral parts, and we do not exhaust ourselves in the shell of our personalities. Emphasise again, we belong to a wider environment, we are constituents of this environment, and we cannot exist if we are disloyal to the law of this environment to which we belong. To cite an example, a limb of the body cannot exist if it wishes to revolt against the law of the body taken as a whole, because the limb is an integral part of the body. Now, unselfishness or selflessness, as you wish to understand, is nothing but the way or the mode in which the part belongs to the whole, by which it surrenders itself to the fulfilment of the law of the whole, through which the lower is transfigured in the higher. Are you satisfied that there is a reason in unselfishness? In an unselfish act we do not do something unreasonable, but the only reasonable thing possible, for unselfishness is the discovery of oneself in the larger whole. I believe this is sufficient reason.
Now, about the question of money which you have raised: No one says that money as such is evil, as nothing in God’s creation as such can be called evil. Taking money or giving money as such are not evils. But the evil lies in clinging to anything, getting disturbed by the absence of it, being in an emotional tension when deprived of it – in short, being attached to it. All attachment is evil – not money or gold, or anything for that matter. As to why attachment is evil is a different subject altogether, which I would like you to study in detail by going through standard texts written by geniuses. But this does not mean that we should necessarily accept money for our services. I do not mean to say that taking money is always an evil. But not to take money is noble and is a mark of greatness. Not to accept money is not in any manner the denial of one’s ability to produce, as you put it, for though money is a measure of one’s ability to produce, as you say, it is not necessary that the ability should always be measured. Let it be there unmeasured. What is the harm? No harm happens to the sun if there is no one to measure the intensity of its heat or light. One may lose money by not accepting it, but thereby one does not lose one’s ability to produce, because money is not the ability – it is ability that brings money.
Further, as I have pointed out above, our existence is to be dedicated to the larger whole to which we belong, and in not accepting money for services rendered, you are only asserting your participation in the larger whole, while simultaneously diminishing the importance of the part, taken independently, in the light of the whole. That is it love of money which is evil does not mean that it is not evil when it is coveted by one who is able to produce it. Whether one is able to produce anything or not, all earthly love is bad insofar as it binds one to a limited life of a very narrow perception. Earning money honestly is one thing, and coveting it is another thing. There is nothing wrong in earning it, but there is something wrong in coveting. Earning has a spontaneity of naturalness, while coveting is deliberate and artificially construed. However, it has to be reiterated that things themselves are not evil but attachment is evil, for all attachment is a bar to the onward progress of the human individual towards a larger reality of which it is a part, as already stated.
Whether it is moral to accept something for nothing is a digression from the point at issue, for unselfish service and accepting something for nothing are two different standpoints. Do you think hat people accept money merely because they do not want the other to receive something for nothing? Is it the consideration of the morality of the others that makes us accept money from them? Have you seen one individual in this world who thinks like this? You know, legal quibbles do not always touch the core of truth. Take the matter as it is, on its face. Do we accept money from others so that others may be benefited by the morality thereof? Definitely not. We want the money for ourselves. And the morality in regard to the other is irrelevant to the matter. I am reminded of a man who, in anger, thrashed some poor fellow and when queried later on answered that he thrashed the other to instil into him the lesson of ‘bearing insult and injury’, which is supposed to be a spiritual virtue. You can imagine how untrue the man’s answer is, though it is true that it is good to bear insult and injury. Similar is the case with receiving and giving money, the point that you have raised. Giving is considered as good and taking not so good merely for the reason that giving unfolds our real personality while taking encumbers it. This is simple enough to understand. The question of the morality about giving and taking is clear to your mind, I believe.
Sacrifice is the voluntary surrendering of a value, it is true, without thought of reward. You say that sacrifice of the nature of dedication of oneself or one’s values to total strangers, especially those whom we despise, is not possible. But there are many other impossible things in the world from the point of view of the ordinary mind, but all possible with some effort and understanding. The reason behind sacrifice is the same as the reason behind unselfishness, which I have touched to some extent already. It is not based on blind faith as you think, nor on other’s saying it, and it is not beyond one’s power of reasoning, as you surmise. It also not impossible as you seem to think. You are right when you say that to make a true sacrifice is death, but it is death of the false personality and not the real one. It is the death of our prejudices and erroneous notions. It is the death of what is to be cast off one day or the other. It is not the death of the real we. Suicide is not the solution, for suicide is not the death of the personality but its affirmation in stronger terms than one would do when alive. Suicide is the culmination of attachment to oneself and one’s own pleasures, which is foolishly affirmed with the wrong notion that by the cutting off of oneself from circumstances which are painful one can attain the desired end. This is not the solution because the effect cannot be destroyed without removing the cause.
Giving one’s body for scientific study may be some sort of unselfishness – there is no denial. But this is again attachment to humanity as a corporate body, which is not in consonance with truth. There is something more real than humanity as a group, which cannot be forgotten.
It all, in the end, hinges upon whether an act is done for one’s personal pleasure or for the good of a larger existence. But no sacrifice should involve pain or injury to others. This is another condition to be borne in mind, barring of course the pains of the nature of the operation performed by the doctor for the good of the patient. To perform a sacrifice it is not always necessary that there should be a ‘taker’, for sacrifice is not always material. Sacrifice is possible even if you alone exist in the world and there is none else, for sacrifice is more a psychological act of self dedication to a higher existence than a mere parting with material objects, though the giving away of material things also is a part of sacrifice of a lower order. Remember again that sacrifice is not giving where it is not needed but the giving for the sake of wiping out of the encrustation of one’s egoism and attachment. You seem to be thinking of only a horizontal sacrifice where someone takes something but there is a vertical one where the higher one consumes the lower. The gigantic fraud that you speak of is not the moral principle of giving but the ignorance with which we deny its meaning and value due to insufficient enlightenment about the truth of things. The principle of giving is based on the principle of the relinquishment of the narrower personality in the larger good which is the eternal reality.
We do not ‘give’ merely because another man’s need is identical with his lack of ability. This is not the reason behind giving. We give because thereby we evolve, and there is the end of it. In this world there is always someone who has a larger ability and some other who has a lesser one. There is no point in mentioning it in the interpretation of the psychology of giving. In the performance of duty the result is not the motive. The motive is the psychological process that is going on in the act of giving. What you think and feel is important. The end beyond it is not the consideration. Our philosophy of Karma Yoga, which is the philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, is one of emphasis on the essential value of active duty and not the passive existence of its remote end. It would be a poor philosophy that identifies this with the dogma or those who, in their inability, what to share the bounty of others. The question of ‘others’ has no relevance to the act of giving. As I mentioned above, giving is a psychological process and there is no psychology except in the subject which thinks. There is no use tagging on to it the object which is an extraneous element to all thinking. This inability to distinguish between the true subject and its false object, which is only a notion of its, is itself the outcome of a muddle in our thinking, for the person that we see outside is not the object. The person standing outside us as a subject in his or her own capacity is not the object of our thought. The real object is the objectness that we associate with that subject. We have to think over this is little deeply.
There is no use merely being a skeptic. One who doubts everything should also doubt one’s own conclusions in order to be a consistent skeptic. That would be a wonderful state of affairs, isn’t it? What is your standard of judgement, and what is the standard on which you base this standard? Can you doubt that standard? Can you be a skeptic about it? All doubt has a reference to a standard which itself is not doubted. We cannot live with doubts. Life itself is a negation of all doubt, for life is and doubt negates all existence.
Your queries regarding selfishness have been adequately answered, and your point concerning the one who imagines he has no self as he borrows from others should have also been answered. Borrowing is not effacement of ego but a strengthening of it, which is not difficult to understand. A shameless man is not an egoless man. We always distinguish between Sattva and Tamas.
Our highest wisdom is expressed in the great sentence of the Veda: ‘Reality is One and undivided, though it is envisaged in variegated forms.’
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
On the Concept of Righteousness and Justice
On the Concept of Righteousness and Justice by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Tuesday 18 February 2014 16:10
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The Universe, as the word itself suggests, is an inclusiveness of operation, in which everything, whether living or non-living, is included. The inclusiveness, which is an inviolable character of the universe, raises a question which cannot easily be answered by any attitude of life which is empirically oriented, sensorily conditioned or even psychologically delimited in any manner. The perceptional procedure of human beings, to take an example, invokes, spontaneously, a principle of exclusiveness by which it becomes necessary for the universe of observation or perception to stand outside the location of the observing intelligence, or the perceiving individual. This would imply that the universe, in order that it may become an object of perception by the mind and the senses, should shed its inclusiveness, that is, its intrinsic nature. What would follow from this predicament is that whatever is observed by the individual is, then, not a universe but an abstraction of certain features from the original nature of the universe. But there is something which is interesting about all this. The attempt of the individual to look at the universe and then make any meaning or sense out of it would be like the attempt of one to study a part of a living organism, such as a human body, by segmenting it and wrenching it out from the organism of the body of which it is an integral and vitally involved part. That is to say, a part of an organism ceases to have any character of the organism, it is no more living, when it is placed out of the context of its vital involvement in the organism. All this would be tantamount to reducing the attempts of classical scientific projects and psychological systems based thereon to studies of a corpse in the endeavour to study a human being.
By way of a slight digression from the point at issue, it would be pertinent to mention here that, in fact, a human being cannot be studied objectively, since no living being can be considered as an object of externalised perception. It is possible to observe the body of a person or even, perhaps gather indications of the prevailing mental operations of the person concerned, but it would not be difficult to accept that the status or the value of a person is not exhausted by the anatomical or physiological structure of the person, or even the mental condition in any given situation. There is a sort of uniqueness, unity and indivisibility about living entities, and thus, it would be clear that a person is certainly more than what the body is or the present condition of the mind is. Then what is a person? What do we call a human being, if neither the physical body nor the transitions of mental process suggest anything at all about the true person? It would appear, then, that a person is more an outlook of consciousness, a centralisation of attitude, a force, an energy, than anything that could be perceived or conceived in an objectivised manner.
The above analysis of the human personality also suggests a wholeness about the person, a wholeness that precludes any attempt at a study of it by means which would convert it into an external object, that is, external to the mind, senses or the consciousness that studies it or even knows it. This non-exclusive and non-objective nature of the basic essence of a human being would, further, reject any effort to convert it into a means leading to some other end, inasmuch as the whole that it is would cease to be such, the moment it becomes an instrument to something else, for an instrument is a tendency moving and rising beyond itself, that is to say, it cannot be a whole. Whatever is an integrality or a wholeness cannot, then, be a means to any thing else.
The above study of the essential nature of things in general would bring out two important truths of life as a whole: One, the universe as an inclusiveness and a wholeness in itself cannot be encountered as an external object; two, a living being also, having the essential characteristic of wholeness, cannot be looked upon as an external object for purpose of study, experiment and observation. If all well-known processes of life in the world, whether scientific, psychological, social or political, require that the world and people in the world are invariably externally perceived and objectively conceived things, then, the natural conclusion is obvious: The entire life process is an erroneous operation of consciousness, and no one can know anything as it is in itself. The world of perception is an appearance, not a reality.
There is a necessary and insistent urge within everyone towards what is usually known as righteousness and justice. It would be hard to find any person in the world who would regard righteousness or justice as a mere appearance: This great requirement of life is always held to be a necessity and a reality. It is known to everyone that life would annihilate itself if it is bereft of the nobility that is attached to and the imperativeness involved in the ideal of righteousness and justice. But how could this be, if the available means of human knowledge and the conditions to which the human mind is subject reduce all life as it is lived to an appearance not related to reality.
It would be impossible to be righteous or just, under the above analysis, unless and until the personal outlook and the empirical approach of the common life of the world rises above itself to a super-personal outlook and metempirical attitude which grasps life as a whole and a totality and ceases to look upon the world or the people in the world as objects of external perception. That is, in entertaining the spirit of righteousness and justice, neither the world nor people remain as outwardly located objects of perception, but integrally involved totalities, and no judgment of any kind would be righteous or justifiable unless the source of judgment stands above both itself and that which is judged. Judgment is a transcendent operation and not something pronounced by someone on someone else or something outside. Law is an operation which is inclusive and not merely a thought or a whim that is exclusive. Law is not a person; it is a field of operation in which are included both the person that dispenses law and the one in regard to whom it is so dispensed. This also applies to scientific observation, which, in order to be correct, should include and at once transcend the location and predicament of both the observer and the observed, the seer and the seen, the judge and what is judged.
In ancient India, great masters who conceived everything in a holistic attitude, regarded human life as a whole within the universe which is the largest dimension of wholeness. Every application or duty in life was envisaged as a movement of a lesser whole towards a larger whole, and not the movement of a fraction, since not even an isolated part, for all practical purposes, is without a self-identity in itself, a personal status it maintains, forming thereby a complete entity by itself. Not only this. Even the so-called individualised operations or activities are not fractions, but emanations of a wholesome character, and every thought, feeling or attitude is a whole by itself, since it is an emanation from the individual which is a whole. In this connection it would also be necessary to state that every organisation that a ‘holistic’ individual forms is also a whole, invested with a soul, keeping it intact, the soul meaning what acts as the cohesive force that keeps the organisation as an integrated entity, whether social, legal, national or international. While the human being as an individual is certainly a whole, a fact which needs no further explanation, a family of individuals is also a whole, without which feature the members of the family would get dismembered and the unit called the family would cease to exist. A community is an organisation of several families, a district an organisation of several communities, a province an organisation of several districts, the national state an organisation of several provinces, and the world set-up an organisation of the entire comity of nations. In each of these levels of the organisational procedure, right from the individual to the concept of a world state, a unity is maintained by each concerned level, each level has a soul of its own, each one forming a self-identical integrated individuality by itself and yet simultaneously forming a facet of the larger self of the next higher level of organisation, until a general universality of what we may call the cosmic organisation is attained as the state of utter perfection.
If we could carefully bear in mind the several implications of the above analysis of human situation in general, we would also realise that even the smallest of individual units, we may call them living or non-living, from the point of view of our observational capacity, and every movement, effort and attitude of such units, have in them potentially and implicitly the resources and powers, the facts and purposes, of the largest and highest organisation – the universe. If this is so, every individual is a whole, every organisation is a whole, and every impulse of every organisation, including the individual, is a wholesome endeavour to reach out to a wholesome experience in every way. This will explain why no one would tolerate oneself being regarded as an unimportant person, even second to someone, and every desire of everyone and everything is actually an asking for everything, inasmuch as what emanates from a whole cannot but be whole.
This vital fact was borne in mind by the ancient adepts in India, who brought about such a transformation in their outlook of life that they felt a necessity to introduce a system of living according to which the whole of life becomes a religious movement, a spiritual aspiration: Religion becomes all life. This system is embodied in the concept of what is known as the Purusharthas, namely, the aims of human existence. The fourfold concept, which includes the four facets of human longing, i.e., human desire, human aspiration, human enterprise, is an attempt to bring together into a single focus of attention the aspirations of the individual towards the totality of being. Life may be defined as a kind of reaction of the individual to the whole atmosphere and environment – an environment which is at once personal, physical, social and supernatural. All the aspects of life, which are the concerns of man, would then be regarded as logical needs to be transformed into the spiritual endeavour. Whatever be one’s occupation in life, that becomes a spiritual movement, it gets transformed into a worship of the universal reality. This is so because religion, spirituality, is the encounter of the total individual in regard to the total cosmos. The whole of life gets thus harnessed into the spiritual enterprise. The Purusharthas, the aims of human life, are broadly classified in terms of a fourfold asking of the individual for a fourfold fulfilment of being: These are Artha (material need), Kama (emotional and aesthetic need), Dharma (the impulse for righteousness), and Moksha (the ultimate spiritual requirement of all things).
The experience of a reaction in respect of the environment around which one seeks the fulfilment of one’s material needs may be called the basic economic need of the person. Whatever is essential far physical existence, without which one cannot live a healthy and sensible life in the world, becomes an object (Artha) of life’s pursuit, and to the extent of the pressure of the need felt, one’s life becomes inseparable from it. Food, clothing and shelter are some of the ostensible forms which this pressure of life takes. And this urge towards material security, is also to be transformed into a spiritual discipline, since this urge has its ultimate purpose in maintaining the individual secure for a purpose higher than the individuality itself. Here is the spirituality hidden behind even the material necessities of life. Matter itself is the first rung in the ladder of the development of the spirit towards perfection. Spirit condenses into matter and matter rarefies itself into spirit. The universe is the face of the Absolute Spirit. There can be nothing unspiritual in a world animated by the universal consciousness. The word ‘secular’, if it means the ‘unspiritual’ cannot exist in the dictionary of creation.
But no one can be satisfied merely with bread, clothing and a house to live in. There are other longings of the individual engendered by the fact that everyone is an intricate complex of different layers of involvement, each one knit into the other inextricably. There is the love for beauty, a desire for emotional satisfaction, and a longing for aesthetic enjoyment. The voice of this impulse is as vehement and pressing as the call for material comfort. The attraction for fine arts, music and literature, is an outer form which this inward impulse for aesthetic experience takes in every person. One loves and expects love. The tragedies of personal and social life may be mostly attributed to absence of affection that one seems to be expecting from others and one’s own inability to love anything at all. Frustration is the outcome of defeated love. Man’s vital satisfactions and fulfilment of emotional needs also form part of the spiritual life, since this impulse, again, is an indication of the orderliness, symmetry, rhythm and proportion present in everything that is a whole and a completeness. The aesthetic impulse, the desire for the beautiful (Kama) is suggestive of any kind of love or longing for recognition and a fulfilment in feeling. The romantic impulse, as it is sometimes called, is the apotheosis of the aesthetic sense. As there is a necessity felt to keep one’s physical body secure by means of the requisite material needs, there is a simultaneous urge to perpetuate the physical individuality through an endless continuity in the process of time, which is the final explanation of the impetuosity behind the sexual hunger of the individual. Infinity and eternity seem to be playing the fool in the individual acts of an endless material possession and insistent sexual longing.
The impulses have their visible expressions as well as hidden forms. There was, in India, no ban imposed on the natural fulfilment of desires, contrary to the dictates of certain over-austere religious attitudes which emphasise to a point of excess a mortification of the flesh, the starvation of desires, and a hibernation of one’s normal impulses by forced repression. Though appearance is not reality and the bungling of consciousness in its material and aesthetic vehemences may be said to be far removed from the ultimate reality of life, all evolution has to be from the lower to the higher, from a lesser completion to a greater one, though we would prefer to designate the lesser ones as appearances of the higher reality. This is the beauty and the perfection, the spiritual significance, which the ancient masters envisaged in every individual attitude or movement, thus seeing and expecting everyone to see, the entire life in all its phases as a grand drama enacted by the Supreme Being in the Theatre of the Universe. This is the reason why even the ordinary daily occupations and instinctive impulses can become and should form raw materials for self-purification and an intelligent harnessing along the stages of the evolution of the spirit towards the Absolute. If God were not to call man, there would not have been desires in life. Every desire is some sort of a distorted shape of the response of man to God. A desire, while it is apparently directed towards the fulfilment of an objective satisfaction, actually arises from a need for universal experience. As everyone is placed in space and time, and the space-time complex manages to externalise even the universal, God Himself appears as an object of sense. What is everywhere looks as if it is in some place and only at some time.
However, the permission and concession given to desires to fulfil themselves, in the manner indicated, is to be conditioned by the great rule or law, called Dharma. If Dharma, the principle of the righteousness of the law, does not regulate the operation of desires, they cease to be aids in the movement of the spirit towards its perfection. Desires, which are like flowing rivers, get dammed up when they are bottled inside and not channelised in a systematic manner to irrigate life’s wholesome involvements. Dharma is law, the regulative principle, which harmonises everything with everything else. The individual has to be a self-balanced purposiveness, integrated healthily, but not opposed to a similar need felt for self-completion and integration by the other levels of organisational procedure, namely, the family, the community, the society, the nation, and the world at large. Usually, there is an inherent urge in everyone to maintain one’s own point of view even to the detriment of others, a form which desire takes when it is concentrated within the body and ignores the presence of other individuals or similar organisations. Dharma, or law, insists that desire can be fulfilled, and must be fulfilled, lest it should go amuck, but not to the disadvantage of others who also exist in the world and who too have a similar permission to fulfil their desires. There is no mutual contradiction involved in such a permission granted under the law, Rita, as the Veda would call such a universal sanction founded on perfect, impartial justice. “Do unto others as you would be done by others.” “Do not do to others what you would not like to be done to yourself.” For, if one wishes that everything should belong to oneself, everyone else also can entertain such a wish. Such a predicament would defeat the very purpose of the operation of any desire. Law is the principle of cooperation and sacrifice, as against competition and selfish arrogance. It is the concession which each one is expected to make in respect of everyone else, because creation, as could be seen from the above study, is a ‘Kingdom of Ends’, and not a restless flow of ‘means’ only without any ‘end’ to be reached. The Veda uses the word Satya for the law of the Absolute, and Rita is the very same law operating in creation as a regulative principle, an imperative, immanent in all things. Every law is a facet of the cosmic law which is rooted in the integrality of the universe. There is a necessity to introduce a system of coherence among the visible particulars, so that they form a harmonious whole, a hierarchy of completeness, and not a mess of jarring notes without any relation among themselves. Law exists, because the Absolute is, God rules all things. Law is the manner in which the indivisibility of the Absolute manifests itself through space and time.
The great regulative system of the administration of life, known as Varna Ashrama Dharma, sums up the way of a perfect life. While what we may call the horizontal integration of life by means of a blend of spiritual power, political power, economic power and man power in life is ensured by the intelligent mechanism of Varna Dharma, which is not a distinction of colour, but a mutually involved differentiation of each one’s capacity to participate in the fulfilment of life, the vertical ascent in the qualitative wholeness of each person is patterned in the rule of the Ashrama Dharma, representing the stages of study, discipline, conservation of energy and continence; the ordained fulfilment of the material, social and emotional requirements of life; a gradual freedom from every kind of externally oriented involvement; and the final pursuit of absolute universality. The horizontal stratification was designed by the participating phases of cooperation known as Brahmana, Kshatriya, Vaisya and Sudra; the vertical discipline and gradual perfection of the person was laid down in the well-known stages of the Brahmacharin, Grihastha, Vanaprastha and Sannyasin. Neither is the Varna system a caste-oriented gradation of the superior and the inferior, nor the Ashrama pattern a social enactment. Both represent a spiritual necessity and the only way in which human society can exist and thrive in harmony, and the individual progress upward towards a gradual realisation of universality. There is no comparison in this system of stratification, but a necessary and just participation and healthy integration of social and personal life. India’s culture never held that negation is the law of life; for it fulfilment is a state that has to be reached by working through the media of every disciplinary process, all which is equally important. The stages of evolution do not brook comparison. Each stage becomes as important as any other, when one finds oneself in it. Life is an inward attainment of oneself with a cosmic conditioning. The inwardness, being constituted of the different layers of personality, has to be taken into consideration in all its degrees when one attempts to live a life of perfection. The inwardness is of a graded form. There is no sudden contact of one level with the rest of reality, except through the necessary stages. The human individual is formed of several psychic vestures, each of which is to be treated well by paying its due, which is accomplished in the fourfold stratification of cooperation and the stages of life. Time is a movement towards eternity.
The perfection that is wholeness, which characterises every stage of evolution, is also to be equally active in the administrative, political and judicial field of human management. The question of management arises practically from the very level of the individual. Management does not necessarily mean a handling of relationship with other people. It is also a matter which concerns oneself. Self-management, or the proper handling of one’s own self, will be found to be of primary importance even when considering one’s relationship with other persons. The individual, as was observed, is also an organisation that needs to be managed. Any non-alignment of factors involved in personal management may land the person in a state of mental restlessness, whimsical behaviour, erratic conduct, and a bungling in the handling of any matter whatsoever. While human society is a group of human beings, it cannot be forgotten that it is human beings as individuals that constitute the society. There cannot be a factual qualitative superiority of a society whose constituent members do not possess in their own person the expected quality. But the very necessity felt to form a society, an administrative system, a government, or a judiciary should naturally be suggestive of an imperative involved in the outlook of anyone to exceed the narrow limits of a purely personal or individual concern and entertain an outlook which would not exclude from its purview the welfare or interest of any other person in the society. This is a specific requirement on the part of anyone who is placed at the helm of affairs in any organisation – social, political or judicial. The head of such an organisation, whether he is a king or a monarch, president, minister or judge, naturally requires a specialised form of education in being able to understand his relationship to the organisation of which he is the chief, a relationship which is not a particularised connection with individual members merely, but a superior relation to the spirit of the organisation, a welfare state, as one may designate it, which is not a person but a principle. From this it would also be clear that the head of such an organisation cannot look upon himself as a person, but the representation of a universalised principle which is the integrated welfare of the entire jurisdiction over which he has authority and responsibility. It would require some specific educational calibre and a stretch of some genius to realise that the head of a managemental system, social, political or judicial, is not a person, but a super-personal general principle. A judge in a court, for instance, does not only transcend the limitations of the clients of the cases, but transcends even himself as a person. The judge is neither anyone of the clients or advocates, nor the visible person seated on the chair. The judge is an embodied representation of law, which by itself is impersonal. Hence, the true judiciary is not visible to the eyes but can only be appreciated through reason which has a wider jurisdiction than any person or even all persons. It is in this sense that a ruler is often considered as a representation of divinity, a deity in himself. It is so because the ruler is a principle of wholeness which, in every one of its levels, enshrines perfection which is godliness, which is a name for the soul or the self-integrating principle in anything.
The above consideration would also in a way enable one to answer the question as to whether the individual is for the State or the State is for the individual. The controversy seems to be finally unfounded, arisen due to a misconception of the relationship between the individual and the State. To bring the instance of the judiciary once again, the client, the lawyer and the judge form a single cooperative network in the act of bringing about legal and social balance in the jurisdiction of the people concerned, and the unit constitutes a whole, each member forming a necessary contributory part of the whole, and the whole in turn deciding the status of each of such participating parts. The individual exists for the State, because the individual, as a lesser whole, is a constitutive element in the larger whole which is the State. But the State exists for the individual, since the integral wholeness which is the State cannot afford to interfere with the progressive welfare of any of the lesser wholes, insofar as the lesser wholes do not contradict or clash with one another’s welfare. So, both the views stand the test of tenability, for they are actually not two viewpoints but two phases of a single point of view, which is the consideration of the entire State as a final whole which is at once inclusive of all the lesser wholes within it forming its inner constituents. This also answers the other question sometimes raised, that both the State and the individual are equally important. The point, however, is that the two are not distinct entities at all.
The administrative and legal issues of life, while they essentially constitute an operation of positive and constructive remedying and equitable healing forces in the organisation, also involve a sometimes unavoidable factor known as punitive justice. Criminal laws engage themselves in this latter aspect of the management of human affairs and in the act known as punishment inflicted by law, the social welfare of the organism is supposed to be ensured. The positive side of legal justice mainly concerns itself with the distribution of property and the question of its ownership in society: the civil rights of the people. Though, even in an act of civil dispensation of justice, an element of punishment may be said to be involved, where, for example, a landed property wrongly appropriated by a person is wrenched out from him and handed over to its rightful owner, based on the principle of equity and welfare of the entire organism of administration; yet, in what is known specially criminal procedure, the punitive aspect puts on an accentuated form as a special kind of pain inflicted on the wrong-doer. It has been held even in a free state or a democracy, where private property is conceded, that all ownership is more a kind of trusteeship and the State can have the right, and has actually the right, to own the entire property under given conditions. In fact, private ownership cannot defy or contravene public welfare or the well-being of the State as a whole. All this means that no one exists for himself alone, but everyone exists for everyone else, also. Here comes into high relief the great spiritual significance of life operating powerfully even in political and judicial administration.
While the manner in which people are entrusted with civil rights or ownership of property has been seen to vary from country to country and from nation to nation, occasioned by local conditions of people and their mentality in the regions concerned, what strikes one’s eye ostensibly is the peculiarity in the administration of criminal justice as understood and enacted by the different nations. What kind of punishment is to be meted out to what offence? Can the hand of a person who steals a pencil be amputated as a punishment equitable with the act of offence? Can a nation which forbids smoking, execute a person for committing that act under its jurisdiction? These are extreme cases which kick up basic questions of human justice, but there are others which are involved in the prejudices of the human mind. The steel frames within which are locked up, in India, the characteristics attributed to the classes of people called castes, Varnas, and the functions associated with the Ashramas in the personal life of an individual, as if they are water-tight compartments, iron cages, and not flowing streams joining the river of life, are also examples of the inveterate habit of human prejudice, ignorance and self-esteem, which raise similar questions of a thing called justice behind the rule of social law. In a region monogamy is holy and inviolable, in another polyandry is not only necessary but an act of sacred cooperation and sacrifice. One leader of the people exhorts the nation on the necessity for unconditional non-violence, but another concedes a proviso that violence is justifiable where self-defence is involved, or where one feels a need to protect the lives of people or guard the security of the nation. It needs no mention that the principle of unconditional non-violence considers that even death should be welcome if it follows as a consequence of adherence to non-violence. It follows also from this that one who does not hesitate to embrace death as an inevitable something, whatever be its causative factors, believes perhaps in a deathless immortality of a soul in man, and the welfare hereafter is a greater concern than a welfare in this world. This strange conclusion, though it is likely automatically to follow from a strict observance of unconditional non-violence, cannot be said to be the intention of the leader of a people, who would not deny the possibility of their earthly welfare, all which would only mean that there is a difficulty in reconciling the need for the welfare of people in the world and the necessity, to be adherents of unconditional non-violence.
The processes of the study of the principles of life considered in the above paragraphs should enable one to accept that justice is neither an affirmation nor a negation of life, but a harmony of conditions that should contribute towards the manifestation of circumstances which would enable lower organisations of reality to expand their dimensions and reach up to higher levels which are the souls of the lower ones. Nature does not go to extremes, nor are law and justice extremes of act and behaviour. The meaning of principles that transcend personalities is generally hard for the mind to grasp. As action and reaction are equal and opposite, because they are based on a unitary law of a balance maintained by the forces of Nature, the rights and privileges of people as may be conceded to them, or even the punishments that are supposed to be necessary, cannot, even in a state of enthusiasm, ignore the fundamental principles of righteousness and justice which demand that the spiritual expansion of the individual and the society has to be the criterion behind all judgments, whether rights and properties, privileges and concessions, or punishments and deprivations. It is not for nothing that great thinkers have often felt that only philosophers can be kings, and kings should be philosophers. It was Plata who proclaimed that until this condition of administration is fulfilled, the world is not going to have peace. There must be justice in conceding privileges to a person and justice in meting out punishment. The justice consists not only in the security and welfare ensured to people in general by that dispensation, but it also should, at the same time, ensure the betterment, welfare and progress of the particular individual concerned. Certainly, none but a god can be a just ruler (Navishnuh Prithivipatih). It has to be borne in mind, again, that the ruler is a principle of integration involving an element of universality in it, and not just a person among many others.
The philosophy and the rationale behind law, justice and jurisprudence would, then, raise the pertinent question: Is man prior to law or is law prior to man? This crucial difference of viewpoint in ultimate matters concerning life is virtually the point of distinction between the Contract Theory of State propounded by thinkers like Thomas Hobbes and the Logical Theory of State advocated by philosophers like G.W.F. Hegel, in the West. The Contract Theory holds that man was originally in a state of nature and was ruled by the law of the fish (the larger swallows the smaller) and the law of the jungle (might is right), and this could be naturally the height of any conceivable insecure condition of things. To obviate this sort of perpetual fear endangering the lives of everyone, people are said to have made an agreement among themselves and framed a system of laws and of governance, vesting the power of rule in a single person (monarchy) or a body of persons (oligarchy or bureaucracy) or an assembly of chosen ones by periodical election (democracy). Here the law of the society and of political government is considered as something created by man by mutual consent or agreement to suit the circumstances or conditions under which he lives at any given time. When the circumstances of life change, the laws also can be and have to be changed by mutual understanding and agreement. This would make it appear that there is no such thing as law unless man wills, individually or in a group, that it should be there. It is the creation of human needs and the environment of life. Law does not exist by itself. Man can do or undo it by a majority of votes (since it is unlikely that everyone would always consent to everything unanimously), and sometimes by the exercise of physical force even by a quantitative minority (as it has happened rarely in the history of the world, though unfortunately for the many in the majority) – a situation which implies that man makes laws either by understanding which would be to the satisfaction of many, or by physical force which can be to the sorrow of many. Anyway, according to this point of view of the origin of social law and political government, man is the law-maker, and this is the essence of the Theory of Contract in the science of Politics. From this it would also follow that even the sense of justice can turn out to be a whim oftentimes in the minds of the ruling powers, because it is hard for the dispensation of justice to stand isolated from the operation of law. On a close examination of the subject, the implications of the Contract Theory would seem to be inseparable from the psychological background of society presented by psychoanalysis. Man can be no better because he can make laws, for he can also unmake the very same laws by the same principles of contract which made them, and rational justice would be a word without any substantial meaning.
Though it may be conceded that the Contract Theory is perhaps the truth of the historical origin of human law and government, even this manner of the origin of law must have itself originated from a principle which ought to have a logical priority over the historical accident of the origin of law as propounded by the Contract Theory. Here we come to a subtle philosophical point which would not ordinarily occur to the mind of the common man. Why does there come about a necessity for man to frame a law at all by mutual consent? The answer to this question is the logical ground which explains the meaning of law and the necessity for law. The principle which is prior to the human effort of mutual agreement in respect of the framing of the law is itself the central law conditioning and regulating all the laws that man makes subsequently by agreement, election, etc. This is the point which Hegel endeavours to win over Hobbes. It cannot be that man is the sole maker of law; if that had been the case, it would be difficult to understand why at all man felt a need to make law. This need felt by him is the conditioning factor behind man-made laws, and is the main law, the universal law, which regulates temporal laws of the terrestrial State. If law arrests a person and inflicts on him punishment, it is not because of the operation of a man-made law merely (else, man could suddenly change his law and abolish such a thing as legal punishment), but the reaction set up by a wider law which is superior even to the totality of the individuals in society and the members in the State. And what is this law?
Here we turn to the metaphysical background of law which also purports to be its logical explanation and justification. The relationship between man and man is not the outcome of some quixotic agreement but a rational necessity dictated by the structure of the universe. Human relationship cannot be made or unmade according to fancy, for it is rooted in a fixed pattern of structural behaviour which is harmonious with the nature of the universe as a whole as manifest in the various degrees or realms of its expression. The necessity for law arises on account of a need felt to rise and grow into a higher degree of reality than the one in which one finds oneself at a given moment. The growth into a higher order of reality is both quantitative and qualitative in a measure in which the two aspects cannot be distinguished one from the other. The higher degree of reality connotes and implies not only a wider inclusiveness of quantitative measure but also a deeper profundity of knowledge and wisdom and an insight into the nature of things. To give an example: Is not man more than a mere total or an assemblage of the different limbs of his body? All the parts of the body of a man, even when viewed together, cannot be regarded as the man himself, for what we mean by man is a. significant meaning or a transcendent essence vitalising and animating the body and the personality, rather than the body or the personality by itself. Man is a significance, a c_onnotation_, a suggestiveness, the state of an integrated consciousness, and not merely a physical body, a psychological unit or a social personality.
Even so is the concept of a nation, which is more a spirit than a sum or an assemblage of people and things. The meaning of this position can be appreciated if we consider for a while such phenomena as, for instance, large number of persons recruiting themselves as soldiers and even dying in a war waged in what is regarded as the interest or the welfare of the nation. Obviously, no one would ever believe that the nation for whose sake people are ready to sacrifice themselves is just the ground of the earth, mountains and rivers, for these do not require protection and they stand by themselves unconcerned with man’s predicament. What seems to be in the mind of people, evidently, when they entertain the notion of the nation, is the group of people arranged into a conceptual network or pattern of wholeness governed by a uniform ideology, cultural aim or ultimate purpose. On this ground, the nation is inclusive of everyone, even the soldiers going for a battle. Even supposing that a large percentage of people as soldiers die in a battle waged in the interest of the nation, no one feels that a part of the nation is dead or that the nation is now alive only as seventy-five per cent or fifty per cent. The nation does not perish even if the majority of people cease to be for some reason, and this is so because the nation is not the person or the physical assembly of individual bodies. Even if fifty per cent of the limbs of the body of a person is to be amputated for medical reasons, the man remains still a whole and never feels that half of him has gone and that only half is alive. That the spirit is not the same as the letter, that the invisible is a greater reality than the visible, can easily be seen on a little in-depth examination of anything.
The ethical or what are known as moral laws, also, stand by this test of spirit ruling the letter, intention standing above routine or outer form. Else, how would one explain the universally acceptable law that no one can injure or harm another on any account and yet feel justified in maintaining defence forces to avert self-annihilation? Here is a subtlety which accepts human behaviour and conduct to be regulated not by the instinct of love and hate, but by obedience to the law of the spirit transcending the isolated instincts of individuals or even a group of individuals. Here is the principle of Ahimsa, or non-injury, thrown into the crucible of a test which can be broadly categorised as utility, coherence, or self-realisation. Though the meanings hidden behind these nomenclatures of behavioural and ethical operation seem to be outwardly different one from the other, there is an undercurrent of a common significance and a uniformity of meaning in all this operational attitudes. Though, sometimes, it appears that truth cannot go counter to its utility in life, the sense of utility cannot but maintain a coherence within its structure, inasmuch as the utility has to be a feature of the common welfare of everyone and cannot be just the favourable utility of someone to the detriment of others. Here, even the idea of utility has to be governed by the principle of coherence, which latter ensures security to people in general and does not convert utility into a picture of selfishness. But what is coherence, and what is its intention, what is the purpose? Here we are face to face with the question behind all questions.
There can be a justification in the necessity felt for the introduction of coherence among values of human utility for another reason altogether, which is neither just empirical utility nor mere logical coherence. And that is the demand for the self-realisation of Spirit. There is an inherent, unbending, unrelenting and eternally operative requirement in everyone to be in a state of self-realisation, which, in the purely physical personality, takes the form of an undividedness of feeling that one is what one is, and one cannot be other than what one is. This is the law of identity, namely, A is A, and A cannot be B. This strange persistent urge to maintain a conscious self-identity is the principle of self-realisation manifest in the lowest degree of reality, that is, the physical organism which lives and works with an intention and purpose. But, as observed above, the individual self-hood can maintain itself only precariously in the absence of its adjustment, adaptation, harmony and coherence with other people in the world, call them families, communities, or nations. These latter are the wider forms of the very same impulse for self-realisation as revealed in the world of space and time, but demanding self-identity at their own levels, and brooking no interference from anything outside that particular unit of selfhood, whatever be its degree of inclusiveness or expansiveness. There would be no necessity to dilate on this issue any further, since this appreciation of the way of things in general would automatically land itself in the recognition that a Universal Selfhood alone can explain and account for the very meaning of the life of anything, and it is its affirmation in graded forms of inclusiveness that goes by the name of law, righteousness or justice.
The above also explains why Nature and history never care for individuals, and even the strongest of empires and the greatest of men have been reduced to the dust of the earth. Not even the best of actors is allowed a continuous and unending performance in the drama of creation. There is a coming and going of things, as required by the change of scenes which constitute the beauty of the enactment. It is not the individual, whether in the form of a person, family, community or an empire, that is of any value to the universal justice, for, what is of value is the universal intention, the universal purpose – the largest universality of selfhood with no external interference or conditioning by way of limitation. Moral virtues and ethical codes relating to the norms of non-violence, truthfulness, continence, appropriation of property and permissiveness to enjoy security, do all finally hang on this final justification to be found in every one of their normative shapes in personal and social behaviour, namely, a healthy balancing of every order of reality, right from the level of the lowest individuality, as required by the necessity to grow by a gradual ascent through degrees, to the general selfhood of the universe.
The need for norms of any kind in one’s behaviour arises due to the necessity to grant the same permission as given to oneself to other people also in the world. While everyone is to be granted the highest freedom, it loses its sense when such a freedom cannot be granted, at the same time, equally, to others also in the world. Unrestricted individual freedom granted to all would be another name for a tendency to the annihilation of all life – strange, that freedom can lead to destruction. But this is so because freedom is a universal principle and not an individual prerogative. The higher always justifies and can justify the lower, and the lower is not supposed to stand independently by itself. The aim of an action has to be justified. The reason behind the choosing of this aim has also to be justified. The means adopted to fulfil the aim is, again, to be justifiable. Finally, the consequence that may follow from the action should also be justifiable. And justice consists in the integral security of any order of reality.
Our duties, as well as character and conduct, are determined by the nature of the meaning that we are able to see in life, or, rather, the aim of life which is the ultimate objective towards the achievement of which every activity is directed. This would mean that the way in which one thinks, lives and acts, the manner of one’s behaviour towards others, and ones relationship with the general atmosphere around, are all fixed by the pattern of the meaning discoverable in life – the final aim of life. Though it may appear that the ultimate goal towards which one is directing one’s life is far remote somewhere in the future, it goes without saying that even the minimal step that one takes in any direction at the present moment is entirely governed by the law which is the stuff and substance of the ultimate purpose of all life. Law is, thus, an operation of the system of the Absolute in different evolutionary degrees of comprehensiveness and perfection, right from the revolution of an atom or the vibration of an electron to the ultimate causality of the universe. Personal needs, social laws and political systems of administration cannot, therefore, be separated from the requisitions necessitated by the very nature of the final unity of all things. It is this Universal Transcendent Principle that creates, sustains, rewards or punishes individual systems and organisations by its gradational actions and reactions. Here is also the explanation as to why individual systems strive for mutual love and cooperation, and at the same time, keep themselves ready with a knife hidden in their armpits. Life is a perpetual battle between the empirical and the transcendent, the external and the universal, time and eternity.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]
The Gospel of the Bhagavadgita
The Cosmic Mystery
The Cosmic Mystery by Swami Krishnananda
Created on Monday 17 February 2014 16:23
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Is there a world? We know it is, by means of sensations from outside, which are converted later into perceptions and concepts. But is it really a world that we perceive? We receive sensations and have ideas formulated according to what we think is a logical way of dealing with things. And when we have a visual, auditory or tactile sensation, we feel we are in contact with an object. But have we any contact with what is not a sensation? We have every right to assert that we have real sensations and real experience. But of what? Of sensible qualities. Science has taught us today that the sensed properties point to a something of an indeterminable nature, observable as radiant energy, force, etc. We are told that the mass of a body is variable. It appears to be fixed in low rates of motion, but it cannot be perceived in states of high velocity. Objects are fields of force, which appear as substances due to our channelising the consciousness through sensory moulds. Pure force cannot be confined to space or time, and the shape, position and time of location of an object have different significations in different perspectives or frameworks of perception. We see a world, because we do not see ourselves properly as essential elements in all experience. The student who studies the world goes with the world, and in vain does he attempt to know it, because he himself is involved in it. He merely sees the laws and limitations which no one can overstep. The universe turns out to be a body of a collective interpretation by its individual contents, and that all men see the same world does not mean that it is independent of the observational perspective. The world is an interrelated process envisaged by an all-inclusive consciousness. There are no bodies visible or tangible, but there is a tremendous mystery that ever recedes from our world which has been reduced to mere frames of reference to a witnessing consciousness. Where is the world of experience? It has shrivelled into conditions of feeling and sensation, modes of the observation of a universal ‘Observer of Himself’. Our dear world is at stake. Reality is something different.
The way in which reality presents itself as appearance is, to the mind of man, inexplicable. Those who witness a legerdemain conjured up by a magician cannot but take it for reality, as long as they see it. But the magician himself is fully aware that it is an illusion created by him. No amount of intellectual analysis and understanding to the effect that the juggleries are unreal will prevent one from taking those phenomena as real, instinctively, and without thought. The world passes for reality to those to whom it becomes a content of experience. Only the magician behind these appearances can know what their essential nature is. We cannot say that our experiences are unreal as long as our consciousness is associated with them and gets identified with their formulations. Our trouble is that we are never conscious of what is altogether non-existent. We glibly talk of a real universe, even as we get excited when we see silver in nacre. Our reflective consciousness may resent acquiescing in the ultimate validity of the reports of our senses, but we cannot help being immured in them and delighting in their deceitful music. We understand that the world can only be an appearance, but we are forced to feel that it is real. We accept it with submission. We seem to be bound; we do not know why. There seems to be a world; we do not know how. We are in the realm of Maya.
The principle of appearance is not an entity second to the Absolute, designated by us as Brahman, but constitutes the great wonder of the One becoming the many. It is not real, for it is contradicted in Brahmanubhava or Truth-Experience. It is not unreal, for we perceive and feel the diversity of life. It cannot be said to be both real and unreal, because such a proposition is unintelligible to us. It is not also neither real nor unreal – such a thing cannot even be imagined. The term ‘Maya’ is used in different senses, it denotes (1) the inadequacy and the incompetency of the world to explain itself without reference to Reality; (2) the inexplicability of the relation of appearance to Reality; (3) the dependence of the world on Reality or Brahman; (4) the energy that is inseparable from Isvara, from which, as the material cause, the manifestation of the world becomes possible; (5) and the dreamlike character of the world when compared with the transcendent Brahman. It is a term suggesting a mystery, which cannot be taken for reality, and yet cannot be denied altogether. We have to admit it as some Power that somehow brings about these strange phenomena of a world-existence in which we find ourselves. It is real to those who are in it, indescribable to those who try to understand it, and non-existent to those who have gone beyond it. Those who are not endowed with spiritual intuition speculate over it, but cannot solve the riddle, for the mechanism of individualistic knowledge is the psychological organ, a modification of Maya itself. As darkness cannot destroy darkness, the mind cannot know Maya.
Two powers are said to be ever busy: the Avarana-Sakti or the veiling power, and the Vikshepa-Sakti or the projecting power. The latter becomes the cause of the creation of the universe from the subtle elements of the gross cosmos. It is this power that, in its cosmic and individual aspects, becomes the medium for the manifestation of Isvara (God) and Jiva (individual), respectively. The Avarana-Sakti veils the difference between the seer and the seen inside, and the difference between Brahman and the universe outside. It is this Sakti that is the cause of Samsara. Empirically, consciousness and its object are different from each other, and the non-perception of this difference is the seed of pain. Metaphysically, the two are one, and the non-perception of this essential identity, is, again, Samsara. The empirical self appears due to a false superimposition arisen in the Witness-Self. This is the work of the projecting power. When the difference between the perceiver and the perceived becomes vivid, as soon as the veiling power is overcome, Jivahood also vanishes along with it. And likewise, as in the case of the witness and the object, Brahman appears as a modification, as it were, on account of the veiling power Of Maya that hides the distinction between the real nature of Brahman and the phenomenal universe. When this veiling power disappears through Brahmabhyasa (continuous meditation on Brahman), the nature of Brahman and the world becomes clear.
There are different degrees in the manifestation of Maya in the world. Its workings correspond to and are felt in its further miniatures in the planes of greater ignorance, where they get more and more separated from one another, until on the earth-plane entities are completely cut off as independent bodies. The power of disfiguring reality is not of the same intensity everywhere. Maya is more manifest and works more vehemently in inanimate beings than animate, more in brute natures than in refined, more in Tamas and Rajas than in Sattva, more in man than in the celestial, more in an aspirant than in a saint, more in the sleeping and the dreaming states of the Jiva than in the waking, more in gross forms than in subtle ones. Maya is manifest on a progressive evolutionary basis on the one hand and as a steady concealing of reality on the other. It pervades every quarter and cranny; there is nothing on earth or heaven that is not under its sway. The impetuosity of universal change drags with it the entire brood of creatures, and every individual is compelled to modify and adjust itself accordingly. Maya is another name for the energy of the cosmos, animated by Isvara, the vehemance with which the formed individuality asserts its independence over the universe.
Maya is supreme Isvara-Sakti. “Maya is not-That. It is not Brahman, the solid reality that is at the back of this seeming universe.” “Maya is the material cause of the world, and the possessor of Maya is the great Lord.” “Maya has two Avasthas or states viz. Guna-Samya-Avastka and Vaishamya-Avastha. The first one is a state wherein the three Gunas-Sattva, Rajas and Tamas-exist in a state of equilibrium. This occurs in cosmic dissolution (Pralaya). The innumerable Jivas remain in a subtle state with their Samskaras and Adrishta (unseen power of Karma or the fruit-giving power of Karma that is hidden in Karma). When the period of Pralaya is over, Spanda or vibration takes place in this equilibrium, because the hidden Jivas want to enjoy the fruits of their actions. This is Vaishamya-Avastha,” “Vidya, Para-Sakti, Prakriti, Mula-Prakriti, Avyakta, Adi-Sakti, Adi-Maya are all names synonymous with Maya. Vishnu-Sakti (Lakshmi), Siva-Sakti (Parvati) and Brahma-Sakti (Sarasvati) are all manifestations of the One Supreme Sakti.” “Chaitanya associated with Sattva-predominating Maya is Vishnu, the preservative aspect of Brahman, Chaitanya associated with Rajas-predominating Maya is Brahma, the creative aspect of Brahman. Chaitanya associated with Tamas-predominating Maya is Siva, the destructive aspect of Brahman” Swami Sivananda: (Philosophy and Teachings, pp. 58-60).
The mystery of Maya has to be accepted as superlogical. “The why of Maya can be understood only when one attains knowledge of Brahman.” “The ‘why’ itself is a logical absurdity. We can have a ‘why’ only for worldly matters where the Buddhi (intellect) functions. There can be no ‘why’ for questions of the transcendental plane where the gross and finite intellect conditioned by time and space cannot reach. Everyone who endeavoured to account for the empirical world has been confronted by ignorance at every step, and has been obliged to confess that human wit could go only so far and no further” (Ibid. p. 60). “The world somehow exists, and its relation to Brahman is indescribable. The illusion vanishes by attainment of knowledge of Brahman. It is in this sense, in the sense that it vanishes when Atma-Jnana (Self-knowledge) arises that this phenomenal universe is said to be unreal.” “If we know the nature of Brahman, all names and forms and limits will melt away.” “A man whose clothes are caught by fire will immediately run towards water. He will never enquire at that moment, when he is in acute distress, how the fire came, or how his clothes were burnt up” (Ibid., p. 62). When the play of the mind is stopped by conscious effort in Yoga, when the seed of thought is burnt by spiritual wisdom, the tree of Samsara ceases to exist.
Does Maya really exist or not? This inscrutable, indescribable Maya cannot be said either to exist or not to exist. It is a strange phenomenon which cannot be accounted for by law of Nature. Maya is Anirvachaniya (inexpressible). It is neither real like Brahman nor unreal like a barren woman’s son, or the horn of a hare, or a lotus-flower in the sky. The phenomena produced by a magician do not really exist…. But we cannot say that they do not exist, because we are conscious of the phenomena, though only for a short time. We are never conscious of a thing which, although it is non-existent, is like a lotus-flower in the sky. Similar is the phenomenon called the universe, which is imagined to be distinct from Brahman. It is like the silver for which the mother-of-pearl is mistaken.” “We call it Maya or illusion” (Ibid., p. 61). “Maya is that illusive power of Brahman which makes the Anitya (impermanent) appear as Nitya (permanent), Asuchi (impure) as Suchi (pure), Duhkha (pain) as Sukha (pleasure) and Anatman (not-self) as Atman (Self).” “The world of names and forms vanishes entirely from the vision of a sage. It is an illusion that can be removed only by true knowledge. It is the illusory notion of the serpent that is removed when the rope which is mistaken for the serpent is recognised. Therefore, it must be clearly admitted that the universe which is removed by knowledge of the Self is also an illusion” (Ibid., pp. 62-63). The illusion, however, is no illusion to those who directly experience it. We have to recall here our investigations of the nature of truth in dream and in waking, and add that the world is relatively real and transcendentally ideal. It has Vyavaharika-Satta or practical reality, while Brahman is Paramarthika-Satta or absolute reality.
It is necessary to dispel certain misconceptions regarding the nature of Maya, for it is held by many that the principle, instead of establishing the oneness of Brahman, creates a dichotomy in existence by its presence. As it was observed before, the term is used in different senses, to suggest the absoluteness of Brahman and the inscrutability of phenomena. Maya is not altogether non-existent (Sunya), for a void, cannot become an object of consciousness; but Maya has a capacity to appear in manifold forms. It does not also signify a self-contradictory assumption like that of a barren woman’s son or a round square, for such fancied things as these cannot even be conceived. But the effects of Maya not only present themselves before the individual but exert a control over it. The Jiva is a part of the world of Maya, and is not the cause of it. The acceptance of Maya does not annul the existence of a world external to consciousness. The theory is not analogous to the Vijnanavada school of Buddhism, as it is generally understood, according to which the world is an objectification of subjective cognitions or a perception of the externalisation of the series of the flow of individual consciousness which is of a momentary nature. It is not to be supposed that the introduction of the principle of Maya to account for the world can in anyway lead to the untenable position of subjective idealism. The theory of knowledge, proposed by Mayavada, accepts Anirvachaniyakhyati (indescribability), and not Asatkhyati (non-existence) or Atmakhyati (subjectivity). The object of knowledge is neither a nihil nor a projection of the internal cognitions. The object is held to be an indescribable appearance, as it cannot be considered either as object or as unreal. There cannot even be an appearance of externality if there were no substratum for such an appearance. When we perceive a table or a cloth, we do not regard it as forms of our own thoughts or feelings but as things independent of us as perceivers. Though, the objects cannot claim to have an ontological status of their own, they have an empirical existence and psychological independence which points to a real though unperceived basis behind them. When we regard the world as Maya, what we mean is that it has no validity of its own as absolute truth and not that it never appears to us, or that it is real enough to vitiate the Infinite.
It has been regarded that the theory of Maya creates an unnecessary difference between Saguna-Brahman and Nirguna-Brahman, while, in fact the two have to be brought together and reconciled. The criticism is really without a basis, for the alleged dualism is never intended. Brahman is either Nirguna, or Saguna, or both, or neither. If it is Nirguna essentially, its Saguna aspect must be accidental, brought about by causes extraneous to it. This would mean that Brahman is not really Saguna but Nirguna. But if Brahman is really Saguna, its Nirguna aspect should be alien to its essential nature. To suppose, then, that Brahman is also Nirguna would be to imagine it in a state not its own. And whatever does not belong to it cannot be considered to be eternal. Thus the Nirguna aspect would be non-eternal. If, on the other hand, Brahman is to be regarded as both Nirguna and Saguna, we would be speaking what we are not able to defend for one thing cannot be two things at one and the same time. If, again, it is said that Brahman, on account of its infinite power, can assume both forms, though unintelligible to us, it means that the real nature of Brahman is neither Nirguna nor Saguna, but beyond both. Thus, again, we are led to the non-dualist position, where the question of the reconciliation of the Saguna and the Nirguna aspects of Brahman does not arise. And if it is neither of these, it must be something different, which, again, would mean that it is one without a second.
It is argued that the world is a real Self-manifestation of Brahman, a creation of its consciousness-force, and that it is not unreal in any sense. If Brahman has really become the world, it has undergone a modification in its essence, and thus has ceased to be what it is. We are driven here to the difficult position of the doctrine of Parinamavada (real transformation). There would be no Brahman left to be realised by souls if it has already become the world by self-transformation. But if it has not really modified itself into the world, the world is other than Brahman, and thereby loses its being – it becomes an appearance. That which does not belong to Brahman, but yet seems to exist, is what is designated by the term Maya. It cannot be said that the world, as we know it, is in Brahman, or belongs to Brahman, for the mortal nature of the former can in no way be extended to the immortal. The world is not also something existing unrelated to Brahman, for, then, it would limit Brahman, and consequently deny it. Even supposing that Brahman has become the world in a manner transcending our logic, we have to admit that Brahman alone is, for the reason that consciousness does not admit of divisions in it. The consciousness of division has to be divisionless.
It is said, again, that just as there is continuity in the perceptions of the imagined snake and the rope, a real relation between the world and Brahman cannot be denied. It is evident that the supposed continuity between the states of the snake and the rope is not in the perceptions, but in a substratum common to both. The Adhishthana or the support of the snake and the rope is one, and it is on account of this fact that one is able to perceive the two in one and the same locus, at different times. There is no continuity between the forms of the perception of the snake and the rope, for the former are negatived in the latter, and the suggested relation is only due to the consciousness present as the substrate of both the forms of perception. The world and Brahman, therefore, are one in the sense that the essence of both is consciousness, but it does not mean that the perception of the world by itself has any relation to the realisation of Brahman.
It is asked: How can Maya have a beginningless appearance if it stands eternally cancelled in Brahman? We see that the snake seen in a rope stands eternally cancelled, for a rope never becomes a snake nor is a snake ever transformed into a rope. Yet the perception of a snake in the rope becomes possible, as testified by common experience, and there is no beginning for the possibility of such an appearance. Suresvara describes Maya as Sarva-nyaya virodhini, the contradiction of every type of reasoning or logic.
The absolute cannot become what it is not; if it does not there is no world. But there is one seen. It must not be, therefore, different from the Absolute. This, again, means that there is no world but only the Absolute. But we do not see the Absolute; we see only the world!
The doctrine of Maya is not a theory of reality, but a symbolic representation of a phenomenon to be transcended, like an ‘x’ in a mathematical equation. When we take a symbol for truth, difficulties are bound to arise, for we assume here the reality of what was declared in the beginning itself to be something meant to be abandoned latter on, as a means of explanation and not anything real. And it is not true that the useful should always be real, ultimately. Maya is not a truth eternal but the baffling mystery of the descent of the One into the many. Maya cannot be known, for the one who aspires to know it is the Jiva whose very fibre is soaked in Maya. And the knowledge of Maya would mean a transcendence of individuality. Darkness cannot be seen with the help of a light.
The critics of the doctrine of Maya commit the initial error of taking it for granted that Maya is something real, and then complain that the introduction of this principle in an explanation of the world in relation to Brahman brings about a duality between the two. It should be reiterated that Maya does not mean any existence or being that would limit the infinitude of Brahman but denotes the inscrutable character of Brahman, by which a multifarious world becomes somehow possible in its unattached plenitude. The sages declare that Brahman alone is real, that the world is not different from Brahman in essence and that Brahman is verily the Atman. Other than this knowledge there is no way of overcoming the influence which Maya seems to have over us. Knowledge is the means to Moksha – in fact, it is Moksha, liberation.
It is objected that even if an appearance is not ultimately real in the sense of Brahman, it cannot but create a duality, for even appearance is, as long as it is experienced. In as much as appearances are facts felt and known, they have to be accredited with a certain amount of reality. And it will be clear that in the perception of a snake in a rope, the snake that is observed is real to its observer, and the rope-snake is not absolutely non-existent. It is experienced, and so has some amount of reality. But does this snake that is perceived cause any duality in the real? The supposed duality would be the one that might subsist between the snake that is seen and the rope which is its substratum. But we all know that what kind of duality there exists between this percept and its substratum. There is no duality at all, for there is only the rope. Even granting a kind of reality to the appearance of the snake, we find no duality that divides the snake from the rope. The being of the snake is at once the being of the rope. The world is a superimposition on Brahman, and the reality of the world is Brahman itself. Thus the principle of Maya does not introduce any duality between the world and Brahman. If the world were absolutely real, a real creation or manifestation of Brahman, it would have been impossible for anyone to escape from limitation, pain and death. That freedom eternal is somehow possible shows that bondage is in the end, unreal, and the changing universe has no reality of its own. This is why it is said that the universe is relative; it cannot contradict The Absolute, which alone is, and can be.
[Extracted from Swami Krishnananda Maharaj’s discourses Divine Life Society]