A Commentary
on the Upanishads
by
Swami Nirmalananda Giri
A Commentary
on the
Isha
Upanishad
Seeing All Things in God
Introduction
to the Upanishads
The sacred scriptures of India are vast. Their importance is
ranked differently
according to the particular viewpoint of the individual. In
Hinduism there are six
darshanas, or systems of philosophy. They often
seem to contradict themselves (and
their professed adherents usually do
contradict those of the other
darshanas), but the
wise know that they are only different ways of seeing the same
thing, and it is that One
Thing which makes them both valid and ultimately harmonious. That
unifying subject
is Brahman: God the Absolute, beyond and besides Whom there is no
“other”
whatsoever. Yet, according to differences in outlook, there is
difference in evaluation of
the scriptures. However, all followers of the Eternal (Sanatana)
Dharma agree that the
Vedas are the supreme authority, and the Vedas are always
understood to include those
treatises of mystical and speculative philosophy known as the
Upanishads. The word
“upanishad” comes from the root word upasana, which means “to draw near,” and is
usually considered to mean that which was heard when the student
sat near the
teacher to learn the eternal truths.
We do not know who wrote (or relayed from inner perception) the
Vedas or the
Upanishads, though we do have the names of those considered the
original seers of
the Vedic knowledge, though we know virtually nothing about their
lives. This has a
distinct advantage over the scriptures of other religions, for
then the image of a
historical, finite personality does not intervene to obscure the
revelation they handed
on to their students. It is in no way unjust to say that in other
religions concentration
on, adulation, and worship of the person who gave the revelation
has often obscured
and even abrogated their purpose in giving the teachings. Words
and behavior
diametrically opposed to the Messenger’s teachings are sanctified
by “devotion,”
“love,” and “dedication” to “the Master,” “the Lord,” or “the
Savior” who has a heaven
to which he will welcome all faithful and believing devotees.
“Following” is the ideal
rather than becoming what the Teacher was. Lost in the
personality of the Messenger,
they forget the Message. “Adore the Messenger and ignore the
Message” becomes
the norm.
The authority of the Vedic scriptures rests not upon those who
wrote them down
but upon the demonstrable
truths they
express. They are as self-sufficient and selfevident
as the multiplication tables or the Table of Elements. They are
simply the
complete and unobscured truth. And realization of that Truth alone
matters.
The first Upanishad we will look into is the Isha Upanishad, so
called from its
opening word: ishavasyam.
Translation
The Upanishads have long interested students of philosophy in the
West. The
English philosopher Hume translated some of them into English in
the eighteenth
century. Later he travelled to America where he taught Sanskrit to
Thomas Jefferson
and together they studied the Upanishads in their original form.
The greatest boon seekers of truth in this country have received
are the
translations of the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita–The Upanishads, Breath of the
Eternal, and The
Song of God, Bhagavad Gita–made by
Swami Prabhavananda of the
Vedanta Society of Southern California in the nineteen-forties. I
was privileged to hear
him speak in 1962, and the value and clarity of his insights were
remarkable. In his
translations he did not attempt an exact literalism, yet they
convey the meanings of the
texts far better than most who try for literal wording. Reading
his translation of the
Gita changed my life in 1960, and everything which happened
afterward was a
consequence of that. My debt to him is incalculable and therefore
unpayable. I looked
at many translations before taking up the task of commenting on
the Upanishads, and I
found Swamiji’s version inescapable. The Light of the Self (Atma
Jyoti) radiates from
the pages, conveying to us the illumination and blessing of his
teacher Swami
Brahmananda and his Master, Sri Ramakrishna Paramhansa, of
Whom it can be rightly
said: “He shining, everything shines.”
An instructive
story
Just before going to India for the first time in 1962, I had the
great good fortune to
meet and hear Sri A. B. Purani, the administrator of the renowned
Aurobindo Ashram
of Pondicherry, India. From his lips I heard the most brilliant
expositions of Vedic
philosophy; nothing in my subsequent experience has equaled them.
In one talk he
told the following story:
In ancient India there lived a most virtuous Brahmin who was
considered by all to
be the best authority on philosophy. One day the local king
ordered him to appear
before him. When he did so, the king said: “I have three questions
that puzzle–even
torment–me: Where is God? Why don’t I see Him? And what does he do
all day? If you
can’t answer these three questions I will have your head cut off.”
The Brahmin was
appalled and terrified, because the answers to these questions
were not just complex,
they were impossible to formulate. In other words: he did not know
the answers. So his
execution date was set.
On the morning of that day the Brahmin’s teenage son appeared and
asked the
king if he would release his father if he–the son–would answer the
questions. The king
agreed, and the son asked that a container of milk be brought to
him. It was done.
Then the boy asked that the milk be churned into butter. That,
too, was done.
“The first two of your questions are now answered,” he told the
king.
The king objected that he had been given no answers, so the son
asked: “Where
was the butter before it was churned?”
“In the milk,” replied the king.
“In what part of the milk?” asked the boy.
“In all of it.”
“Just so, agreed the boy, “and in the same way God is within all
things and
pervades all things.”
“Why don’t I see Him, then,” pressed the king.
“Because you do not ‘churn’ your mind and refine your perceptions
through
meditation. If you do that, you will see God. But not otherwise.
Now let my father go.”
“Not at all,” insisted the king. “You have not told me what God
does all day.”
“To answer that,” said the boy, “we will have to change places.
You come stand here
and let me sit on the throne.”
The request was so audacious the king complied, and in a moment he
was standing
before the enthroned Brahmin boy who told him: “This is the
answer. One moment
you were here and I was there. Now things are reversed. God
perpetually lifts up and
casts down every one of us. In one life we are exalted and in
another we are brought
low–oftentimes in a single life this occurs, and even more than
once. Our lives are
completely in His hand, and He does with us as He wills.” (“He
hath put down the
mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree.” Luke
1:52)
The Brahmin was released and his son was given many honors and
gifts by the
king.
The Isha Upanishad opens with the answer to the question as to
God’s
“whereabouts.”
He is within
all
“In the heart of all things, of whatever there is in the universe,
dwells the
Lord.” (Isha Upanishad 1) Whatever we experience, whether through
the inner or
outer senses, it is a covering of the Lord (Isha). Since it
conceals, it necessarily blinds,
confuses, or inhibits us. It is a door closed in our face.
Tragically, throughout lives
without number we have not known this simple fact and have as a
consequence
believed that the experienced, whether objective or subjective, is
the sole reality and
have dissipated life after life in involvement with it to our pain
and destruction. A door
is never the way out: the way out is revealed when the door is
moved aside–eliminated.
Not knowing this, either, we have clawed, hammered, and hewn at
the door–at least in
those lives when we were not adulating and worshipping it or
calling it “God’s greatest
gift to us”–to no avail. The root problem is our believing in the
door’s reality, thinking
that it is the beginning, middle, and end. Only when it disappears
will we see the truth
that lies beyond “things.”
We must not just get “inside” things, we must get to their heart.
And how is that
done? By getting
into our own heart, into the
core of our own being. There everything
will be found. The key to the door is meditation.
Another viewing
Prabhavananda has conveyed the ultimate message of these opening
words of the
Isha Upanishad. The literal translation, however, gives us another
view which we
should consider: “All this—whatever exists in this changing
universe—should be
covered by the Lord.” (Translation by Swami Nikhilananda.) Rather
than speaking of
piercing to the heart of things, the literal meaning is that the
Lord should be seen
covering–that is, enveloping–all things. This has two meanings.
1) What I have just expressed, that we should experience–not just
think
intellectually–that God is encompassing all things, that we should
not see things as
independent or separate from God, but as existing within God. And
this vision should
extend to us: we, too, exist only within Him.
2) In our seeing of things, God should always be between us and
them. First we
should see God, and only secondarily see the “things.”
The renowned Swami (Papa) Ramdas in his spiritual autobiography In Quest of God
writes of his initial spiritual awakening in these words: “It was
at this time that it slowly
dawned upon his mind that Ram was the only Reality and all else
was false.…All
thought, all mind, all heart, all soul was concentrated on Ram,
Ram covering up and
absorbing everything.”
In the Bhagavad Gita, considered to convey the essence of the
Upanishadic
wisdom, both Prabhavananda’s and the literal translations are put
together when
Krishna tells Arjuna that the wise see God in all things and all
things in God. “Those
who see Me in everything and see everything in Me, are not
separated from Me and I
am not separated from them.” (Bhagavad Gita 6:30)
He IS all
If we accept the foregoing, then we will take the next step and
experience that “He
alone is the reality.” (Isha Upanishad 1) This can be understood
more than one way.
We can conclude that God alone is real and everything else is
unreal. The problem
with that is our tendency to equate “unreal” with non-existent,
and wrongly belief that
everything is only an illusion, that it has no reality whatsoever.
The great non-dual
philosopher Shankara explained the accurate view by likening our
experience of things
to that of a man who sees a rope in dim light and mistakes it for
a snake, his mind even
supplying eyes that glitter and a mouth that hisses at him. When
light is brought, he
sees that there is no snake, only a rope. The snake was not real,
but his impression,
however mistaken, was real. The snake was not real, it was
non-existent; but the
impression of the snake was real and did exist. The rope was the
reality and the snake
was an illusion overlain on it. In the same way God is the reality
and everything else is
illusory like the snake. But illusion does exist. Denying it gets
us nowhere; we have to
deal with it by seeing through it, by dispelling it. Then we will
see the reality: God.
After that we can progress to the understanding that even though
our interpretation
may be wrong, what we perceive does have a real side to it, and that
is God Himself.
Hence, all things are God in their real side. The “wrong” side is
in our mind alone. We
can say that God is the reality of the unreal, which we need to
see past. And that is the
whole idea of the opening verse of the upanishad. He alone is
real; He is all things.
Be at peace
“Wherefore, renouncing vain appearances, rejoice in him.” (Isha
Upanishad 1) All
of our sorrows and troubles come from our mistaking vain
appearances for reality,
from our looking at them with our outer eyes instead of beholding
God with the inner
eye. But we are addicted to those vain appearances–we have to
admit that. Yes, we are
even addicted to all the pain and anxiety they bring us. That is
foolish, but is it any
more foolish than it is to be addicted to drugs or alcohol–or to
people that harm us? We
are insane on certain levels; this world is a madhouse for people
of our particular
lunacy. The sooner we understand this and resolve to be cured and
released, the better
things will be for us. For from “things” we will move on to
God-perception.
For this reason the yogis, those who seek God in meditation,
should be the most
cheerful and optimistic of people. If we look to God we will see
only perfection and
rejoice in it; if we look at ourselves, others, and the world
around us we will see only
imperfection and be discontent. Depression comes from looking in
the wrong place. It
is the bitter fruit of ego-involvement, of ego-obsession. The
remedy is not to have “high
self-esteem” but rather to have God-esteem. And since we live in
God, we will see the
divine side even of ourselves and be ever hopeful. Once God spoke
to a contemporary
mystic and said: “I am He Who Is. You are She Who Is Not.” Now to
the ego that may
sound hateful, but to the questing spirit it is a liberating
assurance. The unreal which
we call “me” need not be struggled with: it is only a ghost, a
shadow. Bringing in the
light of God-contact will reveal that to be the truth. Then we
will be at peace and in
perfect joy. What a burden is lifted from those who come to know
that God alone is real
and true, and that we need only look to Him. When we look within
we find Him as the
heart of our selves.
We must renounce unreality. As I say, we are addicted to it, so we
will have to
struggle to break the terrible habit of delusion, just as those
addicted to the
hallucinations produced by drugs have to break away from them and
discard them
forever. Then we will “rejoice in Him.”
Desirelessness
“Covet no man’s wealth.” Why? Because it does not exist! It is
just a bubble
destined to burst leaving nothing in its place. There are no
“things” to covet or possess.
They are the fever dreams of illusion from which we must awaken.
No one really owns
anything–firstly because the thing (as we perceive it) does not
exist, and the “man”
does not exist either; and neither do we–as least so far as our
perceptions of “them,”
“it,” and “me” go.
God and I in space alone
And nobody else in view.
“And where are the people, O Lord!” I said.
“The earth below and the sky o’erhead
And the dead whom once I knew?”
“That was a dream,” God smiled and said,
“A dream that seemed to be true,
There were no people, living or dead,
There was no earth and no sky o’erhead
There was only Myself–and you.”
“Why do I feel no fear,” I asked,
“Meeting you here in this way,
For I have sinned I know full well,
And there is heaven and there is hell,
And is this the judgment day?”
“Nay, those were dreams,” the great God said,
“Dreams that have ceased to be.
There are no such things as fear or sin,
There is no you–you have never been–
There is nothing at all but Me.”
(“Illusion” by Edna Wheeler Wilcox.)
Living a Life Worth Living
How to live
“Well may he be content to live a hundred years who acts without
attachment who
works his work with earnestness, but without desire, not yearning
for its fruits–he, and
he alone.” (Isha Upanishad 2)
It is generally felt that this verse–and other passages from
scriptures and books on
spiritual life–indicates that one hundred years is the normal
lifespan for a human
being. On the other hand, the figure of one hundred years may also
symbolize the
complete lifespan of a person, however brief or long, the idea
here being that not one
moment of our life need be a burden nor should we ever wish to
shorten our life by a
single breath–that life should be lived in fulfillment with peace
and happiness all the
way through. That this is possible has been shown well by the
saints and Masters of all
religions and ages. We need only know how to do it; and these
words give the way.
Acting without
attachment and desire
In the Bhagavad Gita Krishna draws very clearly for us the picture
of a person who
lives in anxiety and misery and him who lives in peace and
contentment. Both may be
living in exactly the same situation, for it is not external
conditions that make us happy
or miserable, but our reaction to them. Krishna makes it quite
plain that the secret of
happiness or misery lies in the absence of two things: attachment
and desire. Those
who live in attachment to externalities, anxious to fulfill
desire, must suffer and live in
frustration. On the other hand, those who live without egoic
desire are perpetually at
peace.
Nonattachment
Krishna not only holds out the ideal for us, He also tells us how
to accomplish it.
“Perform every action with your heart fixed on the Supreme Lord.
Renounce
attachment to the fruits. Be even-tempered in success and failure;
for it is this
evenness of temper which is meant by yoga.” (2:48)
“In the calm of self-surrender you can free yourself from the
bondage of virtue and
vice during this very life. Devote yourself, therefore, to
reaching union with Brahman.
To unite the heart with Brahman and then to act: that is the
secret of non-attached
work.” (2:50)
“When your intellect has cleared itself of its delusions, you will
become indifferent
to the results of all action, present or future.” (2:52)
“The world is imprisoned in its own activity, except when actions
are performed as
worship of God. Therefore you must perform every action
sacramentally, and be free
from all attachments to results.” (3:9)
“Whosoever works for me alone, makes me his only goal and is
devoted to me, free
from attachment, and without hatred toward any creature–that man,
O Prince, shall
enter into me.” (11:55)
‘Therefore, a man should contemplate Brahman until he has
sharpened the axe of
his non-attachment. With this axe, he must cut through the
firmly-rooted Aswattha
tree.” (15:3)
“No human being can give up action altogether, but he who gives up
the fruits of
action is said to be non-attached.” (18:11)
“When a man has achieved non-attachment, self-mastery and freedom
from desire
through renunciation, he reaches union with Brahman, who is beyond
all
action.” (18:49)
In other words, keeping the mind on God frees us from egoic
attachment to our
activities. This is an extremely high ideal and one very hard to
attain; yet we must
strive for it through the practice of meditation, for only the
clarity of vision reached
through meditation can enable us to live out such a lofty ideal.
Working with
earnestness
Lest we think that negative or passive indifference is detachment,
or that
carelessness and shoddiness in our daily work is
spiritual-mindedness–a view that
prevails in much of the Orient and among many in the West–the
Upanishad plainly tells
us that the wise man “works his work with earnestness.” This is
really a great portion
of the Bhagavad Gita’s message: that we must work with skill to
the best of our
abilities–that is our part–while leaving the results to God–that
is His part. In that way
we truly are “workers together” with God (II Corinthians 6:1) in
our life. Sri
Ramakrishna said: “If you can weigh salt you can weigh sugar,”
meaning that if a
person is proficient in spiritual life he will be proficient in
his outer life as well. That
does not mean that all yogis need to become great successes in
business or some
other profession, but it does mean that they need to work with the
full capabilities they
possess and do absolutely the best they can–and no more; that is,
they need not worry
about the results. In this way they will be at peace both
internally and externally.
Without desire
The real cankerworm in the garden of our life is desire, whether
in the form of
wanting, wishing, yearning, desiring, hoping, demanding, or
craving. Whether to a
little or a great degree, desire destroys our hearts and our
chances for inner peace.
Desire is a wasting fever which drives us onward to spiritual
loss. “For what shall it
profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own
soul?” (Mark 8:36) As
Wordsworth wrote: “We have given our hearts away–a sordid boon!” I
have spent my
entire life watching people gain a little bit of the world and
lose their souls. And
ultimately they lost the world, too, either in the changes of
earthly fortune or through
the finality of death.
“And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for
a man’s life
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.
And he spake a
parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man
brought forth plentifully:
And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I
have no room where
to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down
my barns, and build
greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I
will say to my soul,
Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine
ease, eat, drink, and be
merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall
be required of thee:
then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is
he that layeth up
treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:15-21)
Desirelessness is not a zombie-like passivity, a kind of pious
vegetating. Far from it.
Krishna lauds the desireless in these words:
He knows bliss in the Atman
And wants nothing else.
Cravings torment the heart:
He renounces cravings.
I call him illumined. (2:55)
Not shaken by adversity,
Not hankering after happiness:
Free from fear, free from anger,
Free from the things of desire.
I call him a seer, and illumined. (2:56)
The bonds of his flesh are broken.
He is lucky, and does not rejoice:
He is unlucky, and does not weep
I call him illumined. (2:57)
The tortoise can draw in its legs:
The seer can draw in his senses.
I call him illumined. (2:58)
The abstinent run away from what they desire
But carry their desires with them:
When a man enters Reality,
He leaves his desires behind him. (2:59)
The desireless who have fulfilled themselves in God are the most
alive, happy, and
satisfied of beings. Surely they–and they alone–are “content to
live a hundred years.”
For them there is no talk of death being a “blessed release”
(which it is not), for they
are already freed in spirit.
Spiritual Suicides
“Worlds there are without suns, covered up with darkness. To these
after death go
the ignorant, slayers of the Self.” (Isha Upanishad 3) (“Verily,
those worlds of the
asuras are enveloped in blind darkness; and thereto they all
repair after death who are
slayers of Atman.” This is the translation of Swami Nikhilananda.)
The Upanishadic seer(s?) opened by speaking of the way of
fulfilled and joyful life:
seeing the Divine in all things, and living on the earth according
to Divine Law. But
this is not the only world in which we can find ourself as we move
through a cycle of
continuous birth and death–birth into one world after having died
out of another, or
another birth into the world where we were just living. When we
speak of “birth” we
usually think only of physical embodiment on this earth. But when
we die in this world
we are born into an astral world where we remain for some time and
then die to that
world and become born back into this world. Although this world
remains virtually the
same–despite the fact that every generation thinks it is a great
advance over previous
eras–we can spend time in a vast array of astral worlds, positive
and negative, pleasant
and unpleasant. The earth becomes a kind of stable place of return
for us. Or is it?
Many births,
many worlds
Although the earth accommodates a wide range of spiritual and
psychological
evolution, the astral worlds are more specialized. There is an
astral world for every
degree of consciousness. These worlds can be classified just as
sentient beings are
classified. That does not say much, since each person can have a
different set of
criteria for such classification. But the masters of wisdom have
generally agreed: there
are two basic kinds of people–suras and asuras, those who dwell in
the light and those
who live in the dark. “Divine” and “demonic” are commonly used to
translate sura–or
deva–and asura. A sura/deva is in the light, an asura is not.
Sometimes a person dwells
in the dark by choice, but most often it is a state of ignorance
rather than negative
volition. Because of this we need to avoid a “deva is good, asura
is bad” reaction in all
cases, though there are instances when this is accurate, and to
repress it would be
foolish–and asuric!
The sixteenth
chapter of the Bhagavad Gita
Practically speaking, however–that is, looking at the result of
manifesting those
natures–it is just that simple. An entire chapter of the Bhagavad
Gita is directed to this
manner of divine (devic) and demonic (asuric) nature as it
manifests in human beings.
I know it is pretty lengthy, but it is so insightful and complete
that it merits inclusion
here. Sri Krishna speaks:
“A man who is born with tendencies toward the Divine, is fearless
and pure in
heart. He perseveres in that path to union with Brahman which the
scriptures and his
teacher have taught him. He is charitable. He can control his
passions. He studies the
scriptures regularly, and obeys their directions. He practices
spiritual disciplines. He is
straightforward, truthful, and of an even temper. He harms no one.
He renounces the
things of this world. He has a tranquil mind and an unmalicious
tongue. He is
compassionate toward all. He is not greedy. He is gentle and
modest. He abstains from
useless activity. He has faith in the strength of his higher
nature. He can forgive and
endure. He is clean in thought and act. He is free from hatred and
from pride. Such
qualities are his birthright.
“When a man is born with demonic tendencies, his birthright is
hypocrisy,
arrogance, conceit, anger, cruelty and ignorance.
“The birthright of the divine nature leads to liberation. The
birthright of the
demonic nature leads to greater bondage. But you need not fear,
Arjuna: your
birthright is divine.
“In this world there are two kinds of beings: those whose nature
tends toward the
Divine, and those who have the demonic tendencies. I have already
described the
divine nature to you in some detail. Now you shall learn more
about the demonic
nature.
“Men of demonic nature know neither what they ought to do, nor
what they should
refrain from doing. There is no truth in them, or purity, or right
conduct. They
maintain that the scriptures are a lie, and that the universe is
not based upon a moral
law, but godless, conceived in lust and created by copulation,
without any other cause.
Because they believe this in the darkness of their little minds, these
degraded
creatures do horrible deeds, attempting to destroy the world. They
are enemies of
mankind.
“Their lust can never be appeased. They are arrogant, and vain,
and drunk with
pride. They run blindly after what is evil. The ends they work for
are unclean. They are
sure that life has only one purpose: gratification of the senses.
And so they are plagued
by innumerable cares, from which death alone can release them.
Anxiety binds them
with a hundred chains, delivering them over to lust and wrath.
They are ceaselessly
busy, piling up dishonest gains to satisfy their cravings.
“‘I wanted this and today I got it. I want that: I shall get it
tomorrow. All these riches
are now mine: soon I shall have more. I have killed this enemy. I
will kill all the rest. I
am a ruler of men. I enjoy the things of this world. I am
successful, strong and happy.
Who is my equal? I am so wealthy and so nobly born. I will
sacrifice to the gods. I will
give alms. I will make merry.’ That is what they say to
themselves, in the blindness of
their ignorance.
“They are addicts of sensual pleasure, made restless by their many
desires, and
caught in the net of delusion. They fall into the filthy hell of
their own evil minds.
Conceited, haughty, foolishly proud, and intoxicated by their
wealth, they offer
sacrifice to God in name only, for outward show, without following
the sacred rituals.
These malignant creatures are full of egoism, vanity, lust, wrath,
and consciousness of
power. They loathe me, and deny my presence both in themselves and
in others. They
are enemies of all men and of myself; cruel, despicable and vile.
I cast them back, again
and again, into the wombs of degraded parents, subjecting them to
the wheel of birth
and death. And so they are constantly reborn, in degradation and
delusion. They do
not reach me, but sink down to the lowest possible condition of
the soul.”
Am I an asura?
What are the basic traits that render someone an asura? The
Upanishad has already
given them: 1) spiritual blindness, 2) spiritual darkness, 3)
spiritual ignorance, and 4)
engaging in deeds that “kill” the awareness and the freedom of the
eternal, immortal,
divine self. The first three are what dispose us to the fourth,
destructive trait. Krishna
has already given us quite an exposition of the ways of the asuric
personality, but it can
all be summed up in their effect: the negation of consciousness of
the individual spirit.
Now this point that spiritual ignorance is a matter of unawareness
of the individual
spirit, our own atman, is particularly important because many
asuras think to hide
their status under an externalized cloak of religiosity, of
supposed belief in and
dedication to God. But this is all nonsense. Saint John the
Apostle comments that no
one can legitimately claim to love God Whom they have not seen if
they have no love
for their fellow human beings whom they have seen. In the same
way, it is absurd to
pretend that we know or are aware of the infinite Spirit when we
are not aware of the
finite spirit–our own self–which is right within us. This is why
Buddha simply refused
to speak about God or gods, and insisted that each one must seek
for nirvana alone,
rejecting all other matters as harmful distractions.
Another Upanishad states that if we learn about water from a
single cup of water we
can then know about oceans of water. In the same way, if we come
to truly comprehend
our nature as spirit we will be able to know God the Infinite
Spirit. Thus selfknowledge–
knowledge of our spirit–is essential. Shankara says that until we
know the
self we are all asuras in the absolute sense, but if we are
seeking to know the self I
expect the distinction is not so drastic.
An asura, then, is one whose life and thought obscure and darken
the inner
consciousness so the true self remains unknown and buried–often
even unsuspected
as to its existence. It has nothing to do with what philosophers
and theologians say
about it; the matter is thoroughly pragmatic. Do we or don’t we,
are we or aren’t we?
Verbal claims mean nothing here. State of being alone matters.
The worlds of
the asuras
Because it is their will, asuras are born over and over in worlds
“enveloped in blind
darkness” at the time of their death, earthly or astral. Naturally
our thoughts go to the
ideas of “hell” so beloved to all religionists, east and west,
whether it is the absurdly
simplistic fire pit of Christianity or the horrifically complex
and lurid hell(s) of
Hinduism, Taoism, or Buddhism. But what is this world in which we
presently find
ourselves–a world ravaged with hatred, violence, disease, cruelty,
and aggressive
ignorance and greed? The fact that there is also kindness, love,
mercy, and toleration in
the world makes it even more crazy: schizophrenic and
schizophrenogenic (making us
crazy). No wonder The Onion, a satirical magazine, ran an article
entitled: “God
Diagnosed With Bipolar Disorder.” It might seem blasphemous, but
it is the
preposterous religion prevailing in the West that is blasphemous,
and the satire is just
pointing it out.
Someone once asked Paramhansa Yogananda if he believed in hell.
Paramhansaji
smiled and asked: “Where do you think you are?” A very good
question, indeed.
We write our own ticket by the way we think and act. No amount of
rationalization
or assurance from others will change this fact. If we seek darkness
we will find
darkness; if we seek the light we will find the light. Nothing
more; nothing less.
“Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock,
and it shall be
opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that
seeketh findeth; and
to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” (Matthew 7:7, 8)
Just be aware of the consequences.
The Undivided, Unmoving Self
The teachings of the upanishads are the supreme expressions of the
eternal
wisdom, the eternal vision of the Vedic Seers. Consequently,
though simple in their
mode of expression, they can be extremely hard to grasp. The
rishis lived in a state of
consciousness almost opposite to that of most of us. But it is
possible of attainment,
and so the wise cultivate it. Yet we need guidance along the way,
and need to carefully
look into the upanishadic dicta for that guidance. There are many
things that we need
not know, but the truths embodied in the upanishads and their
inspired summary, the
Bhagavad Gita, must be known by all who would ascend to higher
life. So they merit
our intent consideration.
The four levels
of understanding
During the last week of his earthly life, Jesus was in Jerusalem
at the Passover
season. At one point, while speaking to the crowd, he prayed:
“Father, glorify thy
name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both
glorified it, and will
glorify it again. The people therefore, that stood by, and heard
it, said that it thundered:
others said, An angel spake to him.” (John 12:28, 29) And of course
a third contingency
heard
nothing. This is
how it is in this world of unreality when Reality impinges on it.
According to the level of development, so the encountering
individual reacts to the
impingement.
In Indian philosophy there are a lot of numerical divisions, but
one of the most
prevalent is that of Four. To list some: there are four ages
(yugas) of human history,
there are four modes of consciousness (waking, dreaming, dreamless
sleep and turiya–
consciousness itself), there are four stages of dharmic life
(student, family, semisolitary,
and monastic), and of course there are four castes (shudra,
vaishya, kshatriya
and brahmin). All of these relate to the evolutionary development
of the individual (as
Krishna says: guna and karma) and are fundamentally a matter of
internal disposition
and capacity. These four levels (is it an accident there are four
Gospels?) are depicted
in this event. Some people heard what was spoken and knew it was
the voice of God;
some heard a voice–not the actual words–and thought it was an
angel speaking; some
heard an indistinct sound and thought it was thunder; and others
(no doubt the
majority) heard nothing at all. It is not an event that matters as
much as our
comprehension of it.
Yes, that is everything: comprehension. And that takes place only
according to our
state of inner development. Krishna spoke of this in the beginning
of his instruction to
Arjuna at Kurukshetra, saying: “There are some who have actually
looked upon the
Atman, and understood It, in all Its wonder. Others can only speak
of It as wonderful
beyond their understanding. Others know of Its wonder by hearsay.
And there are
others who are told about It and do not understand a word.”
(Bhagavad Gita 2:29) Here
again are the four levels of comprehension. We pass from one to
another in ascending
steps only through inner cultivation–in other words, only through
meditation, but
meditation supported by a entire way of life that facilitates
it–in other words: dharma.
For if there is neither the practice nor the support for the
practice, little will result in
the way of developing consciousness. And if consciousness is not
developed the
teachings of the great sages will be little understood by us, and
perhaps greatly
misunderstood or just not understood at all.
Sri Ramakrishna told about a certain group of yogis who were wont
to challenge a
person with the words: “What station are you dwelling in?” By
“station” they meant the
habitual state of the individual’s mind. The next verse of the
Isha Upanishad is not easy
to grasp because it speaks of a mode of being far different from
our usual condition. So
it will be a real test as to what “station” of consciousness we
are dwelling in, as we try
to decode it. Here it is:
“The Self is one. Unmoving, it moves swifter than thought. The
senses do not
overtake it, for always it goes before. Remaining still, it
outstrips all that run. Without
the Self, there is no life.” (Isha Upanishad 4)
“The Self is
one”
“One” has two meanings in Eastern thought: 1) number and 2)
quality. This a very
important point, since many controversies have arisen
philosophically simply because
Western thinkers tend to limit “one” to a numerical value only.
The incredibly bitter
and violent controversy over the so-called “Monophysite heresy” in
early Christianity
in which tens of thousands of Egyptians and Syrians were killed by
the armies of the
Byzantine empire, took place only because the Italian-Byzantines
could not grasp what
the “heretics” meant by the simple word monos when applied to spiritual matters. Both
meanings, number and quality, have significance for us who, like
the Four Kumaras,
are intent on the knowing of the self.
The principle that the self is one should set us to thinking about
our own present
self-concept and–perhaps even more important–the way we live out
our self-concept.
Many people think one thing intellectually (or at least verbally,
for public consumption)
and think another instinctively. For example, I knew a minister
who was once
challenged by a self-styled atheist who spent about an hour
expounding the “truth” of
atheism and the folly of theism. When he was finished the minister
said: “There are
two points about all that you have just said. One: it is complete
nonsense. Two: you do
not believe a word of it yourself.” The man threw his right hand
up in the air and
declaimed: “I swear to God in heaven that I do!”
Somewhere I have already mentioned that an Eastern Christian
theological student
once remarked to me that the worse thing that had ever happened to
Western
Christianity and Western philosophy in general was the invention
of the “pie chart”–
those round diagrams divided into “slices” that plagued us
throughout school in many
subjects, from mathematics to sociology. “People have come to
think that they are
conglomerations of pieces that make up a whole, rather than a
single homogenous
being,” he explained. How many times do people speak of having
several “roles” in life
or of wearing many “hats.” Fragmentation is a terrible plague
destroying our capacity
to either see or attain unity-integration of our being. We think
it is all right to be
multiple persons. Where this all began with us is buried in the
past, but the present
reality cannot be denied. Drawn out from our center of unity, we
say: “I am a
businessman, a spouse, a parent, a citizen…” etc., rather than: “I
am a single person
who functions in the area of business, marriage, parenthood,
citizenship…” etc. This
no small thing, and certainly not merely a philosophical nicety.
This is a serious mental
and spiritual disorder. Being both fragmented and dispersed in our
energies and
awareness, rather than operating from a central point of order,
the mirror of our life is
shattered into innumerable fragments that cannot convey any
coherent image of our
“face.” The unity that is the true image is defaced, effaced, and
even erased–as far as
our consciousness is concerned, even though our true nature can
never be altered in
any manner. Struggling and submerged in the illusion of
multiplicity, the truth of our
unity is far from us. For we are not just one numerically, we are
absolutely one in
nature. This is an eternal truth that must be regained by us. How
to do so? By the only
process that really unifies the consciousness: meditation.
“Unmoving, it
moves swifter than thought”
How can the self move swifter than thought and yet be unmoving?
This is not some
koan-like platitude meant to faze our mind in relation to
self-knowledge; it is simple
fact. The self, the spirit, is completely outside of time and
space (which are illusions,
anyway), yet it can scan time and space, moving backward and
forward simply because
of the fact that it is one. Being one in the truest sense, the
self is everywhere–since
there really is no “where” at all. The self is truly Whole and
therefore all-embracing. It
moves swifter than thought, because a thought requires a
time–however small–to arise
or be expressed. The self, in contrast, exists only in the Now.
The questions “Where
did I come from?” “Where am I going?” “What was I in the past?”
and “What shall I be
in the future?” are valuable because they set us on the quest to
the discovery that we
do not come or go, nor do we have a past or future–only a Present.
When Sri Ramana
Maharshi was at the end of his physical embodiment he commented:
“They say I am
‘going,’ but where shall I go?” Some years later Sri Anandamayi Ma
visited
Ramanashram. When the Maharshi’s disciples asked her to stay
there, feeling that in
her they had “refound” their guru, she simply remarked: “I neither
come nor go.” This
is true of us, as well.
“The senses do
not overtake it, for always it goes before”
The self does not move, but it is “always before” the questing
senses in the sense
that it is always out of their reach. The Mandukya Upanishad,
speaking of the
consciousness of the self, of turiya, describes it as “not
subjective experience, nor
objective experience, nor experience intermediate between these
two, nor is it a
negative condition which is neither consciousness nor
unconsciousness. It is not the
knowledge of the senses, nor is it relative knowledge, nor yet
inferential knowledge.
Beyond the senses, beyond the understanding, beyond all
expression,…it is pure
unitary consciousness, wherein awareness of the world and of
multiplicity is
completely obliterated. It is ineffable peace. It is the supreme
good. It is One without a
second. It is the Self. Know it alone!” Who can say any more?
“Remaining
still, it outstrips all that run”
The self is unmoving, as we have been told. Hence, any “movement”
is
incompatible with it and blots it from our awareness. That which
moves cannot
possibly perceive it, nor can any process of movement (including
the labyrinthine ways
of so much “yoga”) ever result in touching or seeing it. Rather,
movement must cease,
as Patanjali points out in the very beginning of the Yoga Sutras:
Yoga is the cessation of
movement in the mind-substance. In other words, when we stop
“running” we will rest
in our self.
“Without the
Self, there is no life”
This is perhaps the hardest lesson for human beings to learn: Without the Self, there
is
no life. We may
engage in frantic activity, running here and there and
“accomplishing” tremendous things, indulging the senses to the
maximum and
immersing ourselves in ambitions, emotions, and “relationships,”
but through it all the
truth is simply this: we are dead, mere wraiths feeding
desperately on a shadow life
that is no life at all–not even a poor imitation. In the self
alone do we find life. How hard
this is to learn, and how much harder it is to follow through on,
for it inevitably leads to
the total renunciation of all that is not the self–in other words,
to the renunciation of
everything we hold dear and identify with as being ours and our
“self” when they are
no such thing at all. This is a bitter insight in the beginning,
but as our inner eye
begins to adjust to the truth of it, we find it the source of
greatest joy.
“Who knows the Atman knows that happiness born of pure knowledge:
the joy of
sattwa. Deep his delight after strict self-schooling: sour toil at
first but at last what
sweetness, the end of sorrow.” (Bhagavad Gita 18:37)
“He knows bliss in the Atman and wants nothing else. Cravings
torment the heart:
he renounces cravings. I call him illumined. Not shaken by
adversity, not hankering
after happiness: free from fear, free from anger, free from the
things of desire. I call
him a seer, and illumined.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:55, 56)
“The recollected mind is awake in the knowledge of the Atman which
is dark night
to the ignorant: the ignorant are awake in their sense-life which
they think is daylight:
to the seer it is darkness.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:69)
“This is the state of enlightenment in Brahman: a man does not
fall back from it
into delusion. Even at the moment of death he is alive in that
enlightenment: Brahman
and he are one.” (Bhagavad Gita 2:72)
“So, with his heart serene and fearless, firm in the vow of
renunciation, holding the
mind from its restless roaming, now let him struggle to reach my
oneness, everabsorbed,
his eyes on me always, his prize, his purpose.” (Bhagavad Gita
6:14)
“When a man has achieved non-attachment, self-mastery and freedom
from desire
through renunciation, he reaches union with Brahman, who is beyond
all
action.” (Bhagavad Gita 18:49)
A great deal is involved when we sincerely pray: “Lead me from
death to
immortality.”
The Ever-Present Self
“To the ignorant the Self appears to move–yet it moves not. From
the ignorant it is
far distant–yet it is near. It is within all, and it is without
all.” (Isha Upanishad 5)
“The Self appears
to move–yet it moves not”
We have just covered the fact that, being outside of the illusions
of time and space,
the self neither “moves” nor goes through any type of change
whatsoever. Yet it
“experiences” a multiplicity of externalities as the unmoving
witness–momentarily
caught up in the movie and thinking it is inside it and undergoing
the changes in the
scenario. Just as imagining seeing or doing something is not the
same as seeing or
doing it, so observing the motion picture of countless lives with
their attendant joys
and sorrows is not the same as actually being born, living, and
dying over and over.
But we are deluded into thinking so, and the upanishadic sage is
endeavoring to wake
us up, just as we awaken someone who is having a nightmare and
calling out in pain or
fear. We, however, having become accustomed (even addicted) to the
nightmare, are a
lot more difficult to awaken.
“It is far
distant–yet it is near”
Since the self is existing in eternity, transcending any degree of
relativity, it could
not be “further” away from the relative realm of experience (not
existence, because the
relative does not actually “exist” at all except as an illusion).
On the other hand, since
relativity is only a concept, the self is the nearest possible
because it alone is actually
present!
At the end of the Syrian Jacobite Liturgy the celebrant gives a
blessing beginning:
“You who are far and you who are near….” The reference is not to
those who are at the
back of the church and those who are at the front, but to those
who are far and near in
their minds and hearts.
For those who are immersed in the illusion of relativity, nothing
could be further
away than the transcendent self. Yet, since as I have said, the
self alone is ever present,
it is nearer than any relative experiencing. It is, as the Kena
Upanishad says, the “ear of
the ear, mind of the mind, speech of speech.…also breath of the
breath, and eye of the
eye.” (Kena Upanishad 1:2)
“It is within
all, and it is without all”
Nothing can exist apart from the self–even an illusion. A
hallucination is a “thing”
even though it is solely mental. The self is the substratum upon
and within which
everything subsists, the screen on which the light-and-shadow play
of “life” is
projected. It is itself the basis of all that is perceived. From
one perspective it can be
said that the self (consciousness) is inside everything. From
another, since it is forever
separate from all things, it can be spoken of as outside–alien
to–all things. Whichever
way you say it, the idea is the same: the self never touches any
“thing.”
The effect of
“seeing true”
“He who sees all beings in the Self, and the Self in all beings,
hates none.” (Isha
Upanishad 6) Here we come to the practical application of what the
upanishad is telling
19
us about the self. (This is the inestimable value of the Bhagavad
Gita. Where the
Upanishads express spiritual mathematics in a usually abstract
manner, the Gita
outlines both the upanishadic principles and what the result will
be when they are
followed or realized, defining spiritual realities in practical,
observable terms.)
If we never lose sight of the self, then we will be able to
perceive what is not the
self. And since what is not the self is not even real, why would
we hate it? Conversely,
how could we hate or be averse to the real self? This vision is
the foundation of
dynamic even-mindedness.
It is also the absolute end of all delusion and negative reaction
to it, for the
upanishad concludes: “To the illumined soul, the Self is all. For
him who sees
everywhere oneness, how can there be delusion or grief?” (Isha
Upanishad 7)
Om
Tat Sat
(Continued...)
(My humble salutations H H Swami Nirmalananda Giri ji and Hinduism online dot com for the collection)
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