Maharishi Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - 2. Swami Krishnananda

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Monday, November 29, 2021. 8:00.AM.

Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - 2.  

Discourse-2.

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The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is not intended for everybody. It is a cosmic meditation. In the Chhandogya Upanishad we have cosmological meditations which are wonderful by themselves. But in the Brihadaranyaka we have the cosmic meditation. The whole thing is transcendent, beyond ourselves. How would we think of anything that is beyond ourselves? Even when we think of self, we place it within ourselves. My self is inside me. But this great admonition of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says the Self is not within us – it is within everybody, within everything, within all the worlds and the universes. In all space and all time, the Self is there. Can anyone close one's eyes and meditate thus? I am present in a far off distance of a world near the skies above! Can you place yourself in the skies and contemplate from there? But, you may say, 'this is an easy thing, I can do that, I can place myself in the skies', but when you place yourself in the skies, again you are bringing a spatial concept, which is not permitted in the case of the awareness of one's Self.

Difficult is this to understand. The Self cannot be placed in the tree, or the sun or moon, or stars, because if the Self is in the sun, then there is no sun, there is only Self there. But then, the idea of distance may be there, persisting again and again, as an inveterate habit.

Never should this meditation be attempted by an impure mind. We are happily conversant with the proclamations of all the religions and philosophies that God is everywhere, Brahman is everywhere, but nobody says that the Self is everywhere. This is a new thing that we hear in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. We feel that the Self cannot be everywhere, It cannot be anywhere except in one's own self. This 'one's own self' is the crucial matter. That is to say, all the worlds are your own Self. Bhu-Loka, Bhuvar-Loka, Swar-Loka, Mahar-Loka, Jana-Loka, Tapo-Loka, Satya-Loka; – these widespread universal expanses of being are our Self! If you can imagine how your Self could be – that kind of imagination should be extended to all the worlds. The self will shudder, it can break into pieces, or it can melt down into the extent of the whole world in an instant. If this meditation can be continued a miracle can take place.

If anything is dear and lovable, the thing that is loved is not actually loved, it is not dear. The Self in the object is what is actually attracting. The Self in the object attracts the Self in us and then the object looks attractive. It is not the object that is attractive, because a corpse cannot attract anybody, a dead body does not attract. It is the life principle that attracts, the Selfhood in the object is attracting. The beauty and the grandeur of the life principle, it is that which attracts. Where is this Selfhood? Again the question arises – everywhere!

There are varieties of selves. The lowest is the physical self – 'I am coming, I am going' – statements like this indicate the physical self. When you speak of 'my family', 'my son', 'my daughter', 'my husband', 'my wife', you are identifying yourself with the family atmosphere. When you speak of 'my community', 'I am from Brahmana community', 'Kshatriya community', you are identifying yourself with a group of people of a particular category. 'I belong to Uttar Pradesh, I belong to Gujarat' – if you say like that, you are identifying yourself with a larger location of human beings. 'I am an Indian, I am a British, I am an American' – when you say that, you are expanding your concept of selfhood to a larger area geographically. All these are selves. An American loves an American, a British loves a British, an Indian loves an Indian, a Tamilian likes a Tamilian, a Kannada man likes a Kannada one – they will talk to each other in that language only. Language is the characteristic of the attachment of self to particular cultural patterns. Language attracts.

To be continued ..

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