Lessons on the Upanishads -1.2: Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 04, Mar 2024. 11:30.

Upanishads

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Upanishads

Post-2.

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We begin to feel there must be something above this world. This was what the great poets and the sages of the Vedas felt. Everything seems to be transitory, moving, and in a state of flux. There is change in nature, change in human history, change in our own mental and biological constitution, change in even the solar system, the astronomical setup of things. Everything is changing. The perception of change is something very important for us to consider. How do we know that things are changing, that things are moving or are transitory? There is a logical peculiarity, a significance and a subtlety at the back of this ability on our part to perceive change and transition in things. A thing that changes cannot perceive change by itself. Change cannot know change. Only that which does not change can know that there is change.

This is a very important point at the rock bottom of our thinking that we have to recognise. If everything is changing, who is it that is telling us that everything is changing? Are we also changing with the things that change? If that is the case, how do we come to know that all things are changing? Logical analysis of this peculiar analytical circumstance tells us that there is something in us which does not change; otherwise, we would not know that things are changing.

Now, if oneself—this person or that person—seems to be obliged to recognise something in one's own self that does not seem to be changing because one perceives change in general, we also have to be charitable enough to accept that everyone in the world has this something which does not change. I have something in me which does not change, and you also have something in you that does not change. If this is the case, it seems to be everywhere. It does not mean that this unchanging so-called thing is only in one person, as all persons have an equal prerogative to conclude that something unchanging seems to be there, speaking in a language which is not subject to connection with changeable objects.

The Veda Samhitas to which I have made reference—which are the outpourings of spiritual seekers, sages and masters of advanced religious thought and spiritual perfection—felt the presence everywhere of something that does not change. All things seem to be embedded with something that cannot change. This is due to a logical conclusion to which we are led—namely, that the perception of change would not be possible if everything, including oneself, including even the perceiver of change, also changes. Therefore, transitoriness implies a non-transitory background of things.

Continued

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