Lessons on the Upanishads -2.8: Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 16, September 2024. 06:20.
Upanishads
Chapter 2: The Problem in Understanding the Upanishads - 8.
Post-16.

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Indra stayed another thirty-two years, and then Prajapati told him, “What you see in the state of deep sleep, that is the Self.”

“Good” Indra said, and went away.

On the way, again a doubt arose. “What do I see in deep sleep? Nothing. It is like a negation of all things—darkness; it is veritable death. Is this the Self? No, this is no good,” thought Indra. Again he went back.

“Oh, how are you here again?” asked Prajapati.

 “Sir, this instruction is of no use. What do I see in deep sleep? I see complete darkness, negation, annihilation. So, is the Self an annihilation? No, I don't see good in this instruction; please give me proper instruction.”

“Oh, I see. Stay again and undergo discipline here,” said Prajapati. This time it was for five years. Prajapati was a little considerate.

When Indra came back after five years, Prajapati said: “Now listen, Indra, my dear one. This Self is not what you can see with your eyes, because it is the Seer of things. How can you see it? This body is the seen; it is an object like any other object in this world. If the Ultimate Self, which is the Supreme Reality, is not an object that is perishable, it cannot be the body either. Otherwise, the Self will die along with the death of the body. What good is this knowledge of the Self? The Self is not what is seen in dream because in dream there is such fluctuation, fickleness of thought and veritable transition, transitoriness, and all the sorrows that are incumbent in the waking life. The waking perception also is not the Self. The dream, the waking are both not the Self. The sleeping experience also is not the Self. What you experience in the state of deep sleep is not the Self; it is a negation of it.”

Now, what is the Self? Here a little bit of in-depth thinking may be good. Every one of you has a good sleep in the night. Do you know that you slept last night? Were you endowed with any kind of consciousness, awareness in the state of deep sleep? If you had no knowledge of any kind in the state of deep sleep, how are you now telling me that you slept last night? Who is telling this? You may say that you have a memory. How can there be a memory of an experience which is bereft of all consciousness? Can a stone remember anything? Were you a stone? Memory is a recollection of a past experience, and no experience can be called experience unless it is attended with a kind of awareness. So you cannot explain the fact of memory of sleep unless you concede somehow or the other, by the force of logic, that there was a kind of consciousness in sleep. Why you could not experience it is a different matter. By inference, logically, you conclude that there must have been some sort of an awareness. Did you exist in the state of deep sleep? Were you dead? No, you were not dead; you were existing. In the state of deep sleep, did you exist as this body? No. Did you exist as the mind? No, because the mind was not thinking. In sleep, you did not exist as the body and you did not exist as the mind. What else have you got with you?

Today, for instance, when you think of yourself, you think of the body-mind complex. “This body is me” or “this mind is me” or “the intellect is me” or “the psyche is me”, and so on. Other than that, what else is there in you? But, did you exist in the state of deep sleep as something other than the body and the mind? You are forced to conclude: “Yes, I did exist.” In what condition did you exist? “Not as body, not as mind.” What else, sir? “I must have been there as only existence.” Existence of what? “It is not existence of what, it is not existence of anything because anything was not there; it is existence of my Self.” You were conscious of the existence of your Self, though that consciousness was covered and you were not aware of it directly, for some reason—without which fact, memory of the sleep would have not been possible. You were consciousness. What kind of consciousness? Consciousness of something? Because when you say “I am conscious”, you always mean conscious of this world, this tree, these people, this mountain, etc. It was not a consciousness of something; it was consciousness of Being only—just Awareness of the fact of your existing. In Sanskrit we call this Consciousness chit, and the consciousness of Being is chit-sat or sat-chit. Were you happy? You were very, very happy. Otherwise, you would complain that you had slept yesterday and it was a painful thing. All the pains of life get abolished and they vanish. Even a great pain or agony or sickness or any other pain is negated in the state of deep sleep; you get rejuvenated. You feel happy when you wake up.

So you were existing, you were conscious, you were happy. Existence-Consciousness-Bliss was your real nature. What kind of existence? What kind of consciousness? What kind of bliss? Were you existing in some place only, or in some other place? You will say, “I was existing in one place only—on the bed.” Now, if you have been conscious of one point only, you would not be conscious of another point; you would exclude that which appears to be away from the point which is supposed to be your existence. “I was existing there—only on the cot, not elsewhere.” So, if you were not elsewhere, then the “elsewhere” must be there as outside the purview of your consciousness. If that is the case, you were conscious of the fact that there was also something outside you. When you say “I was only in one place”, you are making a reference to the existence of other things or other places or other spots, of which you had no knowledge. If you had no knowledge of that which is not in your location, how could you say that there were things of which you had no knowledge? You make a contradiction in your statement. As there is a difficulty in finding out what condition you were in the state of deep sleep, there is another difficulty here in knowing what kind of consciousness it was that was prevailing in the state of deep sleep.

Prajapati goes deep into this question and gives a tremendously illuminating answer. “This Consciousness was not of some particular thing like this self or that self or this thing or that thing, because there was no question of this thing and that thing there. It was Pure Being as such, which is the Being of all things. Universal Consciousness was prevailing there; that is the reason why you are so happy. If it had been finite consciousness, you would have woken up miserably from sleep.”

Hence, the great teaching of Prajapati to Indra was that the Self is Universal Existence and Universal Consciousness. The difficulty, the problem before us, is how to conceive this Universality which is supposed to be inseparable from us—in other words, how to conceive our own Universality while we are sunk in this body consciousness, social consciousness, political consciousness and a hundred types of irrelevant consciousnesses.

I have placed before you this little introduction in order to present the teaching of the Upanishads, which is the knowledge of the Self.

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Chapter 3: Preparation for Upanishadic Study

Continued

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