The Chhandogya Upanishad -( ENDS ) 83: Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 11, April 2025. 10:50.
The Chhandogya Upanishad - 83: 
Swami Krishnananda.
Appendix 2: Samvarga-Vidya
Section-3 Continued
Mantram-8. 
Post-83.

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Mantram-8:

"Tasma u ha daduh, te va ete pancanye pancanye dasa santastat krtam, 

tasmat sarvesu diksv-annam eva dasa krtam, saisa virad-arnnadi, 

tayedam sarvam drstam, sarvam asyodam drstam bhavati, 

annado bhavati, ya evam veda, ya evam veda."

So they gave him food. Now follows a very complicated passage. It is peculiarly archaic, as many of the mantras in the Vedas and the Upanishads are. I give you merely the literal translation of what it is. This five and the other five make ten. This is the enigmatic meaning of this sentence. This is called the krita. Therefore, food comes from all the ten directions. The Virat is the eater of everything. Whatever it sees, it eats. The food itself is the eater of food. This is the effect that follows in respect of anyone who knows this secret.

Now, what do we make out of this? We cannot make out any sense if we read it literally like that. But it has a significant mystical meaning. The five are the eater and five are the eaten. The eater is Vayu cosmically, the absorber, the supreme deity into which everything enters. The other four are the articles of diet for this supreme deity. According to some it is fire, sun, moon and water. If we do not want it to be so complicated, we may say that they are the four elements—ether, fire, water and earth which are absorbed into this Supreme Absorber. Inwardly the prana is the eater, and the food is the sense-organs, speech, eye, ear and mind. So the four items which are regarded as food or which are the eaten, together with the eater, constitute the five. The five in the macrocosm and the five in the microcosm make ten. And this is the krita.

Here, krita is another difficult word. As we said earlier, it is the name of a cast of dice in a game. There are numbers inscribed on this cast and they are four, three, two and one. Now if you add up these numbers, four, three, two and one, they make ten. So it is said that even as all the numbers together on the dice make number ten, likewise, outwardly and inwardly, this deity together with the stuff that is eaten by it constitutes ten.

Another very interesting word that is mentioned here is virat. In the Veda, virat is a metre which has ten letters. So there is a comparison introduced here between the metre virat having ten letters, and the number ten which has association with the deity as the eater of food and the eaten, and also the total number in the krita, the dice cast which is ten. Or, in a more general way, it means Virat, the cosmic Person, is the All-Being, the most comprehensive Reality to which everything is food. In the Virat you cannot say which is the eater and which is the eaten. There is no object-subject difference in the Virat. Food flows from all directions to the Virat and in the form of the Virat. The Virat is the name that we give to the all-comprehensive Reality where subject-object distinction cannot be made, as it is no more. The seer and the seen are indistinguishable. There is no difference between the eater and the eaten. The eaten itself is the eater, and the eater is the eaten. We can look at it either way. Whatever perceives is the stuff that is eaten, and whatever is eaten is also that which perceives. One who knows this mystery also becomes like this. What is this mystery will be clear to anyone who has read and understood these passages.

"Here we conclude the Samvarga-Vidya with which we also conclude our study of the Chhandogya Upanishad. We have covered practically every essential point in the prominent sections of the Chhandogya Upanishad."

END.

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