Lessons on the Upanishads: 20 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday 08, January 2025, 19:00.
Books
Upanishads
Lessons on the Upanishads: 3.6.
Chapter 3: Preparation for Upanishadic Study -6.
Post-20.

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I have briefly told you something about the nature of karma yoga, or unselfish action—performance of duty for duty's sake as a standard method laid down before us by the ancient masters for cleansing the mind of the dross of extraneous desires for sense objects—and upasana is the love of God that you evince in your own self by daily worship performed in whatever way you would like to do it.

In the beginning when you conceive of the Supreme Being, you have a spatio-temporal imagination of that Being. God is very big, very large, very far away, very great, adorable; you offer your prostrations to that Almighty as something lovable. Even the Upanishads sometimes refer to the Supreme Absolute as the most lovable. Vanam means adorable; that Being is the most adorable. That thing which you call God, that thing which pulls your attention in its own direction, that which is the Ultimate Reality of things, that which is the Self of the cosmos, is the most magnificent, beloved, lovable, beautiful, most essential of all beings. And one who loves this Ultimate Being as the most lovable is loved by the whole world. You attract things towards yourself because you are attracted towards that which is everywhere. This is the best way of making friends in this world. You need not read Dale Carnegie, etc. If you are attracted towards that which is everywhere, wholly and solely, the entire world will be attracted towards you as a natural consequence of the attraction that you feel towards that Ultimate Reality. This is how you can honestly love it, if you want to be loved by others. How can you expect love from anybody if you yourself have no love for that which is the essence of all things?

Worship, or upasana, is conducted in many ways: by ritualistic methods as it is done in temples or before the altar in one's own house, by japa or recitation of the Divine Name, in japa sadhana, by prayer which is offered in the form of actual articulation of voice or even mentally, or by the study of scriptures. All these constitute part of upasana, adoration, the feeling of love for that which is supremely divine.

All this process will have to be carried on for a considerable period of time in order that the fickleness of the mind may be subdued. Otherwise, if you give scant attention to this difficulty in the mind, you will find that you will not be able to appreciate the methodology prescribed in the Upanishads for the realisation of the Atman. You will not only not be able to do this, you will also have a difficulty in even knowing why this meditation is carried on at all, because many people may honestly feel a difficulty in knowing what will happen to them after attaining God. Everybody knows that one has to attain God, but what will happen to you afterwards? You cannot easily answer this question because you still have a defective understanding of what you are and, therefore, there is a defect persisting even in your attempt to know what will happen to you at that time. However, by a protracted practice of upasana, by worship, by japa sadhana, by svadhya, by jnana, and your own notion of God, whatever that notion may be, the fickleness of the mind comes down. It will become attentive.

After having sufficiently undergone this discipline by which the distraction of the mind is subdued and also the impulse towards sense objects is curbed, you can become good students of the Upanishadic philosophy.

In the Upanishads, three disciplines are referred to, which are equivalent to what I meant as karma, bhakti and jnana—namely, sacrifice, austerity and Guru pasakyti, approaching a master for teaching. In ancient Vedic terminology, sacrifice meant, of course, the offering of holy oblations into the sacred fire, but sacrifice may also mean mentally offering anything that one would like to dedicate to God. There can be externally performed sacrifice, or yajna— or a mentally conceived yajna. You can be charitable by an external gesture or you can be charitable in your own feeling. A charitable feeling is more important than a charitable gesture. I am not going to dilate upon the subject of sacrifice just now, as many of you may know what it actually means, and as it is not the main subject of our study.

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Continues

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