Upanishads : "The cream of Vedas"

01/05/2019 1. The contents of the Upanishads are the esoteric spiritual knowledge recorded for the purposes of reflection and contemplation, and, therefore, the deeper a person can dive into the significances of the passages during his meditation upon them, the greater shall he discover their hidden meanings. Mere superficial readers cannot be fully catered to with such philosophical literature which are  discourses upon Pure Truth, challenging the authority and authenticity of the fields of the mind and intellect. As such, many are the unprepared students who, having reached the portals of the Veda-s had made a very quick and sudden retreat from these texts in their sheer inability to understand or appreciate or follow the right import of the words of the great Rishi-s. To be continued  ..   

30/04/2019 (Spoken on January 14th, 1973) 1. We have been traversing through the courses of different kinds of meditation beginning with the systems expounded in the Kathopanishad, the Bhagavadgita, the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the Epics and Puranas, and so forth. Today we shall have an excursion into the Upanishadic method of meditation, which is the predominant note of all these Vedantic texts. Though we have already looked into the method expounded in the Kathopanishad last time, that cannot be regarded as an example of the Upanishadic technique because it was more akin to the Bhagavadgita and the Yoga Sutras than the main current of thought in the Upanishads, which distinguishes them from other approaches to Reality. The Upanishadic approach to Truth is out-and-out philosophical and mystical. The Upanishads take a comprehensive view from three angles of vision: the external, the internal, and another feature which transcends them both. The Mandukya, the Taittiriya and th...

28/04/2019. Mandukya Upanishad : Chapter-1. Agama Prakarana ( The Scriptural Treatise ) Sri Gaudapada's glossary begins : Karika Slokam-s 1 to 9. Mantram : 7. "Vibhutim  prasavath  tvanya  manyante  srshti-cintakah, svapna-maya-sarupeti  srshtir-anyair-vikalpita." vibhutim = the glory of (the Lord ); prasavam = the creation; tu = but; anye = some others; manyante = consider, accept; srshti cintakah = thinkers of creation; svapna maya sarupa = comparable to dream or magic; iti = to be; srshtih = the creation; anyaih = by others; vikalpita = is considered. "Some creationists believe it to be the projection of the Glory of God's own super-human-power, while others consider the world to be of the nature as dream or illusion." Discussion-2. 2.1 The Non-creationists also explain the world as a long dream, as later on we shall find that 'Gaudapada' himself very elaborately going into a comparative study of both the wakin...

27/04/2019 2. 2.1 When we look at the world, we have what may be called a first view of things, and dissatisfaction with the first view of things is supposed to be the mother of all philosophical thinking. If we are satisfied with things, there is nothing more for us to search for in this world. Any kind of search, quest, enterprise, or desire to seek implies that we are not satisfied with the existing condition of things. And, we are quite aware that nobody in this world can be said to be totally satisfied with the prevailing conditions of things – neither in one's own self, nor in one's family, nor in the society outside, nor in anything, for the matter of that. There is always a tendency in the human mind to discover a lacuna in things: "It should not be like this. It should have been in some other way." This is a distinction that we draw between the 'is' and the 'ought'. We may say "something is like this"; but instead, what we ...

26/04/2019 2. EXISTENCE AND VALUE The problem of reality has direct bearing on that of existence and value. Existence is what is independent of everything else, different from relations of every kind. Value is the nature of existence as it is related to a perceiving subject; it is the manner in which an external existence becomes a content of an internal consciousness. An object as cognised or perceived is, therefore, a value, and not an existence as such. But the true nature of the object, without being related to a cogniser, is its existence. The problem of perception involves the determination of the nature of existence and value. For, on this depends the worth of perceptive knowledge. What do we really perceive? Is it only an illusion, an error, or is it a fact in itself? Do we grasp phantoms in sense-perception or do we have real and genuine knowledge of anything truly existent? The investigation of this phenomenon of the relation between existence and value, truth and er...

25/04/2019. 2. 2.1 But what does this declaration say? Imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. All the created beings, all the worlds, ima lokah – all – sarvam yad ayam atma. Can I place myself in the location of something which is the extended world outside? Is the world outside my self? How can I tear the internal location of my selfhood and place it in the sun, or anywhere else? This is an exercise which is like the Brahmastra to the human concept of any value in this world. Can anyone believe that his self or her self is anywhere else other than in one's own self? Is it possible? Is the Self sitting in Brahma Loka, is it in Bhuvar Loka, Swarga Loka? Is it in Pathalam, is it in the sun, the moon and the stars? Can my self be conceived as being located there? But it is necessary to conceive such a possibility according to this great statement of Sage Yajnavalkya. This will rend the knot of attachment to personality, attachment to selfhood in an individu...

24/04/2019 Chapter 1: Introduction -3. An instinct is an intelligent seeking on our part for the purpose of the achievement of a goal. An instinct is not a blind and chaotic urge that arises in ourselves; it is a rational, purposive movement which is unintelligibly conducting itself towards a particular aim, and when we cannot understand the rational background of the instinct, we call it irrational. But if we can understand the purposive movement of the instinct, it becomes logical, and there would be then no distinction between these two. And why is it that we have an instinct for social life? Why do we wish to come together and form bodies, whether it is a religious body, or a social body, or a political body, whatever be that body? We have some un-understandable and inscrutable feeling within us from a part of ourselves which speaks in its own language. There are depths in our personality which are deeper than our conscious level, as we all know very well. This instinct fo...

23/04/2019 5. The idea is that in all attractions, in all processes of contact of the subject with the object, it may be true that that the gunas of prakriti collide with the gunas of prakriti; but more profoundly, we may say that consciousness collides with consciousness. The sea of consciousness is everywhere in the universe. One eddy or wave of this consciousness is touching another. Why are we so much attracted towards things; and when we are pulled in the direction of something lovable or dear, we seem to lose our senses? We become crazy and mad. Why does it happen? It is because the whole universe is at the back of even this little drop of consciousness which appears as the object. A little wave that is rising up on the surface of the ocean has the entire sea at the back of it, which wells up as this eddy or the wave. The power of the entire sea is behind the wave. The infinite is incapable of resisting, because nobody can resist an attraction. This is because attraction...

12/04/2019 Mandukya Upanishad : Chapter-1. Agama Prakarana ( The Scriptural Treatise ) Sri Gaudapada's glossary begins : Karika Slokam-s 1 to 9. Mantram : 7. "Vibhutim  prasavath  tvanya  manyante  srshti-cintakah, svapna-maya-sarupeti  srshtir-anyair-vikalpita." vibhutim = the glory of (the Lord ); prasavam = the creation; tu = but; anye = some others; manyante = consider, accept; srshti cintakah = thinkers of creation; svapna maya sarupa = comparable to dream or magic; iti = to be; srshtih = the creation; anyaih = by others; vikalpita = is considered. "Some creationists believe it to be the projection of the Glory of God's own super-human-power, while others consider the world to be of the nature as dream or illusion." Discussion-1. In estimating, thus, the various Creationists' theories that have been given in our philosophical literature, Gaudapada has already hinted at the very opening line that he personally does...

11/04/2019 1. I made a brief reference to the natural difficulty that one may feel in understanding the subject of the Upanishads, that difficulty being the nature of the Upanishad discussion itself. It is the subject of the Atman, as this boy mentioned just now, but it is easily said than really understood. All our educational technology these days, as education is generally understood, concerns itself with objects of perception and intellectual understanding. The Atman is not a subject which can be perceived through the sense organs, nor can it be understood intellectually by any kind of logical acumen, the reason being that the Atman is yourself; it is not somebody else. In all courses of knowledge and procedures of study, you place yourself in the position or context of a student, and you consider the world of objects outside as subjects of observation and experiment and study. In your education you do not study yourself; you study something other than your own self. Yo...

10/04/209 The Doctrine of the Upanishads : 1. Swami Krishnananda Human life is a composite continuum of varying phases of consciousness, of different processes of thought. It comprises a few links in the long chain of development, a few rungs in the lofty ladder of evolution. It is a series of conditions, becomings, events, which ever stretch beyond themselves and point to something remote, something wider and yet unattained. Life is, therefore, an ever-increasing organisation of consciousness, never resting in itself, never satisfied, but always hoping to be completed in a state of existence which is dimly foreshadowed in the present experience of the individual. Every condition of experience appears to be real and complete when it takes the role of being the one immediately above that which is directly being experienced in consciousness. It reveals its unsatisfactory character when it becomes the content of immediate experience. Unachieved ends seem to promise fulfilment and p...

09/04/2019 1. Idam brahma, idam kshatram, ime lokah, ime devah, imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. "This Source of knowledge; this source of power; all these worlds; all these gods; all these beings – All this is just the Self." This proclamation is like a Brahma Astram that Sage Yajnavalkya is discharging against every kind of attachment one can conceive in this world. It is somewhat easy to accept that God is everywhere. It becomes easy because we always externalise the location of God, however much we may try to universalise Him. The idea of location in space does not leave us so easily. God is everywhere, this is what we generally believe. The everywhereness of God implies that there is space, and inasmuch as our mind is wedded completely to the concept of spatial expansion, we feel a little bit comforted when we are told that God is everywhere. Now, here, a thunderbolt is discharged by Sage Yajnavalkya when he says the Self also is everywhere. Imani bh...

08/04/2019 Chapter 1: Introduction -2. We, generally, do not go deep into these matters. Mankind, unfortunately, is averse to go into the depths of any question. We like to float on the surface in every kind of activity of ours. Whatever be our walk of life, we seem to be content merely by glossing over things without going into the profundity of the issues on hand. But no problem is merely a surface issue; every problem is as wide as life itself. We can imagine how vast and how immense in magnitude human life is, and our concept of duty cannot be ‘smaller’ than that. There is something in us which is vitally connected with everyone else. But for this fact, there would not be an endeavour to talk in terms of mankind or humanity. It is very strange that we speak of mankind, as if there is some sort of relationship between oneself and another in the group that we call humanity. The desire to form organisations, institutions, bodies, etc., whether in the small unit of a famil...

07/04/2019 4. Yajnavalkya tells us that when we love somebody, some thing, some object – whatever it be, that which pulls us in the direction of the object so-called, is not the object by itself, because this object is a subject in its own status. Its essence is not objectivity; its essence is as much a center of consciousness as our own subjectivity is a center of consciousness. In all love, in all affections, in all attractions, the Self pulls the Self. The Universal that is hidden in the so-called object outside, pulls  Itself (present in the subject) – as it were, in its own direction, and towards whichever side the action that is taking place. I hope you understand the point. It is as if one part of consciousness collides with another part of consciousness in perception. As the Bhagavadgita tell us in another context, Sri Krishna, in one context, says that all perception which is sensory is actually the gunas of prakriti coming in contact with the gunas of prakriti. G...