The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads :2-2. Swami Krishnananda

Tuesday, June 09, 2020.

Chapter 2: The Atman-2.

1.

While the effect has come from the cause, it is not disconnected from the cause. This is one principle laid down at the very beginning itself. The universe seems to have descended in such a way that it has not isolated itself from the Absolute vitally. 

There is no vital disconnection between the effect and the cause. 

There is some sort of a relation always. 

There is an inscrutable relationship, ‘anirvachaniya sambandha’, between the effect and the cause. There is not an absolute identity, because there is a manifestation. 

It is not an absolute manifestation, because we can see our relationship with the cause. 

This relationship between God and man, the Creator and the universe, the Absolute and the relative, is unintelligible. 

This relationship is the beginning of all cosmological questions, the theories of creation and doctrines of every kind. Once creation is admitted as a fact of empirical experience, everything that devolves from it is also accepted. 

We are only to accept the fact of the creation of the universe, and we are made at once to accept everything else also, automatically. There is a gradual evolution by an increase in the density of manifestation at lower levels. The Absolute never loses hold of the universe.

2.

The Atman alone was. “Atma va idam eka evagra asit, nanyat kin cana misat,” says the Aitareya Upanishad at the very commencement. The Atman existed as the unparalleled Being, and it became the cause of the manifested elements. We have the great division of the elements as ether, air, fire, water and earth, in all their densities or levels of expression. There is a causal condition, a subtle condition and a gross condition. 

This was manifested. But the Absolute is never disconnected from them at any time; it always maintains a lien over everything that it has created. It enters the great objects of a cosmical nature, and this is what we call the immanence of God.

3.

The Creator does not stand as an extra-cosmic substance unrelated to its creation. The Upanishad rules out totally any coming of a fresh effect from the cause. The immanence of the cause in the effect is admitted. It is the immanence of the cause in the effect that creates an aspiration in us for higher values. When we ask for God, it is God speaking from within. 

The cause is speaking to itself from the bottom of the effect when there is an aspiration on the part of the effect to move towards the cause. This circumstance of the cause being hiddenly present in every effect is called the immanence of the cause in the effect. Then we say that God is present in the world.

To be continued ...