The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads 5.1. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday, February 07, 2021. 10:42. AM.
Chapter 5: Ananda Mimamsa-1.

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We will continue the subject of the Taittiriya Upanishad. We observed that our individuality is constituted of different layers, and these layers are called koshas in Sanskrit. There are primarily five such koshas, or sheaths, in which our consciousness is enveloped. These sheaths are nothing but the forces of objectivity that pull the consciousness outwardly in terms of space and time. Thus it becomes clear that these sheaths are not substances or material objects like five walls that may be built round a person sitting inside a room. They are mere urges of consciousness to move outward in greater and greater density, and with more and more of impetuosity towards externality of experience.

Our unhappiness consists only in this much—that in order to come in contact with anything outside, we have first of all to forget ourselves. The more we cling to the objects of sense outside, the more is the forgetfulness of our own consciousness. There is atma-nasha, or destruction of selfhood, as it were, in a very significant manner so that, in every clinging to an object, there is a transference of ourselves to the particular object in which we are interested, or towards which our consciousness is moving.

Every kind of love, every type of attachment is a transference of oneself to another. If a mother loves the child, the mother has gone; only the child is there. The consciousness of the mother has identified itself with the child’s body in such an intense manner that she does not exist any more. The child alone exists for her, and anything that happens to the child appears to happen to the mother. If the child is happy, the mother is happy; otherwise, the mother is not. If the child goes away from this world, it looks as if the mother herself is dead. This is the case with every kind of transference of consciousness to objects. Every attachment, positive or negative in the form of love or hatred, has this characteristic in it. So all our sorrows in life can be attributed to this peculiar trait in our consciousness to go outwardly—either positively as love, or negatively as hatred—in respect of certain things.

All this activity is undertaken through these peculiar apertures of personality called the sheaths, by means of which the consciousness limits itself by a kind of focusing its attention upon limited groups of objects of sense. This is what is called samsara in Sanskrit, which means earthly existence, or the life of bondage. It is bondage because the consciousness clings to what is not really there. It is moving towards a phantom under the impression that the Self is there. One of the characteristics of selfhood is non-externality. You can never become another; and by ‘you’ what is intended or meant is the deepest consciousness or intelligence in you.

To be continued ...

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