The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads 6.3. - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday, July 17,  2021. 8:48. PM.
Chapter 6: Some Light on Yoga - 3.
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It is true that the Absolute is everything. The Supreme Being is manifest as all these things. Even the wall that we see in front is the Absolute manifest. But, and a terrible ‘but’ indeed, there is some great mistake in our notion about this wall. We have again to bring to our memory the selfhood character of the Absolute. The Absolute, or Brahman, is the Atman; it is not a vishaya, or an object of sense. So when we look upon this wall as an object outside, it has ceased to be the Absolute, though it is true that ultimately, in its essence, it is that. The mistake is not in the substance of the object as such, or the astitva or existence of the object, but in the nama and the rupa, the name and the form of the object, which is the effect of the externalisation or the separation of the object from our consciousness. Name and form have to be distinguished from the existence, or pure being, of the object.

When we say there is an object outside, we make a confusion of characters. There is the object that exists as anything else also exists. This character of existence, or being, is general. I exist, you exist, this exists, that exists. But the name and the form, the shape and the contour, etc., are different. This shape of mine has risen on account of the space and time factors interfering with the being that I am. There is a ball of clay or mud, which is the substance. It takes the shape as a pot or a vessel. A vessel can be many shapes: it can be round, it can be oblong, it can be square, it can be anything. The substance of every type of pot is the same, the 

This is the way in which Brahman exists in everything. The clay exists in every form of the pot, but the form of the pot cannot be identified with the substance. What we call the form is a peculiar indeterminable something which is not identical with clay, and yet not different from clay. The shape of the pot is what we call the pot, not the clay itself. When I say there is a vessel or a pot, what I actually speak of is the shape which the substance has taken; it is not the substance itself that I am referring to, because that substance is elsewhere also, not only here. This particular shape is the space-time factor involved in that substance we call clay. So the entire problem is due to space-time. It is not due to the substance as such.

Thus, the interference of the so-called factors of space-time in the substance of the Absolute is the cause of the manifestation we call this vast universe. Therefore, self-control, control of the senses, mind control, yoga practice, whatever it is, is not a withdrawal of the mind from the substance of the object, which is the selfhood of things, but from the name and the form which are the external characters of the object. The selfhood of the object is the same as the selfhood of ours. That is not the problem. The problem is the externality of it. Who told us that it is out there? The space makes us feel so. There is something called space. We do not know what space is, what time is. These are only some words that we are using to describe a thing which is ultimately unintelligible.

To be continued ...

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