The Kenopanishad : Commentary on Section 1.1 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, 03 June, 2023. 06:30.

Post-1.

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Invocation :

OM apyayantu mamangani vak pranas caksuh

śrotram atho balam indriyani ca sarvani. 

Sarvam brahmopanisadam ma'ham brahma 

nirakuryam ma ma brahma nirakarot 

anirakaraṇam astu anirakaraṇam me stu. 

Tad atmani nirate ya upanisatsu dharmas te 

mayi santu; aum śantiḥ, śantiḥ, śantiḥ.!

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Mantram -1.

kenesitam patati preṣitam manah 

kena pranah prathamah praiti yuktaḥ,

kenesitaṁ vacam imam vadanti 

caksuh śrotraṁ ka u devo yunakti.

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Thus begins the Kena Upanishad with a question: Who is the impeller and propeller of the mind, who is it that incites life into activity, propelled by whom does speech function properly, and who is the Divinity that harnesses the senses, such as the eyes and the ears?

The question implies that there is a directing principle behind the visible operation of the senses and the various faculties in the individual. Generally, such a question does not arise in ordinary life. We never put a question to our own self, ‘Who is it that makes me work?' etc., because it is taken for granted that we have the capacity of agency in action. Never does a person question himself, ‘Who is it that thinks through me,' and so on, because the accepted feeling is that each one thinks for himself or herself: ‘I think, and there is no need for somebody else to make me think, and the like. There is no necessity for any direction from anyone for me to speak, to act, or to breathe.' But the Upanishad starts at the very outset with a query which impliedly means that the functions are different from that which causes the functions to be there at all. Some truth seems to be assumed here, and that is why the question arises suddenly. What is taken for granted is that the actions of the sense organs as well as of the mind, intellect, etc., are an expression or a manifestation of the powers of something, which is transcendent to these operations.

The Upanishad does not go into the detail of the meaning that is hidden behind this question. In the very first two mantras the whole of its significance is summed up, wherein it states that there is positively some superior principle surpassing the operations of the sense organs, mind, intellect, and the like. While the Upanishad is a revelation and can proclaim this certainty with confidence—the truth of there being a transcending principle superior to the operational activities of the senses and the mind—the sadhaka, the student of the Upanishad, is taken slowly by a teaching that takes the mind from the visible to the gradually realised invisible.

All that is said to be of the nature of a directive principle within is invisible. We never see any directing agent inside us, and if there had been any such directing agent inside us, of which we could be easily conscious, then there would be a dual consciousness in us: partially a consciousness being of the real agent inside and partially the consciousness being of what we think we are at the present moment. Now, such a double personality does not usually arise. We have a single consciousness, and we never seem to be maintaining a double consciousness of a bodily personality and the consciousness of the agent inside. This, perhaps, is exactly our folly. It is the purpose of this Upanishad to make a clear-cut distinction between the true agent of action and the apparent agent. If we had been conscious of this duality, if we were to be aware that the real agent in ourselves is something different from what we think we are, then we would not be living the life that we are living now, because it goes quite contrary to our natural inborn feeling that we are bodies and are agents in terms of the body. Naturally, and generally speaking, when we make statements as, ‘I do', ‘I think', ‘I feel', etc., we attribute agency to our own bodily personality. This goes without saying, and it is simple to understand. ‘I see', ‘I hear', ‘I think', ‘I feel', and such statements of this nature are directly the outcome of a confidence that we are the body; otherwise, there would be no such thing as seeing through the eyes and affirming as ‘I see'. The agent identifies himself with the organs of knowledge, the energies that operate in the body, and then there is a conglomerate experience of one's being this total complex called the body

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To be continued

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