The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads - 4.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, 13 Jul 2023. 06:30.

Chapter 4: Cosmology-2.

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Now the Taittiriya cosmological treatment is as follows. The universe of the five elements—ether, air, fire, water, earth—is a condensation, as it were, of the Atman itself. There was a gradual descent of the Atman into greater and greater particularity, and together with it greater and greater externality. There is particularity, externality and grossening of the cause into the effect. 

“Tasmadva etasmad atmanah akasah sambhutah, akasat vayuh, vayor agnih, agneh apah, adbhyah prithivi,” etc. 

The individual being comes as a consequence of these universal manifestations of the elements. Here again, even in the Taittiriya, we stand as effects to the Universal which stands in the position of a cause, as in the case of the doctrine of the Aitareya. Though the universe is an effect of God, it is a cause of our experience. We have no control over the elements. We cannot order the earth, water, fire, air or ether to behave in this way or that way. In this sense, they are causes of our experiences. The objects precede our experience.

There seems to be some great point in the doctrines of realism as well as idealism, which are the dominant schools of philosophy. The realist holds that objects come first, experience comes afterwards. But the idealist thinks that experience comes first and the object afterwards. There is a great quarrel among these schools of thought, but there need not be any quarrel. Both these standpoints seem to be correct because they speak from different positions and different points of view altogether. There is a metaphysical idealism implied behind even the empirical realism of perception of objects. We perceive the world, no doubt, as something external to us, and we know very well that the world was there even before we were born; therefore, realism is right. The world of objects in its physical form precedes the experience thereof by the individual experiencer. But idealism is also right, because there is a consciousness underlying the very manifestation of the things. The whole universe ultimately can be reduced into consciousness, because the objects which are apparently external to us are conditioned by this perceiving consciousness in various degrees.

The Taittiriya tells us that there was thus the creation down to the earth, and from the earth arose vegetation of various kinds, herbs or aushadhis which became the diet of the individual, the Purusha, “

aushadhibhyah annam”. “Annat purushah”: The individual grows out of the food that he takes. Here is again an interesting factor that we have to observe.

We are constituted of anna, or food. It is not merely the physical body that is constituted of food; everything that we are is nothing but the food that we take. As cloth is made of threads, or as any composite object is made up of the component factors, so is the total individuality of ours, including the psychic individuality, constituted of certain bits of experience and bits of matter. Thought is nothing but the various functions it performs. The various feelings and emotions and the volitions put together constitute what we call the mind, the fabric of psychic personality. The body again is constituted of these elements only—earth, water, fire, air and ether, etc. Everything in the so-called individuality of ours is a composite structure, or sanghatta, of various factors which can be dismembered and broken into their component parts. These compositions of individuality become the causes of the various experiences we pass through in our life.

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To be continued

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