The Mandukya Upanishad -5. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Saturday, 05 Aug 2023. 06:30.

Article

Post-5.

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We have passed through various lives; we have taken many births. This is one link in the long chain in the births that we have undergone, maybe thousands in number. In every birth we think something, feel something and do something; and every thought, every feeling and every action creates an impression in the psyche. The psyche is nothing but the individualised center of consciousness. This impression is nothing but a remnant of a desire remaining after a particular experience. If we see something, we would like to see it again. If we like something, we want to continue that liking again and again, as much as possible. 

The like and dislike, so-called, which is the basic operation of the mind of the individual, creates an impression in the mind, a groove, as it were, and creates a compulsion in the psyche to repeat that experience already had earlier. This goes on day after day, every day, and we pile up impressions, one over the other, so that these impressions heaped in that manner, one over the other, become something like a thick cloud covering of consciousness. This happens in one life; but if many lives are taken in this manner, what would happen? Complete darkness like an eclipse of the sun or an utter midnight – like experience when there is monsoon season, even in the waking condition, even in daytime. This thing is weighing so heavily upon us that it does not permit us to be aware that we were aware in the state of deep sleep.

So the transcendental being that we really are in the state of deep sleep is almost a negation of our existence, because of the heavy weight that is sitting upon us. Suppose I give you a very good lunch, very tasty, and five quintals of heavy weight I keep on your head at the same time – will you enjoy the food? Very tasty thing, but the five quintals on the head – unless that is removed, this eating has no meaning. So our own experience of transcendental awareness in deep sleep does not have any signification for us on account of the heavy weight of Karma potentials which compel us to think only in one way, in a stereotyped fashion – like blinkers, as it were – and we cannot think in any other way.

Any number of lives we may take, births and births we may pass through, but we are the same person. We do not become different because we are whipped by the desires which were produced by earlier impressions; and as a horse being whipped and compelled to move in one direction only, we are forced to think in only one way – this space, this time, this causation, this object, this person, this me, this somebody else.

The Mandukya Upanishad gives this analysis of our basic nature. But it is said that we will attain moksha by knowing this knowledge – Mandukyam ekam eva alam mumukshunam vimuktaye. How would we get Moksha by knowing this? It is also added that we are the same foolish persons; we have never become different. This foolishness of ours can be removed by the gradual practise of Yoga. The suggestion of a particular kind of Yoga that is made by the Mandukya Upanishad is the recitation of pranava or omkara. It has a simple way, a very easy means of meditation to tell us, not complicated – the recitation of pranava. OM is the pranava or the omkara which is a blend of three syllables, letters – A, U, M. A-U-M becomes OM. When we chant OM, when we articulate the vocal organ in the recitation of OM, all the parts of the vocal organ act simultaneously in such a way that they may be supposed to be uttering every letter at that time. All language is supposed to be included in OM because of this reason. All the articulatory process takes place in the recitation of OM, if we can properly observe it.

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To be continued

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