The Essence of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad : 7. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday, 03 Nov 2023. 07:07.

Scriptures

Upanishads

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 

2.The Absolute and the Universe-3.

Post-7.

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2.The Absolute and the Universe-3.

The Upanishad tells us, by way of this analogy, that it is no use trying to contact Reality through the senses or the mind; they have to be placed, first, in the context of cosmic universality. This is the meditation to be practised, which means to say that Virat is to be the Object of meditation. Whenever you contemplate an object located as a part of the Body of the Virat, then immediately it assumes a divine character, it ceases to be mortal and it assumes a grand beauty which is characteristic of divinity. This is how we have to meditate really, and not merely look upon some object, as if it is outside. Even spiritual meditations should not be attempted by mere sensory activity or mental function. This is the great truth told us by this analogy of the Asuras and the Devas battling with each other and the gods attempting to overcome the Asuras by means of meditation.

Then we have, perhaps, the most central part of the Upanishad, which is the Fourth Section of the First Chapter, called the Purushavidha Brahmana, a very grand and eloquent exposition of the supreme heights that our ancient Masters reached in their meditations. By means of this Purushavidha Brahmana, the Upanishad gives us a complete description, not only of the nature of Reality, but also of the process of creation upto the lowest limits of manifestation. This is not only a subject for meditation but also for philosophical analysis and comparative study of various religious concepts.

The Purushavidha Brahmana of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is a classical exposition of the famous Purusha-Sukta of the Veda. The very beginning of this section proclaims that there was One Being at the origin of things and It is the Cause for the Primal Will to create. So the 'Will-to-create' is the expression of the Universal Being whose identity with this Will is of an inscrutable nature. Neither can we say that it is identical, nor can we say that it is different. In order to explain the relationship of the creative process and the created individuals with the Supreme Cause, the doctrine of creation is enunciated in the cosmological hymns of the Veda as well as in this section of the Upanishad. The characteristic of the Supreme Being is said to be an eternal 'I' or the Consciousness 'I-Am-That I-Am', 'I-Am-What-I-Am', or, merely, 'I-Am', or, even the word 'Am' is redundant; there is just I, the Absolute. This was the Primary Status of Being.

In order to make us understand our connection as individuals with this Universal 'I', the Upanishad explains how the One tended to become the many in the form of space, time and objects. This is the story of the Fourth Section of the First Chapter—the Purushavidha Brahmana. The One does not suddenly become the multitude. According to the Upanishad, the One becomes two. There is a split of feeling or experience, as it were, which alienates the Self into the subject and the object. It is a peculiar state of consciousness where oneself becomes the object of one's own self. 

The Absolute is neither the subject nor the object, because these appellations, subjectivity and objectivity, do not apply to a state where Consciousness is not thus divided into two self-alienated aspects. The Supreme, somehow, becomes Its own Object. This is what we call the state of Ishvara, the condition described at the very beginning of this Brahmana of the Upanishad. It is the Universal Tendency to objectivate that is called Ishvara. The objectification has not yet taken place; there is a potentiality of manifestation, as there is a hidden presence of the vast banyan tree in a little seed of the tree. So was this universe contained in the Seed of the Will of the Absolute. 

The Seed was the cosmic repository of every manifestation that was to take place subsequently. There was, thus, the beginning of a cosmic subject-object consciousness inseparable one from the other. Now, this split becomes more and more accentuated as time passes, so that there is a greater and greater intensity, and density of this feeling to isolate oneself from oneself, into the object of one's own perception and experience. It is oneself experiencing oneself—the subject deliberately condescending to become an object of its own self for purpose of a peculiar kind of joyous experience, which the scriptures describe as Lila, or play of God. What else can be the explanation for that tendency in one's consciousness where one begins to will the objectivity of one's own Universal Subjectivity?

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To be continued

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