KENOPANISHAD -11: Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, 13 Jan 2024. 06:30.

Upanishads

KENOPANISHAD

THE PHILOSOPHY OF YAKSHOPAKHYANA

Post-11.

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THE PHILOSOPHY OF YAKSHOPAKHYANA:

Virtue and vice act as opponents both in the individual body and in the objective universe. The battle between these two is a continuous struggle for the sake of victory of truth over untruth. Virtue is the movement of the ego towards Truth, whether it is through thought, speech or action. Vice, on the other hand, is the process of the affirmation of the ego through self preservation and through self-proclamation. The nearer the ego is to Truth, the greater is the light received by it from Truth. Virtue, therefore, is guided by Divinity. The power of virtue is in fact the power of the Atman within. The power, the greatness and the glory of an individual do not belong to the individual at all. They are borrowed from the Self, and because of this, the individual passes for a great being, though in fact, it is not great. It is pride and conceit that make an individual feel that it is possessed of greatness, knowledge and power. This self assertion has to be dispelled totally before the Divinity can be realised. The story of the Yaksha's appearance is to illustrate the quelling of pride. The quelling of pride is necessary before the realisation of Divinity. The total cessation of individuality through a dissolution of the ego in knowledge is required before the achievement of Self realisation. Without this, one does not become fit for the glorious experience. In this story, the Yaksha stands for the Supreme Brahman. Agni stands for speech. Vayu stands for prana or mind. Indra stands for the ego or the jiva. Uma stands for knowledge. But for the sanction of the Great, Divinity Speech and prana can do nothing. The mind cannot think; the glorious gods cannot shake a straw. Speech and prana are said to have approached the Yaksha or Brahman, but they could not understand that Being. Speech can express, the prana can demonstrate, and the mind can think a form or aspect of Truth, an aspect of its manifestation, viz,, the formed being, Yaksha. But the speech, the prana and the mind cannot know this Truth. They may show their vanity in trying to comprehend the Truth, but they will miserably fail in their attempt to deal with even the minutest aspect, even a straw, set before them by it. This means to say that even a drop of intuitive knowledge is not given to speech, prana or mind. They return baffled by this wonderful Being.

But when Indra, the ego, approaches the Divine Being, it vanishes, i.e., it withdraws the form of its manifestation. It is not possible for the ego to come face to face with the form of the Absolute. It would be like a salt doll entering the ocean. It would not be able to behold any form. Form shall vanish from its sight. Moreover, because the ego is the centre of vanity and pride, the Divinity shall not manifest itself before it. On the other hand, when the ego persists in its attempt to know this Truth, and does not get baffled, and is very persevering, knowledge shall dawn before it. Knowledge is represented as Uma, because it is the power of the Divine that appears first, and not the Divinity itself. The first experience is not of Divinity but of sattva-Guna,

A Guna is a mode of prakriti, and, therefore, it is represented as a female, a Sakti, or an expression of the Divine. It is Uma that instructs Indra about the Yaksha in the state of sattva, the ego is cleansed of all pride and it comes to know of the nature of the Divine. It is one step below the Divine Experience. When Uma, too, vanishes, i. e., when sattva-Guna also is transcended, the real nature of the Yaksha is revealed. There is the realisation of Brahman when all the modes of tamas, rajas and sattva are got rid of, in order. In the state of Self-experience the ego is dissolved.

Indra speaks of the knowledge of Brahman to Agni and Vayu. It is experience within through knowledge that transmits itself to speech, mind, etc. The external functions are possible because of inner experience Agni, Vayu and Indra are considered to be the greatest of the gods, because it is not possible for any other of our functions to express the Divine Being even a little; only the speech, the prana and the mind or the ego have some relations with the Divine, though these, too, cannot express it completely.

To be continued

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