Commentary on the Isavasya Upanishad - 21. Swami Krishnananda.

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Sunday 04, Feb 2024 06:25.

SCRIPTURES

UPANISHADS

ISAVASYA UPANISHAD

Post-21.

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Mantram - 5.

It moves, and it moves not. It is far, and it is near. It is inside all this, and also outside all this. The movement of the Atman is like the movement of the sun with reference to a perceiver. The sun does not really move; only the clouds move. It is the mind that shifts its centres of thought, and consciousness appears to follow it because of its omnipresent nature. The mind cannot move outside the reality of the Atman. Its motion is within Truth, but, because it works in terms of forms or particular centres, it moves and changes itself. And because the Atman-consciousness is reflected through the mind, the reflection appears to move when really the medium it is that moves. In itself, the Atman does not move, because it is eternal. It is very far, because it is infinite and without boundaries. 

Also it appears to be very far to the ignorant, because it is not possible to know it even in crores (tens of millions) of births through any worldly means. It is very near, because it is the heart of all. It is nearer than even the mind. It is the central existence of every being here; there is nothing nearer than the Atman. It is inside all this, because it is the subtlest principle immanent in everything. It is outside everything, because it is the supreme transcendental being outside all names and forms. It is not exhausted in this universe. In the Purusha Sukta it is said figuratively that 3/4th of God is outside the universe.

The Atman is intense knowledge, without internal or external restrictions.

Mantras 6 and 7

Who sees all beings in his own Self and the Self in all beings, – he does not shrink away from anything, i.e., does not get disgusted with anything. In whom, the knower, all beings have become the Self, – to him, who beholds unity, where is delusion, where is sorrow? The person who has established himself in the Absolute Self sees everything situated in himself, because he is the support and the possibility of all beings. This realisation comes to him through absolute renunciation which means the transcendence of all particular forms and diving into the general substance which enters into the very fibre of the particularities. 

Because of this knowledge of the oneness of all beings there is no reason for him to get disgusted with any form or to be attached to any form. He knows that he lives in all bodies and that it is his spirit that works the life of the different individuals. He is the cosmic life in which all individual lives are included. Because of his separation from the body, the senses and the mind, he has got a full knowledge of and a control over all these objective functions. He controls the whole universe, because he has no attachment to it. 

Knowledge and power are the results of supreme renunciation. The sage with Self-realisation experiences himself as the undifferentiated witness of all changes and modifications. He is the unchanging Being who underlies all beings. Hence he knows everything that changes. And everything has his Self as the basis. He neither loves nor hates anything. Special attitudes and relationships are developed towards objects only when they are believed to be other than the Self. The differenceless Atman does not allow of any such distinction within its undivided existence. 

When an object is considered to be as much real as the subject or at least to have some reality, the value of the subject is limited, whereby the state of Absoluteness is denied. If the Absolute is at all possible, duality can never be possible. Absolute-Experience is non-relational. This knowledge destroys all delusion and sorrow. Such objective experiences as grief and delusion have no meaning in the state of Absolute Unity. Pleasure and pain, confusion and mistake, are all the results of ignorance and desire which are possible only in the case of an individual. The Absolute Being can have no such individual experiences. The cause of misery, together with all its effects, is completely rooted out in the state of the Absolute. This is the experience of the sage.

Continued

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