The Essence of the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad : 12. Swami Krishnananda.

Swami Chinmayananda:

Did you know what happens after death?

[after death, what happens after death, karma, good karmas, karma quotes, life, life and death]

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Friday 02, Feb 2024. 06:30.

Scriptures

Upanishads

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 

Chapter -2.The Absolute and the Universe-8.

Post-12.

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Then, there is a set of suggestions given by the Upanishad from the practical point of view. All activity in the world is ultimately futile, if one condition is not fulfilled. We are not going to succeed in any attempt of ours in this world, we are going to be a miserable failure, whatever be our enterprise—you may be a great philanthropist, you may be a loving social worker, you may have big ambitions in life to do great things and magnificent things—all these efforts will go to dust and one will go repenting, achieving nothing of the nature of success in this world, if one essential point is missed. What is that? The Dharma, or the Law of Unity which is present as the Selfhood of all things, the Atman-nature in things, even in the midst of all this apparent variety of activity and experience.

Every activity becomes divine, provided the element of the Atman is impregnated into it. Every activity becomes futile, if the Atman is divested out of it. Every body is alive, if the soul is present in it; every body is a corpse, if the soul is out of it. Thus, the Upanishad very precisely tells us here, again, that we should not weep and cry if we do not succeed in life, for it is our mistake. We have an unspiritual attitude towards things, and this is the cause of our failures in life. We fail at home, we fail in our personal works, we fail in society, we fail even in our higher ambitions, which may be superphysical in nature. Where God is absent, nothing can be a success. Where God is present, everything shall be a success. This is the essence of this practical suggestion given by the Upanishad. When we forget God, we shall be in the throes of misery at that very moment and when we are in the presence of God, when we are able to practise the presence of God, when our consciousness is tuned to universality, then, whatever we touch would become gold, and any enterprise of ours is bound to be a success, whichever be the direction we take. Success will be in our hands and failure will be unknown, if the Atman is our guide, if the Absolute is at the beck and call of our personal experience; otherwise, we are not going to succeed; everything shall be futile.

There are three personal desires in the individual, or we may say, there are three urges in the individual, which are three types of expression of the very same Absolute. The Upanishad tells us that we cannot be completely closing our eyes to these desires in the individual. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is a very complete scripture; it touches every point of psychology and spiritual aspiration. What we call desires and call bondages in life are the blind movements of the same spiritual force. It is God Himself walking, as it were, closing His eyes—that is called a desire; and we cannot call it undivine merely because it has closed its eyes. It becomes undivine only when it has lost the awareness of its purpose. The movements of the human nature in the form of desires, called Eshanas, or the primal urges of the personality are the gropings of the very same cosmic force, attempting to unite itself with every blessed thing in creation, searching for the Selfhood in things. These are the functions of hunger, sex and renown. Even if one ignores only one of them, there is a sense of incompleteness of being. But, their activity is of a painful nature; it does not lead to success ultimately; it throws the individual into sorrow finally, because its well-intentioned activities or movements are blindly directed. It is an unawakened urge of the Universal, and these are the blind forces of Nature; they are also the Absolute Law working, only they are not conscious of themselves. The Upanishad tells us that it is up to us to render them conscious, awaken them to the awareness of their own purpose, then desires shall become directives of the soul on the path to liberation. The Self is the true world of all living beings.

By Yajna or sacrifice, study of sacred lore, offering of libations, providing boarding and lodging, giving grass and water and the like, tending and non-interfering with domestic animals, birds, etc., even up to such creatures as ants in one's house, the knower of the Self recognises the Reality of the gods, sages (Rishis), ancestors (manes), human beings, animals, etc., respectively, and becomes one with all existence, evoking the love of all beings as they would love their own Self. This is, in essence, the doctrine of creation, as well as of the return of the soul to God, or Brahman, as expounded in the fourth section of the First Chapter of the Upanishad.

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To be continued

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