The Chhandogya Upanishad - 55 : Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 22, Apr 2024. 06:50.
Chapter 4: An Analysis of the Nature of the Self
Section 12: The Self as Spirit
Mantram-2
Post-55.

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Section 12: The Self as Spirit (Continued)

Mantram - 2.

Asariro vayuh, abhram, vidyut, 

stanayitnur-asariranyetani. 

tad-yathaitany-amusmad-akasat 

samatthaya param jyotir-

upasampadya svena 

rupenabhinispadyante.

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But these difficulties do not arise when the body vanishes and when one experiences a bodiless existence. It is impossible to conceive what bodiless existence is. It is beyond the conception of the mind because of the fact that the mind is only a handmaid of bodily experiences. It simply accepts what the body wants, what the body clamours for and what the senses speak. Whatever the mind thinks is only in terms of the body. So how can the mind imagine what is bodiless? It has to stand on its own head, as it were, which is impossible. So, the injunction of Prajapati that the bodiless existence is free from the vicissitudes of pleasure and pain cannot easily be made intelligible to the mind that is affected by the cognitions of bodily existence.

But here is the truth. The Atman is bodiless. That does not mean that it is an ethereal abstraction. The doubt in the mind that is likely to arise that freedom from the body may be some ethereal abstraction is due to the misconceptions arising consequent upon the habits of the mind. The Atman is not an abstraction from the physical existence. What the Atman is, the mind cannot think, for the simple reason that we are used to imagining that physical bodies are substantives which have qualities and characters inhering in them. In our present condition we can never for a moment think that the substantive can be other than a physical body. Whatever we think is physical only. Even if we close our eyes and imagine something non-physical with the stretch of our imagination, it cannot be non-physical because it will be located in space and time. That which is located in space and time is physical. This is the very meaning of physicality. There is no such thing as non-physical thinking and, therefore, the Atman cannot be thought of by the mind. That is the reason also why we cannot imagine what this bodiless existence means.

The bodiless existence of the Atman is not the divesting of Reality in any manner whatsoever. It is complete freedom and not the negation of anything. It is like the gaining of health from a condition of disease. It is an impersonality of state, an impersonality of condition, an impersonality of experience, and an impersonality of being. The so-called body or the physical atmosphere is a finitisation of this impersonal being. Can we say, to give only a very gross intelligible example, that a lump of ice which is finite in its bodily being is in any way superior to the causes out of which it has come into existence? The ice is nothing but a solidified form of water. Water is more general in its formation than this limited form of ice. But even water has a cause behind it, hydrogen and oxygen, and we cannot say that the water is superior to its cause in any manner whatsoever. Can you say that water vapour is inferior to the manifestation that is called water or ice? But even these gases, hydrogen and oxygen, are not ultimate causes. They are again manifestations chemically of something superior or more subtle in character, more unthinkable. Merely because something is unthinkable it does not become a non-real existence. The more is the capacity of our mind to conceive causes, the more will we be able to understand the nature of the Atman. Why it looks abstracted is because it is generalised and is universal.

Space is, in a sense, an impersonal existence. It has no finite form in the sense of a body that we can see with our physical eyes. But it cannot be said, even physically speaking, that space or ether is divested of the realities of the physical earth, fire, air or water. We are told that the contents of the earth can be withdrawn by way of sublimation into the causes thereof, so that they become liquids and gases which can all be absorbed into ether, which in turn is not a negation of physical substances but a very ethereal impersonal existence of everything that we call physical. Some such thing happens when we enter into the consciousness of the impersonal Atman. Because of this impersonality of Being, it cannot be affected by anything, because anything which can affect something else has to be other than that which it affects, and other than that (the Atman) nothing is.

So, this seems to be the implication of the great injunction of Prajapati. Indra might understand it or not, but this is the fact. Prajapati gave some examples to make Indra understand this impersonal nature of the Atman. Air has no body. It is not affected by pleasure and pain. In a sense it is bodiless, because it is not located in some particular place. It is not attached to any particular body. It has free movement. The lightning in the sky is also of an impersonal character to some extent. The clouds are also of an impersonal character to some extent. The thunder is also of an impersonal character. These clouds will vanish into space. They get absorbed into space. Wind also ceases and gets identified with space when it is heated up by the light of the sun. These movements of wind, the falling of water as rain and every phenomenon that we see in the atmosphere-all these are capable of being lost in space ultimately, under certain given conditions. They go to their sources. They arise from their cause and they go back to their cause. Space is the ultimate cause of every physical element. By space we do not mean emptiness, but a most subtle impersonal state of physical existence. So, everything goes back to its cause, which is the universal ether, and everything arises from that universal ether. Even so is the case with all this creation which has arisen, as it were, from this universal Atman and it goes back to this universal Atman.

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Next

Mantram-3

Evam evaisa samprasado'smac-charirat 

samutthaya param jyotir-upasampadya 

svena rupenabhinispadyate, 

sa uttamah purusah, sa tatra paryeti, 

jaksat kridan ramamanah stribhir-

va yanair-va jnatibhir-va nopajanam 

smarannidam sariram, sa yatha 

prayogya acarane yuktah,

evam evayam asmin sarire prano yuktah.

Continued

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