The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads - 7.1 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Monday 15, Apr 2024 07:10.
Chapter 7: The Secret of Sadhana -1.

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We hear in the scriptures that when creation was complete, a war took place between the Devas and the Asuras, the celestials and the demons. The Epics and the Puranas in India are replete with stories of Devasura Sangrama, the yuddha or the war continuously taking place between the gods and the demons. The gods sometimes had an upper hand, but mostly they were defeated. In the Upanishad we are told that the gods are lesser in number than the Asuras. Also in the epic of the Mahabharata, the Pandavas were lesser in number than the Kauravas.

The evil forces are larger in quantum than the beneficent forces in the world. Acharya Sankara, while commenting on the Upanishad, tells us that it is quite obvious because the impulse towards evil, which is the urge towards contact with the objects of sense, is more powerful than the impulse towards God. Rarely people turn to God; mostly they go down to objects of sense. So the number of spiritual seekers moving towards the light of God, perhaps, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. But the downward forces rejoicing in contact with senses are plenty, and therefore their number is more. So the war went on for ages and ages.

The gods had a brainwave. They conferred among themselves. “This state of affairs cannot be for a long time. We must find out a means of overcoming the Asuras. We shall chant the holy Udgitha Saman, which is a Veda mantra, and some of us will be engaged in doing this work of holy recitation to quell the Asuras.” So the deities, who were all implanted in the sense organs such as the eyes, ears, etc., and even the mind, were all requested to undertake this discipline of chanting the Udgitha. The deity of the speech was told: “You chant the Udgitha for us, and with the power of this great force, we shall overcome the Asura forces.”

The Asuras got wind of it. They knew that a great spiritual discipline was being undertaken by the Devas so that they may overcome the Asuras. So the Asuras thought, “We shall not allow this to happen. We shall not permit this spiritual discipline to go on. We shall attack it.” When speech was chanting the holy mantra, the Udgitha, Asuras came and attacked, and speech was quelled and thrown down. The Upanishad says that this is the reason why often speech that is uttered by people is not beneficent, not worthy, not delicate, but is harsh, barbaric, cruel, cutting and insulting to others. This detrimental negative attitude adopted by speech often is the effect of the evil influence imprecated upon it by the Asura forces. So the deity of speech was defeated.

Then the gods told the deity of the nose, “You chant the mantra; speech is defeated.” So the deity of the nose started chanting the holy mantra, and the Asuras understood this. They came with a force and attacked this deity of the nose. That is why it is said that we can also smell bad odour, and not only fragrance. So sometimes we close our nose when certain odours enter our nostrils. The nose was defeated.

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Continued

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