KENOPANISHAD -4: Swami Krishnananda.

#Swami Chinmayananda:

*Chinmaya Mission

*Should one believe in astrology?

*Disclaimer: This is one of the perspectives given by Swami Chinmayananda. One may agree to disagree! 

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Thursday 23, May 2024 07:00.

Commentary on Section 1

Mantram - 2
Post-4.

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Mantram-2:

The Self is the hearing consciousness of the ear, and similarly, the consciousness of the other different sense-functions. The organs of hearing, seeing, etc. are not capable of functioning without Self awareness. The nature of the Self can be defined by what it is not and not by what it is. The Self, as it is in itself, is indefinable, because it is devoid of the characteristics that a definition requires. It is not a substance with attributes, nor is it an individual directing the senses, etc. It is nothing to the senses and the mind, though it is everything to itself. Through the acts of deliberation, volition and determination, it is possible for us to infer the nature of the Self. The born, the originated and the compounded substances cannot be explained and accounted for except on the basis of an unborn, an unoriginated and an uncompounded being. The world of experience is the indicator of the existence of an eternal being. The acceptance of our finitude posits the existence of the Infinite. That we are imperfect means that there is a perfect being. But it is not possible for us to presume that we are perfect now itself, because our experience revolts against that conclusion. When the absence of anything brings about troubles and calamities, the value of its existence is realised. When, without something, nothing can be explained, we have to admit the reality of that something. No experience is explicable except on the substratum of a permanent Self. The feeling of “I” within us refuses to be rejected and asserts itself even before we begin to think. Consciousness is presupposed by thinking. Anything that is a composite of parts must be dependent on a non-composite wholeness of being. Differences can be explained only by non-difference. Corporeality has got a value only on the hypothesis of an incorporeal being. We give value to our bodily existence because we confound the indivisible Self with the divisible body. The senses disagree among one another, but this disagreement is reconciled and set into harmony by the unifying Self within.

In the state of waking, consciousness pervades the body, even as fire makes an iron ball red hot, when it is heated. It becomes difficult to distinguish between the fire and iron in that condition. Similarly the body appears to be the Self because of this pervasion of consciousness over the senses and the body. But consciousness is different from the senses and the body, even as fire is different from the iron ball. Self-revelation is the nature of the Self. Because of it the senses reveal to us objects. They die without it. As the sun illumines the world, the Self illumines the mind and the body. Thus it is proved that the body is not the Self and that the mind also is not the Self.

Similarly, the prana is not the Self. The prana is the expression of the mind. It is the connecting link between the mind and the body. The flow of prana is regulated by the function of the mind, and the body in turn is controlled by the movements of the prana. The condition of the body depends upon how the prana works, and the condition of the prana depends upon how the mind works, and what desires it has.

There is life in prana because of the life of the Self. The prana has no life (consciousness) in the deep sleep state when it is disconnected from the Self. There is loss of consciousness of breathing and the other functions of the prana. In conclusion, therefore, it is to be known that nothing of the five external sheaths has anything of reality.

Immortality is attained through the knowledge of the fact that the Self is the independent existence. Death is negated because of the absence of desires. Death is the process of the reshuffling of oneself from one condition to another condition. This process is the effect of unfulfilled desires. Nothing is lost when this body is lost, because death is the casting off of what is not needed and the way of entering into what is needed.

Knowledge is disintegration of personality and integration of being. Embodiment is the centralisation of energy by desires attended by consciousness. Generality is particularised by desires. Everyone wants something and not everything. This separation or partition created by the desires limits the desirer to the form of the object of his desire. This results in the experience of death and birth by the desirer, because he has to maintain the reality of the form of the object of his desire. Knowledge, therefore, consists in the cancelling of the truth of all forms of desires and removing the partition that is created.

The Selfhood attributed to the senses, etc. has to be transcended through the negation of their realities. This requires extraordinary courage or dhairya, because it is hard to negate what is experienced as a reality. To realise that the changing of bodies is for one's good, to know that getting rid of individuality is beneficial, to come to the conclusion that impersonality is the real state of being, to detach oneself from one's pet forms of experience, is not easy. Faith in Truth means disbelief in phantoms. Immortality and mortality are utter contradictions. We cannot live in God and at the same time live in the world. The world is a nihil in the glory of the Selfhood of Divinity.

Transcending this world does not mean casting this world away and going to another superior world. The world is a condition of experience, a mode through which we view reality, a form which we have selected out of the immense Ground of forms. As long as we are satisfied with some condition of existence and do not want its other conditions, we are said to live in a perishable world, because no condition is complete. All modes are, after all, distorted aspects and do not reveal to us the fullness of perfection. Renunciation of this world, therefore, means dissatisfaction with everything that we experience at any time, at any place and under any circumstance. Nothing of this universe should please us, lest we should be pleased with apparitions or thought constructions or dream-objects. Deathlessness is the result of desirelessness, of resting in the condition of wanting nothing at all, nothing of this world, nothing of the other world, nothing of this body, nothing of the mind, nothing of externals or internals. Negation of death means transcendental independence or kaivalya. It is to be connected with nothing, to rest in Supreme Subjectness.

The world is the colour that we paint over Truth. This colour is the one in which we appear, and it is variegated. The colours change as we change ourselves. What we are, that the world is. The objects are influenced by the characters of the subjects. The form of what we perceive is dependent on the instruments through which we perceive. The collective mind of all of us gives form and value to what it experiences, and this it does on the basis of the constitution of itself. Whatever be the value or greatness of anything of the world, it is determined by the necessity of the experiencers to experience that value or greatness. The good and the evil of this world are the reactions produced by the wants of individuals, and as such good and evil are not absolute values. The form of the world of objective value ceases to exist the moment the potentialities of wants in the individuals are annihilated, i. e., when the necessity for any form of experience in the cosmos is put an end to. Freedom from desires is something like existing as a granite-mountain that knows no change even when storms blow over it. It is to exist in the highest sense of absolute non-duality. This is immortality. Though the experience of the Immortal need not necessarily mean the destruction of the body, the body will be incapable of maintaining itself for long, for want of egoistic desires. Therefore, moksha in the real sense means existing in the condition of the Truth of bodilessness. The highest jivanmukti is immediately followed by videhamukti. Brahman is experienced here and now. 

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Next

Mantra 3:

Continued

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