The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads - 7.3 - Swami Krishnananda.

==================================================================================

Wednesday 15, May 2024 07:30.

Chapter 7: The Secret of Sadhana -3.

==================================================================================

There is eternal daylight there, says the Upanishad. “Sakrit vibhato hi brahmalokah.” In Brahmaloka, which is the Indian counterpart of the Garden of Eden in the Bible, there is eternal day—no night there. It is all blazing radiance. This blazing radiance does not come from some object hanging in the skies, as it is the case here in this world. The radiance of Brahmaloka is not the effect of a light coming from some lamp, not even a lamp like the sun or the moon. It is self-radiance. It is the light emanating from everything that is there. It is light shining upon its own self, and not shining on some other object which cannot shine. This is the Kingdom of God, this is the Garden of Eden, this is Brahmaloka, this is the world of the angels, the gods, the celestials.

The angels fell. What is this falling? The Upanishad's answer is that the fall took place due to the Asura influence, which is a difficult thing for us to understand. The problem of evil is an indescribable problem for everyone. Philosophically conceived, the Asura is the impulse towards sense objects. The desire for anything other than one's own self is the Asura, or the demon. This is something very interesting. We can know where we stand by the measure of this yardstick. One who desires anything other than one's own Self is the Asura. The angels have no such desires. They are self-satisfied, self-contained, self-complete, radiant sparks of divinity. Something happens! Nobody knows the mystery of creation. This mystery, this so-called something seems to have occurred, whether it was the cause of the fall of Lucifer or the cause of the fall of anybody else. Something happened. This mystery diverted the attention of the angels in a direction which is contrary to the original angelic vision. So we do not think like angels. We think like men and women, like human beings. What is the difference between the vision of the celestials and the vision of the mortals like us?

The Upanishads have many things to tell us in regard about this interesting feature in the process of creation. An explanation of the significance behind this anecdote can be found in the Aitareya Upanishad, wherein the description of the descent is characteristically described. When the angel, the celestial or the god becomes the mortal, the subject becomes the object and the object becomes the subject. This is what has happened. In the beginning of the creation process, the universe remains as an inseparable body of the Almighty. Since God revealed Himself as this creation, all things in creation are inseparable from God's Being; and since God cannot be regarded as an object, nothing in this world can be regarded as an object. Since the world is the body of God, it is an appearance of the glory of the Almighty Himself.

But, for every one of us, the world is an object of sense, as if God Himself has become a sense object. We are running after things which were originally inseparable from us but which have now assumed the context or the position of the things which are external to us. The origins of our own present individualities, the causes of our present form of existence have erroneously assumed the position of an object of sense outside. The world is an object of sense for every one of us. And we have assumed a false position of subjectivity or the position of a seer or experiencer, while we are the experienced objects from the angelic or the cosmic point of view. The so-called subjectivity in us is an objectivity to God, and to assume that we are subjects is to assume what Lucifer assumed in the presence of the Almighty. Now what position we are all occupying in this world will be clear to every one of us.

*****

Continued

===================================================================================