KENOPANISHAD -5: Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Friday 07, May 2024 06:30.
Article
Commentary on Section 1
Mantras - 3&4
Post-5.

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Mantras - 3 and 4:

3.

"Na tatra caksur gacchati na vag gacchati no manah,

na vidmo na vijanimo yathaitad anusisyat."

4.

"Anyad eva tad viditad atho aviditad adhi,

iti susruma purvesam ye nas tad vyacacaksire."

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There, in the Atman, which has been described in the earlier mantra, nothing can reside, and that Atman nothing can reach. This is the purport of the third mantra. The eyes cannot see the Atman. The speech cannot describe the Atman. The mind cannot think the Atman. We do not know how to speak about it, think it, understand it or instruct about it. Thus it is that we have heard about it from those who have realised it.

We have had enough of indication in the second mantra as to the inaccessibility of the Atman. Why is it inaccessible, and how is it that it remains ever the transcendent in respect of all the faculties of the human being, is clear from the very description that was given earlier. It so happens that our mind is constructed together with the senses in such a way that they can never, with all the best of their ability, turn back upon themselves, or cognise that which is behind their own existence. The mind always remains a cognising faculty. The senses ever find themselves busy in the perception and sensation of things. But due to the very constitution and the nature of the mind and the senses—the very make up of these—it is impossible for them to know the background of their own being. Why does not the eye go there or the ear go there? The reason is that the senses are the refracting medium whose rays always project themselves outwardly rather than inwardly. It is as if, from a source of resplendent light, rays emanate with a tremendous force in the direction of not the light itself but of other things which the light illumines. The resplendence of the Atman projects itself in the form of sensory rays, and vehemently moves externally in space and time in respect of objects. The force of the rays is such that it is capable not only of dragging through the avenues of the senses all the energy that is located in the bodily organism, but, something more mysterious than this, even confounding the very light of the Atman as a cognising and perceiving operation, so that in the mental cognitions and sensory perceptions there is an indescribable transference of attributes, the subject becoming tinged with the character of the object.

The light of the Atman transfers itself to the objects in such a way that the Atman may be, temporarily at least, said to recognise itself in the objects rather than realise its own Self-identity. There is no Self-consciousness, there is only object-consciousness in all forms of perception. When we are conscious of objects we are never conscious of the Self. Even in this empirical world of bodily existences, in our usual sensations, perceptions and cognitions we find that when we are aware of an object we are not simultaneously aware of our own selves. We cannot be doubly conscious at one and the same time. There may be a quick succession of alternate perceptions of ourselves and the objects, but never can there be a parallel or simultaneous perception of one's own self and the objects outside. We may stretch our imagination and try to be conscious of both ourselves and the object at a given moment of time; even then, even during that flash of a short period of the so-called double consciousness that we try to maintain, it is only a quick succession of alternate perceptions and never a simultaneous perception.

The fact is that self-consciousness and object-consciousness cannot go together. Now, the Atman is pure Self-consciousness. When I say 'pure', it means unadulterated, unrelated to any form of objectivity. There is no sensory operation there, and it is absolutely unnecessary there, but when any kind of sensation takes place in terms of objects, the consciousness which is the Atman gets transferred through the avenues of the senses in respect of objects and there is object-consciousness.

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Continued

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