KENOPANISHAD -6: Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday 21, June 2024 06:50.
Article
Scriptures
Kenopanishad
Commentary on Section 1
Mantras - 3&4 (Continued)
Post-6.

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In the material world, we are so deeply objectively conscious that oftentimes we regard the objects as more important that our own self. This is called samsara, in ordinary language. People say they are involved in samsara, which means to say that they are immersed in object-consciousness, regarding the objects as more valuable than themselves. The things connected with me are more meaningful to me than my own self. This is the simple statement about the whole matter. This is why people die for things other than their own self. The entire life of a person is spent in adjusting himself with objects, so that he may be in tune with objects rather than the objects be in tune with his self. We flow with the current of the movement of objects. In this hectic activity of the senses the self-consciousness also gets involved, and as the objects never remain in a single condition, they always transform themselves, there is evolution, it looks as if consciousness also evolves.

There is evolution every moment of time. There is not a single atom of the world which remains constant for all times. There is a rapid movement of every constituent of every object, and when a group of forces that constitute an object-form corresponds, for the time being, to the constitution of the senses of a perceiver, there is a corresponding perception. What we call object-perception is nothing but the correspondence of the constitution of the senses with the temporary constitution of a given object. If there is no such parallel coordination between the subject and the object, if there is increase or decrease in the frequency of the forces constituting either the subject or the object, there would be no perception of any such thing as the world. This is why we cannot see higher worlds or lower worlds than our own. We can see only this particular world, the earthly plane, the physical realm, on account of the frequency of the vibrations of physical objects corresponding to the frequency of the vibrations of the forces that constitute our senses. This is how the objects become the contents of our sensory consciousness. Not allowing that it is only a temporary situation that is presented before us, forgetting the fact that the world is much vaster and deeper than what the senses perceive, there is confusion created before the mind, and then the whole personality of the human being gets involved in the setup of objects tentatively given for the time being.

This is what is called the immersion of self in samsara, earthly existence, and this happens in the case of every person, as it cannot but happen for the reasons mentioned. On account of this situation that has been created, in which the self-consciousness gets lost in object-consciousness, there is such a removal of one's self, farther from one's centre, to a distant imagined centre called object, that we are supposed to be in the lowest of created worlds, the earth plane. It is the lowest because it is the most removed from the spiritual centre of the Self. You must have read in philosophical textbooks that there are what are called the sheaths or the koshas of the Self. These koshas are nothing but representations or symbols of the intensity of the removal of Self-consciousness from itself. The innermost layer of the Self is called anandamaya kosha, or the causal sheath, where the Self tends to objectify itself. There is a tendency of Self-consciousness to externalise itself here. This tendency is called the causal sheath. The sheath is not made up of any material substance. It is nothing but consciousness entwining itself in what it has made of its own self, like a silkworm creating threads out of its own material and winding them round its own self as its own bondage. The sheaths are not made up of any exterior substance. It is only consciousness winding itself in a mysterious manner, and it looks darkened, externalised and material, as we say, on account of its concentration upon this mysterious phenomenon as an object. When there is a greater and more intensified objectification, there is a subtle perception of diversity of objects. To know how this happens we can only imagine how we enter into the state of dream. When we go to sleep, there is only a tendency to dream. We do not dream immediately. The tendency of the mind to objectify itself into forms of dream perception may be compared to this creational activity of consciousness which is called anandamaya kosha, but when there is an actual diversification, a real objectification, a complete self-alienation into a multiplicity of forms, there is a subtle recognition of the world outside. This is the astral or the subtle body working. But there is a further removal of the Self from itself when there is concrete, visible, physical perception of objects, the condition in which we are now. This is the physical world. It is in one sense the lowest of worlds, the farthest from the true nature of the Self. The forces of consciousness tend themselves to objects in such velocity that there is no possibility of their easily turning back upon the Self.

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Continued

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