The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads - 7.5 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday 13, June 2024 07:00.

Chapter 7: The Secret of Sadhana -5.

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So there is a super-sensory integrating vitality in us, which was the thing that finally succeeded in chanting the holy invocation and quelled the Asuras. How could it be done? Because the integrating force is the only power that can put down the distracting force. The impulse of the senses in terms of or in relation to objects is the evil spoken of as the Asuras here in this battle. This sensory impulse cannot be overcome by employing the senses themselves. It would be like employing a thief as a policeman to catch the thief. He will not succeed in that, because he is a friend of the thief. 

Therefore, the senses are not good instruments in the practice of yoga. They have to be withdrawn in pratyahara, and this is done by various ways, as we all know. So the Udgitha, the divine invocation, was the recital by that integrating vitality which sung the chant; and the concentration of this force, which is the total energy of the system, melted the impulses of the senses, and there was a retention of the activity of the senses. A true pranayama-kumbhaka took place, in yogic parlance. The senses ceased from operating in their own ways.

The Asura spoken of is not a human being or something like a human being, but it is a power. Finally, everything in this universe, in all this creation, is a force moving in this direction or that direction. The Deva, the angel, the god, the celestial, the power divine is the impulse towards cosmic integration, divine experience. The Asura, the demon, the Rakshasa, the evil that is spoken of is the counter-energy that rushes towards the periphery of creation, away from the centre, to the farthest gross form of objects of sense; it recognises a drop of honey there and licks it, like a dog licking a broken bone. 

The spiritual practice of yoga is the union of the powers of the senses together and the centralising of this force in the great vitality in us, which is indescribable, finally. This energy, or Sakti, is in every one of us. This Sakti is not a physical power merely; the physical power of ours is only an expression of this internal Prana Sakti. The Udgitha mantra was chanted thus by the Prana, and the Asuras were quelled, and the gods assumed their original positions.

What is the meaning of gods assuming their original positions? It means that the gods went to heaven. Otherwise, they were banished as exiles and they were wandering anywhere, helplessly. When the Asuras were defeated in battle, the angels got back their original positions. The angel is a limb of the Virat who visualises everything as a subject rather than an object. There is no object for the Virat, or the Supreme Universal Consciousness; and we were all parts of it. We are all parts of it even now, but we are blindfolded and afflicted with some kind of evil, as the Upanishad mentioned already, and so we have lost our positions. We have been thrown out as exiles from this relation that we had with the Cosmic Virat or the Hiranyagarbha. The origin that we aspire for, the position that we have to regain, is that position in the limb of the Almighty.

Everything was visible in that Cosmic Form described in the Mahabharata, particularly in the Bhagavadgita. Everything is found there. Even the one who sees it is there, already included. The seer of the Virat is also inside the Virat. That means to say that there is nothing outside it. So the so-called outsideness and the running after the things that are outside is something totally undivine. And the practice of yoga, the living of the spiritual life, is the chanting of the Udgitha. It is the Divine Name for all practical purposes. It means the invocation of the Divine Principle in our practical lives, implanting God in our hearts and seeking the blessing of the Almighty.

This is a hard job, because when we visualise the Divine Being, or when we invoke the divine into us, the senses persist in their action; the Asuras attack us, as the Upanishad tells us again and again, and we do not succeed in our attempts. Because there is always a tendency in us to objectify everything, we cannot think in terms of the angel's vision; that is out of question. But we have to succeed in doing it. Otherwise, there is no entry into this Divine Kingdom. 

“A flaming sword is placed at the gate, and an angel guards it that no mortal may enter.” It means to say, no sensory appetite may be permitted there. Not only appetite, even an activity of a sensory type will not hold water. “Straight is the gate, narrow is the way.” The gross objects of sense cannot enter that narrow gate. It is so narrow that even this body cannot go. We cannot carry this body there; we have to shed it.

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Continued

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