KENOPANISHAD -10: Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday  16, Aug 2024 06:20.
Article
Scriptures
Kenopanishad
Commentary on Section 1
Mantram - 5 (Continued)
Post-10.

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Mantram- 5

yad vaca nabhyuditam yena vag abhyudyate,

tad eva brahma tvam viddhi nedam yad idam upasate.

It is called Brahman because it is infinite and omnipresent. The word 'Brahman' comes from the Sanskrit root 'brihm', which means 'to fill all space', 'to be complete in itself', 'to exclude nothing from itself', 'to be a plenum internally and externally'. Brahman is Fullness inwardly as well as externally. That is the Atman at the same time. It is Brahman because it is the universal completeness. It is the Atman because it is the presupposition of even the thinking of the mind and the workings of the senses. It is the 'Selfhood' of all things. It is difficult to explain, again, what the Selfhood of all objects could be. No one can explain what the Self of an object is; it can only be felt. We cannot express adequately through language what we mean by our own Self, but we know what it is. How endearing it is, and how lovingly we hug it and regard it as more advantageous to us than anything else. 

So it is Brahman and the Atman at the same time. We can imagine how mysterious, how necessary, how dear can that be which is perfection on one side as Brahman and our own Self on the other side as the Atman. It catches us from both sides. On the one side it is the cosmic miracle of beauty and perfection which no one can gainsay, and on the other side it is our Self. How can we avoid it? The cosmic mystery, the universal enrapturing beauty of the perfection of the Absolute is identified with us, what we are 'really' in our own Self. If the whole universal perfection is to be centred in what we are, what would we feel at that time? That is the Atman, not that which we worship here through the sense organs, for that is not Brahman—nedam yad idam upāsate.

What is it that the Upanishad is trying to repudiate here when it says that it is not what people worship here? We worship objects of sense. We regard objects as part of our own being. We love objects. And we love objects sometimes more than we love our own selves. This is how we make fools of ourselves by imagining that the Atman is centred in something else. We know where the Atman is present, for, wherever our love is fixed, there the Atman is centred. We find ourselves in all those things which we love. The force of love is only an indication of where we are located or placed in the world. Do you want to know where you are? You can find it out by recognising what you love. Shall I tell you another humorous story? There were two mountain climbers, it appears, who, while on a mountaineering expedition lost themselves in the Alps. They did not know where they were in the widespread mountains of the Alps. They had a map in their hands. One of them stretched out the map, 'Oh, let me see. Let us find out where we are now, on which peak we are standing.' He opened the map and went on looking at it for a few minutes. 'Oh, now I know where we are standing. Look, look!' 

He pointed to a distant peak. 'See that mountain there. We are there!' This is interesting joke! He points to a mountain afar and says that is where they were. Well! We are also standing like that in some distant object. As you found this anecdote a very humorous one, you would also realise this condition in which we are in the world due to this foolish transference of the Self to objects outside. We are not in our own Self. We are not standing on the mountain on which we think we are. We are on another mountain, out there! Look at this miracle. We are in something else! We have already gone to some other object. This is called love or affection, and the extent of affection that we cherish for the things of the world will also point the extent to which we have transferred ourselves to objects. That would also be an indication of the extent of our ignorance.

This is the worship that we are performing in the world. And what is worship? The worship is of objects which we adore as our own Self. This is not your real Self, says the Upanishad—nedam yad idam upāsate. Do not mistake an object for your Self. Whatever be the spatial expansion of this object, however vast it be, it is not your Self. Now, there are gradations of this peculiar something called the object. From the minutest, tiniest and most isolated inorganic material unit to which we can transfer the Self, the object can extend to the whole universe itself. 

There are people who love even a walking stick; that is a kind of transference of Self, indeed, and it is the smallest conception of it, to give an example. If we take away the walking stick, the man gets annoyed and angry, because his Self is there. So, from this sort of the smallest, crudest conception of the object related to the Self we can expand this conception to higher and larger levels even up to the conception of God Himself, which is also a big object before us as long as God remains a content of conception only, and the Upanishad downright puts down all these sensory valuations of reality and says 'this is not the Self'.

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Continued

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