The Mandukya Upanishad: 2. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 09, March 2025, 08:00.
Article
Scriptures
The Mandukya Upanishad: 2. 
Swami Krishnananda.

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Five senses of knowledge, five organs of action and five pranas make fifteen. There are four functions of the psychic organ. The internal psyche, which we generally call manas or mind in ordinary language, has four functions. In Sanskrit these four functions are designated as manas, buddhi, ahamkara and chitta. Manas is ordinary, indeterminate thinking – just being aware that something is there. Manas is the work of the mind. Buddhi determines, decides and logically comes to a conclusion that something is such-and-such a thing. That is another aspect of the operation of the psyche – buddhi or intellect. The third form of it is ahamkara – ego, affirmation, assertion, 'I know'. "I know that there is some object in front of me, and I also know that I know. I know that I am existing as this so-and-so." This kind of affirmation attributed to one's own individuality is the work of ahamkara, known as egoism. The subconscious action, memory, etc., is caused by chitta. It is the fourth function. So manas, buddhi, ahamkara, chitta – these are the four basic functions of the internal organ, the psychological organ.

So, we have five senses of knowledge, five organs of action, five pranas and four operations of the psyche, totalling nineteen. These are the mouths through which consciousness grasps objects from outside, and we feel secure and happy because all these nineteen things are acting at the same time in some form or other, with more emphasis or less emphasis. Any one can act at any time, under special given conditions; and inasmuch as any one can act at any time, it is virtually saying that all are acting at the same time. Therefore we are objectively conscious through the nineteen operative media of the individual consciousness acting in the waking condition. We are aware of this vast world of sensory perception, and we go on contacting these objects of the world through these media.

It is also mentioned, in this connection, that we can conceive this form of perception in a cosmic way. Cosmic consciousness can be conceived to be operating in this manner in a cosmic waking condition. In the same way as we are individually conscious of objects in our waking condition, in a similar manner we can conceive that the universal consciousness is awake to the world of daylight. The whole universe is the object of the consciousness of a consciousness in its manner, similar to an individualised, circumscribed world becoming the object of our individual consciousness in the waking state. The waking state is called jagrat-avastha-jagratsthan. Technical words are used, which may be remembered or not remembered. For instance, visva is the word used to designate consciousness in the waking, individualised state. Our consciousness, the jiva-tattva, this individuality of ours at this moment of waking, is called visva. This very waking world of universal expanse in space and time, animated by a universal consciousness, is called Vaishvanara, or sometimes the word used is Virat. There is a consciousness pervading all things, as we know already. If this consciousness, which is universal and hidden behind all things, is to be aware of the whole cosmos as we perceive in our waking condition, that cosmic awaking or awareness of the whole universe may be regarded as Virat-tattva, or cosmic consciousness of the whole physical world, the entire cosmos of physicality.

We have heard that Sri Krishna manifested the Viratsvarupa before Arjuna. In the Purusha Sukta we also have some sort of description of the Cosmic Being conceived as animating the whole physical cosmos. By 'physical cosmos' we have to understand here not merely this physical earth, but all the layers of externality which are computerised, as it were, into fourteen categories known in Sanskrit as Bhurloka, Bhuvarloka, Svarloka, Janaloka, Maharloka, Tapoloka and Satyaloka. The whole cosmos, in all the levels of its manifestation, is at once an object of the awareness of this Cosmic Being. Such an awakened, waking state, as it were, of the cosmic consciousness is Virat, also known as Vaishvanara in the language of the Upanishads. Individually, the microcosmic aspect of this Virat is visva – your own or my own waking experience as it is available just now, for instance.

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Continued

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