The Realisation of the Absolute: 1.2. Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday 25, March 2025, 11:15.
Books
Upanishads
The Realisation of the Absolute: 
Chapter 1: Introduction - 2.
Swami Krishnananda.

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The Method of Conscious Expansion:

The Upanishads are thoroughly spiritual and, hence, advocate the most catholic doctrine of the Yoga of Truth-realisation. Their teachings are not the product of an intellectual wonder or curiosity, but the effect of an intense and irresistible pressure of a practical need arising from the evil of attachment to individual existence. The task of the Seers was to remedy this defect in life, which, they realised, was due to the consciousness of separateness of being and the desire to acquire and become what one is not. The remedy lies in acquiring and becoming everything, expressed all too imperfectly by the words "Infinity," "Immortality," and the like. The central problem of every one of us is the overcoming of the illness of individual life and the attainment of the state of perfection, peace and bliss. The Upanishads point out the "End" as well as the "Means" and, since those sages had the Integral Knowledge of Reality, the method of approach to it they point out is also befitting the Ideal, viz., it is integral. The practice of such an ideal "sadhana" for deliverance from the thralldom of relational life leads one to the shining region of unalloyed happiness.

The differences among the conceptions regarding the efficacies of the various methods of the transformation of personality into the higher consciousness are due to the varying temperaments and grades of experience of those engaged in the task of realising the Divine Existence. Each of the ego-centers is different from the other in consciousness and experience. They require higher touches of experience varying in degree, in proportion to the subtlety of the condition of their present state of consciousness. We may assert that though the fundamental view presented in the declarations of the Upanishads is the one taken by the highest class of the seekers after Truth—a thorough-going intuitional Absolutism—one will not fail to find in them deepest proclamations touching all the aspects of the psychological constitution of the human being in general. The light and the heat of the sun are not useless to any existing entity of the universe—whatever be the way and degree in which it may make use of the sun's presence—and the Upanishadic statements of the integral Truth are not useless to any aspect of man and to no method of approach to Reality; for, "integrality" includes all "aspects".

This Integration of Being can be achieved even in this very life. It is not necessary to take some more rounds of births and deaths for the purpose, provided the integration is affected before the shaking off of the physical sheath, through persistent meditation on Reality and negation of separative consciousness. The quickness of the process of Attainment depends upon the intensity of the power of such meditation, both in its negative and assertive aspects. A dehypnotization of the consciousness of physicality and individuality is the essential purpose of all methods of spiritual meditation.

The Transcendent Being:

The teachings of the Upanishads are expressed in the language of the Self —not of the intellect—and, hence, they do not easily go deeply into every soul, unless it possesses a responsive and burning yearning for Absolute-Experience. The soul, due to its deviation from the Truth and wandering among the shadows, finds it difficult to hear the voice of the Silence. The Upanishads suggest that even the highest achievement in the relative plane—even the creatorship or destroyer ship of the universe—is, from the ultimate point of view, among the fleeting shadows of phenomenal existence. The delicate tendencies which manifest themselves in the process of the blossoming of individuality into the Infinite try to cover the presence of the Truth in the inmost recesses of our being. Such psychic layers, however brilliant they may be, are, after all, layers of non-being and should not be mistaken for the Real. Even the subtlest layer is but a veil over the Truth, a "golden vessel" that hides the essence, and must be transcended before the kernel of Being is reached. The delight of unfettered being is beyond all states of relational joy, however extreme that joy may be. The Bliss of unlimited Consciousness is the zenith of Existence, and everything other than this is condemned as untrue.

The delight of the Self is the delight of Being. It is the Bliss of Consciousness-Absolute. The Being of Consciousness is the Being of Bliss, Eternal. It does not lie in achievement but realisation and experience, not invention but discovery. The Consciousness is more intense when the objective existence is presented near the subject, still more complete when the subjective and the objective beings are more intimately related, and fully perfected and extended to Absoluteness in the identification of the subject and the object. This Pure Consciousness is the same as Pure Bliss, the source of Power and the height of Freedom. This is the supreme Silence of the splendid Plenitude of the Real, where the individual is drowned in the ocean of Being.

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Next

Truth and Its Quest

Continued

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