Lessons on the Upanishads: 2.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Sunday 06, July 2025, 20:10.
Books
Upanishads
Lessons on the Upanishads: 2.2.
Chapter 2: The Problem in Understanding the Upanishads-2.
Swami Krishnananda
Post-8.

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The Isavasya Upanishad is the only one which occurs in the Samhita portion of the Veda. All the others come as appendices or follow-ups of the Brahmanas or the Aranyakas, which I mentioned in the previous session. Therefore, there is a special intonation required in the recitation of the Isavasya Upanishad, as is the case with the Samhitas of the Vedas. We cannot read the verses casually, as we read a book. There is a special modulation and intonation of voice—swara, as it is called. This swara aspect of recitation is not emphasised as much in the other Upanishads as is the case with the Isavasya Upanishad.

Now, to repeat what I told you towards the end of our last session, the Upanishads are most important and equally difficult to understand. The difficulty arises because of the subjects they treat. They are not telling us a story of something that happened sometime, like the epics and the Puranas, for instance. Also, the Upanishads are not prayers offered to some god which we can just chant every day as a routine of practice. They do not tell us how to perform rituals or gestures of worship as we do in temples or altars of adoration. They tell us something quite different from all these things. What is this differentia which marks the Upanishads? They deal with our Self.

The most unpleasant thing in the world is to say anything about one's own self. We can go on saying anything about people, but when it is a matter concerning us, we would like that not much is said. Om Shanti. This is because we are the most secret aspect of creation and we are very touchy; we would not like to be touched, even unconsciously, by anybody. “Don't say anything about me; say anything about other people.” Now, what is the matter? There is some peculiarity about this so-called 'me', 'I', or the self. This is the peculiarity of the Upanishadic teaching, and also its difficulty. The knowledge of the gods in the heavens, the knowledge of historical personages—kings, saints and sages—and the way of worshipping them and adoring them is something we can comprehend. “Yes, we understand what it means.” This is exactly what we commonly understand by the word 'religion'. “He is a religious person.” Sometimes we even say, “He is spiritual.” Generally speaking, when we say that a person is religious or spiritual, we have an idea that this person is concerned with something higher than himself or herself—some god, some ideal, some future expectation which we may call divine, not concerned with the present, necessarily. The present is unsatisfying; therefore, we are in search of a future. I said something about it in our last session.

The Upanishads are not telling us about any God. Then, what is it that the Upanishads are telling us if it is not speaking about God? It is speaking about God, but not about the God that we usually think in our mind according to our upbringing, culture, language or tradition. It refers to God and it refers to nothing else, whereas the other religious forms of the concept of God—the God of the various 'isms' in the world—have other things in addition to and simultaneous with God's existence, such as: Something must be done, something must not be done. These 'do's' and 'don'ts' fill the texture of every religion in the world. Something has to be done and something should not be done. The question of this dichotomy does not arise in the Upanishads.

The concept of God, or the Ultimate Reality, that we encounter in the Upanishads is markedly different from our transcendent conception of God. We always look up to the skies, fold our palms and humbly offer a prayer to a divinity that is invisible to the eyes but considered as transcendent, above us—perhaps very far from us. None of us can escape this idea of God being a little far from us. Certainly, there is some distance between us and God. That distance frightens us. Sometimes the distance seems to be incalculable, especially when we are told that millions of births have to be taken in order to reach God. This has been told to us, and is being told to us, again and again. It is not a question of an effort in one birth only. Several incarnations may have to be undergone by way of purification and selfdiscipline in order that one may reach that Supreme Almighty. This brings us into the well-known idea of the distance between us and God.

Simultaneous with this concept of distance between us and God, there is also the concept of futurity of the attainment of God. It is not something that can be attained just now; it is a matter for tomorrow. “I will attain God one day.” This “one day” implies some time in the future. So, somehow the concept of time also comes in when we conceive God in the traditional pattern. Because of the space concept in our mind, we feel that God is far away from us; there is a distance. The concept of distance is the concept of space. It has entered our brains to such an extent that we cannot think anything except in terms of measurement—length, breadth, height, distance. So, God is away from us, measurably, by a distance. He is also a futurity in time, and He can be attained by hard effort. There is also a causative factor involved in the concept of the attainment of God. Space, time and cause—these are the conditioning factors of human thinking. Without these concepts, we can think nothing.

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Continued

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