Commentary on the Panchadasi: 13. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Tuesday 12, July 2025, 06:10.
Books: Upanishads.
Commentary on the Panchadasi:13. 
Swami Krishnananda.
Discourse 3
Chapter 1: Tattva Viveka – Discrimination of Reality
Mantras 14-27
Mantras - 23 to27.
Post-13.

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Mantram-23:

"Buddhi karmendriyaprāṇa pañcakair manasā dhiyā, śarīraṁ sapta daśabhiḥ sūkṣmaṁ talliṅga mucyate (23)".

The subtle body, also called the astral body, is within the body, and it consists of the five senses of knowledge, the five senses of action, the five pranas, together with mind and intellect—totalling seventeen. These seventeen constituents are the substance of the sukshma sarira, that is, the subtle body. Seventeen components go to form the subtle body within the physical body.

Mantram-24:

Prājña statrā bhimānena taijasatvaṁ prapadyate, hiraṇya garbhatā mīśas tayor vyaṣṭi samaṣṭitā (24). 

When Consciousness manifests itself as a background of the sleeping condition or the causal body, it is called prajna, as we said. When it is there at the back of the dreaming condition, it is called taijasa. Cosmically, this dreaming condition is animated by the universal consciousness, called Hiranyagarbha-tattva. Individually Hiranyagarbha is the dreaming consciousness, and cosmically it is called by such names as universal prana, sutratma, thread-consciousness. Ishvara is the cosmical counterpart of the sleeping condition, whereas Hiranyagarbha is the cosmical counterpart of the dreaming condition, and Virat is the cosmical counterpart of the waking condition. This is something important for us to remember, even for our meditation.

In meditation, what do we do? We merge the waking consciousness into the Virat universal consciousness, as the total waking condition of the cosmos. We merge the dreaming consciousness in the total causal dreaming condition of the cosmos in Hiranyagarbha. In sleep we merge this causal condition into the universal causal condition of Ishvara. But in all the three states of sleep, dream and waking, we are conditioned, and we remain helpless; forcibly we are driven into these conditions by some factor of which we have no knowledge.

Whereas that is the case with each one of us, a different state of affairs obtains in Virat, Hiranyagarbha and Ishvara. They have no compulsion. That is all freedom. It is all universality. It is all omniscience. It is all omnipotence. God dancing in His own glory, as it were, is Virat, Hiranyagarbha, Ishvara; but the suffering jiva in a concentration camp, as it were, which is this world, is the fate of every one of us.

Hiraṇya garbhatā mīśas tayor vyaṣṭi samaṣṭitā. Vyasti is individual; samasti is total. Individually, we are prajna, taijasa and visva. Cosmically, the same thing is known as Virat, Hiranyagarbha and Ishvara.

Mantram-25:

Samaṣṭi rīśaḥ sarveṣāṁ svātma tādātmya vedanāt, tada bhāvāt tato'nye tu kathyante vyaṣṭi saṁ jñayā (25). 

Because Ishvara has an identity of His own Self with everything that He has created, He is called Total Consciousness, or samasti in Sanskrit. Because of the absence of this identity of Consciousness with all things at the same time in the case of the jiva, it is called shakti, or segregated individual. Identity with all things at one stroke is the nature of Ishvara, Hiranyagarbha and Virat. Identity with only this particular body, and not with anybody else, is the fate of the jiva, the individual. A great tragedy, a great travesty, a great sorrow has manifest before us as this individuality of ours.

Mantram-26&27:

Tad bhogāya puna bhogya bhogā yatana janmane, pañcīkaroti bhaga vān prayekaṁ viyadā dikam (26). 

Dvidhā vidhāya caikaikaṁ caturdhā prathamaṁ punaḥ, svasve tara dvitīyāṁ śaiḥ yojanāt pañca pañca te (27). 

It was mentioned that there are five potentials of the five elements—sound, touch, etc. These electrical energies, we may call them, that are at the back as the causative factors of the five elements and are mixed up by God Himself in some proportion, are called panchikarana, or the process of quintuplication, due to which, the physical world of earth, water, fire, air and ether are manifest. Half of the sabda, or the hearing tanmatra, is mixed with one-eighth of each of the remaining four, and therefore, it becomes half in its composition as sabda tanmatra; and one-eighth of it consists of a little portion of the others, namely touch, colour, taste and smell. In a similar manner are the other elements also. For the touch principle, half of it is the touch principle, and one-eighth of the other four are taken into consideration and mixed with this half, and it then becomes vayu, or wind. Sabda becomes space, or sky, as we call it, by this quintuplication process. In the same process, the fire principle becomes fire, or light. In the same process, the taste principle becomes water. The smell principle undergoing the same process of quintuplication becomes the physical earth.

So the five gross elements—ether, air, fire, water and earth—are constituted of some other elements also, and they are not entirely the original potentials wholly manifest in them. It is a peculiar combination and permutation that becomes necessary for the chemical type of combination, as it were, which causes the manifestation of the five gross elements. Thus, on the one side, the whole physical universe has been cosmically created, and on the other side, it has been individually created.

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Next
Discourse -4
Chapter 1: Tattva Viveka – Discrimination of Reality
Mantras 28-43
Continued

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