Lessons on the Upanishads: 25 - Swami Krishnananda.

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Wednesday 06, May 2026, 07:50.
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Upanishads
Lessons on the Upanishads: 4.3.
Chapter 4: The Isavasya Upanishad -4.
Post-25.

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For obvious reasons, a thing that is outside, totally, cannot become yours. How can you possess a thing that is not yours? But you somehow convince yourself that it is yours. You have a way of operating your mind and of convincing yourself: “This tree is mine from tomorrow because I have purchased it from someone.” Neither that person who got money from you really had it, nor have you really got this tree as you imagined. But the mental operation is so very important and so very tricky that it can make you happy or unhappy. If somebody has taken away something and kept it somewhere else, you consider it lost and you grieve that it has gone. It has not gone anywhere; it is in some other location. Now, suppose the location shifts. The object is placed in another location and your mind is adjustable to the idea that it is yours; you are happy. That which is capable of leaving you, for any reason whatsoever, cannot belong to you. A thing that is yours cannot leave you. Anything which can leave one day or the other is not yours, and there is nothing in this world which will not leave you one day or the other. Therefore, it cannot be considered as yours. Hence, you should not be under the impression that you will be happy only because of possessions. In this wondrous universal context of the pervasion of God in all things and God being all things apart from being everywhere, who will possess what? Are you concocting some imaginary dream-like situation in which you can be falsely happy by a false sense of possession of existing or non-existing things?

Therefore, renounce attachment. It is another way of saying renounce the sense of possession. You do not grab anything; you cannot grab anything. Happiness is a state of being and not a consequence of possessing. God is not a possessor of the world; and do you believe that God is happy or unhappy? Is God very unhappy because He does not possess anything? Sometimes God is called Bholebaba, like Lord Siva who has not even a house to stay in. If God is the happiest of conceivable realities and if God has no possessions of any kind, then the highest happiness is not in possession. The more you feel the need to be alone to yourself as a state of being rather than a possessor of objects, the more happy will you be. The greater is the approximation that you strike to God's universal Existence, the greater also is your joy, your happiness.

Therefore, enjoy, be happy. The Upanishad does not say, “Be sorry.” Bhunjithah—“Enjoy.” Does God enjoy anything? Or is He starving? You will be wondering if the question itself has any meaning. God does not starve. He does not require any diet and, therefore, there is no question of starving. Why does He not require any diet? He is all things and so the diet is also Himself only. Therefore, where is the question of His grabbing it? If you consider God as the Ultimate Reality and all others as lesser realities, or perhaps not realities at all, your welfare consists in your approximation to God's Existence in some way, to some extent, in some measure, and not in anything else.

So, enjoy everything without possessing anything. Can you enjoy a flower without plucking it from the garden? Here is the whole point. Why do you pluck things and want to say “it is mine”? Let it be there; let the flower be there, growing luxuriantly on the plant. Let it be happy as it is and ought to be, in its own location. Why do you want to cut it off and say it is yours? Would you like someone to say that you are his? Would you like to be a property of somebody? “You are my property from tomorrow.” Would you like to be told this? You will say, “What kind of thing is this? How is it possible? I am an independent person. I am what I am and how can you possess me?” Nobody likes to be even a servant or a slave. It is a very unpleasant thing to become a servant, a slave, an underdog of somebody; and to say “You are my property” is still worse. How would you expect anyone else to tolerate this statement of yours? Even the land would not like to be told “You are mine from tomorrow onwards”. This is not a joke; in fact, there is a reference to this in the Bhumi Gita of the Bhagavata, where the earth says: “Oh, so many kings have come and wanted to possess me! Nobody really possessed me. They went and I am here as I am. Nobody possessed me! So many kings walked over me and said, 'Oh, you are mine', but nobody took me. They went, and I remained.” The Bhumi Gita is very interesting. You will find this in the Vishnu Purana and also in the Srimad Bhagavata Mahapurana.

Therefore, do not be under the impression that you require possessions in order to be happy. Being enhanced is the state of happiness. Your existence has to increase in its dimension; you have to become larger, not by adding some accretions from outside in the form of property, which can never become yours, but by your 'being' itself becoming larger. You have to learn this technique of how your being can become large.

If you can conceive of God, you can conceive of this large Being also. God is the largest expanse of Being, and is not 'becoming', or an object. Pure Sat, Existence as such, Being qua Being is Ishvara, God. And if you know He is the happiest pinnacle of existence without having any kind of association or possession from outside, you can also be happy in the same way, provided you are able to adjust your being in some measure at least, to the extent possible, with that Great Being of the Cosmos.

Hence, the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad says, Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat: “All this that you perceive, see, or contact through the sense organs is enveloped by God.” I have tried to explain the meaning of this word 'enveloped', which is very intriguing, and deep connotation and significance are involved in it. “Knowing this, be happy.” Merely by knowing this, you will be happy. Are you not happy merely by knowing that you are alive? Will you be happy by knowing that you will not be alive? The greatest happiness is in the feeling that you are hale and hearty. And if you are not hale and hearty, any kind of possession is not going to make you happy. Even in ordinary daily life you will realise that your being itself is a source of happiness. “I am perfectly secure, hale and hearty; it makes me happy. However, if I am not that, then put all gold and silver on my head. Will I be happy? Crush me with the weight of a load of silver; what is the good if I am not hale and hearty?” Happiness is the condition of Being, which is you. Happiness is not some consequence or result that follows from accretion of objects into your so-called personality. This mantra is very difficult to understand. One great thinker said that if all the scriptures in the world were destroyed and if only this mantra is available to us, we need not learn anything else afterwards. Let this one mantra remain and all the scriptures be destroyed. This one verse is sufficient to save us: Isavasyam idam sarvam yat kim ca jagatyam jagat, tena tyaktena bhunjitha, ma gridhah kasyasvid dhanam (Isa 1).

Do not be greedy. Do not be possessive. Do not say “I want, I want, I want.” You require nothing, finally. Even the richest people do not sleep on ten kilometres of land. They require six feet on which to sleep. Do you think a millionaire requires a longer, lengthier bed, several furlongs long, to sleep on? Will a rich person eat two quintals of food because he is rich? He will perhaps eat less than what you eat. These are confusions in the mind. Wealth and possession— accretion of objects, imagination that one has everything in this world—“I am the ruler of this earth”—these are rank illusions in the mind, and you will know this when the time comes. When everything goes, you will realise that you made a mistake in thinking that you had everything. You never brought anything when you came to this world. Are you trying to possess things which you did not bring? How did you earn this property of the world when you did not bring it with you when you came? Actually, if you have earned this property, you could take it when you go. Why do you not take it with you? You have so much wealth that you have earned through your profession; take it with you when you go. Can you? If you cannot bring anything and if you cannot take anything either, how is it possible for you to possess anything in the middle? The logic is: that which is not in the beginning, and not in the end, is also not in the middle. It is a total delusion, which is hard to understand and difficult to appreciate. A bitter pill is this knowledge. But this is the truth, and this is what the first mantra of the Isavasya Upanishad says.

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