2.1
The Vedas are
acceptedly the most ancient scripture in the
world. They have formed the basis of religion
and philosophy and even today they are
authoritative in those fields for Hinduism.
There is a view
that Indian philosophy started with the
Upanishads otherwise known as the Vedanta (end
of the Veda or its concluding portion). This
view owes its inspiration to the recent
occidental scholars who have been convinced of
the parallel with Greek philosophical beginnings
which dismissed all
mytho-theologico-anthropological explanations.
Upanishads have not avowedly discarded either
the earlier portions of the Veda or the gods
praised therein. On the other hand, they have
tended to make clear the implications of the
Veda in such a way as to help understanding of
the enquiring mind. In a profound sense we can
perhaps make a distinction between the Mantra
and Brahmana portions on the one hand and the
Upanishads on the other, as referring to svartha
– sabda and parartha – sabda, for the former is
for inner intuition for oneself, for knowledge
and works, and the latter is for instruction to
the disciple. The Upanishads then are to be
considered to be intellectualised or mediating
presentations of the intuitive and revelatory
truths of a Reality very much transcending the
ordinary sensate level of understanding of man.
In a profound sense it would be correct to go to
the earlier portions of the Veda in order to
understand fully the implications of the meaning
of the Vidyas of the Upanishads, rather than
attempt or try casuistical explanatiens of the
same from parity with other portions of the
Upanishads, which unfortunately has been the
practice so far. Revelations help interpretation
of intuitions and generalisation of intuitive
truths and may illumine intellectuality, being
of a higher order of Reality but not vice versa.
The Vedas were
originally reckoned to be three, namely the Rig
Veda, Yajur and Sama. These three were known as
the trayi ; but a fourth Veda, Atharvana,
containing many hymns not contained in the Rig
came to be regarded as important, and well might
it have been the source of the other revealed
literature pertaining to the ayurveda,
dhanurveda etc....
Later thinkers,
including the author of the Bhagavad Gita,
prescribed the Veda as dealing with the trigunas
(sattva, rajas and tamas) : traigunya visayah
Vedah, nistraigunya bhava Arjuna or the objects
which have the three gunas as motives to attain,
such as power, pleasure and heavenly residence
arising from following the rules of sacrifice
(dharma). Thus from early times it was regarded
that the Vedas taught the attainment of the
lower ends (purusarthas) which were known to be
closely connected with the three gunas, rather
than Moksa which it was the function of the
Upanisads to teach. The Vedanta Sutras also have
been interpreted accordingly by the Vedantic
teachers as teaching Brahman, whereas the
Mimamsa of Jaimini is said to teach Karma
(Dharma) and that though they both form one
single Sastra, yet the latter teach the
transient good whereas the former teach the
eternal Good. It is in this sense most probably
that some serious scholars saw in the Upanishads
the germs of the pessimistic view since they
discard the pursuit of social efficiency and
hedonistic goals for the attainment of the
liberation from avidya (which comprises all
technical knowledge and hedonistic
pleasure-ends) and samsara for the sake of
transcendent condition of immortality which can
be won only by Vidya (real liberating
knowledge).
The world of the
Right Veda is surely not different from the
world of the Upanishads since it is the world of
men who are in direct contact with the supernal
powers not merely primitive natural apotheosized
by the primitive mind. Nor can it be said that
the Vedic seers were pleasure – loving Soma –
bibbers, though it almost appears that some
eastern and western savants have convinced
themselves about this by applying the
naturalistic and anthropological and
evolutionary interpretations so much the fashion
of the nineteenth century. Western scholars like
Max Muller, Whitney, Eggeling, Grassman,
Griffith etc., claim to follow the great
Vedicist Sayana, who explained the Vedas, mainly
adhibhautically. The philosophic seers of the
Upanishads always speak of the Vedic sages with
profound reverence: iti susruma dhiranam
yenasted vyacacaksire.
The development
or evolution of Indian culture continued under
different conditions and passed through periods
of faith and devotion, works and ritual and
agnostic speculation and philosophic idealism.
Later thinkers reacted against certain attitudes
of the Vedic integralism and produced
philosophies (darsanas) which emphasized one or
two aspects or attitudes of the same.
The Vedic seer
was consciously aware of the integral unity of
the whole reality. He realised that there are
several planes of reality, the physical (with
its terrestrial, atmospherical, celestial), the
psychical and the supra or transcendental
reality and he also realised that one must
consciously integrate them in order to be able
to attain the Good and the liberation and the
happiness and truth. He assigned the several
powers divine – belonging to the One Supreme
Divine – such as Agni, Mitra, Surya, Indra,
Maruts, Varuna, Matarisvan, Soma, Brhaspati,
Rudra, Prajapathi and Visnu etc., to the several
planes. Thus even in the Rig Veda, monotheism
had been achieved whilst preserving the apparent
polytheism of multiple powers by the classic
text : ekam sat viprah bahudha vadanti : The
Real is One though the sages speak about it
variously owing to the planes in which the One
is seen. Later thought would speak of it as One
person who appears as four or many persons. The
many personalities of the One Person (purusa)
were at first considered to be each the whole or
integral expression of the one and accordingly
all exploits were referred to each though they
really were performed by one of them alone. This
led to the conception expressed rather naively
by Prof. Max Muller as henotheism or what was
dubbed cynically opportunistic monotheism – a
philosophy of courtiers. This obviously is an
unsound suggestion and needlessly humanistic.
All the manifold personalities are in a sense
subordinate to the One, and there is room for
the later development of the evolution of the
hierarchy of gods and goddesses who are not God
or Brahman but His amsas, part or ray of Eternal
Being. We cannot resist the Upanishadic
explanation that all things and beings are God,
because they form the body and function (or
manifestation) of Brahman (sarvam khalvidam
Brahma) who is the Self and support and truth of
their very existence, in whom they live and move
and have their being.
The Vedic Seers
showed that common sense Polytheism inherent in
hierarchy is not in every sense the
contradictory of monotheism, and so also
pluralism need not be contradictory of monism,
when understood in an organic integral sense and
meaning of the One Eternal Brahman as Integral
Reality (Purna) and Person (Purusa). Since all
gods, all powers of goddesses, are supported by
the One Being in all, every prayer addressed to
any one of them finally and even immediately
directly refers to that One Being alone, even as
Sri Krishna says in the Gita. Indeed all refer
to Himself alone : Vedaih sarvaih Aham eva
Vedyah, says He.
As for the
philosophico-mystic exposition of the Organic
Integral Spiritual Reality, the Vedas themselves
express this in that grand and suberb Hymn known
as the Hymn of the Supreme Person : Purusha
Sukta, that occurs in all the Vedas, with slight
variations of order of the mantras. There is
hardly any doubt that this Hymn is the meeting –
place and synthesis of several Fundamental Vedic
concepts, even as the Isa. Up. is for
Upanishadic thought.
It begins to
speak of the thousand – headed, thousand – eyed,
thousand – footed Person who has covered the
entire Universe and is exceeding it. (Sahasra
sirsa Purusah, Sahasraksa Sahasrapad, Sabhumim
visvato vrttva atyatista dasangulam, purusa
evedam sarvam). The One Supreme Reality and
causal Being is immanent as Self (purusa) of all
and yet exceeds all. Thus pantheism is set aside
or rather transcended by the concept of
exceeding. The original idea of the One has
yielded place to the concept of Person, which is
so to speak going to play an important part in
the Gita as the Purusottama. The divine
personalities merged in the One now appear so to
speak as the Uttama (Supreme) purusa and monism
of metaphysics finds its translation as the
supreme Personality of God of religion. Here
again we find that profound suggestion as to the
nature of sacrifice or Yajna that played such a
prominent part in the life of the sages of yore
as is to be gleaned from the Brahmanas.
Interpreted psychologically (adhyatmically), all
divine works, either as rites of sacrifice, yaga
or Yajna, are mystical attempts to attain the
realisation of the worlds of Brahman, yoga. The
Purusa – sukta however adds one more note of
tremendous value : it reveals that all true or
real creation is possible only through yajna or
sacrifice. Not that the Divine One is imperfect
and having a goal, for even as Sri Krishna said,
there is nothing that He need do, but that all
Works must be done for the sake of the Divine.
There is hardly any suggestion in this Hymn of
any carnal motive (himsa): it is of the spirit
of self-giving of the Divine for the Realisation
of the Perfect Order (Rta), both in individual
creation as well as social. The sacrificers
selflessly do it accordingly to the ancient
manner (dharma). The world of our temporal order
comes into being from out of Him who is all,
enveloping all, and as such the material and the
efficient cause of the World, in significant
sense of the organic unity. In this Hymn alone
indeed is the reference made to the Divine
manifestation of the social fourfold order from
the body of the Supreme Being. Considered to be
a metaphor, its meaning was made clear by Sri
Krishna in terms of functional position (gunakarma),
the question of hereditariness being seen to be
a social convention in the Vedic society as
shown by Dr.V.M.Apte in his interesting study of
the Rig. Vedic Hymns on this subject. The
ancient practice of right social organisation
was explained and given the sanction of the
Vedic intuition, and prefigured as the Ideal of
society. The fact that this conception is under
eclipse owing to the egalitarian views at the
present moment does not entail its uselessness.
The Rig Veda
(along with the other Vedas) clearly presents a
composite picture of the Universe as seen from
an integral vision. To this Veda belongs the
Aitereya Brahmana that contains the famous
Sunassepa episode of purusa–medha, human
sacrifice, which tries to give a psychological
meaning and direction to the sacrifice, so as to
make it free from the taint of himsa (injury).
It is quite conceivable that owing to the loss
of the psychological and spiritual tradition
there came into being the practice of gross or
literal sacrifices against which Buddha, Kapila,
Krishna and Mahavira and a host of others
protested, and which yet continued to sway some
tantrika sects driven out by the purified
Vedists.
We owe a lot to
the great work of the Vedic savants, eastern and
western, for the work in unravelling the
mysteries of the Veda. Today we owe to Swami
Dayanand and Sri Aurobindo the deep mystic
interest in the Vedas.
The Vedas have
had profound influence on the Southern Mystic
schools. The Sri Vaishnava Mystic Seer [Alvar]
claimed to tamilicize the Vedas, and claimed to
give the import of the Rig Veda in his
inimitable Tiruviruttam as the seeking of the
Soul [deemed as female] of its beloved Godhead.
Indeed the original of the concept of Soul’s
femaleness [including that of the gods] is
stated in the Rig V : [I. 164.16] and later
carried on in the Vishnu Purana and
Visistadvaita, and tantra. St. Tirumular of
Saiva Siddhanta claimed to give the gist of the
Vedic truths gleaned through the Saiva agamas in
his Tirumantiram and not merely about the One
Being of Love but also the Agni-karma.
The Vedas’
knowledge of the Eternal Being and Order [Rta]
and prescribing means to the Realisation of both
is unlike others which deal with the transitory
goals and ends. In a sense, it also teaches how
the transitory could be utilised to achieve the
Eternal and the Immortal through surrender and
dedication and sacrifice and selflessness. It is
therefore what has been heard, uncreate, and
which every one has to heed and hear for the
attainment that passeth Understanding.
Om Santhi Santhi Santhi!
2.2 BRAHMAVIDYA
The supreme merit
of the Upanishads lies not so much in its so
called philosophical mind but in its inimitable
methodology of approach to the fundamental
truths sought to be expounded and attained. The
speculative features, which alone attracted the
intellectual doctors of philosophy, are indeed
without any basic strength if they are not
revealed to be supra intellectual or attained by
practical verification. It is clear that this
verification is not to be equated with the
pragmatic criterion of success or consequences
or even workability. A profound understanding of
human psychology had revealed to the Upanishadic
seers taken as a whole the necessity of
discipline of the mind in all its levels of
ananda, intellect and will so much so they
subordinated the lower levels of approach or
technique to the higher. This will be clear if
instead of treating the vidyas of the Upanishads
as statements of inference deductive or
inductive or analogical, we try to see that they
are training techniques for inner perception.
It is true that
almost all collegiate training these days
forgets this inner discipline of the mind and
senses of the students and gets about going with
cramming stuff of all kinds and all grades at
the same time in the minds of the pliable mental
make up. Unfortunately this stuffing – a
veritable chau-chau as any study of the modern
curricula will reveal – has left no elbowroom
for training as such for discernment. To equip a
man for all things is the ambition of a
sarvatantra svatantra – an encyclopediest but it
hardly works well with the normal man. The
Upanishadic theory of education hardly
contemplated this omnivorous bookworm or
laboratory assistant – for – all – trades. On
the other hand they took hold of values firmly
and affirmed certain human aims in knowledge as
in works which will promote a process of growth
and development leading up to the highest
possible welfare of all by firmly binding people
to one another which seems to be the basic
meaning of the word so often and so loosely used
– loka-samgraha.
The Upanishadic
upasana, which is equated with bhakti, is a form
of meditating on the Highest Reality knowing
whom one knows all and attains supreme facility.
The number of
these Upasanas or meditations or approaches for
attainment is about 32 according to the
Visistadvaitins, 28 according to Swami Sivananda,
but I believed they are considerably more in so
far as several contemplations or meditations are
of certain attributes of God or the Ultimate
Brahman. It is clear that the list furnished by
the Acharyas are taken from the Vedanta Sutras
and should prove sufficient for the attainment
of supreme liberation or God which will not lead
a man again into this world of Samsara.
We are aware that
the modern climate of thinking has veered
steadily towards a different goal namely the
goal of being well here and we have steadily
given our wishful meanings to the concept of
Jivanmukti. This–worldness may be a great bar to
higher levels of knowing and being and
ultimately set up a peculiar attachment to the
transitory. One of the profound dangers that
arose from the development of the yoga–siddhis –
and which has led to its being steadily put down
by the great Vedantins, was this materialism
that is more insiduous than the pure materialism
of the Charvakas. This has been the grave of
yoga–siddhis.
The Upanishad
Vidyas at no point encourage the
siddhi–mongering and indeed have steadily
avoided any mention of the lower ‘avidya’ so to
speak. It does not at all mean that they were
not aware of the possibilities open to man in
his power–adventure, but it can lead to only one
consummation and that is world–sankaram,
confusion.
However it is
true that the synthetic Upanishad
Isavasyopanisad does mention the double practice
of avidya and vidya (avidya being taken here in
the sense of lower Vidya rather than Karma), as
promoting a double attainment of conquest over
death and attainment of the Immortal.
The aim of the
Upanisad vidyas is the attainment of the
Immortal Brahman by which one becomes immortal
that is beyond the fear of death and birth cycle
and misery and ignorance and all.
Swami Sivananda
in his Essence of Vedanta has given his
own synthesis of the several Upanishad upasanas
and has named it SIVANANDA VIDYA. The same
comprises X khandas and they are Nature of
Brahman, Contradictions reconciled, vision of a
Sage and the worldly man, Adhyasa, Happiness in
Atma only, Brahman is the material and efficient
cause, Brahman is unattached, Qualifications of
an aspirant, Kaivalyam and the method of
Meditation.
A commentary on
the above ten khandas is also given to explain
in detail, the several aspects of the Brahman
Nature.
The vidya thus
gives the minimum hypothesis about the nature of
the Ultimate Reality from the particular
standpoint of the sadhaka or mumuksu (seeker
after liberation). The supreme qualification for
Vedantic vidya is the desire, which is firm and
steady for liberation from the worldly transient
things and goods. For many today, wish to do
sadhana not for liberation but for more bondage
for wealth and power and health. Not the
bubhuksu but the mumuksu is the
adhikari for Vedanta or true philosophy. Today
philosophy has fallen into strange techniques
and aspirations for Reality is not its concern
nor truth nor for the matter of that anything.
Means have become ends and ends in themselves
too. In such a tragic state of philosophical
learning and teaching it is certainly refreshing
to find Swami Sivananda gallantly speaking up
for the Mumuksutva as the necessary first
step.
Not in the world
and not in any thing but in the Atman alone can
their be happiness. And this is true because it
is the illusion and delusive attractiveness of
the world and the powers and pleasures of the
world are derivative from the atman which they
hide. The fact is there that one runs after
these again and again, and return to them again
and again, in ever so many subtle forms for even
the great men get caught up in the net of the
adhyasa. Seeking to save they also get caught in
the net and know it rather too late.
The Nature of
Brahman cannot be detailed by any neat logical
processes and the efforts at samanvaya or
reconciliation are not of the order of intellect
with its dialectic intended for intellects. The
true reconciliation is seen in intuition which
is really an experiencing in living and knowing
or living-knowing. It is usually forgotten that
the logic of the Infinite can only be recognized
in living-knowing rather than in any one of them
apart from the other. The aparoksanubhuti is not
a cognitive (jnana) process but a transcendental
living-knowing. It is in this sense it is said
to be bhakti-jnana-janya or Semusi in the
language of Bhagavad Ramanuja.
The bliss of
Realisation of the Supreme Atman with which one
becomes one without separatability at any other
time is a unique experience beyond the happiness
and triumphs of it in the world. Indian thought
(and I believe all truly spiritual thought) has
realised that there is an unchanging state which
is transcendental to any space-time-causation
nexus. This means a state of Bliss in Brahman.
That men may seek to hold on to both the
pleasures of this world as well as of that world
yonder is but natural, for men seek the best of
both worlds. This is an unfortunate deduction
from the modern notion of religion so generously
pampered to by very knowing man. However, Swami
Sivananda had no two minds in this matter. In
his Vidya he has clearly announced that the
Kaivalya is not of this double or dual nature.
Man is a real member of the Divine permanent
World call it Brahman or Paramapada or
paramdhama or Narayana, or Vaikuntha or Kailas.
And as such for him the return home is the
natural thing to do. This is the constant
remembrance or dhruvanusmrti that is necessary
and the significant meaning of the great vakyas
cannot be other than this. It is however
necessary to remember that they are not mere
words or sentences which have to be repeated
parrot-like or to be grammatically analysed in
the mind but to be fully invoked as prayer and
devotion to the highest Brahman.
A synthesis of
all vidyas is not possible except in terms of
their content referring to the One Supreme
Brahman. This one Brahman is the abode of
infinite auspicious qualities, each of which
attracts a sadhaka, and through that route he is
led to the Highest One who is then realised as
the One who has all these attributes. The
intellectual dialectics that tries to divide
substance and attribute and affirm the former at
the expense of the latter is incapable of
profound intuition. A vidya is a profound
intuitive one, trans-philosophical or
intellectual and must be approched and studied
as such.
Swami Sivananda I
am sure is doing a noble work in analysing and
intuitively reconciling the several trends of
upasanas.
DISCUSSION
2.3 UPANISADS AND UPAMANA
The Upanisads are
concerned with Ultimate Reality and they are
held to be par excellence the Sabda or
valid verbal testimony for knowing it (the
Ultimate Reality). The study of verbal testimony
comprises discussion about the nature, the means
and the fruit of attaining Reality.
The Upanisads are
mainly instructions given to the seeker after
the Ultimate Reality, thought of as the source
of all process, meaning and life. The
instructions are given by the aptas or
rsis who have attained, by the threefold
processes of knowing, seeing and entering into
that Reality, (even as the Lord of the Gita
has stated modifying the Upanisadic statement
of “jnatavyah, srotavyah, mantavyah and
nididhyasitavyah. Thus the ultimate
knowledge of Reality can only be truly attained
by entering into that Reality. Indeed such is an
apta, one who has attained, and such a
one is the person who can speak about it with
authority. Sri Sankara rightly held that this is
aparoksa-anubhuti-transcendent experience
of Reality. That it may entail other
consequences such as loss of the triple
distinction of known, knower and knowledge need
not detain us at this stage. That there is
hardly a choice for the human individual between
the pratyaksa and aparoksa,
between perceptive knowledge and transcendent
revelatory knowledge is what should make us
pause. Reason and sensation or perception are
the two opposites of Western Philosophy, whereas
in Indian Philosophy or Vedanta the opposites
are perceptive knowledge and transcendental
revelation. The contradiction between reason and
revelation is of a different order even as the
contradiction between perception and reason is.
Reason has no independent status beyond
systematising the knowledge it gets from
sensations or from revelations. It has hardly an
independent capacity to afford immediate reality
or reality per se, or thing-in-itself.
The Upanisadic
seers were of the same order as the Seers of the
Mantras and indeed the Vedic literature has
mentioned them as such. But as teachers of the
knowledge of the Ultimate as Brahman or Self we
have to conceive of them as communicating this
knowledge. Is this communication effected by
means of inference, or by means of analogy, or
by both? The present writer believes that
appropriate means for such a communication are
inference and upamana, both together. I
wish to suggest that (as in great transcendental
matters) the inference does not work, even in
the sense of Mimamsa rules of interpretation,
and that in the Upanisads it is through the use
of Upamana that the transcendental vision is
being sought to be brought to the consciousness
of the seeker.
Upamana in this
sense is a separate means (pramana)
rather than a sub-class under inference
depending on invariable concomitance (vyapti
and bhuyodarsana). The Naiyayika view
of Upamana mentions that it consists in (i) a
forester coming to us and telling us of (ii) an
animal like our cow in the forest and (iii) that
it is called gavaya. This is just
information from a reliable forester. Being from
a reliable individual the information has some
authority but it is the actual seeing of the
animal in the forest by me that makes me name it
gayaya remembering the name given to it
by the forester. So much so that some consider
that naming is important because it is
the name that really makes one know about a
thing. This nominalist view however is dependent
on the more important thing, viz. seeing
the animal like a cow, which alone makes one
name it. Neither of these functions will
begin to operate unless a reliable forester
comes and gives information about its existence.
Let us now look
at the Upanisadic method of communication. It
resembles exactly the method of Upamana.
Here one asks about the ultimate reality, and
the rsi (a forest-dweller–play on the
word), a reliable one who has known the highest
Reality and will not speak an untruth, speaks
about the ultimate and says that it is
Brahman, that it is Sarvatman, that
it is Satyam, jnanam, Anantam and so on.
All these are in a negative sense compared or
contrasted with what we know, or even exalted
and multiplied in excellence to what we know.
But it remains just information and
book-knowledge in a sense or heard-knowledge so
to speak, till one actually “goes to the forest”
and sees for oneself and applies the name
Brahman to the inward and infinite Reality
or the Sole Reality – Ekam sat, which is
an intuition of the highest order. Therefore the
three steps of Upamana as conceived by
Naiyayikas seem to be available in this method
of communication or teaching of the Upanisads.
Thus we find that
when Naiyayikas formulated the testimony of
Upamana as an independent pramana
they were thinking of the methodology adopted by
the Upanisadic seers. Comparisions from ordinary
experience are for the sake of making
communication intelligible by comparison, but
the difference of the transcendental from the
known was never left out ; and though the
Brahman was compared with the Jiva or their
indentity affirmed, it was not so very
unconditional as it is sought to be made out. It
is because this Upamana or “near-measure”1 has
been used in the Pararthasruti that the
whole literature of Upanisadic philosophy has
been described as ‘Upa-nisad’. But it is
unfortunate that some schools of Vedanta do not
perceive that there is a unique method or
pramana utilised by the Upanisads which is
different from the usual upamana or (upama)
in poetry and scientific treatises. The use of
Upamana by the Vendantins themselves has
not been consistent with the logical schools of
either Mimamsa of Nyaya.
The fact is that
a careful inspection of the methodology of the
Upanisads reveals that the technique of
communication of transcendental truths in the
language of the ordinary man or phenomenal
existence can only be through this “upamana”
that combines the knowledge given by an
authority, the experience of that object which
has been spoken of, and lastly the verification
that culminates in granting the new name to that
transcendent reality – a recognition-remembrance
– smrti so to speak – a word which has been
significantly used by Sri Krsna of Veda Vyasa in
the Gita (18).
This intimate
connection of Upamana and Sabda
(which later has to be made into anubhava
or one’s own experience in a direct and
non-sensory manner) has led to the
non-discrimination between the two and to the
neglect of the important discovery made by the
ancient Naiyayikas of the Parartha-sabda
technique. The Mimamsa technique of Upamana
as stated by me in a paper several years ago,
seeks to transcend the common method by
comparing the unknown with the known (upameya).
However this is a point that needs to be
carefully studied in any logic of the Vedanta or
the Upanisads.
2.4 Isavasyopanisad – a Study according to Sri
Vedanta Desika
In paying tribute
to the genius of one who has by his stupendous
labours done more than any other single thinker
to the cause of Dharma-sastra study in India, I
wish to present a few salient points in the
Upanisadic thought as expounded by one of the
finest flowers of Sri Vaisnava thought in India.
I mean Sri Venkatanatha, otherwise popularly
known as Sri Vedanta Desika. Sri Venkatanatha
commented on only one Upanisad, the
Isavasyopanisad. He considered that this
Upanisad was sufficient for all purposes and
difficulties on the path of Realization, which
he considered is the proper dharma of
every man. This Upanisad is the friend of
the Universe, visvamitram. That this
claim has stood the test of age, even as the
Gita has, is proved by its enormous influence on
the minds of men of all ages in India. The
Indian Renaisance thinker has to study the
implications of this profoundest of Upanisads.
GANDHI,1 AUROBINDO
and TAGORE, who in the words of Sir Sarvepalli
RADHAKRISHNAN, show great “promises of a great
Dawn,” owe their finest inspirations and
syntheses to this Upanisad. Not that other
Upanisads do not contain valuable instruction,
but this Upanisad gathers within it syntheses of
great worth and moment to Humanity.
The
Isavasyopanisad shows a synthetic way of
realization, of works, of unity, of synthetic
conquest and triumph and synthetic Ananda. Later
literature appears as it were to be comments on
this wonderful Upanisad.
That some Mantras
are taken from other Upanisads, especially
Brhadaranyaka, and others, does not in the least
affect the Integral nature of the syntheses
presented in this piece.
The Analysis of
the Upanisad shows that it tries at the very
start to synthesise the knowledge of the
Omnipervasive Divine Being with the doing of
individual duties. The duties immediately take
the form of self-lessness or fruit-renouncing
nature. The Upanisad itself is the concluding
portion of the Vajasaneyi Samhita, and that
means that all works, sacrifices, nitya
and naimittika, should be appropriated to
the growth of knowledge of Brahman:
Samhitodahrtam sarvam viniyogaprthaktvatah
Vidyartham syad iti vyanktum nibandho ‘sya
tadantah.
The unitary
practice of knowledge of God and works devoted
to the enlargement or increase of one’s
consciousness culminates in the Vision of Unity
which is the aim of all Upanisadic instruction.
The first three
mantras form the preliminary instruction of the
Guru to his disciple, and these form the
introduction to the entire thought of the
Upanisad. Whatsoever is changing and transient
is pervaded by the Lord, knowing this one
should, giving up all sense of possession and
avarice, enjoy the world of His. Man should not
surrender his works based on the knowledge of
the all-pervasive Brahman, since such action
does not cleave to man. Failure to know or do
works with the sense of renounced-enjoyment
makes one a self-killer, and the destiny of such
a person after death is not the solar orb or
supreme status but the unending gloom of
interminable darkness.
The fourth mantra
takes up the threads of the first half of the
first mantra which intimates the indwelling
all-prevading nature of God. In a few vigorous
choice phrases His Omnipervasiveness and
Omnipresence are described in apparently
contradictory terms so as to indicate the
wonderful luminous presence everywhere. The
height of this wonder is reached when the Seer
describes that ‘Air upbears the Waters’
“tasminnapo matarisva dadhati”. The next
verse repeats the same idea in order to
emphasize the excellent transcendent nature of
Sarvesa.
The sixth mantra
points out the fruits of the knowledge of Lord’s
omnipervasion. One does not recoil from any
thing. The seventh proceeds forward and points
out that ‘He who perceives the Oneness of the
Lord does not suffer from delusion or sorrow’.
The eighth mantra
is all important. No commentator, ancient or
modern, other than Sri Venkatanatha has
explained it properly. Sri Venkatanatha displays
loyalty to the grammatical construction of the
mantra which contains two groups of words, one
in the nominative case and the other in the
accusative case. The two groups accordingly
should refer to two different persons, God and
the soul, the soul in this case being the
mukta, freed soul, which has attained the
highest state. This also shows that the two
groups may interchangeably refer to God and the
freed soul. This identity in quality it is that
makes it possible for the individual to meditate
and realize the Supreme as the Self–So’ham
asmi (16th mantra)
‘He am I’.
HE ATTAINS THE RADIANT, BODILESS, SCARLESS,
SINEWLESS, PURE BEING WITHOUT SIN : (HE) SEER,
SELF-CONTROLLED, CONQUEROR INDEPENDENT, BEARS
THE REAL NATURE OF THINGS FOR INNUMERABLE YEARS.
Or
He (the supreme Brahman) Omniscient,
Intelligence, Lord, Independent, who from
eternal years determines the real nature of all
things, pervades the pure (self), without
(karmic) body, scarless, sinewless, freed from
evil (and good).
The above is the
two-way translation according to Sri
Venkatanatha. This interpretation does not
militate against the doctrine of Unity. It shows
that creation is not a fiction but a real
creation. The individual soul achieves real
height and peace and glory of equality in all
aspects except the creation of the world (jagadvyaparavarjam).
Then come the two
triads of the most intriguing verses, referring
to the synthesis of Avidya and Vidya,
and Asambhuti and Sambhuti.
There are several
views and no one is agreed as to the exact
meaning. One view holds that Avidya is
ignorance, and this ignorance produces action.
This action thus is Avidya. This action is
further identified with vedic ritualistic
performance, kamya-karma, which produces
blindness. When practised along with Vidya it
helps the surmounting of the death and
attainment of Immortality.
Another
interpretation makes ignorance the consciousness
of many alone, whereas vidya or knowledge
means consciousness of unity alone. The integral
truth is the unity in multiplicity and
multiplicity in unity.2
According to Sri
Venkatanatha, avidya means vidyetara
– other than vidya, that is that
which is also next and nearest to it, and that
is action, karma. This is the karma
prescribed in the second verse; kurvanneveha
karmani …. This is right action, consecrated
action which does not touch man, action done in
the consciousness of the omnipervasive Brahman,
action suffused with renunciation of fruits and
self-possession. Such is avidya.
I shall not
dilate on the controversies about these two
terms as I shall be doing so elsewhere at
length.3
The next group is
equally interesting, and the interpretation of
Sri Vedanta Desika is remarkable. Sri Sankara
identifies these two terms with destruction and
birth and pleads for their transcendence. The
dialectical movement, it is assured, is overcome
by the realization of the height. What is
throughout forgotten in the analysis of both the
groups is that the terms avidyaya mrtyum
tirtva and vinasena mrtyum tirtva are
not properly explained. How can ignorance lead
to conquest over death? How can destruction lead
to conquest over death? Certain further
explanations are needed to make them acceptable.
It is this that made Sri Venkatanatha undertake
to explain these terms otherwise so as to be in
tune with the integral meaning of the Upanisad.
Sri AUROBINDO, an
integral thinker of great Vision, holds that the
ideal of the Upanisad is “to embrace
simultaneously vidya and avidya,
the one and the many : to exist in the world but
to change the terms of death into terms of
immortality, to have freedom and peace of
non-birth simultaneously with the activity of
birth-Death is the constant denial by the All of
the ego’s false self-limitation in the
individual frame of mind, life and body.” Here
the meaning of non-birth is birthlessness, and
this is the counter-pole of birth. Birth is the
quality of manyness, whereas non-birth is the
quality of self-identical existence, and their
conciliation is brought about through the
pursuit of Divine Transcendence that does not
follow exclusively either the birth-pursuit or
the birth-lessness-pursuit.
These is another
interpretation which is also interesting. It
considers that asambhuti refers to the
lord of destruction, Rudra-Siva and sambhuti
to the Lord of Creation, Brahman ; worship of
any one of the two gods exclusively leads to
ignorance and darkness. Both the functions
belong to the Supreme Lord who is spoken of as
sarva-vyapin and is declared to be the
Origin of all the three processes of creation,
sustenance and destruction : janmadyasya
yatah (I. i. 2. Vedanta Sutra). The one
supreme Godhead should be worshipped as the Lord
of both, and this will lead one to the two-fold
realization.
Sri Venkatanatha
interprets the two terms in a very luminous
manner quite distinct indeed from the rest.
Asambhuti means the destruction of all
obstacles to sambhuti or divine birth or
communion. Sambhuti is divine birth (jnana-sambhuti).
It is the brahmic experience (Samadhi)
that is to be sought after and the obstacles to
it ought to be overcome. Hence destruction (vinasa)
means the destruction of obstacles to
realization, and therefore when this destruction
happens there is also conquest or crossing over
death. The two are limbs of the knowledge of the
Omnipervading God. They sustain and energize the
growth of His consciousness and make for the
rending of the veil that covers the face of the
self mentioned and prayed for in the following
mantra :
Hiranmayena patrena
satyasyapihitam mukham
Tat tvam pusann apavrnu
satyadharmaya drstaye (15th Verse)
Thus according
the Sri Venkatanatha, the first triad is not
repeated by the second ; on the other hand, the
second triad belongs to the realm of upasana,
praxis, and the last group of mantras 15-18 are
prayers to the Supreme of the form of Pusan the
protector, the Sun, Prajapati, and Yama, to
reveal the form effulgent and auspicious of the
indwelling Lord in them and in Him, who is the
same as his own self, so’ham asmi, He I
am.
The description
of the darkness into which men are said to enter
through isolated or atomistic conduct (in verses
9, and 12) is similar to the description given
earlier in the third mantra. The reality of the
dark spheres or planes of consciousness of
ignorance, the reality of sin, and the sin of
non-performance of action and wrong performance
of action, the sin of not fulfilling the
dharma of the self, which is to perceive its
Self as the Supreme Lord indwelling in all, are
clearly enunciated. They result in the entrance
into darkness. All these are activities
comparable to or indeed are activities that lead
to suicide of the self. To realize the diunity
to knowledge and selfless consecrated action,
the unity of religious consciousness of utter
dependence on the Supreme and the mystic
consciousness of over-coming all restraints and
obstacles to that realization, is the real
synthesis of the integral consciousness.
Religion and Mysticism are clearly represented
by the figures of sambhuti and
asambhuti.4 Both
lay claim to vision and knowledge, and yet
one-sided or unilateral action precipitates them
into darkness as much in the lower as in the
higher states. The occult secret is their
diunity of dynamism.
4. Cf. My paper read at the 10th All
India Oriental Conference, Tirupati, 1940, on
“Relation between religious and mystical
consciousness in the Isvasayopanisad-bhasya of
Sri Vedanta Desika.”
The last four
mantras are said to be prayers. The Lord is the
protector, is the Kratu, who remembers
the Satvic sacrifice performed by the individual
as instructed in the first verse–tena
tyaktena bhunjithah. The most glorious
vision thus becomes man’s through the prasada
of God and not otherwise. Surrender, prapatti,
is thus intimated with the words, nama uktim
vidhema, and it gets its complementary
prasada, grace. This last is one of the most
important features of the doctrine of
Realization according to Sri Vaisnava
philosophy.
Isavasyopanisad
(Translation of
text)
I. All this whatsoever is in the worlds
changing is capable of being dwelt in by the
Lord. With that (world) renounced enjoy. Covet
not anyone’s wealth.
II. Thus should one desire to live a
hundred years performing works. Thus for thee it
is not otherwise than this. Works do not touch
(such) a man.
III. Notoriously evil are those worlds of
Asuras, enveloped by utter blinding darkness
whitherto all slayers of their souls resort on
departing from their bodies.
IV. Unmoving, the One Existence, speedier
than the mind, that which has at the very
beginning attained all the gods have not yet
attained ; standing, which overtakes that run,
by it air upbears the waters.
V. That which runs (and yet) that does
not move,
That which is afar and that is also near,
That dwells within all this and outside all
this.
VI. He who sees in the self all creatures
and all creatures in the self alone, does not
recoil from anything.
VII. When he who knows the Self only as
that which has become all things, for him who
has seen Oneness, where is there delusion or
sorrow?
VIII. He attains the Radiant, Bodiless,
Scarless, Sinewless, pure Being, without sin :
(he) Seer, Self-controlled, Conqueror,
Independent, bears the real nature of things for
innumerable years.
Or
He (the Supreme
Brahman) Omniscient, Intelligence, Lord,
Independent, who from eternal years determines
the real nature of all things, pervades the pure
(self), without (a karmic) body, scarless,
sinewless and free from evil (or good).
IX. Into deep darkness enter those who are
devoted to works. Into still deeper darkness
verily those who are devoted to knowledge.
X. Different verily from the knowledge
it has been said,
Different verily from works it has been said.
This is the instruction we have received from
those wise men who instructed that very clearly
to us.
XI. He who knows that the knowledge and
the works as together,
By the works crosses over death, and by the
knowledge attains the Immortal.
XII. Into deep darkness enter those who
follow asambhuti (exclusively) ; they
into still deeper darkness who are devoted to
sambhuti alone.
XIII. Different verily from sambhuti
it is said :
Different verily from asambhuti.
This is the instruction we have received from
those wise men who instructed that (means) very
clearly to us.
XIV. He who knows sambhuti and
asambhuti together
By vinasa crosses over dealth, and by the
sambhuti attains the Immortal
XV. The face of truth is covered with a
brilliant golden lid. Do thou remove that, O
Nourisher! for the sake of perceiving the true
nature.
XVI. O Nourisher ! O sole Seer ! O inner
Ruler ! O Prompter ! Lord of all creatures !
Abolish thy burning rays, gather up thy rays of
light, so that
I (may) see thy most auspicious form. Who this
MAN this He am I.
XVII. Moving about, abodeless, immortal, after
giving up this body which goes to ashes, OM. (O
Lord of)
Sacrifice ! Remember that which was done. (O
Lord)
Sacrifice ! Remember that which was done.
XVIII. O Agni. Lead us by the auspicious path
to (spiritual) wealth. Thou God who art knower
of all knowledge, remove the crooked sin from
us. To thee we sincerely (and repeatedly) utter
the word ‘Namah’.
2.5 A NOTE ON USE OF THE TERMS ADHIDAIVATAM AND
ADHYATMAM IN THE KENOPANISAD
The question
addressed to the Seer of the Kenopanisad at the
beginning is :
Kenesitam patati
presitam manah
Kena pranah prathamah praiti yuktah!
Kenesitam vacam
imam vadanti
Caksuh srotram ka u devo yunakti!!
‘Who is that
Godhead by whom desired the mind moves towards
its object, at whose bidding the breath first
preceeds to perform its functions, by whom
wished do men utter speech, by whom are the eye
and ear directed?’ the answer to this
fundamental question was that Person is the eye
of the eye, ear of the ear, mind of the mind,
breath of the breath, speech of the speech, who
is beyond their reach and cannot be known by
them fully. Further it was stated that one
should know that Person as He who grants then
their virya or energy of being. Neither
Agni, nor Vayu nor Indra knows who that
effulgent One is till instructed. He is indeed
the power that got them the Victory over the
asuras or powers of darkness, which they did
not know and for teaching which He appeared to
them.
We can
esoterically consider in the story narrated in
the third and fourth sections of the Upanisad
that Agni, Vayu and Indra are the adhidevatas or
presiding deities of the elements or of the
senses viz. eye, breath and mind respectively
which refer to the three planes of physical,
vital and mental or jnanendriyas,
karmendriyas and mind. The story concludes
with the instruction in the fourth section thus:
Tasyaisa adesah: Yad etad vidyuto vyadyutada
Itin nyamimisada ityadhidaivatam?
“This is the
instruction regarding It. ‘Just as the lightning
flashes forth and disappears’. Here ends the
instruction having reference to elements (adhidaivatam)”1 .
The above is the
translation made according to the Commentary of
Sri Rangaramanuja. Others translate ‘nyamimisada’
as ‘it vanishes as the eye winketh’ or ‘it is
like the twinkling of the eye’. Further it is
stated that this analogy of Brahman with
lightning and its disappearance is well known.
I wish to point
out in this note that the usual rendering of the
adesa of the Seer is not adequate. Not
that it does no convey some meaning. My
contention is that it can convey much more than
what meets the eye. The story gives the most
important clues. The idea that the experience of
Brahman at first occurs out of His grace, out of
His wish to let known that He indeed is the
being behind all activities, that HE is the
self. This experience at the beginning is like a
flashing-light (vidyurlekhaiva bhasvata)
or even like the Yaksa, wonderful Being who
disappeared or vanished the moment Indra
approached It, and revealed there another form (bahu
sobhamanam Uma Haimavatim). It may be a
momentary experience whose speed is like that of
lightning itself, but it is something that binds
the eye. The eye is made to close down –
nyamimisada.
And all other
sensory organs too ‘close down’. No longer does
the individual perceive or is conscious of any
thing of the outer world. The word
nyamimisada reveals this complete inversion
of the senses. The senses are enraptured
utterly. A very arresting name of the Divine is
stated to be ‘Hrisikesa’ which means the
“enrapturer of the senses,” for by His very
appearance they cease to be attracted by the
objects and get blind to them. This experience
of the Divine as the supernal falsh of lightning
occurs out of His grace and cannot be had by
means of austerity or mere learning or any
other. As the Kathopanisad points out He who has
been chosen by the Divine, by him is He
perceived: yam esa vrnute tena labhyah.
Thus adhidaivatam2 means
really that which occurs by the Will of the
Divine or Brahman who wishes the individual or
the senses to win a victory over the lower vital
forces, the asuras. The adhidaiva
occurance of the occurance of the Grace is
intimated and this sets up processes within the
individual, which is intimated by the next
passage. A radical experience, which cannot
occur through the will of the individual or his
effort is what we refer to the Divine or Grace.
Once this radical experience within occurs, and
the senses close down or become inwardly
absorbed or are sent to sleep, then there is the
preliminary peace or quiet, the prasada. This is
what happens.
“Athadhyatmam
yad etad gacchativa manah and na caitad
upasmaraty abhiksnam sankalpah: Then the
mind goes after It as it were. And by that it
constantly follows it desiring It (alone).”
Sri Rangaramanuja
reads that the desire is not capable of
following it as it is such a momentary
experience. Man’s contemplation on It is
incapable of being continuous and uninterrupted
due to the extreme transcendence of the Supreme.
But it is claimed by all sadhana that not until
one’s consciousness flows like tailadhara,
uninterrupted continuity, can there be real
establishment in the Divine. Bhakti means this
uninterrupted meditational continuity.
Thus the reading
anena caitad upasmarati seems to be
proper, at least as cogent as the other given by
him nacaitad upasmarati. The eyes that
have beheld the Lord, even for a second, can
have no place for anything else. The mind’s eye,
the divine eye divya caksus, opens up and
it begins to move towards the Divine who
thereafter is the one object of desire and
volition. The Divine alone is enjoyed. The
individual is rapt in love of that object
adorable, effulgent, the source of all power and
the Self, whose first contact was like that of a
lightning that dispels the darkness and
ignorance which the senses follow. Through God’s
Grace, as Uma Haimavati intimates in the
upanisad, the victory over the objects of senses
happens by the very perception of the Divine; it
all happens in a split-second. The individual’s
mind is lost to the Divine, it discovers its
source and being in the Divine; one-pointed it
enters into the Divine contemplation instead of
driving the senses outward for the fields of
enjoyment. All desire follows it inward to the
Divine.
The Divine is
next revealed as the Tad Vanam, the
garden of Bliss, the garden of spiritual honey.
Taddha Tadvanam nama
Tadvanam ityupasitavyam:
That is called
Tadvanam. It is to be meditated upon as
Tadvanam.
Thus the
individual to whom through Grace, that which is
due to the Godhead’s Grace (adhidaivatam),
He appears as Jyothis, as effulgent light
of the lightning, becomes one whose senses are
inturned, and whose mind becomes concentrated on
God, and whose desire follows the Divine Goal,
with the Divine as Goal, with an extinguishment
of all other desires. This is what occurs within
the individual (adhyatman) or within his
body (if we yet play with the view that the body
is the soul), or since the manas is not
of the soul nor the senses for the matter of
that except of the sarira or body,
Rangaramanuja may be considered to be right when
he explains adhyatmam as ‘with regard to
the body’. But it must be pointed out that this
is what the individual finds happening to him
who is the embodied-seeker of the Supreme
Divine.
Almost all the
great mystics have borne testimony to this
process of the Divine Revelational action, a
descent of Godhead towards man; and the ascent
of man towards Godhead is described by the
adhyatma.
In this
connection I am delighted to present the close
correspondence between the Kenopanisad’s
instruction and the experiences of the Alvars,
especially of Tirumangai. I have already
expounded the philosophy of religion of Sri
Tirmangai taking into consideration the two
Madals under the caption ‘Eros’ in
the Journal of the Sri Venkatesvara Institute
(Vol. IV. Pp. 21). I shall here point out the
close similarity expressed in the language of
the beloved who on beholding the beloved Form of
Sri Krsna lost herself entirely. She did not go
out to see Him, but some others called her out
to behold the dance of the Lord.
Vara yo venrarkkuccenren
envalvinai yai
karar mani niramum kaivalaiyum kanen nan
aranum sollirrum kollen
(Siriya madal 14)
I went to them
who called me out to see the Lord, owing to my
great sin, (for) there I became as one who saw
not the black attractive form (of krsual), and
as one who lost her bangles: I accepted not the
words (of consolation or assurance) from others.
Again
Karar tirumeni kandatuve karanama
Iperapptarrattiritaruvan…..
Varay madanenje vandu manivannan
Sirar tiruttuzhay malai namakkaruli
Taran tarumenrirandattil onratanai
Aranum onratar kelame connakkal
Arayumelum panikettatan renilum
Poratozhiyate pondidunirenrerku
Kara kadal vannam pinbona nenjamum
Varate yennai marandutu tan…
(ibid.
54-55, 57-60)
On merely seeing His blue
form, losing control, shivering I am wandering.
Further the cool breeze breaking through my
frame entering into me is causing in me passion.
I am unable to know in what manner.
To me who sent my mind after
the blue-ocean-hued form (as messenger) with the
words “O sluggish mind, get up. If you but go
and ask such that none of my enemies hear ‘Will
Thou of blue-stone-hue out the Grace give us the
beautiful tulasi garland or wilt thou not?’ and
hearing His reply come back to me. Even if He do
something that ought not be done, do not stay
back there, but come and tell me.” The mind did
not return to me. It forgot me…
Thus the mind was lost, having gone after the
Blue-Form, the form that emerges as lightning out of the rain-cloud-sky of
Grace, that appeared for a moment and disappeared before a full vision could be
got. Yet such is its the enchantment and capturing force that it made one
liberated from the bangles of sensory attraction, from the world and from the
body-sense. Most commentators have indeed missed the significance of the falling
off the bangles. The mystics usually clothe their deepest insights in such
language.Thus the Vision of the Lord, the passing of the
mind, the blindness to all else except the Divine, the Desire following the
following the Form of the Divine, all these are strictly accordingly to the
Adesa of the Kenopanisad Seer. Tirumangai further adds: My soul is melting like
wax on the fire – the divine passion.In the Tiruviruttam also the great
Sathakopa expresses these experiences of the Divine in the triple movement:
firstly the Divine coming, a momentary glimpse of God, a flashing out of the
blue sky: and then the mind chasing it to grasp it and to bring bring it back,
and its failure; and the consequent utter concentration of the entire being as
an offering to the Divine for being consumed by Him. One is eaten up by the
Divine. The contemplation of the self, now bereft of the senses, bereft of the
mind and desire also for every thing else but the Divine, is set on the One
Adorable Being- Tad Vanam. The alvars here give a most excellent clue: the
Divine is the garden beautiful, Tirumal irum solai, garden-girt by
honeyladen flowers and trees, a mountain-garden of exquisite natural beauty and
transcendental illumination, the Place of God, or God Himself is where
honey-bees are humming, where peacocks are dancing, where rain clouds are
gathered and where Indian Kokils are making call to one another in Joy; it is
the Celestial Heaven of Bliss, where there is the supreme experience of Self.
The ancient Seers always found the Peace in the God-Garden; they found that the
natural beauty is infinitely surpassed by the God-beauty, much more rich,
peaceful, soul-filing; and above all it is the transcendental Reality and
universal love, suprasensual reality and consciousness omniscient and
beneficent. That is the Vana, vananiya or varaniya, desirable and
preferable to any that the senses know or feel or enjoy. It is at once the
height of peace and the depth of Delight. So much so it is said that when
Madhura kavi (the enjoyer and singer of the Madhu honey of Truth-Vana) asked
Sathakopa ‘Settatin vayirrile siriyadu pirandal ettaitin renge kidakkum –
when the soul (the little one) is born of the worm of the Inconscient what
enjoying where does it lie?” Sathakopa replied “Attaittin range kidakkum:
Eating That, it remains there”. The soul of the knower enjoys the Divine, having
realised that the Inconscient is nothing at all, though residing there. The
body-Consciousness is lost utterly. And by this answer Madhurakavi knew
Sathakopa as a Realised Person.Thus we find that a close similarity exists in
the statements of the Upanisadic seers and the alvars or mystics, the adorers of
the Tirumal-irumsolai, which is variously described as Vengadam,
garden-girt cities and temples of God. The Tadvana concept is most
profoundly the concept of the Alvars.Thus to conclude, I have pointed out that the
word adhidaivatam refers to the Divine Grace-action, not dependent on the
individual will or effort. That it may have reference to the senses to the
senses or the gods which are not capable of being under the control of the
individuals, being instruments of that maya of His which is difficult to cross
over is also capable of being accepted only in a secondary sense.The adhidaiva-action precedes the
individual activity or the transformation of individual mind. The mind is either
drawn into the inner Self or extinguished when the Vision happens out of His
Grace. The individual’s desire becomes one-pointed or centred in the Supreme
Object revealed by the Vision, which is the fulfiller of the Desire, the
Tadvanam. Thus man attains the Supreme End or purusartha and lives in
it and becomes adored and sought for by all sa ya etad evam vedabhi hainam
sarvani bhutani samvancchanti. All beings love him who knows It thus (as
Tadvanam).2.6 A
MEDITATION ON THE ISAVASYOPANISAD 15-18.
Every meditation
is a practice of union with the Divine, a yoga.
The last four verses of the Isavasyopanisad
counselled for the purpose of meditation by Sri
Venkatanatha reveal certain wonderful
correspondences between the Vedic, Upanishadic
and pauranic strata of consciousness. The Mantra
or the revealed literature is rendered into
assimilable intellectual terms in the Upanishads
and elucidated in the History which the Pauranik
literature is. But the three are (I should have
added the Brahmanic or sacrificial mysticism
also) one integral presentation. If we would
understand the inner meaning of any one of
these, we should go to the other two, and this
indeed is the intention of certain classes of
ancient scholars who insisted upon a correct and
complete understanding of the three literatures
mentioned.
The
Isavasyopainsad teaches in the first fourteen
verses the nature of God, the nature and duty of
man and the means towards freedom and perfection
and the results of the violation of the nature
and the violation of the means. The realization
of perfect being or at-one-ness with the Divine
is intimated most luminously in the 8th verse.
I have dealt with these aspects in another work
and therefore do not propose to deal with them
here1 .
But my practice of meditation for the last four
verses beginning with “Hiranmayena patrena
satyasyapihitam mukham Tattvam pusan apavrnu
satyadharmaya drsthaye” (15) had led me to
feel that here we have a clear and profound
mantra of liberation that is integral and
combines the knowledge with works, and this
prayer is the expression of the devotion
impregnated with the knowledge of the Divine
Nature and Grace, and the knowledge of the true
relation that subsists between the individual
and the Nature which includes his body.
The first verse (Isa.
15) clearly reveals that the individual soul is
covered over with a passion-coloured lid and
this is of the form of ignorance, since this
prevents the soul from seeking the Divine as the
indweller in all things moving and unmoving (Isa
I). The goal is the realisation of the One
supreme Being as indwelling in all and the
perception of the entire realm of creatures and
things in that One Being and not only that one
should see also the Divine as that who has
become all these things (Isa 6 and 7), in orther
words, as creator and cause. This realisation is
incapable of being attained through the help of
the senses, as the Kenopanisad has stated. For
the Self is that which causes these senses to
see and hear, and breath and taste and smell
and touch; thus the real subject of all
experiences and the agent of all action is the
Self; and this is the Satya, the Truth.
Thus every other function of the self is
incapable of seeing or knowing or even
adequately informing the self to us. By the self
alone can the self be seen and known and heard,
and as the Kenopanisad says Atmana vindate
viryam vidyaya vindate amrtam – we must
gather our strength and truth from the Atman,
the self that is the source of all seeing and
the power behind all seeing. Thus it is that
this Being unseeable of the senses, is incapable
of being known except when the passion-clouds,
are dispersed, the passion-lid removed and a
strong peace or silence or calm pervades the
being. More fully must it be comprehended that
this attainment of peace or sthita-prajna-consciousness
or calm silent fullness is impossible to attain
by means of man’s volition or will or ignorance
as such; but by a real and inward aspiration
this might be possible. That is the reason for
the prayer and the aspiration upwards calling to
the Nourisher, Pusan, the Divine of the
beneficent movement. The santa-state is a
gift of the Divine, this is the satya-dharma
state, a preliminary peace-state but nonetheless
foundational and fundamental to all ascent. It
is because it is a gift and Grace of God and the
intimation of His presence, it is capable of
being permanent and ever-revelatory of higher
and higher levels of being and immortality. Any
peace that comes as a result of one’s own effort
is not only incapable of being permanent, but it
indeed achieves a false-peace, a repressed state
infected with a deeper conflict or else it is a
precarious egoity that is the contradiction of
the realisation of the One self in all beings.
The pauranic
analogue suggested by the phrases of this verse
of Isa Up. is the story Hiranyakasipu—the
gold-vestured or gold-coated egoistic Asura, who
searched as no man or God ever did for the
omnipervasive Being—the Vishnu, the enemy of the
egoistic soul Hiranyaaksa, greedy eyed – a
stealer of the Things that are of the Divine,
the coveter of the Goods that belong in verity
to the Divine(Isa 1), the usurper, albeit
ignorant of the fact that the things do belong
to the Divine alone. But the point is not that
alone, the soul that is thus greedy eyed or
passion-eyed and passion-covered, being ignorant
of its true nature and considering itself to be
the sole Master of reality, of all that is
permanent and temporary, essays to challenge the
very existence and possibility of the existence
of the Divine, Iswara.. The Puranas as well as
the Veda describe the existence of other Asuras
such as Vrtra, Vala, Naraka, Taraka.. But the
illustration of the truth is most aptly and
adequately represented by the unique figures of
Hiranyaaksa and Hiranyakasipu. The nature2 of
the asura is to make it impossible for the truth
to emerge, to possess it exclusively for
themselves, by confining it to their own cave by
closing the gates of the cave against any outlet
or inlet. This lid was what was prayed for to
be removed by the Divine Almighty. It is in this
sense that we have to accept the story of
Hiranyakasipu who through his austerities won
the coveted boon of unslayability by any mortal
being or God or animal or plant or any created
being. His own son pointed out the actual
existence of the supreme Omnipervader. Searching
for this Being, the Asura returned baffled,
unable to reach it. “The ego was a helper” in
acquiring the boon by tapasya and yoga, but it
had become a bar to attainment of the knowledge
of the Omnipervader. It had indeed itself fixed
the lid more firmly on itself than helped to
remove the lid. This indeed is the mystery of
the ego. “He who would save his soul must lose
it.” The ego is something that is an entity
fundamental and real; because it is indeed such
it is the most persistent fact in experience. It
is eternal. But this is quite different from the
fact of ignorance that erects this ego as the
possessor of all reality or experience, as the
ruler and sustainer of reality. It is
immitigably private that it can never play that
role of Isvara though it is through the soul the
Divine acts or manifests or enjoys the soul as
well as the Universe of Nature. The infinite
diversity of Nature equally is reality that is
sustained by the Divine One so true is the
numerical manyness in respect of individual
souls and the Nature (prakrti), this manyness is
a reality, a secret truth of the Divine Nature.
The Divine, as Sri Aurobindo affirmed, is the
One in His eternal Manyness.
Further the truth
becomes clear that the lid of ignorance cannot
be removed by the powers and passions or
exertions of the individual ego. Only by the
Divine alone could the imprisoned soul get
released; only by the Divine Power and Love or
Grace could the lid of ignorance and passion be
removed. No doubt as a result of intense prayer
and pleading and aspiration the soul imprisoned
within its own construction of desire, passion,
greed and covetousness could be released. The
souls are of three grades: divine, human and
titan. The first is a class by itself, luminous
in being, uncovered by any lid of passion,
full-blown instruments of the Divinity within
them, devoted servants and warriors of light.
They never suffer from this opaqueness of being
that is a result of convetousness and separation
from the Divine, the Satya, the centre of being,
a seperation that results from the covering of
the lid by the ignorance of the One Truth that
all verily belong to the Divine alone.
The second-class,
namely the human (mental) and the third-class
namely the Asure (vital), beings are those who
are in need of this removal of the lid of
separation and passion, the lid of division, the
lid that makes it impossible for the soul ever
to enter into itself in order to arrive at the
truth or knowledge of its real function and
nature. The word in the Upanisad ‘dharma’
significantly points out that the soul has to
seek to know its real function in respect of the
Divine, for, knowing this the soul becomes
something protected and nourished by the truth
rather than tormented by the untruth of
independence and egoism which it could not but
consider in its own limited consciousness as the
core of its reality. Confronted with the mystic
truth that Prahlada, the awakened
Intuition, had brought, the Vital Asura, indeed
the father because of being the prior or earlier
manifestation in evolution, engages upon a
severe test of the nature of the soul, Atman,
Prahlada himself being but the embodient of the
nature of Atman. The Atman which has attained
the Supreme Being, the Isa, is described in the
Isavasyopanisad verse 8, as Suddham, Suklam,
asnavirum, akayam, avranam, or Kavi, manishi,
paribhu, svayambhu – all these attributes
reveal the soul to be other than the body, the
physical body, which the individual has been
seeing and considering it to be. The vital soul
(titanic and powerful), the Asura, found that
the son, the enlightened buddhi, Prahlada, was
not touched by the rigourous tests and threats
of the vital being. He was different, and he
said that there was another, the Vishnu, the
omni-pervader, who was guarding him (paryagat;
attained him as the Isa Up. ‘8 put it). The
vital soul wanted a demonstration for his own
complete benefit of existence of the
omnipervading being, and would not accept the
conclusive evidence of the mysterious
persistence of the soul apart from and despite
the body. Thus challenged the soul of Buddhi,
Prahlada, prays (or is it the self of
Hiranyakasipu baffled by the energy and ability
of the soul that lives by the Self and by
Knowledge had attained immortality: atmana
vindate viryam vidyaya bindate amrtam – vinasena
mrtyum tirtva sambhutya-amrtam
asnute-prati-bodhaviditam matam amrtatvamhi
vindate-?) to the Supreme Vishnu to remove
the lid that covers the ego, even if it be by
force, as indeed it has to be done, for it is
the Rudragranthi, the knot of final death or
ignorance, dissolution of egoism, and
convetousness and possession; it is then that
the individual soul ceases to feel the need for
the continuance of itself as a separate being.
It is then that the Lord in the form of Narsimha3 (indeed
a play on the word Purushottama in one sense,
and in another sense the representation of the
infinite marvel of the Divine Being transcendent
to all creation, all possibilities of created
being, and yet master of all these forms and yet
master of all these forms and names and capable
of incarnating in each and everyone of them
without undergoing any sort of dimunition of
energy light, knowledge, infinity and power,
benevolence and majesty), emerged, as the Purana
says with mystic Sound, Om.
The Omkar is the
Aksara, the One Imperishable supreme Sound that
is the Brahman. The Isa uses this Mystic Sound (pranava)
in the 17th verse
as meaning the Sacrifice of Will-superconscient,
the Doer. The Narasimha emerges form the Pillar
(sthanu) within and destroys the hrdayagranthi
the root-knot of bondage, that is, the
possessive-knot that separates and disintegrates
the unity that is the abiding nature of the soul
with the Divine. The bowels and entrails of the
soul are removed once for all, for it is for
these or for the protection and sustention of
these (self-preservation and self-perpetuation
which are the twists in real seeking of
immortality, the perversions of the fundamental
truth of immortal existence in divine nature and
function) that the habits of sequestering or
coveting or theiving were cultivated. Thus the
grand effulgence of the Divine who emerged with
the glorious sound creative and destructive of
all the worlds, manifested the ever present
beneficence of the Vishnu. The prayer of the
soul was indeed answered and the asuric knot was
cut, the lid was torn open, (apavrnu-remove or
uncover almost suggest the tearing open, cut
open) and the great father of Prahlada was
liberated. Thus may the father, or Prahlada on
behalf of his father, pray “Pusannekarse Yama
Surya Prajapatya Vyuha rasmin samuha tejah! Yat
te rupam kalyaanatamam tat te pasyami Yo’
savasau purusah so’ham asmi!! O Nourisher! O
sole Seer! O death! O Surya! Prajapathi!
Withdraw thy Hot rays, gather up thy beneficent
rays so that I see thy most auspicious Form. Who
this man He this am I.” And thus know that the
angushta-matra, thumb sized being in-dwelling in
me is identical with the Self in the Sun. This
is the Aditya-hrdaya—the secret of oneness in
multiplicity resolved by, in and through the
experience of the Prahladic Buddhi the Joyful
Wisdom, the Sreyas, the eternal oneness in
eternal Manyness of the Antaryamin, Vishnu, the
Omnipervading Iswara, Narayana of the Pancaratra4,
and the Prasnopanishad.
It can well be seen if any one reads the
Bhagavata VII, how Prahlada prays to Laksmi-Narasimha who though He revealed His
fierce form to illustrious and blazing might to the Vital Asura, revealed his
most beneficent form to Prahlada with the ever-inseparable Laksmi Sri, for the
eternal good of his father Hiranyakasipu, (how remarkably this recalls the
choice of the first boon by Nachiketas in the Kathopanisad?) In reply to this
the Divine Narasimha says that that was indeed already granted by the very touch
of His and by His very combative embrace. The soul was indeed restored to its
purity by the clasp of the Divine and by the knowledge of the oneness of the
Self in all existences (Isa 6 and 7). The true Self Aham so to speak is
the Divine Alone.We can then proceed to see in the next two
mantras the same Joyful Wisdom, Prahladic consciousness, that has beheld the One
supreme integral unity of the godheads and its own Self now resolves to offer up
itself in utter consecration for the fulfillment of the Divine Lila. The soul is
immortal and it has no one above and its bodies are not fixed or permanent. The
dehatma-bhrama has been rooted out utterly. The truth has been known that
whatever is possessed by the soul even in trust must be offered up completely to
the Divine. Tyaktena Bhunjitha of the first verse of the Isa Up. already
intimates the consequence of the acceptance of the Divine as all-pervading and
all-residing. Sacrifice (kratu) is the height of the truth. Thus it is
that man or the awakened soul, pure and rescued from the false identification
with the body, resolves upon the great act of conquest of Visva or the waking
consciousness (jagrat) with the help of sacrifice. It is in the waking
consciousness that the consciousness of difference is most acutely present, and
it is this that has to be overcome by sacrificing, by giving up all possession,
by co-operative action, by love and feeling of brotherhood and
self-renunciation. This is also the Asva-medha. In other words,
the sacrifice is called Visvajit, and it is a sacrifice that entails the
surrender of all possessions as daksina; to whosoever seeks anything that thing
must be given. The visvajit sacrifice of Mahabali is a great sacrifice, in this
sense that it has a great mystic meaning. (So too is the inner meaning of the
sacrifice of the father of Nachiketas – Gautama Aruneya)5.
He who would possess all must give freely all that one has. This was the
pratijna and it is clear that this sacrifice would not have been competed
but for the coming of the Vamana (the name is significant as it is used for the
Divine in the Kathopanisad), the dwarf-Vaisvanara-Brahman, who asked just three
feet of ground. The Mahabali offered him the three feet despite remonstrances
from his Guru. The Lord with one foot measured the entire earth (prthivi) and
with the other foot measured the entire heavens reaching beyond the sun and the
moon and the great seat of Brahma, and asked of Mahabali for the third feet of
ground. The great king then offered his own head. Thus the physical and the
spiritual parts of the King were returned to the Divine. An integral offering
took place, and the result was the attainment of the supreme bliss of Brahman,
the rasatala, the seas of Ananda. Thus come the wonderful words of the verse 17
of the Isa pregnant with the consciousness of the true Lord of Sacrifice, Kratu:
Om Krato smara, Krtagam smara. Aum sacrifice Remember what was done6.
As Venkatanatha interprets this verse it means “Please fulfil the sacrifice by
thine supreme presence and acceptance of my surrender, for thou art the Lord of
sacrifice.” The satvika tyaga is also exhibited, for the individual soul is a
mode, prakara, sesha, dasa of God alone.
The last verse is
a further fulfillment of the previous verse, and
is not as some scholars might consider, a
general prayer found in the three Vedas and the
Brahmanas. For, its integral place by reason of
the continuity of thought is ascertainable form
the fact that surrender of the form of sacrifice
of the Mahabali, the energetic elevated
soul,conscious of the nature of the Dwarf,
Brahman, who came a-begging for just the three
mystical feet, as the Vishnu; who was anxious to
complete the great sacrifice undertaken by him
entailed the leading of Bali to the highest
places of plenitude out of the Grace, promised
to the progeny of Prahlada. (The Matsya Paurana
and Harivamsa accounts of the entire episode are
most enlightening accounts). Once the Divine has
appeared as the self of itself as its truth and
being, the peace is assured, conflicts are
avoided, by the Grace of the Divine who of his
own accord came, as the great Tiruppanalvar
said, to take the soul to the supreme abode of
Rasa, rasatala, for the great
Mahabali was consigned to the Rasatala, there to
be eternally watched by the Divine solely and to
be enjoyed by Him alone and naively or is it
purposely it is stated, Mahabali was fully
satisfied. Was there a more lovable punishment
ever given to one who dared to offer himself up
to God despite the entreaties of his own Guru
who asked him to hold on to what he had and
warned him the deceit of the Divine! Did not the
Gopies seek such a punishment? Have not the
Alvars sought this punishment? Have not Gods
awaited this punishment? To be with God morning,
noon and night and for ever and alone. To have
God is breath, sight, taste, smell, and the
sweetest Sabda of the Flute: to share in the
experience of knowledge of God’s direct
sovereign rulership, intimate indwellingness,
transcendent supremacy, wonderful power of
creation, sustention and destruction all
revealing the supreme sovereign Daya, and more
than all descents into all forms, in His Fullest
puissance and plenitude, resplendence and
power!! The Divine though omni-pervading or
capable of omnipervading (vasyam literally means
this latter), out of his Grace and in response
to the search and prayer and aspiration,
descends to meet the soul and leads him to the
higher reaches. If this task could have been
done in respect of the recalcitrant dividing
asura, vital being, and difficult to modify
except through force or violence, how much more
easily and more finely could not the Divine do
the same for the more evolved mental soul? Thus
the last verse:
Agne naya supatha raye asman visvani deva
vayunani vidvan!
Yuyodhyasmajjuhuranameno bhuyistham te nama
uktim vidhema!!
The Divine who is
the Nourisher and Ruler, Seer, Death and
In-dwelling self, and our father and Supreme
Light is the Foremost Fire or Will within us. He
is undiminished in every one of his descents and
is ever full:
Purnamadah purnamidam purnatpurnamudacyate!
Purnasya purnahtadaya purnam eva avasisyate
!!
2.7 P R A N A Y A M A
The Yoga of
Patanjali is distinguished from the practices of
the Sri Vaishnava thinkers. There are certain
differnces mentioned by the Sri Vaishnavites
whose authorities are the Agama of Vaikhanasa
and Pancaratra and tradition or Sampradaya. I
shall here sketch briefly the relevant portions
taken by the Sri Vaishnava thinkers in order to
be in tune with the main tenets of their
Philosophy of Organic Unity and prapatti
and bhakti which are held to be the final
culmination of all knowledge and action,
jnana and karma.
The eight angas
of Yoga are accepted and they are Yama,
Niyama, Asana, Pranayama,
Pratyahara, Dharana, Dhyana
and Samadhi.
Yama, niyama,
asana, pranayama are all of the satvic order and
are intended for the sake of ‘yoking the
senses’ that are outwardly turned to make them
inwardly turned, or at least quiet, so as to
permit direct reception by the mind itself. It
is in a quiet mind that the intimations of
higher consciousness are sown.
Yama and niyama
accepted by the Sri Vaishnava is what is
described in the Vishnu Purana VI.7: Celibacy,
harmlessness, truthfulness, non-covetuousness,
non-acceptance of gifts, scripture reading,
purity, outer and inner, contentment, austerity,
and inclining the mind to God. This list is not
quite different from the Patanjali’s Yoga.
The Asana that is
counselled as par excellance is padmasana
– lotus-pose. The Patanjali’s Yoga holds that
asana is best which is steady and
performed with ease, sthira-sukha-asanam.
The Pranayama
deals with the vital breath. Three stages are
mentioned the recaka, kumbhaka and
puraka. This view is accepted by all. The
special method, however, followed by this school
is different from the Patanjali sustras. The
inhalation and exhalation are of half the
duration of the kumbhaka or restraint. The
inhalation follows the exhalation. The usual
procedure adopted by the Yogis is that the right
nostril first is used to exhale the air, and
then closing it with the fingers the indrawing
of breath is done with the left nostril. After
retention for the specified period, the
exhalation is performed with the right nostril.
Then with the right nostril the breath is
inhaled and exhaled with the left nostril. This
establishes according to these thinkers and
practicers the balance of the breath and
establishes equipoise of mind and breath. On the
other hand, the doctrine of Sri Vaishnava
thinkers is that in no case should there be
inhalation with the right nostril and exhalation
with the left nostril. Therefore the
fundamental difference.
The
psycho-physical basis of this argument is as
follows:
The left nostril
is supplied with Amrta-nadi and the right with
death or surya-nadi. The one is Agni, and the
other is cooling like the Moon. The seeker after
the vira-path seeks the divine realization
through the path of Agni, and does not seek to
establish the fullness of the living presence
the immortal,here and now. Thus there is death
seeking in that path. The good that accrues from
the practice of left-nostril breathing is
annuled by the right-nostril breathing.
It has been amply
demonstrated by a yogin who counselled that in
all cases when persons are suffering from fevers
due to heat and other disorders, and even those
who wish to sleep by day-time, not to sleep with
their left side to the ground or to breathe with
the right nostril. Pranayama with the left
nostril-inhalation leads to cure, whereas right
nostril-inhalation leads to aggravation of the
malady.
Pratyahara
(Reversion of will) accepted by the Sri Vaisnava
is that according to the Vishnu Purana VI.7,
and dharana and dhyana are said to be of five
kinds according to the Vishnu Purana VI.
7-91-ff.
Samadhi is the
culmination of dhyana; it is of the nature of
saksatkara, of the self. Beyond that is the
supreme Brahma-saksatkara. Samadhi itself
is an intimate coitional-consciousness of bhakti
and overwhelming knowledge-devotion. The quality
of power that it gets is due to the intensity of
the equational consciousness leading to divine
integration. More and more the individual
becomes conscious of the presence of the Lord
within, and the Mother, and those two rescue the
individual from being merely an interiorised
being. The veils of the soul are reft as under
and the individual stands in the presence of a
transformed universe of Delight that was misery.
All he perceives as the Vasudeva and is lost in
the contemplation and ecstacy of the
supreme.
APPROACH TO PHILOSOPHY
2.8 ARTHA PURUSHARTHA
Ancient Indian
culture accepted four legitimate motives of
human being – man’s vital interests and needs,
his desires, his ethical and religious
aspirations, and his ultimate spiritual aim and
destiny. These fourfold motives answer to his
fourfold nature as a physico-biological (or
embodied) being, as an emotional being seeking
happiness and enjoyment, on the one hand, and on
the other, as an ethical and spiritual self. On
the proper satisfaction of these four aims
consists perfection and happiness.
Almost all men
normally devote the major part of their energy
to the finding of means to satisfy their
terrestrial needs. It is legitimate to strive
for the bodily welfare of oneself, not merely
seek its mere survival. Those things which help
this preservation of the body and its continued
efficiency and enjoyment are called the good
things of life or simply goods. Everything is
measured by its utility for the preservation of
the body.
It is clearly
recognized that the world in which we live
though bounteous in its gifts and prolific in
its produce of the essential and elementary
demands of the body, sometimes offers great
threats which challenge the life and existence
of the individuals. These challenges of the
environment are the ones which dictate the
responses of the individual not merely in a
purely stimulus-response (or situation response
manner) but also with foresight. And foresight
is power. It is precisely this foresight which
again impels the individual to secure and hoard
and preserve the things that are needed, and
protect them from being taken away from him by
other individuals or creatures. This necessity
to protect and preserve the acquired things
demands power, ability and might. The individual
who has greater foresight, cleverness and
ability as well as might wins in the race of
life. He survives not merely as an individual
against the environment but also against other
individuals who seek to snatch or rob what he
has. This latter condition may not usually arise
in a well knit family or group where
co-operation rather than rivalry predominates.
But it is nontheless true that the break up of
the family or the tribe is caused by the
competitive rivalry between its members owing to
manifold psychological reasons. Such break-ups
undoubtedly reveal the individual to be a
disintegrating force, an ego at cross-purposes
with society, which appears to be a better unity
or unit than the individual himself. Out of this
fact one thing can be assumed for certain, that
the individual seeks his self-expression, his
freedom to be in a certain way. He seeks his
growth and development in the world and in
society if possible, out of it, if necessary.
The emergence of the individual person then is
the primary fact of the struggle for survival.
(As conceived by Locke,) it is not enough to get
the right to live and protect oneself but to
have property which is the means to live, which
is the fundamental necessity and right.
Property (artha)
becomes a means for self expression, development
and freedom. Property implies the exclusive use,
enjoyment and control of those things which are
of value in so far as they satisfy the
fundamental needs of the organism. Thus property
or rather private property is an essential
condition of economic freedom. A life without
property is impoverished for there is no
wherewithal to live.
The right of
every individual is to secure the primary needs
of food, clothing and shelter without
interference and without abridgment. But in a
world wherein there is so much of competition
among individuals for the necessities of the
body, even to the minimum, and wherein these are
not keeping pace with the growth of population,
the problem of getting these has become very
acute and a solution to it is not easily to be
had. Thus a limit has to be placed on the
quantum of property or wealth, understood in
this limited sense that any individual can
possess. Socialising the means or the equal
distribution of all land and produce by the
State will not mean anything but the best means
of providing each individual with the barest
necessities of life. This may imply that the
individual may be obliged to work
co-operatively, so to speak, with the rest of
the individuals to get the bare minimum of his
requirements. In whatever manner we go about it,
the principal basis of life of man is material
and economic. The higher aspects have to be
erected on this. Any view of our human
“existence” which neglects or unduly belittles
or intolerantly condemns this basis is therefore
by that very fact, whatever its truth or merit
or utility, or whatever its suitability to
individuals of a certain temperament or in a
certain stage of spiritual evolution “unfit to
be the general and complete rule of human being”
says Sri Aurobindo.
Therefore it is
seen that the modern world insists on this
necessary material basis of life. It must be
first well established before one engages on the
spiritual adventure. The spiritual man who
emphasizes the spiritual nature at the expense
of the material basis of personality perhaps
speaks for the higher values of life which are
beyond the apprehension and ability of the
normal man. He divides the world of experience
into two schemes – one is the biological and
hedonistic, and the second is the ethical and
the spiritual. And similarly he divides man into
two parts, the material (prakriy) and the
spiritual-psychic (purushaic). He
emphasizes the utter contradictory nature of
these two which are somehow in an unholy
wedlock. Thus the real nature of man is the
spiritual, which is eternal and immortal. The
body binds for it is ignorance. There is really
no necessity or obligation to serve the needs of
the body at all, except in so far as it is
necessary to keep it going till one knows
oneself as one truly is or knows it to be all
illusory. Further since greed grows on what it
gets, the pursuit of wealth leads to
accumulation of more and more wealth. But it is
not an unmixed good. It ceases to be a
protection and tends to become more and more a
threat. The sense of security passes when
possession of wealth or goods passes beyond
particular limit. This is one danger. It invites
the powerful man to rob it away. The search for
power is incidental to the search for wealth.
Wealth is power, and it is thought that more and
more wealth means more security and also more
and more power. It is the ready means to
survive. But this is not true. The results are
paradoxical.
Men from early
times have sought to grow rich and opulent
without realising the trasitoriness of wealth.
However, the methods adopted to gain wealth have
been many. Wealth is a product of labour. It is
cumulative labour. When power controls labour it
controls wealth. Thus wealth and power are
closely linked up and cannot be separated, (even
as Kautilya has pointed out). Economic and
political power go hand in hand and they cannot
normally be abused and should not be. But it is
not the same thing as saying that they will not
be.
Artha,
according to the spiritual renouncer or
sannyasin, is a grave danger to spiritual
freedom, unless seriously limited to barest
necessities. But mankind in general has not been
able to accept this recipe of asceticism and
negation of life. That is the reason why the
Indian social order provided the doctrine of the
‘asramas’ and emphasized the “grhastha”
householder as the most important for the
ordinary man. Whilst it granted that the
grhastha must pursue artha or wealth and power
so as to be the best citizen of the society, it
also instilled in him the need for restraint and
dharma in conduct. Grhastha dharma provides for
the full development of personality and
perfection, for it proves that artha and
kama are not incompatible with the high
pursuit of ethical and spiritual perfection,
provided they are followed according to
well-established dharma. A perfect
self-expression of the Spirit is the object of
terrestrial existence, and the
artha-purushartha is included in this
perfection of the individual personality. The
world is God’s and is pervaded by God inside and
outside. The wonderful Upanishad-Isa
proclaims that knowing the world of both living
and nonliving or the moving and the unmoving to
be pervaded by God, one should seek to enjoy
whatever is granted to him. It also counsels
that one should not seize or covet other’s
wealth. Artha by all means must be
enjoyed and acquired but as belonging to God and
received as a gift of God. Even so all
activities have to be done as dedicated to God
so that no sin can accrue or the dread of such.
(na karma lipyate nare). By so acquiring
and enjoying and acting, men can attain freedom
from fear and death and attain the Immortal. If
one on the other hand, becomes either wealth-mad
or power-mad, then destruction is sure for him.
Modern theories
seek to remove the concept of private property
from the field of human thinking. They seek to
substitute the society in the place of the
individual as the possessor of property. But the
truth is that neither capitalism nor socialism
can solve the problem of the individual
development of personality based on freedom. But
this can be best achieved in a true democratic
society, wherein the individual is treated as
end in himself and counts as such and not merely
as a means to some other unity or unit like the
community or the State. Freedom from dependence
on others for the wants and needs of life is
sought to be guaranteed by wealth. This is
always necessary in the interests of freedom.
Considered in this manner wealth is a means to
an end, even as power is a means to wealth. The
Vedic Rishis seek wealth (rayi) but they
had always had the integral concept that real
wealth is the wealth of spirituality, which
confers all other lesser wealths. God is the
real undeteriorating wealth of all individuals,
for He grants a fourfold sense of free
existence. The truth about wealth then is that
it is only a means to a more fundamental end of
freedom. That is the reason why ordinary
economic wealth which is dependent upon so many
transient and temporary factors, which are
brilliantly analysed by modern economists, is to
be tested by its capacity and ability to
subserve the higher values which the individual
experiences and seeks even at the cost of
renunciation of all these goods. The sublimated
use to which goods are put will always justify
the pursuit of wealth and power.
The Vedic prayer
to Agni has this purport :
“ O Agni! Lead us
by the auspicious path to Wealth ”
(Agne Naya
supatha raye !)
2.9 KAMAPURUSHARTHA
Not money alone
rules the world. Pleasure is a more powerful
force than property. Property becomes a means to
the end of pleasure. Sri Ramakrishna following
the great tradition of India, stated that Kamini
and Kanchana are the two most powerful forces of
ignorance.
Men indeed love
pleasure; seek pleasure both immediate and
distant. They endeavour all their lives to
attain pleasure at least at the end of the day,
at the eve of their retirement, and beyond the
world of living here in the world yonder. Men
run from one object to another; satiated by one
object they race towards other similar objects
for new pleasure. When natural pleasures do not
satisfy or are exhausted in their ability to
grant pleasure, they device subtle inventions
and apparatuses to provoke and prolong and
enhance pleasures. Substitution of abnormal or
subnormal pleasures has had a long, very long,
history. The most abnormal ways of men in
respect of smells and tastes, colours and forms,
decorations and designs have played a very great
role in the history of civilization. The grand
feasts of senses, which excite, enthrall and
hold captive men and women alike, are all born
of the desire for gratification of the senses.
They refuse to be put aside, and they enter by
the most devious and unconscious ways into the
halls of the cultured and civilized mankind. The
desires of men derive strength through exercise
and drive men to seek pleasure in manifold
mysterious ways. Truth in pleasure is stranger
than fiction.
The ancients
called the world the abode of pleasure (bhogayatana).
Nature is known as the enjoyable (bhogyam).
The soul is called the enjoyer (bhokta).
Nature exists to be enjoyed, and her capacity to
entertain seems to be infinite (bhuma),
hence is She known as bhumi. Men seek
pleasure even like the animals (monkeys of the
Ramayana) which are kamabhuks. The materialist
philosophers (lokayatikas, world-minded
ones) despite their philosophy of matter were
essentially hedonists, pleasure-seekers. “Love
and drink” for tomorrow you may die.” “Be
merry”. The enjoyment of objects of sense (sex)
as many as possible is heaven”. The test of
reality is not truth but pleasure. Unreal things
grant more pleasure than real things. Therefore
what we seek is pleasure not the reality or the
unreality. Thus fictions and imaginations are
the sphere of art; and they have an autonomy all
their own. They should be judged by standards of
pleasure or delight-granting capacity rather
than, by their approximations to truth.
Illusions are things we thrive in. Suggestions
of pleasure are indeed the test of living,
existence. Indeed the usefulness of a thing does
not consist as it did in the search for wealth (arthapurushartha)
in its usefulness to survival in the world by
the getting of goods such as food, shelter, and
property but in its capacity to ‘entertain’,
enhance and increase pleasure.
Pleasure is
power. It is the greatest incentive to modern
activities. The magnae in this direction is not
the industrialist of food production, the pandit
of swift communication of the goods necessary
to life, but the man who makes life meaningful
and worthwhile, by granting it the greatest
amount of pleasure. He is the luxury goods
manufacturer, the entertainer, the cinema star.
Pleasure has a dependability in its nature,
which even the call to life does not have. The
world would forsake all essential needs for a
single ecstatic moment of pleasure. We can call
it by whatever name-for the sake of a woman men
have sacrificed everything, honour and all. It
is true that sometimes pleasure love is an
escapist phenomenon but all the same it can
occur also otherwise than as an escape from
other pains.
Moralists may
criticise the pleasure-seeking drive as self
defeating and as irrational. Do we not know that
pleasure sensations are followed by pain? Do we
also not know that intensification of pleasure
leads to pain? When we eat more and more number
of dishes of delicious sweets and fruits, beyond
the limit not only do they become painful but
cause diseases which are the consequences of
excess. The physiological limit for pleasure is
fixed for each organism. There is no means of
denying pleasure as an incentive, however much
it may be criticised. Excess turns health into
disease. Pleasure becomes a mirage :
transitoriness of pleasure provokes every effort
to continue it and anxiety becomes a consequence
of such effortfulness. Anxiety is the antithesis
of pleasure of satisfaction.
A reaction to
this pleasure-principle gave rise to
world-negation theories. Pleasures of the body
are to be avoided. Asceticism, brahmacharya
or absolute divorce from the life of sense is
the only rational course open. Real pleasure,
permanent pleasure is not to be sought in the
body but in the soul. Pain may very well be the
food of the soul for it is the sensation of
avoidance of bodily pleasures. ‘Pleasure for a
beautiful body, pain for a beautiful soul’ are
the food on which they thrive : so wrote Oscar
Wilde in his De Profoundis. Spiritual
pleasure or bliss is the opposite of physical
pleasure. But the denial of pleasure as an end
in itself to the spiritual life of man has been
a counsel of perfection. It is a neat
contradictoriness. All actions are performed
with an eye to success in their objectives,
though scripture may say that one should perform
all action without any attachment to the fruits
there of, nishkama karma. A deeper and
distant goal of union with the divine purpose
and will is the end result sought by doing
actions selflessly without an eye to fruits. A
different view was put forward that the bodily
pleasures were delusions (vivarta) of the
true bliss which one seeks with the soul. We are
searching for a pleasure that is non-existent
outside ourselves. As against these theories of
philosophers, the great Greek hedonist humanist,
Epicurus, drew a remarkable line which no
hedonist could over’ step. It can be described
as practical hedonism. He counselled the
enjoyment of ‘natural-pleasure in such wise as
not to produce reactive pains which usually
accompany excessive indulgence. Aristotle also
advised the ‘golden mean’ in all things. They
recognized the principle of “self-defeatingness
of Excess”. Therefore wisdom in practical life
lies in the pursuit of all things in moderation
(samabhava). The teacher of the Gita
indeed teaches this moderation-principle in all
possessions and enjoyments.
But men indeed
are also regardful of the life after death. The
sacrifices to Gods and other powers are said to
grant results beyond the grave. Heavenly (or
other-worldly) pleasures accrue. But they are
not permanent and inward pleasures, they depend
on the satisfaction of our senses even as the
pleasures got from the earth-objects. Scriptures
themselves know this limitation and made
allowances to the individuals’ appetites. But
all this is not to say that they ought not to be
done. It is perhaps necessary to do all these
kamya-karmas (desire-ridden actions) if not for
the sake of oneself but for the sake of progeny,
national welfare and humanity as a whole. The
pleasures then entail lot of pain and effort but
they are considered to be good. Socialising of
pleasure or comfort and entertainment so that it
is not selfish, is said to grant freedom from
personal pain. But surely this is not clearly
true. Pleasure-calculus, as the Utilitarians
improvised it, is a rough measure which is
neither exact nor feasible. All the same almost
mankind believes in this fiction of universal
welfare or pleasure. A further modification of
the pleasure-principle is the search for
peace-principle. Peace is certainly a second
degree pleasure for it is absence of conflict
and pain. This however will break up if there is
an incidence of a more ruthless demand on the
part of individuals for an end greater than
pleasure or property, individual or social,
namely freedom of law (dharma).
Through several
lives at last as the Lord of the Gita says one
arrives at the truth that one ought to seek the
everlasting, undeteriorating, undiminishing and
non-disintegrating and non-reactive pleasure of
self-knowledge or God knowledge. Union with the
divine is that which grants both peace and
pleasure or Ananda. Through this union
everything becomes attractive and inexhaustible
ecstacy of delight, within and without. He is
the ‘prerita’, the impellor within, the
kama, the desire secret in everything and
person, driving each soul to search for Himself.
He is the ‘Rasa’ the essence in all things, of
all tastes, colours and forms, smells, and all
pleasures. He is the beauty in all things which
attracts other things. Kama-purushartha answers
to the search for beauty in all things which
fulfils the values of utmost importance to man.
The great Veda says desire is in the beginning
which is the primal seed and germ of spirit.
Desire (kama) ungoverned by limits, like
power and wealth is a dangerously corruptive
thing. Sublimated by the process of reason which
discerns the fundamental essence of a permanent
pleasure, desire in man passes through all the
love for wealth, woman, drink, and forms and
power, dropping them as essentially worthless in
granting an unmixed pleasure, pleasure untied
with reactive pain, arrives at the great truth
of pleasure as Ananda of the subjective
and the Self. The supreme reality becomes the
object of desire or rather the Desire which
desires itself in knowledge. Such desire not
yoked to the satisfaction of the senses but to
the supreme Self within, does not cause
ignorance, contraction, darkness,
selfdestruction and pain but leads to the
experience of the bliss that passed
understanding.
As the Chandogya
Upanished says “He alone who sees thus,
meditates thus, who knows thus, he verily is
drawn to the Self (Atma), has love-play with
Atma, and is united with the Atma, which is
bliss itself Atmarair atmakrida a mamithuna
atmanandah sa eva bhavati.”
God-love is the
perfect pleasure or bliss, which transcends the
dualities of the opposites of pleasure-pain,
hot-cold, honour-shame, for one attains Him in
whom everything is fulfilled; He is satya-kama,
the desirer of the Real. The love of God thus
becomes the gift of the beloved, and faith, the
scion of Kama, as the rishis stated, becomes the
cheer in the path of the world. The love of the
Divine is what all saints have sought. Kama is
not to be extinguished for its real core is love
of the infinite, which we seek in everything
because He is all, in all, as their self,
impellor and truth. Such a seeing and desiring
of the Supreme Beautiful Person, Krishna, does
not but enhance the love of the Divine by
turning the inward eye of true vision and love
on the worldly objects. The secret process is to
substitute the outward sense-seeing by the
inward love-seeing. Used in the ordinary manner
through the outward-sense-seeing love turns into
lust and greed and struggled for pleasure, but
restored to the inwards seeing of love, the
transformation of the Nature into the body of
God as Anandamaya and as
Sundara-tejo-moya happens.
Ordinarily this
process of turning the lust into inward love of
all things can be done only by regulating
activity according to limits of righteous life,
of dharma. The Science of Kama (Kamasastra) has
this purpose of showing how best normal life
could be utilised for the pursuit of pleasure.
The Ashrama again which provides for the
right-love is the grhastha (householder),
who is expected to effect this slow-process of
transmutation of lust into love-through the
realisation of the Godlove which makes home-love
blissful.
All other types
of desire are ‘adulterous’, because not governed
by the love of freedom in love, a freedom which
brings no reaction of bondage and a love which
does not bring the reaction of ignorance and
delusion. Thus kama purushartha has in it the
essence of a powerful drive towards the
discovery of the permanent satisfying principle
in reality, and never be smothered for that
which cannot satisfy the inmost nature of the
self can never be wholly true. In loneliness
there can be no peace; in the enjoyment of the
eternal and the immortal bliss alone can there
be the fullness of satisfaction which nothing
can deny. That is why the supreme Abode is
called the Paramam padam – the
Bliss-abode – Ananda Nilayam – Sac-cid
anandam.
2.10 DHARMA PURUSHARTHA
There has never
been a civilization that has not enthroned the
law. Human conduct is differentiated from that
of the animal by this awareness of the law, the
distinction between right and wrong, which it
lays down.
We are in the
world of human society, with all its
institutions which have come into being as a
result of the social and economic needs. The
growth of these institutions is surely due to
the cooperative instincts and still more the
cooperative reason which orders and regulates
the business of cooperative enterprise. Thus
social reason has been at work. This social
reason is the bearer also of social values and
traditions and customs being in continuous
activity. It becomes indeed the social
conscience which becomes not merely an outer
regulating reason but in internal conscience of
each individual, the inner judge and guide of
most men.
The growth of the
individual from the animal to the rational
social being has provided the powerful social
conscience to each. It is the voice of the folk
expressing itself in each. The right is what is
good for the whole folk, and the wrong is that
which is not good or injurious to the interests
of the entire folk or its unity or order or
tradition.
At the beginning
the right was yoked to the economic or social
welfare or enjoyment of the social and was
relative to it. The orders of the society
through the leader or king or chieftain was the
representative of the right. Dharma sastras or
codes were formulated and transmitted as the
right in respect of social and individual
conduct. They claimed the status of the eternal
tradition. But from the study of history we know
that seers of the later age had to modify or
amplify or curtail many provisions of conduct.
The dharma sastras not only provided imperatives
and prohibitions but also provided punishments
for violations or sanctions of a moral and
physical nature.
The process of
the change of the dharmas from age to age,
environment to environment is inevitable and has
been recognized as such even in the ancient
conception of the dharmas of the four ages as
being different. Even so is the case with the
individual’s ages or ashramas. The dharmas of
each have been formulated and when one changes
over to another ashrama one’s dharmas pari
passu change. But social welfare has not
been the only criterion nor individual artha and
kama ends, though obviously each one of them was
taken into consideration of the formulation of
the dharma of each ashrama. And another factor
also loomed large, the factor of functional or
vocational or occupational nature. Each varna
(occupational group) had to fulfil certain
duties and the preparation and education in that
line or the ashramas in that line have their own
duties or dharma. These complexities along with
the duties to the State as a whole are baffling
enough. Added to these is the emergence of the
moral individual. And the real individual who
seeks freedom and the religious individual who
seeks God, are also further high lights of the
problem of dharma.
Each individual
must first know how to obey the law – dharma the
social, individual and spiritual, law which is
the good for all. Thus Sri Ramachandra taught
that all goods and enjoyments accrue here and
hereafter only through the strict obedience or
conformity to law : Dharmad arthah prabhavati ;
dharmat prabhavate sukham / Dharmena labhate
Sarvam ; dharmasaram idam jagat. (Ar.9) “From
Dharma arises (righteous, wealth) from dharma
arises (right) pleasure, by dharma is everything
(good) obtained. This world is the essence of
dharma”. It is supported by dharma or law.
The world is a
vast unity of law, physical, vital, mental,
spiritual and so on. The knower knows the law
and acts so that no pernicious effects or
restricting limitations and bondages accrue. But
the ignorant knowing not the law practices
adharma (non-law). Sciences teach the law of
nature. Morals and psychology teach the law of
the individual in relation to other individuals
and in the fields of economical and hedonistic
enterprises. Religion teaches the law in respect
of the relationship of the individual to God and
His super-terrestrial hierarchy and all. Unlike
western moralists and political theorists,
Eastern seers had counselled that each
individual must recognize the divine unity of
all creation and the interdependence of
interests between the several orders of
creation. Thus man has his duty to Natural
elements, bhutas, to creatures lower down in
creation, sub-mental, to men and to over-mental
angels and gods. All these duties follow from
the awareness of interdependence of all in God.
Thus we are asked to perform yajnas or
sacrifices or offerings to all the five classes
of entities : bhuta-yajna, athithi-yajna,
pitr-pajna, devayajna Dana is of the same order
of free and loving offering.
Dharma is a
concept of interdependence and is correlational
in so far as it is a reciprocal interdependence.
If this reciprocity is not strictly available
then there is the arising of adharma. Thus every
school of thought in India had developed the
idea of dharma in each field : Vaiseshika Nyaya
in the field of physical, Purvamimamsa in the
field of supernatural causation, where dharma
means the correct performance of rituals and
rites – yagas and yajnas – for attaining
individual and social welfare and happiness -.
Buddha taught Dharma is the means to moksa or
Nirvana or ultimate freedom from all process,
social and individual and cosmic.
Visishtadvaita
almost emphatically urges that the individual is
in the relationship of dharma to God Himself. My
relationship to God is a dharma, and the
exercise of my relationship is dharma. Even as
my relationship to my father and mother is a
dharma whose exercise in life is my dharma. Thus
not merely the relationship but the exercise of
that relationship which is a dynamic concept is
dharma (duty). In one sense they are my dharmas,
flowing out of my nature as a related being to
others, God, parents, society, creatures, Nature
and so on. Dharma comprises the sum total of my
relationship to All, taken distributively, and
to God. It is something which I recognize as
issuing out of my place and station and nature
and as such as svadharma. The performance
of the svadharma after having discerned it
clearly is karma-yoga, liberating dharma. The
performance of dharma, svadharma, accordingly is
not fraught with danger, whereas the attempt to
perform other than it is capable of landing one
in danger and confusion.
Even the so
called higher dharma (para-dharma) belonging to
a higher status of life is undesirable. It was
precisely this counsel that Lord Sri Krishna
gave to Arjuna.
Binding is the
nature of karma which arises from ignorance of
the svadharma. It is self-seeking and mainly
identifiable with kama or desire for fruits.
Phalapeksa is its radical defect. For every
thing a man wants to know the phala or the fruit
or end-result and judges its value accordingly.
The real actor or karma-yogi is one who refuses
to judge his daily, occasional or special duties
in this manner. He does his duties without an
eye to fruit but to efficiency in respect of his
mental vital and physical performance. A man who
does his work with an eye to fruit more often
than not does it inefficiently. Selfless work is
always skillful work. Phala-tyaga or
renunciation of fruit thus is true efficient
condition of efficiency. Thus duty for duty’s
sake done is liberating and efficient. Man must
therefore perform his duties to God, Men and
Nature and all with this conception of the
nature of svadharma and all dharma. It would
more exhibit the real nature of the individual
as a spiritual being freed from the bondage to
the demands of the flesh and matter, property
and prosperity and pleasure.
This end of duty
for duty’s sake is sought to be achieved by
social men by means of insisting on the standard
of social value. But such social value is
nothing other than the fulfilment of
property-pleasure demands of men-in-society or
the ‘masses’ instead of the ‘classes’.
Socialised end-result or phala is said to be
dharma, whereas individual gain in action is
adharma. In this sense even the seeking of
individual freedom is said to be a kind of
adharma, something not at all worthy of man.
Meliorative action, lokasamgraha is but part of
the dharma as its real nature is to exhibit the
universal nature and imperative of the
individual in relation to the Supreme All, the
totality which comprises all individuals,
whether they are class-conscious or
mass-conscious or individuality-conscious.
Thus it is that
the great Buddha Gautama, taught that the
individual should seek no other refuge than the
Supreme Atma. “Live as they who have the self
(atma) as lamp as refuge and none other. Live as
they who have dharma as lamp as refuge”. The
society of individuals who live in this
awareness forms the indissoluble samgha and its
practices of work acara which becomes the
code of conduct, the dharma of the individuals.
The teacher of such a traditionally tested code
is the Acharya-sad-acharya or the ‘Desika’.
Ultimately it is
aim of all devoted practice of dharma to gain
the audition of the inner voice, the voice of
the inner ruler Immortal, the antaryami seated
in all hearts and oneself. Previously the voice
of the superman, the King, or the great Manu was
the voice of God. Then when due to various
reasons the voices of the King were adjudged to
have quite different origins the voice of the
people was accepted as the Voice of God. But the
vicissitudes of the voice of God have surely
taught that it is only in the voice of the wise
that it can find expression, and fulfilment ;
and to become humbly wise in the ways of duty
according to one’s station and place in the
whole is the only means by which the unity of
the inner voice and the voice of God can take
place. Such a voice neither bends nor fawns
before mortal men or the mass, for it holds the
scales even : its direction is the way of
fulfilment (nisreyas) not preyas
(wealth and progeny) : it reveals a greater love
of the nature of man as freedom than as creature
of wants and demands.
Dharma is
entwined with satya or truth, the ultimate as
well as the immediate, the Supreme Self (Atma)
that is omnipervasive. Moral existence is the
manifestation of the spiritual existence and
depends on it : the questions of beyond good and
evil seem to have no place in this conception of
the spiritual morality of dharma. Thus teach the
great mantras : satyan nasti paro dharmah
(There is no greater dharma than truth) and the
other ‘Ritam pibantau sukitasya loke guham
pravistau parame parardhye’. (Kath Up.
iii.1) [There are two (Shade and Sunshine) that
drink deep of the truth of works well done in
this world : they are lodged in the heart of the
creature and in the highest half of the most
high is their dwelling”.
2.11 MOKSA PURUSARTHA
The search for
liberation has been one of the most profound
urges in man (indeed of all life) much more
valuable and dependable than even sex and food
or power. But its presence and activity are
discernible only subtly. Its first portent is
the seeking for movement and growth and
enlargement of the field of operation.
Scientists may refer this to the seeking for
survival and adaptation to the environment. But
that is the physical expression or immediate
motive of the urge to freedom ; and expansion is
the necessary ingredient in all freedom.
Man’s expansion (pravrtti)
moves by degrees to possession of property, and
then to power and social activity, and to
progeny and possession of the instruments of
progeny which give him freedom of love of things
of Nature and life. His acute senses and reason
help him to discover the laws of life and nature
and conduct which determine his further
successes in the fields of freedom. Laws
discovered become instruments for freedom or
helpful to the extension of the levels of
activity. Nature and life yield to the knowledge
of their laws. Freedom of course means here the
applied use of the laws to situations which
grant mastery over these phenomena. So far the
knowledge of the laws of nature and life has
helped the conquest of nature and life. All the
human or man-made laws are also capable of each
type of existence. Thus the discovery of laws of
nature helps the formulations of laws which are
prohibitions and imperatives of command to help
living according to nature laws. Laws of social
organization are indeed results of discovery of
the laws of society. Laws of the State in
respect of health, food, distribution,
cultivation and of religious communities too,
are results of the knowledge of the laws of
nature, with this difference that the laws of
man and the State are based on foresight and
experience and have as their aim security from
fear of wrong adaptations. That is the reason
why the moral laws are obligations as well,
necessary for the preservation of life and
liberty and love. The more truly the laws of man
and State help the cause of fearless living and
growth of liberty in conformity with Nature
(taken in its widest sense including human
nature), the more are they freely and willingly
obeyed.
Thus the progress
of man has been for the recovery of full
freedom. But it has expressed itself as the
sense of expansion in and through nature, the
physical, the vital and the mental being more
and more efficient than the previous ones.
Indeed the prior ones have at once revealed
themselves as the hindrances to the later ones,
the physical being an obstruction to the vital,
the vital similarly to the mental ; and today we
witness the mental being obstructive to the
higher functions of mind and spirit. Thus the
problem of the modern man is the freedom from
the physical, vital and mental natures which
obstruct the fullest realisation of freedom of
spirit. Man has been gradually becoming aware
(in evolution) of his several kosas (sheaths) so
to speak. Of the real nature of himself as
spirit (atman) he has only rarely become
aware. The ancient rishis in their advanced
evolution had seen these formulations of Nature
and passing beyond them arrived at the notion of
their nature as Spirit (atman). The
realisation of the Spirit as the essence of
oneself is freedom from the lower formulations
of nature, such as physical (annam),
vital (pranam), mental (manas),
intellect (buddhi). Each movement upward
to a deeper and extensive layer of being is a
movement towards freedom or release (moksa).
But the ultimate and final or Absolute freedom,
that is from which there is no further urge to
freedom, is Brahman, Spirit Vast and Complete (purnam).
Indeed this
Absolute Freedom (Brahman) is the source of all
law (Rtam). It is Satyasya Satyam,
Rtasya Rtam. Freedom is the condition of
law. Law is the expression of one’s nature, and
in this case the nature of Brahman is Freedom,
real unconditioned Freedom of Spirit.
Man is caught up
in misery, for it is the consciousness of being
limited by circumstances and restricted by
environments and thwarted by fate and chance,
unpredictable factors of the Vast Nature. In
this samsara of unpredictability, men strive
after shadows deeming them to be real ; in other
words, there is a constant tendency to revert to
lower and earlier ways of response, suited
admirably to lower orders of creation but
fearful and soul destroying at the higher
levels. Regressions actual, or virtual, take
place, which cause profound disorders. Baulked
by these restrictions and tortured by the
awareness of inability and incapable of
reconciling himself to the conditions of life,
man has sought escape from Nature and society
and its manifold relationships. Sometimes a
return to Nature appeared to favour a more
peaceful life, if not afford a quiet retreat
from the vital and mental perplexities of
society. Such a retreat from life was a sense of
freedom secured for the larger and profounder
contemplation of freedom which would be
ultimate. Thus moksa found its first urge in man
in the form of retreat to forest retreats,
Ashramas, free from the struggle for wealth and
desires of the senses, and social relationships
natural to city and town dwellers. Seekers of
the way out of samsara haunted these ashramas to
find peace away from the world. By itself it
looks like freedom, vairagya being the first
step to moksa. Nivrtti, turning back on Nature
to Spiritual nature, comes only to those who
have suffered the agonies of life in the triple
fields of artha, kama and dharma. Transitoriness
of wealth and power, unfaithfulness of partners,
and confusion about dharma, are sufficient to
make man turn towards the discovery of that
immanent law or being which shall make one free
from the mortal peril of phenomenal existence
and experience.
Thus have great
seers and saints turned their back on life for
the contemplative life far from the madding
crowd. Renunciation of life, the trivarga, the
three purusharthas of the ordinary man, was
itself freedom. But physical, social, vital and
mental freedoms are not quite sufficient if
there is no search for the positive content of
freedom. Freedom from is moksa (mukti)
release. What is gained by sannyasa is the
freedom from the obligations of the triple
purusharthas of artha, kama and dharma. It is
undoubtedly complete renunciation or giving up
of these aims. It is not a freedom yet of the
Absolute.
Thus sannyasa
assisted by vairagya is the deliberate act of
nivrtti from the lower formations of life, their
aims and ends which have been discovered to be
not the essence of oneself but opposed to it.
Nirvana is the
passing to the stage of utter changelessness,
beyond the cycle of samsara. It is the stage of
beatitude, egoless and mindless, strifeless. It
is got at by right thought, right meditation ;
those which help the passage to the state of
nirvana are those which are right such are
ahimsa, kindliness, purity, renunciation of the
ways of the world. Such is the way-farer or
welfare ; (tatha-gatha). The negatively
described state of nirvana roots out all
contemplation or imagination of the state of the
soul or individual ego which is phenomenally
considered to be but a bundle of habits and
tendencies of the mind (skandas).
Brahmanirvana is
the Vedantic version of this transcendent state.
Here the individual soul losing all the mental
formations and egoistic configurations and
patterns of action (karma) merges itself
in Brahman the supreme Absolute Spirit. The
separative existence and experience of the
individual ego is completely lost by it. No
longer is it in the thraldom of the flesh and
mind and egoism but experiences oneness with the
Source and the Universal beyond all forms and
names. Brahmanubhava passes beyond the stage of
a subject enjoying an object and arrives at the
self-contemplation of the Subject of Itself in
all. There is perfect identity (aikya)
and equality (samanatva) in all
experiences, because of the perfect
identification of the individual with the
Supreme Spirit in all levels of consciousness
and being. This is said to be the experience of
Advaita, a state compared to the mergence of the
waters of the rivers in the Ocean, the plunge of
the moths into the fire, the complete cessation
of personal existence. This is the brahmabhuta
experience within and without.
One experiences
not only that one does not exist apart from or
as separate but even feels the Absolute as the
one being, alone, and complete, not only as the
indwelling seer and all within but the Universal
Single Saccidananda. This experience transcends
all discriptions and characterisations and is
Freedom (Kaivalya) from all limitations.
Gloriously have the seers described this state
of Brahmanubhava. Truly it is the highest state
of experience available to a soul for verily
there is perfection and peace from which is no
return to separative contemplation or meditation
or experiencing.
The transcendence
is complete. Whether we conceive of this state
as a state of identity, absolute and
indivisible, with the Brahman in a formless,
stateless, or a state of utter inseparability
with the no less absolute Personal Brahman with
whom the real relationship of oneness is
experienced or a third double poise of identity
with the Transcendent an inseparable
relationship with the Transcendent as Person, it
is an experience of unabridged freedom. Immortal
divine life is his thereafter and there is
nothing that he has to do. Third experience of
fulfillment and transcendence of all action and
activity is the state of Peace of the self.
The path to this
realisation may follow either the sheer
unceasing search for the ‘I’ (Self) its nature
and formations and progress from its finite
presence to its infinite actuality or may begin
the doing of works selflessly for the Divine. It
may also progress through a sheer dedication and
worship and love of the Divine in all His forms
and formlessness. Whether it is jnana or karma
or bhakti yoga, what is requisite is the quiet
surrender to the Supreme Spirit recognized and
acknowledged as such (Saranagati) that
makes the Moksa not the result of an individual
effort (ego) but the gift of the All-Self or
Brahman. For verily does the Upanishad say : “Yam
esa vrnute tena labhyah” and Surrender is
the perfect means (egoless desireless means) to
the Choice by the Divine (varana).
Moksa in a more
comprehensive sense means not only freedom from
the shackles of karma and bondage to the cycle
of samsara and ignorance but also the ‘living
and moving in the Divine’. It is the freedom of
free creative activity (lila) of Brahman, beyond
the Maya. This too the Vedanta declares in
luminous terms- the freed soul or realised soul
moves everywhere – sarvagata, kamacarah-
enjoying everything. The soul’s yearning for the
service of the Divine is sometimes said to have
a fruition not according to deserts of karma
which have been altogether extinguished or
shaken off but according to the Will of the
Divine Infinite. Great messiahs and prophets and
teachers enter into the scheme of creation as
amsas of the Divine freely and without the
sense of bondage.
This too is the
final purushartha possible to the liberated One
(mukta). But this is not an involvement in
process, for it is a knowledge-descent not an
ignorance-descent. The former is distinguished
by its transcendent purpose consciously,
fearlessly uniquely pursued in a supramanic
manner, it is an avatarana. But the latter is
the involvement in rebirths, a gradual evolution
and, ascent by trial and error, attended by
faith and failure, gloom and grace.
The soul achieves
in this itself the freedom-awareness in the
Divine though limited by the conditions of the
terrestrial life. But even here the
siddhapurusha uses the material and the vital
parts of his own being at their very best
sublimated reality. Even the mental becomes an
instrument of the mystic realisation of oneness
with the infinite, no longer an obstruction to
the higher manifestations but an aid if
possible. This is the experience of the Divine
in all levels, open to the human embodied
consciousness or spirit. This is the jivanmukti-freedom
even in the bodily life. Beyond this bodily life
of the spirit, after the body has fallen away in
the natural way or after exhausting the physical
powers and forces remnant in one’s life, one
achieves the final union or identity. To some
thinkers ultimate and the real moksa is obtained
only after the physical body drops off, and the
soul passes upward to the celestial abode of
Vaikuntha and beyond into the essence of the
Divine, with which it is eternally one,
identical.
There has been
another view which presents Jivanmukta as the
person who lives and moves and has his being in
essence and existence in the Divine, both in the
temporal terrestrial (ksara) and the
Transcendental (Aksard or nitya)
Eternal manifestations, with full freedom of
awareness, power, delight and effortlessness.
The sense of freedom gets a concrete expression
and fullness of meaning, as it is at once a
freedom from all obstructions, ignorance,
conditions of time, space and matter, and
freedom in and through and for the Divine
All-Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.
This is the
complete passage to Freedom, from which there is
no return. The eternal light (jyoti) pervades
inside and out. There is no longer any inner and
outer, for the same light illumes all without
distinction and difference.
2.12 FREEDOM AND
KARMA*
The problem of
freedom has been a very ancient one. Ultimately
whatever men may say and seek, they crave
freedom alone. Whether it is the freedom that is
sought through the means of artha or
kama or dharma or that is sought
after having renounced these three Purusharthas
as unsatisfactory-since they do not lead to the
ultimate self-satisfaction or self-fulfilment,
it is freedom that we seek. There are three
senses in which men may be said to seek freedom
: (i) freedom from all limitations and reactions
and the cycle and chain of births and deaths,
defeats and successes, or in one word Dvandvas;
(ii) freedom in all the works of life, so as to
possess skill, mastery, facility, and energy
that triumph over all impediments in the course
of the performance of any act; and (iii) freedom
to all the planes of existence which would not
fetter or bind us at any point and to any
extent. These three freedoms are mutually
complementary. But they necessitate three kinds
of knowledge. The first requires of man a
transcendence over the Dvandvas (dvandvatitatva)
and when it includes transcendence over the
cycle of birth and death and rebirth it means a
complete attainment. Brahmajnas alone, who have
attained Brahman, do not return to birth or
rebirth, says one Upanishad. The knower of
Brahman becomes Brahman, says another Upanishad.
This is moksa, the caturtha-purusartha,
the highest that the Vedanta has proclaimed.
Once attaining
this supreme status there is no longer any
return to birth, or should we say to all birth
as such, or should we also hold that non-return
includes the abolition of the world of dual
experience or the world process itself, or that
one is indeed so thoroughly merged in or
identified with Brahman that there is a virtual
nirvana. All these views have been
propounded. Even though one attains the state of
Brahman, one continues to remain in the
terrestrial world till such time as the past
Karma has to be worked out or works itself out
like a fire which gets extinguished when no new
faggots or fuel are added. Jivanmukti is a case
of waiting for the end, for the body to fall.
Maya passes and there is nothing remaining but
the Brahman. This freedom from Maya, from the
world process, and from this miserable round of
births and deaths is a transcending process
meaningful only in the limited sense that it
exists for the simple process by itself, though
called lila, means nothing at all and
leaves the divine will in creation
unintelligible.
Thus we have to
inspect whether freedom gets a meaning with the
world and if so in what sense, even if it be a
restricted sense. This is given by a
consideration of what we mean when we say ‘I am
free to do this’, ‘I can do this and I need not
do that’, ‘I can pick and choose what I like’.
Every individual human being has this awareness
of being able to choose, to do a thing or not to
do a thing, to seek to do something and refrain
from doing it or enjoying it or feeling it or
even willing it. Thus, freedom from choice or of
choice is available to one normally. And this is
what one claims to be born to, as in the great
statement of Rousseau : ‘All men are born free’.
A critic may well point out that this freedom at
birth is indeed itself not a consulted affair,
few indeed are born who have been consulted in
their coming to birth and thus at the very start
this claim seems to be false. We are certainly
not consulted and in that sense we are not free.
And indeed it turns out that all that men
finally seek is to get out of this miserable
world of conflicts and precariousnesses in
respect of loves and possessions and even the
pursuit of righteousness which only makes life a
prolific field of evil rather than good. And
thus embitterment eats into the soul of the
seeker. Well may Vyasa exclaim that no one
hearkens to the advice of sages, who, with
uplifted hands, warn man against the choosing of
what is evil and pernicious! But evil itself is
said to be the result of freedom in choosing the
lower ends of life, the things that increase not
the understanding of Nature or man but only
blind men more and more to the truths of being
and their own self. The right to err is said to
be a most precious right. But then this error is
error not because it is intrinsically capable of
being determined by inspection, but only when it
turns out to produce a defeat of what it seeks
to affirm. Evil is freedom, not only because
other individuals cannot suffer this action of
any individual but also because it tends to
reduce the sphere of apprehension of what is
free; the field of choice unusually becomes
narrower and narrower. The Kantian argument that
lie cannot be made universal may be analogically
adduced here also with a difference that it is
not necessary that other individuals also acting
likewise would make evil not worth-while
practising.
In the first
meaning of the term ‘freedom’ we find it leads
to the negation of the will itself, for freedom
has reference more to action than to mere
thought: though, to be sure, we use the phrase
‘freedom of thought’ to signify that we have a
right to express our thoughts, thoughts which
have consequences on the activities of ourselves
as well as all those who have access to them.
Freedom thus has to be closely associated with
action. Karma is the general term that signifies
the action that anyone does. But by usage we
have associated so many more meanings to it
which extend the meaning to so many other
ingredients of an action. Thus, we can refer the
term ‘Karma’ to action, the consequences of the
action, or the conserving elements of such
action. That these are even considered to be not
limited to one action but to a chain of actions,
not of course or perhaps not mainly of the
nature of chain-reflexes of psychology. They
even assert that the explanation of the present
life is itself to be sought in a chain of causes
from past lives, - not perhaps the very
penultimate one, which has no beginning. All
these are mostly due to the inability to refer
any consequence or unforeseen occurrence in this
life to anything that one knows here in this
present life. But though this is incapable of
being proved and thus we may assert that freedom
is the essence of this unpredictability of the
causes of consequences, yet all this seems to
demand so much of our credulity.
Let us start with
the present problem, then, of our freedom in
action. We have four points to take note of: Are
we free when we decide to choose one among the
alternatives present before us or are we not
free? (It would be maintained that if we knew
all the alternatives well and our knowledge were
perfect we would be obliged to choose the one
that our highest nature or universe of desire or
reason or spirituality would dictate. In that
case we would not literally be free, though it
may be an euphemism. As the Russian theologian
asserted, to hold that the rational is the real
or the right limits the freedom to rationality
and this is not real freedom. Freedom is a
category of supra-rationality, not of
rationality. Just as it is not right to say with
the hedonist that freedom lies in enjoyment or
exuberance of sense, so also freedom, when it is
limited to rationality, is not correct). Thus
freedom, when it is taken to be a supra-rational
category, refers not to the individual in his
private choice but in his choice of that which
is relevant to his spiritual or cosmic divine
status or in relation to the Divine Reality. The
choice or the motive which determines the choice
would no longer be a private choice and in that
sense the alternatives rarely have the capacity
to become disjunctive except in respect of the
fundamental dichotomy of the private and the
universal. Thus the choice would yet be made in
action with an integral knowledge of the divine
nature and will which would enhance and further
the divine expression and realization in
activity. Our great seers have seen in this
divine ethic of motive and choice a clear
indication of the integral activity of the
Divine achieved in niskama-karma: the
choice is dictated by the inner light which
increases the light and the joy and goes on
expanding them within the Karta. The highest
motive is the motive of service of the Divine,
carrying out the divine will and without
hesitation to act, if need be, against all
forces that appear contradictory.
The action then
must have a motive and the motive force is the
divine voice and choice. The means then come in
for the Karma. Are these means suitable to the
realization of the end? We have had long and
learned dissertations on this subject. The fact
remains that unless the means help the
realization of the goal, or are adequate to
realize the same in as inexpensive a manner as
possible in respect of time and energy and
accuracy and without raising difficulties or
resistances, they cannot be said to be the
means. But a divine action does not bifurcate
the motive and the means and the end. It is only
the mental mind that does this and that labours
with alternatives all along the line of action.
The psychologists mention about the manner
anyone learns and give at least three
hypotheses: trial and error being the general
characteristic, these are-whole path learning,
place learning, and chain-reflex learning. We
shall only observe that all these reveal the
fragmental approach to the problem of action.
Just as in cognition all knowledge is received
in bits and somehow synthesized or analysed and
synthesized by the categories, and we never
arrive at truth as it is in itself or the thing
as it is in itself (ding an sich), so
also in ethics of the mental mind it is a
thorough fragmentalization of motives and means
and the process of trial and error only leads to
the application of traditional ways of action or
habitual modes of choice which conditions the
freedom of the individual considerably. The only
freedom for the human individual is the choice
of trial and error, thanks to the environmental
limitations and lack of knowledge of them. But
suppose one finds the laws of matter and motion
and has knowledge of the totality (geography of
things so to speak), then his actions proceed
skillfully. Thus Yoga is described as the skill
in action (yogah karmasu kausalam).
Another point of great consequence to the ethics
of perfection would be that whatever one does
really should not provoke conflict in the
atmosphere of things, but seek to resolve the
conflicts and bring about harmony. There are
recognized two ways by which harmony can be
realized: (i) the method of liquidation of
opposition has been the earliest in the field or
what one calls the peace of the grave; and (ii)
the method of integration and adjustment, deftly
so to speak, as to convert the so-called real
opposition into apparent opposition by making
them co-operate in the common endeavour of a
divine means. We can see that this requires an
integral means of showing that the criss-cross
of events and movements are capable of being
fitted into a pattern not by their own mutual
impingement or rationalized compromises (as
sometimes practised in the well-known and
notorious religious compromises), but through
the divine pattern of incidence which transforms
both of them to yield a divine pattern. The
seer, Messiah, Avatara, or Rishi acts in this
integral form, not merely having his eyes glued
to the immediate, but seeing in the immediate
the perfect occasion for the incidence of the
divine light and signature (vibhuti).
Thus efficiency of means comes from a complete
dedication of all to the Divine and the integral
force (cit-sakti) to act in and through
all and oneself for the realization at each
stage of the goal or end in perfect awareness of
the same, unfettered by any impediment either
from the circumstances or environment or from
other individuals equally acting but from the
human level of fragmentary actions. Means cannot
be divorced from ends and ends would and could
be of the same order as means or vice versa
only when there is the unique integral
perception of the oneness of the means and ends
and motives. There is the fine realization of
the human ethic in Gandhiji’s conception of the
need for the quality of spirituality in means
directed towards spiritual ends. Nonviolence
alone can beget non-violence. Spirituality or
integral activity alone can beget spiritual
freedom or integral existence. Material means
can do nothing here. But then, to the integral
person matter itself is capable of being –
because it is – spiritual when integrally used
or approached.
So far, then, as
to the means (karana)-instrumental or
material. The other two causes,-the formal and
final being, completely absorbed in the motive,
and the purposive direction of the integral
being which exceeds the private and the
interested in the particular.
The consideration
of the third aspect of Karma as the result or
effect (karya) of the action motivated
and executed leads us to the most impressive
part of the Karma problem, that part which alone
seems to be most important to those who are
afraid of Karma or action. The results of action
lead to bondage. Men are creatures of their
actions, not only when they become habitual
actions, but also the consequences of these
actions lead to certain other factors which more
thoroughly than ever before bind the individual.
Thus victories in action turn out to be Pyrrhic
victories alone. The consequences turn out to be
other than what one expected them to be. Human
actions motivated by private interest and acted
upon in isolation from the totality lead to
repentance and distress. We all know that though
a seeker after the goods of the world (artha)
gains them, he finds that they are not the real
instruments of happiness. Thus, ends taken up by
men, such as artha and kama and
even dharma , turn out to be but means,
and even then not perfect means either for the
realization of perfection or freedom. Freedom is
the essential goal, but even this in turn should
exist not as a result that comes out of the
operations of other causes but operative form
the very beginning. We are free or else we can
neither strive for anything nor choose any
means. Thus the end is not freedom but what
freedom achieves as the culmination of its
fullness. Complete freedom is the realization of
freedom-instinct. All others remind us that
freedom has not been got; rather, they point out
that in achieving them one gets bondage alone.
Thus it is that some thinkers thought that not
only Kanchana and Kamini are the dangers or
bondages but also even dharma (niyatam
karma): ‘Andham-tamah pravisanti ye
avidyam-upasate, tato bhuya iva te tamo ya u
vidyayam ratah’. (Isa Upanisad, 9). Karma
that is completely consecrated to itself and the
goal fixed for it in action leads to bondage;
though performed with freedom it leads to
bondage-greater bondage as it were. The choice
of a goal thus should be clearly neither
personal nor private, to satisfy a fragmentary
enjoyment or even knowledge or law. Thus the
mystics have known that the choice of the
eternal is the fundamental, for it liberates
even as it achieves the goal determined. The
goal-binding process, which is indeed a
limitation in respect of other lesser ends, no
longer operates when the eternal and the
unconditioned is chosen as the goal. This they
call goptrtva-varanam. There then exists
no interruption of the process of liberation or
freedom through Karma that has exceeded the
limitations of its objects. The ekantin
is a seeker after the eternal and the immortal
in motive, in means, and in end, urged by the
eternal; acting in and by the eternal as the
means (upaya), one attains the eternal
which is freedom. ‘Na karma lipyate nare’,
says the Isa Upanisad. Such action as is
dedicated to the Divine, with the knowledge that
all is of the Divine and in the Divine,
liberates and action itself undergoes a
transformation which exceeds even the
connotation given to it as dharma (right
action).
This integration
of the motive, means, and end is the first
condition of Karma that would be useful in
achieving, maintaining, and sustaining freedom
from the motive and means and ends that bind in
ordinary action. Thus Sri Krishna counsels the
‘surrender of all Dharmas to Him’ so that at no
point does the individual who has thus
surrendered get the feel of bondage. This is
liberating Karma, for it is divine action (divyam
karma). The integrative action is surely of
the Divine Lord or Brahman, for it proceeds from
the very nature of freedom, delight, and unity.
Thus the end of
action, if it is Brahman, liberates rather than
binds, and indeed such a choice of the eternal
dissipates every fragmentary and partial
movement of the consciousness that binds,
restricts, and causes illusion and Ahamkara. The
greatest difficulty lies in overcoming the
illusion that action should be private and
personal and can only be that. This is due to
the structure of the mind that perceives in
segments and fragments and tries to synthesize
the broken up. It is perhaps very relevant to
remember Zeno’s arguments about the illusion of
motion and Bergson’s refutation of the same as
it is a difference between two types of mind,
the mathematical and the intuitive. Even so
Karma should not be broken up into fragments of
activities of this individual and that and into
parts as having four phases of – motive, means,
end and results that determine the next chain of
activities or other chains of other’s
activities. The human mind has to be seen as
limited to the ego or personal consciousness
which is again tied up to particular ends of the
physical, vital, and mental. Indeed that is the
characteristic of the human mind; at its least
it is just sensorium, and at its best it is the
fragmenting instrument of the self behind which
analyses and laboriously reconstructs the whole,
leaving out what is indeed the very kernel of
the Reality.
But still a
fundamental consideration remains and has been
the most clamouring for solution. The goal is
not so much the binder but what it leaves behind
as further consequences or traces of its
effectuation, like the ever enlarging ripples in
the water into which a stone has been thrown.
These results are described as the sancita
and the prarabhda Karmas, resultants of
previous activities in prior lives which
determine our present career and suffering. The
liberated soul is said to discard both papa
and punya of his life and of course by a
moral distribution of deserts the good of the
individual goes to the good ones of the world
whereas the evil of the individual goes to the
evil ones. Be it as this may, we can see that
the human individual gathers round him these
effects which seem to continue to envelop and
determine the individual and we ought also to
anticipate that this is not purely an individual
envelope comparable to the suksma sarira
or linga sarira alone but also to the
social which brings about events in relation to
the individual, causing him to curse his fate or
praise it, i.e. in one word, knows them to be
adrsta, kala, or niyati. This
close interconnection between the destiny of an
individual and that of others is much the
root-cause of present misery. A knowledge of
previous lives is unfortunately incapable of
being had by ordinary human individuals, though
perhaps it ought to be available to the seers
who have transcended the limits of this
incarnational present. We know that Sri
Ramakrishna used to speak of the past of his
disciples and this is certainly not new as some
such references to previous lives of Acharyas
are not wanting. This transcendence of the
knowledge of one life, like the transcendence of
the knowledge of a single sensum makes for
freedom and reveals that a large freedom had
been indeed supporting and moving the Karma of
the present. The determination of the present
Karma is seen to be an activity of the
inalienable freedom of the spirit behind,
self-regulating itself in its expression.
Thus a liberated
person alone can have knowledge of the freedom
of the Karma that one performs and ‘ought to
perform’ as a revelation and expression of one’s
true nature. An integral understanding alone can
sustain an integral action, in which the motive,
the means, the goal, and the fulfillment of the
continuity of one’s eternal being inhere.
Here are briefly
analysed the phases of Karma and the implication
of freedom at every point, an implication
perceived and overcome by an integral
consciousness or mind (Sri Aurobindo calls this
the Supermind). This may go a long way in
clearing certain conceptions about the
relationship between Karma and Freedom.
2.13 PERENNIAL PHILOSOPHY
Satya
and Rta are the two most fundamental
concepts in Vedic Philosophy. Satya is
Reality and Rta is the law of truth, the dynamic
manifestation of all that is true. It does not
mean that satya is static nor that rta
is impermanent. We distinguish these two as
Being and the laws of Being, and Being includes
therefore Becoming. No religion or metaphysical
thinking can forget the fundamental nature of
truth and law. Truth is not formless and our
knowledge of reality will be poorer if we only
consider one aspect of reality, that aspect
which is at first look much more fixed than the
other.
That is why the
ancient seers have asked man to speak the truth
and to follow the Law (dharma) of Truth.
Satyam vada, dharmam
cara. It is the same fact that is enunciated
by Buddha, “Seek refuge in Dharma;” the truth,
whatever it is, will take care of itself. Those
who are incapable of following the law or Rta
or Dharma will not be able to preserve or
protect truth, nor can those who say that they
observe the law really follow it unless they
speak the truth without fear or favour and
without any illwill to anybody. Truth preserves
dharma and dharma preserves truth and they form
an organic unity. The ancient mantra (spoken in
another context) satyam tva rtena
parisincami–by Rta I circumambulate
(sprinkle, maintain, preserve, protect) satya
or Reality, really reveals the fact that not by
any other means can satya be protected or
preserved: our food, our life, and breath, mind
and self cannot be protected except by abiding
by the laws that pertain to each plane and
purpose. Purification of our being is available
only by means of dharma. So also
preservation from the hands of passion, asuric
forces of darkness are all rendered possible
only by means of dharma: cosmic,
terrestrial, individual, adhidaiva, adhibhuta,
and adhyatma. Our business is to do the
right deed, speak the right word, and by this we
preserve and make growth and improvement of
satya possible in us. We must become
satyakamas. There is the other part of our
life, when we are not conscious of our
existence, except perhaps in the intermittent
dream-consciousness, when we cannot even know
the law and therefore cannot preserve the
satya. We are wrapped in ignorance or sleep.
The individual follower of dharma, who is
indeed called a dharma, a function of the
Divine, an amsa of satya itself,
or the body of satya or Isvara, cannot
protect himself in sleep, or in pralaya,
or in darkness. When indecision, helplessness,
possesses the soul, all the dharmas that
he had been following to preserve and protect
the self, are of no avail. Dharma seems
to be threatened, and confusion,
dharmasankara, seems to be imminent. It is
then that we need the other mantra that can save
us from destruction. For that purpose the
ancient Risi gave another mantra, again used in
a similar context-Rtam tva satyena
parisincami-I circumambulate (sprinkle,
preserve, protext, in all ways) rtam by
satya. The satya is self, Godhead
, who is awake when everything else is asleep.
For it is satya that is the reality or
Being which is the source of all dharma.
The individual soul is to live by satya
and for satya, and dharma is the
activity of living for satya and is in
turn protected and preserved and increased and
liberated by satya alone. There is
therefore the famous prayer of the Seer “Uncover
Thou O Pusan, the golden lid that hides the
Truth, so that I may perceive satya-dharma”.
It is by the Rta that we cross over death and by
the former satya, we are enabled to enjoy the
Immortal.
The two dharma
and satya are indeed inseparable. To
separate them is to lose both this world and
hereafter, the higher and the lower, God as well
as wealth. It is the business of the soul to
offer itself to the Divine for protection and
emancipation, and it is the business of the
individual soul to follow the path dictated by
the Law, the soul-law revealing itself within
the individual, or the words of the Veda or the
teaching of the masters on the path and the law
givers, who are aptas or knowers and
givers of the spiritual truth-and not mere
political and social law-givers who see so much
less and with so much more confusion.
In Perennial
Philosophy the conception of Unity or oneness is
dominant. Reality or satya is one. But
its oneness is not a static oneness but a
oneness that is manifested in all its diversity
or multiplicity. Oneness is thus the form under
which the unity of the many is revealed or
apprehended. Each one of the many is indeed a
part, integral and expressive of the oneness of
the many. So much so, the oneness which is
expressed in our harmonious life, in our
thoughts and in our ways and modes of living, in
the world of physical phenomena, under the
concept of all embracing law or rta in
one world, or one universe. All cognitions are
but various ways of perceiving the oneness of
the Reality. But this oneness is not apparent to
the eye or sense-experience, or to the egoistic
seeking impulses or vitalities, or to the
embodied creature which struggles to maintain
and continue itself and perpetuate itself in the
world of other creatures and elements. It is not
even apparent to the eye of reason, which
emphasises the distinctions and differences and
analyses the ‘presented world’. The inner core
of individuality is not private, though finites,
being but a universal reality, and expressing
the universal eternal, immortal in the mortal
and changing. The individual is the microcosm of
the universe, continuous with the universe and
Reality, and expressing the universal character
of the Reality. Therefore is the famous
utterance of the Upanisad “Tat tvam
asi”-(Thou art That O Svetaketu) a
fundamental formula of realisation, whose
correlative statement is “So’ham asmi
– He am I”, the individual is the eternal
function of the Universal, and is of identical
nature as the Divine Reality, or Person, and to
manifest Him, to act in unison and as law and
instrument of the Reality or Person is
realisation. The individual is the eternal
multiplicity in the Reality whereas the Reality
is the eternal oneness of the multiplicity. The
only difference between the individual and the
Universal or Real Divine lies in the fact that
the Universal is all individuals and More or
Transcendent and is not limited to any one
individual whatsoever. The liberation and the
freedom and perfection and knowledge of the
individual consists only in the fact that it
moves or ascends in the universal world of
Divine Truth unhindered by ignorance of law or
being, and having an inner knowledge of the
unity of the diverse. It was Liebniz who
maintained that the individual monad is capable
of perfection, or fullest knowledge or distinct
perceptions all the monads and their changes
within oneself, and the cognizance of the law (Rta)
of pre-established harmony, or the ways of Grace
or Divine Will. Jnatrtva samya is
what one can have. Such a knowledge comes out of
adhyatma-yoga, inner yoga of the
Self, the Brahman. It that could come about only
when one has given up the pursuit of discovering
outer conformity and seeks the inner law of
Self-being, as individual part of the universal
Divine, as dharma of the Satya. It
is then that one recollects the past, knows the
present and is aware of the future and does not
recoil from the other souls but loves with a
love that is born of the law of inner harmony
and sympathy with the struggle and the
attainment of more and more light and free
movement in a world that restricts, constrains
and compels. Freedom lies in the service of the
Divine, in surrendering the particularity and
privacy of being that are due to egoistic
assertions and impulses and darknesses of
possessive living.
An appreciation
of the inner life of oneself and that of others
will reveal that nothing occurs without a cause
or sufficient reason. The differences between
several planes of being, like the material,
biological-vital, mental, and other
social-mental, levels really reveal that each
plane or sub-plane of being is governed by
definite laws fully valid within and for the
limits of those plane. Skill consists in knowing
and applying those laws for the efficient
prosecution of our divine effort. Our freedom in
a plane is possible only because we know the
laws governing that plane. If we are physical
scientists, our mastery of physical Nature is
commensurate with our ability to apply the laws
of Nature for conquest over it. We knew the laws
of gases, and steam engine was the result; we
knew the laws of magnetism and electricity and
we were able to apply the knowledge to the
making of bulbs and dynamos, radios and all the
other modern appurtenances of civilization.
So also when we
knew the laws governing animal life and the ways
of animals and plants, we began to practise the
arts of agriculture and breeding and taming of
animals or domesticating them. Since we are not
yet masters of the knowledge about animal life
there are many domesticable animals not yet
domesticated. Hindu puranas reveal that some of
the wild animals are vahanas of certain gods or
seers. The obvious meaning or suggestion seems
to be that they are the powers or intelligences
which have understood or known the laws of those
animals. Control and use happen only by means of
the discovery of the law and the knowledge of
the relevant order or dharma of each.
Equally logically
it follows that our ability to control ourselves
and guide ourselves and other men or humanity
lies only in the direction of our ability and
power to know ourselves-psychological knowledge
of man of himself and of his community would be
necessary. Human ills may be cured only by means
of knowledge of the laws that guide human
conduct, social and otherwise, normal as well as
pathogical or abnormal. But man is a plane of
being which not only can know itself but can
know those below it, namely, the animal and the
mineral, and material and plant, and in him,
therefore, through his passage through those
phases of being called evolution, there have
grown predispositions to the old laws or laws of
lower being and it is difficult for him to
extricate himself from the laws of those lower
orders of reality. Nor is it necessary. Even as
a man cannot understand a thing unless presented
to him in perception or by representation, in
imagery and by experimentation or execution, so
also he is unable to think and know and act from
the point of himself as mind, as rational, nor
does he consistently follow the application of
the principles of reason to the vast knowledge
of the lower planes of life. Thus in him is
revealed a contradiction. He has to leap away
from his past complexes, prejudices, sentiments
and what not. This is possible however only when
he knows himself as having a mind and not merely
a mind brought into being for the purpose of
utilizing more effectively the lower planes of
being, for the sake of his own biological needs
of satisfaction. But that is not all. It is the
beginning of a new action; a new potentiality
of mind is made active; a new mind comes into
being. Thereafter alone does man comprehend the
unity of Matter and its conservation within
limits; thereafter alone does man comprehend the
unity of energy and its conservation within
limits; thereafter alone does he perceive the
unity of all life, and its conservation within
limits; thereafter alone does he find that there
is a unity of mind and its conservation within
limits; and, thereafter alone he begins to know
that the law of conservation of each is only a
limited law, and that there is another fact of
convertibility or reversibility or processes,
that out of mind, by degradation, life had come
into being, that mind protects the life becoming
‘veiled in it’; that energy is a degradation of
life, that life and mind protect it, becoming
‘veiled in it’, that matter and mineral are
degradations of energy, that mind, life and
energy protect it, becoming ‘veiled in it’.
Therefore does Sri Aurobindo, following the
ancient seers, hold that matter, life, mind are
but involved and concealed consciousnesses in
different degrees. The ancients called this the
parinama of consciousness or of the
avyakta or Mula-karana, or
Prakriti. The terms used in the Aiteraya
Upanisad for the several activities of
consciousness are: samjnanam ajnanam prajnanam,
medha, drstih, matih manisa, jutih, smrtih,
sankalpah, kratu, asuh, kama, vasa; (III.2): The
higher the reaches of the consciousness the more
pure and integral it is and universalized, the
more completely does it apprehend and comprehend
the truths and laws and rtas (dharmas)
and satya of things, creatures, minds and
individuals. All is then perceived as suffused
through and through with the Truth, the Self,
the Divine, and working by His Law,
transcendental will, freed from all ignorance
and darkness.
The act of being
consumed, eaten, suffused through and through,
by the higher, of the lower planes is called the
Yajna, sacrifice, and the Yajamana, sacrificer
is the conscious agent who brings about this
consummation, suffusion, elevation and
transformation. It is of the nature of offering,
surrender, on the part of the lower; it is a
free offer to be killed or cooked and made whole
by the higher, which accepts this offer, this
sacrifice, this food. The esoteric meaning of
sacrifice thus goes far beyond the external form
and initiates a new direction in consciousness,
through its organization by the higher. No one
perishes by his surrendering or offering of
oneself but that there happens a new freedom
from which there is no return to bondage; a new
passion and purpose is unfolded before him; a
new world is created for him, if not merely
opened out to him wherein he could live and move
and have his being. That this doctrine could be
misinterpreted and mere murder of animal life,
or plant life or mineral life may take place for
the purposes of selfish instincts of
exploitation by man is true, very true. But real
sacrifice is made not for the sake of one’s own
uses and very purposes but for the Divine. It is
some times claimed that all things and creatures
exist for man’s benefit and God had ordained
this. But it is legitimate to argue that they
belong primarily to the Divine and that this
must be recognized, as it is indeed recognized
in the Lord’s Prayer, that all must be received
from the Divine, as given by the Divine, and
only the minimum of subsistence must be taken
without greed but with gratitude.
That this
sacrifice or the process of transmutation, the
alchemy of evolution and salvation, might differ
from plane, to plane from mineral to plant,
plant and animal, animal and man must also be
granted. Lacking self-consciousness and even
consciousness, they are used by man as his
instruments and things of offering to the Divine
and get the benefit of such offering to the
Divine.
Self-consciousness is poured into them or rather
they are exalted from their being and status,
and get purified, in one word. And in the case
of man, being endowed with the consciousness and
will and self-consciousness, he becomes the
agent, the outer agent who offering everything
that is his to the Divine, cows and cattle,
wealth of all kinds, becomes a free being, whose
consciousness goes beyond the transitory earthy
pleasure and comforts. He becomes
immortal-minded and immortal. The process of
sacrifice is signified by Fire, the inner Divine
will, and the individual is offered into the
triple fires, physical, vital and mental fires
or soul-fire, as the plane suggests, so that he
may be transformed or transmuted into a higher
nature. Some are transitory changes and the
individuals fall back into the lower, but having
tasted the freedom of the higher, they seek it
with more constant will by themselves. And there
are some other sacrifices which seek more
distant and deeper realisations, more
fundamental changes of being, involving several
leaps and steps to be covered. From such
attainment there is no return to the lower. The
condition of the former is desire, the condition
for the latter is non-desire for anything except
the very Highest status of divine living, of
living and moving in the Divine such as
sayujya, sarupya, samipya and salokya,
or even aikyanubhava, or
brahmasampatti. One primary fact that the
Hindu sages revealed was that man has a double
duty, a duty that he owes to the future and to
the lower, and a duty which he owes to the past
and the higher called fathers, pitrs. He
must sacrifice the lower, help them through
sacrificing them for the sake of their own
evolution; the unconscious and inconscient must
be raised from their torpor and stupor; it may
be symbolic only when we cannot really do it,
but it would be real and helpful to the lower
when its laws are overcome by the higher law.
Sacrifice in the sense of injury to animals is
possible only when a superior consciousness is
not available in the sacrificer, in one in whom
the divine consciousness has not taken abode.
And it may well be that really divine
consciousness need not have to kill the animal
but could yet bless it with inner freedom. But
Hinduism is also conscious of the law of
continuity and gradualness, and knows that
though leaps may be made, the knowledge of each
plane must be learnt, lived and experienced, its
laws understood and also know how the lower laws
are surpassed and subsumed under higher laws and
truths of Being. Omniscience is the goal;
clarity in every plane and the totality of
comprehension is the aim, That is the inner
causality, the meaning of change and progress.
2.14 RELIGION AND DHARMA
The soul of
religion and the body of religion is dharma.
We can in the above words describe the organic
relation between the religious ideals and
dharma. Dharma is the essential reality
about the Good life. We know that India has
always been described by the ancients as the
field or state of dharma–dharma-kshetra.
And the concept of dharma has been most
efficiently pushed to the forefront by that most
exquisite religious product of the Indian
genius-Buddhism of the Buddha. If Hinduism or
Vedism has placed God or God’s organic unity in
the forefront, Buddhism placed the Order, the
dharma1 ,
as its ensign and carried the message of the
Good life to the world. It is not necessary for
my purpose to canvass the vicissitudes through
which a religion based on the divorce between
the reality of selfness of God and His Order or
dharma had to pass, and pass it did, till
finally it was absorbed into its parent-fold in
some measure, overpowered though it was in some
alienating features that it developed in its
extremistic swing.
We have a
conception of Religion as a sufficiently helpful
attitude towards the understanding of the
metaphysical status of the individual in so far
as he is related to the total entirety, called
God, or Absolute Reality or Sachidananda,
or Good. Dharma2 is
the description of this Form of the Reality as a
dynamic construction; that is to say dharma
is the right attitude that the individual has to
take in respect of the total all and in respect
of his participation in it. Dharma is a
description therefore, not only of the Order but
also of the laws pertaining to and governing
every thing that is capable of keeping the order
in dynamic equilibrium. Dynamic equilibrium
means in one sense a state of agitation and
restoration and adjustment and evolution, or to
use the expressive description—in some ways the
only description that we could give: thesis,
antithesis and synthesis. The ancient Samkhyans
had conceived of this dynamic equilibrium in a
different way as the conflict between the three
gunas – the sattva, rajas and
tamas. Making a slight variation we could
say that the tamas and rajas are
the two moments of the dialectic known as thesis
and antithesis, and sattva is the
harmoniser, the synthesis. This is a fair enough
description of the process of the ascent into
divine life, as it is the pattern of the reality
construed as a dynamic Unity or Whole. It is
possible, of course, to challenge the above view
and state that Reality is a static pattern,
since it is a superterrestrial pattern or
Existence, to which alone we have to address
ourselves. That proposition will not entail
non-consideration of the actuality of the
struggle which reveals either an upward movement
towards dharma – consciousness of that
reality, however that might be apprehended
either as a Godhead or a Person of Impersonal
Consciousness, or else a downward movement
towards a receding and frustrating diversity of
egoistic and unconscious movements. This descent
entails a different form of the dialectic
between the gunas –– sattva and
rajas being the two movements of the
thesis-antithesis whilst tamas will form the
synthesis—or should we say the
counter-synthesis?
Dharma
is thus a fact of law, a principle of operation
that is not merely of the elements, of movements
and actions in general as natural features or
events as the Naiyayika-Vaiseshika schools
uphold, nor is it merely the right performance
of rites as in the Mimamsa or its causal
efficacy or even the benefits accruing from
sacrifices, capable of granting fruits
mechanically and unfailingly. It is all these
and something more. The question involved is one
of rectitude, and the proper dialectical
activity alone can resolve the conflict
engendered in our activities. Dharma as a
mechanical law is a usage that we might not at
present study, for Nature considered as
something unconscious or tamas is the one
term against which we are placed in our ascent
towards the sat or reality, the sattva, saman,
Godhead, Nirvana or Peace or Harmony or ananda
which shall be the synthesis if we could place
ourselves in antithesis to unconscious matter,
mechanical conduct, unintelligent acceptance. On
the other hand if we place ourselves in
antithesis to the Divine, the sattva,
then the synthesis is tamas, matter,
degeneracy, peace of death and a temporary
suspension of action, since it is not in the
nature of matter or unconsciousness to stay so
for ever for it is instinct with disruption of
itself. This disruption of matter and mechanical
movements is itself the primary cause of our
samsara or constant upheavals and round of
existence. Whereas the sattva of the
Divine nature is eternal and incapable of
disruption if once it is attained. Thus we find
in ancient scriptures and sutras we are
asked to abandon or to renounce matter,
egoism and other products and wealths and riches
of matter, if we would seek and attain the real
and the permanent reality of our existence. It
is true that the principle of rajas or
action is the ambivalent entity that
could be used in either direction. Religion lays
great store on this fact of withdrawal from the
material fact of tamas, its ignorance and
activities, which are capable of permeating even
the most subtle of our dharmic activities as
Samkhya has clearly shewn. The activities of the
individual have to get tuned up to the Highest
nature of Reality which is the harmony that is
ultimate and not dialectically temporarily
achieved however much these small syntheses are
requisite in the path of ascent. But it is
practice that makes this constant choice of the
harmony the highest possible and makes the
rajas or activity within us lose that
downward pull that is its earliest preoccupation
due to its terrestrial preoccupation with
self-perpetuation and self-preservation.
Dharma is thus an ought and not an is so far
as the human individual goes, though its own
significant stamp and nature considered from the
stand-point of Religion is one of eternally
significant typal or structural unity, always
present and realized.
We have to note,
as would have been seen in the above analysis,
that action typified by rajas is karma
that is restrictive if it is directed towards
the self-preservation and self-perpetuative
instincts of the lower forms and matter whereas
it can become expansive and evolutionary if
directed towards the realization of the Supreme
Reality and Ultimate harmony. Action involves
intelligence however below the normal
consciousness. Any action that becomes
repetitive on any plane or planes becomes
automatic and requires less and less of
attention and consciousness and therefore
becomes habit or instinct. It may be efficient
but it becomes impossible to change or alter
these habits once established without a lot of
trouble and struggle. It is this last capacity
of inability to change that is the chief bane of
material existence. It is precisely this that is
not the fact about Sattvaguna and
consummate intelligence which always acts from
the point of view of cosmic and supracosmic
consciousness. Sattvaguna is in matter
and it is this fact that is the intelligent
adaptiveness to novel situations inherent even
in the lowest manifestation of life. The
Samkhyan analysis in one sense grants the
inherent possibility of spiritual contact
because of this possibility, though the Vedantin
will and does find quite a different method of
explaining this fact. The point to notice is
that karma that is recessive or, to put it in
other words, selfish (that is self-preservative
and self-perpetuative and capitalistic)
mechanizes; whereas dharma liberates;
karma binds, dharma unbinds, karma
restricts, dharma releases; karma is the
principle of conservation, constriction,
crystallization, dharma is the principle
of evolution, creation, vigilant and awake
towards the highest purposes of the spiritual
life of liberation. It is true also that Vedic
karma when done selflessly makes for this
liberation-consciousness that is of ever
widening receptivity to cosmic existence which
is Divine, but the same when done selfishly for
personal joy and delight will restrict and lead
to the deterioration of dharmic consciousness.
We can also see that even though men may arrive
at some place or plane of consciousness out of
selfless activity the moment such a person takes
up the enjoyment or dwelling in that
consciousness alone seeking to enjoy it fully,
the dharma- consciousness gives place to
repetitive routine of actions that led up to
that state, but are unable to sustain the tempo
of the consciousness of ascent. It is this that
makes even the highest and largest codes of
morals and ethics mechanical instructions or
mechanical routine that make them despised after
attainment to the state. They contain not that
force that makes for ascent and point out to no
direction. But even this criticism would not be
forthcoming if only men did exercise their
consciousness in the direction of true
selflessness, for then there would be a clear
way of evolution in the Divine nature. Further
karma is uniplanal adjustment, that is to say,
its direction is mechanical or material
adjustment or even personal adjustment to the
outer universe or personal adjustment to the
object of its attainment at any one time. Not so
dharma. Dharma being essentially a
self-denying and Spirit-affirming activity
hitched to the supreme goal of liberation and
final attainment involves several planal
adjustments to the Divine, Cosmos, and material
worlds also which are included in the
description of the Total Reality. Since however
every dharma may become through
degeneration a karma, this danger has to be
avoided finally and can be avoided completely
only through the realization that the self or
the individual who is the carrier of rajas
and action through his egoity, is either not an
independent entity or else a nullity or an
illusion. This is the metaphysical truth that
has to be known; man is a creature, a dependent
being on God,a body of God, whose existence is
irrevocably linked up with God and that man
shall not seek anything for himself but for the
God who is his ruler, indweller, and svami;
man is a skandha, a congeries of desires
or cravings and not a self at all; the truth is
that there is no such thing as individual soul
which has to become selfish or self-perpetuative;
what exists is other than all this which is
anatman or anatta; the ego of man is an illusory
entity; due to avidya or ignorance, his cosmic
or supreme self is not this but the One Spirit
or Brahman; all seekings and thirsts and
cravings are false and illusory activities. In
all the above cases or ways we find what is
aimed at is the liberation of man from his
insular and isolated pursuits towards
self-preservation and self-perpetuation, which
the modern man knows are not so simply
represented in his life as in the case of
animals but on a wider and vaster scale and
subtler and perverse forms.
Karma Yoga can
only mean therefore the linking up of action to
the Divine Life or Life of Spirit by which
actions become consecrated to highest spiritual
life. The fullest meaning of the term Yoga thus
becomes clearly manifest. Actions then do not
restrict but liberate one from death even as the
Isavasyopanishad-Seer has stated: na
karma lipyate nare3;
vinasena mrityum tirtva4—Mechanical
actions turn out in the long run to be the grave
of intelligence; it is against that the fight
has to be waged. Therein lies the counsel that
Jnana must permeate action: action and
knowledge must reinforce one another; together
they must subserve the Highest Purpose of
God-experience, Nishprapanca-experience,
Nirvana; thus indeed do they bring about
the divine birth, that birth from which there
can be no fall. But nothing vital and ultimate
can come about through man’s efforts alone.
There is in each man the mystical instinct which
must become mature and when it becomes operative
then it leads the man to the Divine; for that is
the response to the Divine call. Truly indeed
does the Kathopanishad say
Na samparayah pratibhati balam pramadyantam
vittamohena mudha5 (l.
ii. 6 ab) and Yam evaisha vrnute tena labhyah6.
Dharma
is thus the path of supreme awareness, wherein
every karma is transformed into a kainkarya
or service or obedience to the Divine. Religion
and dharma are in one sense integrally
one.
Work
does not taint him.
Having
conquered death by the worship of Hiranyagarbha.
To
the careless and childish man befooled by the
delusion of wealth the Divine Path never
appears.
By
him is It (the Divine) obtained who by himself
chooses It.
2.15 THE LORE OF THE ANCIENTS:
SMRTIS
The Srutis and
the Smrtis have been the true sources of the
spiritual and ethical life in India. The Srutis
or the Vedas are divinely inspired experiences,
heard and felt and seen and entered into by
sages. They are contained in the Mantras.
Brahmanas, the Aranyaka and Upanishads. They
have a self-certifying authenticity and as such
they are the authority (pramana) for
every other type of knowledge generally and in
the field of spirituality they are the criteria,
so to speak, by which others are to be judged.
They do not depend on any other source of
knowledge or experience for their veridicality.
The Srutis have been transmitted both in form
and content through ages from teacher to
disciple in an unbroken continuity. It is one of
the greatest miracles of transmission in the
world. The Srutis form our spiritual,
traditional heritage. The Vedic hymns are lauds
about God’s infinite personalities and their
lila which are His felicitative beneficent
activities. These lauds reveal some of the
sublimest and deepest features of the Spirit
Immortal. The Brahmana literature deals with the
revealed processes of sacrificial rites, for
example the construction of the Naciketa
Fire altar taught by the God of Death, Yama,
Himself, as a means to the attainment of the
worlds of the Gods and ends which they grant for
felicitous living in the worlds here and
hereafter. Capable of being interpreted in at
least a three-fold manner, corresponding to the
demands of Man’s three-fold status, known as
adhidaivika, adhibhautika and adhyatmika,
an entire science of Interpretation or
Mimamsa came into being to settle and fix
the proper and correct performances as between
the different branches (sakhas) in the
Vedic literature of rites. There grew up also
differentiations and enlargements and
modifications in the size and scope of the Vedic
rites, for example, the grhya rites
(household rites) were extended suitable to
embrace communal and statal ends intended for
the general good.
*
From SWATANTRA July 2, 1955.
Another
differentiation, much earlier than the former,
also prevailed. Some rites were intended to be
performed daily, such as the worship and prayers
too be offered to the deities, forbears, guests,
nature and all living creatures; and some others
were intended for special occasions such as
arise in the life of every individual from his
birth to his death, namely, pumsavana,
upanayana, etc., and the several vratas
which are inculcated for the purpose of
acquiring merit or washing away demerit. That
these several rites have been sometimes utilised
for getting individual merit and glory for
oneself selfishly, does not at all militate
against their being the mean to the acquirement
of benefit for all. All Vedic sacrifices and
performances have one avowed aim, namely,
universal welfare (lokah samastah sukhino
bhavantu) and not the advancement of any one
community alone. The Brahmanas became the source
of all performances of duties (karmas) (kalpa
and grhya included). The Yajna,
Yaga and Yoga are the three aspects
of this integral brahmana conception. The
performance of these dharmas indeed is the only
way by which not only individual life but also
communal life could be supported. The Yoga
aspect was further developed by the Upanishads,
which form the final or concluding portion of
the Vedic Sruti literature. They are the
culmination of sacred knowledge, which is the
absolute truth, and are instructional in form.
They teach the supreme Brahman as the Reality to
be attained and united with and merged in. Here
also alternative and diverse interpretations
have held sway from the earliest periods thanks
to the variety of vidyas taught. A mimamsa
literature also grew up in the field known as
Uttaramimamsa.
The Sruti alone,
however, is not what men have received from
their forbears. A distinct literature known as
Agama of various kinds also held this
distinction. We find it among the avedic Jaina
and Buddhist schools as well as among provedic,
the Vaishnava, Saiva and Sakta tantra
schools. But in all these cases the Sruti is
less important than the teachings received from
their own Gurus, Buddhas, Tirthankaras and so
on. They do not claim to have been seen or heard
and they are critical of the teachings of the
Veda and are certainly opposed to the Brahmanas
both in respect of the grhya and
kalpa, yaga and yajna. But they claim
to have a spiritual view of reality though they
have been more humanistic in their outlook, even
when their goal was cosmic, that is, utter and
complete liberation from the world.
Smrti is the
other kind of tradition, which has prevailed in
an unbroken stream. The distinction between this
and the former lies in the fact that this is the
‘memory’ of the habits, customs and stories and
history, including even the philosophy or
philosophies that prevailed. It contains the
spiritual as well as the secular tradition of
laws and precedents in different periods of the
racial history. In any society men have both the
spiritual and the secular traditions, the former
representing the eternal and the unchangeable
truths of inner and higher and diviner life and
the later standing for the constant adjustment
to the world of changes and challenges. There is
a constant interaction between the secular and
the spiritual both in their individual and
social forms. The Sruti and Smrti are
inseparable and organic in a world, which is
seen to be a sacramental dynamic unity as in
Hinduism. Though there have been some who
claimed to follow the sacred Sruti alone and
others the Smrtis alone yet the two have mingled
so completely during the centuries that no one
who is a srauti can be other than a
smarta also and vice versa. The Smrtis have
one aim and that is to make the changing demand
of social life accord more and more to the
spirit of the Srutis. The great literature of
the nibandhakaras and commentators of the
different schools of smartas and srautas shows
on the one hand this indisputable phenomenon of
realistic change in the codes to suit the
‘historical necessities’ (which have always
derived an ironic pleasure from seeing permanent
and settled and even apotheosized codes change
and break and bow down before the inevitable
temporal process) and, on the other hand, they
have also revealed a grand development of
casuistical literature which seeks to foster the
sense of continuity, however shadowy, thanks to
the legal luminaries in society. No wonder a
large number of men consider that there is a
sanatana tradition, unchanging and
unchanged, though this is obviously not an
historically correct view.
Thus the Smrtis
form a body or historical tradition of immense
worth for the proper study of the ethos of our
country. They along with the Itihasas
(Mahabharata and Ramayana) and the Puranas have
contributed the real pattern of Indian culture.
It is indeed through them that the Srutis had
sought to realise themselves. The Smrtis embrace
more of ordinary life than the Srutis, but it
has been the aim of the Smrtis to lead man more
and more to the proper experience of the Sruti
itself. A happy blending of tradition of customs
and usages and revelation was what was the
characteristic pattern achieved by the Smritis.
In other words the Smritis achieved the yoking
of secular tradition with revelation through a
rich dynamic synthesis (samanvaya) of
religious practices (samayacara) and
righteous conduct (sadacara) as
illustrated in the lives of the purest and
finest of men. The number of
Smrtis is said to be forty-seven but only twenty
are extant. The most important of the
dharma-sastras are Manu, Yajnavalkya, Atri,
Vishnu, Harita, Usanas, Angirasa, Yama,
Apastamba, Samvarta, Katyayana, Brahaspati,
Parasara, Vyasa, Sankha, Likhita, Daksa,
Gautama, Vasishta, and Satatapa. The most
well-known are Manu, Parasara, Yajnavalkya and
Apastamba; these treatises are in metrical
Sanskrit. The Smrtis deal with dharma; they
indeed form the source of Law (dharma-mulam);
Smrti, Sila and Acara are the three important
topics dealt with. These are further expanded
into the exposition of (1) Veda and Vedanta, (2)
Acara and Vyavahara, and (3) Prayascitta and
Karmphala. The most important indeed is the
second, which deals with individual duties of
each station and position (Varna dharma
and Ashrama dharma) according to usage of
great and holy men and with the social codes of
political government and administration and
public welfare and commerce and the theory of
punishment. The last group deals with the
sacramental way of expiation for wrong doing,
wilfully or otherwise, which is indeed the
result of activities done by an individual or
officer of the State.
The Smritis do
indeed vary in their instruction from one
another. These have been studied by an
illustrious line of commentators so as to evolve
a unified code. Such a modern study is that by
Dr. P. V. Kane and others.
The different
codes, however, refuse to be disposed of on
grounds of relativity of authoritativeness.
Growing diversities in the fields of economics
and political set-ups and religions due to
changes of climates of understanding have not
permitted any one Smrti to have continuous
predominance over the others. To most modern
thinkers the importance of these different
dharma-sastras lies in the picture that they
present and the light that they throw on the
periods in which they have been considered to be
authoritative. Being practically pauruseya
or manmade (unlike the Sruata group of sastras
which are deemed to be apauruseya, not
man-made) it was well recognized that the
dharma-sastras ought to be classified according
to the age in which they held the field of
authority, and all the attempts at compromises
and options and adjustments in ethical conduct
and political and social activities are held to
have come in only to make the transitions from
one ethic to another easy and evolutionary
rather than revolutionary. It is precisely
because of this immanent and inevitable
necessity that changes had to be introduced,
cautiously no doubt, in the structure of the
moral and spiritual codes. It is a fact that
institutions devised at one stage of a nation’s
life for the conditions prevailing and operative
at that period, hardly help if not positively
hinder or impede the conditions which arise at a
later period. Nor should we forget that people
as a rule except under exceptional circumstances
demand that all change must conform to the past,
or in other words they resist change and seek to
rationalise change as merely a kind of
continuity or eternal recurrence. This is true
even in respect of grhya sacraments of
marriage and others. Caste and state (varna
and ashrama) that prevailed (never
ideally perhaps) brought in its train several
imperatives for its preservation or purity and
growth which are held to be not needed or,
outmoded, by some atleast at the present time.
So also the concept of rights has itself
changed, the sacramental rights have been made
to yield to the secular concept, even as the
individualistic attitude to rights has clearly
been substituted by the socialistic concept of
rights. Indeed we find that the very
institutions, which were originally instruments
of equality of opportunity, are condemned as
instruments and engines of inequality. The
notion of a sacramental Universe, which
undoubtedly was that of the ancient Smartas,
has passed into a kind of superstition, the
only notion that we have of the society today
being frankly materialistic.
The dharma-sastras
take serious notice of adhikari-bheda
(fitness-differentia) which has been the target
of criticism from the abstract spirituality of
the mystics on the one side and on the other
from abstract materialism which is equally
unrealistic. The Smrtis do not certainly belong
to the level of unreflective morality: rather
they are the most awakened realistic social
morality, which conduces to the growth of the
moral conscience and the social cohesiveness
which ultimately leads to the transcendent sense
of reality. The individual is a ‘pilgrim to
eternity’ in the context of the spiritual
society.
THERE is
undoubtedly an important incentive that may yet
develop in the readers of the Smrti literature;
there is so much in them, which strikes one as
authentic and indubitable and tremendously
realistic that men would like to recover the
ancient condition. There is no doubt that it is
by dharma that all life lives and grows and
expands and liberates itself. The Srutis and the
Smrtis are in fact the two pillars of ancient
wisdom. Whether or no our modern pragmatic
makers of the code have this synthetic genius of
the ancient seers, a fair consideration of their
eternal standpoint and the means by which they
sought the impregnation and transformation of
the secular world, would always be genuinely
valuable. We have yet to understand the
hierarchy of values and abilities, of social
stations and places and functions, which is
perhaps a truth that impetuous reformers and
iconoclastic revolutionaries and utopians are
unwilling to see. This is a message, which the
Smrtikaras have been at pains to deliver.
– Courtesy AIR.
2.16 PSYCHOLOGY IN THE MINOR UPANISHADS
The earliest
ideas regarding the structure of the human body
are to be found in the Rg Veda itself related to
the general theory of evolution. The
psychological insight of these thinkers far
exceed anything that they have given us
regarding the physiology of the human body. It
has been claimed by certain writers that the
development of the sacrificial rituals
facilitated the understanding of the
physiological aspects of the organisms, and this
is lent colour to by the descriptions of the
fire altars and their constructions given in
Satapatha Brahmana.1 The
mention of the distinct portions of the body
indeed is already available in Rg V. X, 163 and
AV. II. 33 and X, 2. Prof. A, F. R. Hoernle was
the first to investigate into the Vedic
cestelogy,2 and
he has shewn that the physiological ideas of the
ancient found expression in their rituals. What
apparently struck him as odd was that the
ancient rsis were mystically-minded. That is to
say that they felt that there was the
correspondence between number of bones in the
human body and the days of the year, that is,
360. This fact of adhyatmic, adhibhautic
and adhidaaivic3 correspondence
indeed plays a large part in the
psycho-physiological mysticism of the Ancients.
This is a deep and fundamental instinct that
colours the entire range of the vedic
literature.4
The evolution of
the physico-psychic body has been a most
remarkable thing and the ancient thinkers
conceived this in a way that makes the physical
just a descent of the spiritual lthrough the
psychic gradually formulating the planes in a
succession of increasing grossness oro
materiality. This is the metaphysical view of
the Upanisads. The divine Spirit is stated to be
the source the entire range of elements, powers,
forces, planes, gods and other creatures. In one
sense therefore the entire reality is spiritual,
and the manifestations of matter, life, mind,
overmind and other planes about which so much
has been stated in the Upanisads are too be
conceived as degradations of that Supreme Spirit
out of His own self-Will, for the purposes of a
creative activity which is the ascent of
evolution, which means the ascent of the souls
through the integrative organization of the
several planes in their own individualities or
as the many. Whatever may be the metaphysical
view that might be adopted to explain the
manifold nature of reality as revealing matter,
souls and their Lord, Brahman, the capital fact
about the evolution of oindividual life and mind
consists in the actual perception of the
integral unity of matter and Mind in the
organism. The psychical controls, and is
conditioned by, the physical; and the
interaction between the psychical and the
physical is not only constant but also
inevitable. The possibility of spiritual
evolution, or rather evolution of the spiritual
life is due, to the fact that we could evolve
because we intrinsically are spiritual, and the
physical is but the instrument of the psychical
spiritual.
Cosmic creation
is what is usually stated in all the Creation
Hymns of the Veda, and the Upanisads echo them
when they state that Brahman is the material and
instrumental, and one should add, the
teleological cause of the creation. This
creation is described as two-fold: the first is
the creation of or manifestation of all the
categories known as spiritual entities or gods
or powers, and elements such as mahat, manas,
subtle elements and subtle sensory and motor
organs, and the gross elements. As in the
macrocosm, so in the microcosm, there have
happened the gradual formations of the subtle
body and then the gross body.5
The physical
aspect of the human body is such that it reveals
the five elements through the possession of the
qualities in the several parts or organs of the
body. The Garbha Up. says “the earth is
said to be hard, apas or water is
fluidic, fire is that which is hot, air is that
which moves, akasa is that which is full
of interspace: Yad Khathinam sa prthivi yad
dravyam tadapah, yadusnam tattejo, yassamcarati
sa vayu, yat susiram tad akasam ityucyate, tatra
prthivi dharane, apah pindikarane,
tejorupadarsane, akasam avakasam. These elements
conceived to exist in these five forms of ether,
air, fire, liquid, and solid, are necessary even
for the formation of senseorgans, and motor
organs, though indeed they serve the higher
categories of mind, intellect, and personality.
“The ear exists in sound, the skin in touch, the
eye in forms, the tongue in taste, and nose in
odour.” “The mouth exists in speech, the hands
in lifting, the feet in walking, the anus in
excreting, the genitals in enjoying.” In this
manner the functions of the motor organs or
organs of action is described by the same
upanisad. The Sariraka Up. supports these
descriptions of the Garbha Up. The
elements of the outer universe or rather those
elements, which go to form the objects to be
perceived by the embodied soul, are indeed the
very things, which these sense organs pertain
to, or which are formed by the five elements.6
The evolution of
the human body is described by the Garbha,
and we find that the Ayurvedic writers like
Caraka and Susruta agree with the description
detailed therein. The human embryo is “semi
fluid in the first night; in seven nights it is
like a bubble; at the end of a month it is
hardened; in two months the head is formed; in
three months the region about the feet; and in
the forth month the region about the stomach and
loins and also ankle is formed; in the fifth
month the back (or spinal) bone; in the sixth
the face, nose eyes and ears; in the seventh it
become united with the soul; in the eight month
it becomes full (of all organs); in the ninth
month it becomes fatty.”7 There
is an earlier but less complete version in the
Pancagni Vidya (Ch. Up. VI, 2) of the
development the fetus.
The integration
of the several levels of sensation and action,
if we can speak of levels in describing the
differences between the sensations of sound,
touch, form, taste and smell, is possible only
on the basis of unification of these by a
principle that is the common source of all these
elements. This principle is variously known as
the buddhi or manas. The latter
term is usually reckoned as a sixth sense. The
unification is also made possible on the basis
of an inherent vital impulse or life, which is
that which is connoted by the term prana
or breath, which is different from the air. A
third type of unification is also called for by
the facts belonging to experience, namely, that
organs which usually have functions in respect
of certain elements or stimuli do officiate
under certain circumstances for other organs;
thus we hear with our eye-centre when the
auditional centre is impaired. Or when we
observe that the lower centres that function for
smell also respond to stimuli of the taste,
form, touch and sound. The Upanisads have a
theory of quintuplication that is the
intermixture of the five pure elements in the
formation of all organic bodies or life. These
several hypotheses explain the possibilities of
the cognitive, conative, and affective
experiences of the individual embodied being,
and not only that, they make it possible for the
Minor Upanisads to postulate parallel
developments of the bone, gland, nerve, hitas or
suksma-nadi or etheric systems which form such a
large part in the practices of achievement of
siddhi in yogic literature.
The five
principal elements are directly related to the
five principal sensations. The atoms of these
five elements form the sense organs in
conjunction with the mind (manas) which
the principal sensorium as also the principle of
desire. Further these earth, water and fire
elements form the annamayakosa the
material body. There is another sheath or
kosa pranamayakosa, formed by the
principal breaths, formed by the Vayu and
akasa elements, (Subala. Up. VII)
which though physical and tenuous are invisible,
and cannot be measured. But these do not form
the psychic body.
The psychic
sheaths are according to some upanisads the
manomaya, vijnanamaya, anandamayakosas. The
manomaya is the psychical organ that
directs and controls memory even as it helps in
integrating spontaneously the present experience
with the past experiences. But its main
principle is vital or desire. Desire it is that
motivates its action of memory or conservation
or integrating action. The vijnanamaya is
animated and sustained by the higher
soul-consciousness or intuition. It is just
possible that this vijnanamaya is itself
of three levels of prajnana, samjnana and
vijnana the level of intuition or
over-mind, supermind, Gnostic mind as stated by
the Aitareya Upanisad. The Anandamaya
is the highest which is enclosing the Truth, the
Sat-cit-ananda Self.8 Excluding
the annamaya on the one side and the
anandamaya-kosa at the other end, which is
called the karana-sarira (causal body) by
the Paingala Upanisad, the other sheaths
are known as the linga-sarira. The
Sarvasara Upanisad describes the sheaths in
the following manner: “The annamaya
sheath is the aggregate of the materials formed
by food. When the ten vayus (breaths),
pranas and others flow through the
annamaya sheath then it is called the
pranamaya-kosa. When Atma connected with the
two sheaths performs the functions of hearing
etc., through the fourteen organs of manas
and others, then it is called manomayakosa.
When in the antahkarana connected
with the above three sheaths there arises the
modification etc., about the peculiarities of
the sheaths, then it is called the
vijnanamaya sheath. When the self-cause-jnana,
is in its self-bliss like the banyan tree in its
seed though associated with these four sheaths
caused by ajnana, then it is called
Anandamaya.” It will clearly be seen that
there is no box-theory here, but a functional
theory of inter penetrative activities of the
several higher psychical functions in the
several sheaths in unity with the rest.
The
Saptannabrahmana (Br. Up.I iv) clearly
states that the annamaya sarira includes
in a sense all that exists of the seven planes,
or foods, each fulfilling the needs of such
creatures of the planes. It is stated there in
conformity with the Veda that these were
produced by austerity (tapas) and intellect. The
self-nature or ‘the three made for himself’ are
stated to be mind, speech and breath. And mind
is defined as “desire, imagination, doubt,
faith, lack of faith, steadfastness, lack of
steadfastness, shame, meditation, fear.”9 The
Taittiriya Up. II, 3 clearly sketches the
sheaths of annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya,
vijnanamaya and anandamaya. It is
also shews the inter-boxing of the sheaths, that
is to say, the lower sheath covers the higher
sheaths; the central core is the self. The
Mundaka II reveals the fact that the several
planes of existence or sheaths are in an
integral sense possessing the features of the
other planes also, in this confirming the
Saptannabrahmana (Brh. Up. I. iv). “From Him
come forth the seven life-breaths (prana).
The seven flames, their fuel, the seven
oblations, these seven worlds, wherein do move
the life-breaths that dwell in the secret place
(of the heart) place seven and seven” (II I, 8).
The co-ordination
of all these seven breaths, seven flames
mentioned also at Prasna III. 5, and
Mund I. 2. 4. is something achieved through
the activity of the mind located at the heart.
Further this correlation between the fires and
breath is worked out in the Prasna IV. 3.
Apana is garhapatya fire, vyana
is anvaharyapacana (southern sacrificial)
fire, prana is the Ahavaniya
(Oblation) fire; the samana equalizes the
two oblations, the inbreathing and the
outbreathing.10 The
mind verily is the sacrificer. The fruit of the
sacrifice is Udana upward breath or
movement to Brahman day by day.
Whilst the
physical body through its nerves, sensory and
sympathetic, transmits all the extrovert or
peripheral stimuli and the reactions to the
psychic organs which are behind all perceptive
cognitive, activity, and also guides the desires
and volitions which arise out of perceptive
activity, it also determines them. The psychical
factors in turn form such psychograms or ideas
or habits or tendencies so as to influence
memory and behaviour and such other equipment
which help response on future occasions. The
psychic factors form indeed the very stem of
future action.11 Action
is the thing in all existence, and skilful
action is Yoga karmasu kausalam as
the Gita has stated. The mental forms or
psychograms are more influential in prospective
action even then the neuronic structures or arcs
which determine all types of responses. They
however do not sublate the neuronic but only
subordinate it to their own vision or
cognitive-control.
In the formation
of intelligent association tracks or arcs of
behaviour, consciousness is fully utilized.12 Some
writers hold that consciousness is itself a
product of interruption of activity as a
consequence of frustration of action.
13 While
this genesis of consciousness in animals and
habitual actions is quite true, it is not true
to say therefore consciousness is just this and
that it is an epiphenomenona useless for action.
On the contrary according to the Upanisads,
Consciousness enters into the picture because of
its need to meet the occasion with its light and
fore-vision and plan. It alone can plan the
future to meet the novel situation for which its
previous psychic or material provisions in the
form of neuronic arcs or conditioned reflexes or
psychic autograms which functioned with
subliminal consciousness were inadequate. The
dynamic nature of Upanisadic psychology lends no
room for the mechanical theory of genesis of
consciousness.
The Mandukya
Up. implicitly refers to the nineteen
ingredients of the functions of the
antahkarana when it refers to the nineteen
mouths which refer to the five organs of sense,
five organs of action, five vital breaths, the
sensorium (manas), buddhi, ahamkara
and Citta, according to Sankara (3)
and (4). The Maitri Up. however limits
the intellect-form to buddhi, manas and
ahamkara.(5).
We can see
clearly that Citta is that which is a
principle of thinking (cintana) and
characterised by cit (intelligence)
though extroverted in the direction of objects;
equally manas is derived from the root
man ‘to think’. That is why all the
different operations of mind are referred either
to citta or manas. Buddhi,
even as intellection or abstract ideational
thinking, is discovered to be the real link
between the introvert psychical self-knowing and
citta (manas14).
We can patently see that the Vedantic
metaphysics and original samkhyan metaphysics
have moulded and shaped the understanding of the
psychic apparatus15.
14 Kausitaki Up. 1.
mentions the dynamic nature of the functions
such as manas, as those that are the
messengers of the Divine Brahman conceived as
breath, the supreme prana. “Of this same
breathing spirit as Brahma vrily indeed the mind
(manas) is the messenger; the eye the
watchman, the ear the announcer; speech the
handmaid.” The divinity named Mind is a
procurer.”(3)
15 Prof. Hume in his introduction
to his translation of the Thirteen principal
Upanisads points out that the original words
were manas and citta which denoted
all mental activities, and that buddhi is
a samkhyan word. He instances the
Svetasvatara’s two enumerations of the
categories (1.4-5) and (4-10) as belonging to
non-Vedantic and samkhyan classifications. The
post-principal Upanisads are, it can be seen,
equally not clear about the different functions
of the fourfold
antahkarana.
cf.
The Sri Bhasya in dealing
with the question of number of organs makes
comment on the nature of the buddhi,
ahamkara and citta, which are all to
be considered to be “mere designations of the
manas, according as the latter is engaged in the
functions of deciding (adhyavasaya) , or
misconception (abhimaana) or thinking (cinta)”
Manas is known as atma, the
eleventh (Brh. Up. II. iv, 11) and as the
eleventh it has been mentioned in the Bh…… XIII.
5. Sri Bhasya: II.
iv.5)
contd....
If the
differentiations between the several functions
of the antahkarana were largely due to
the samkhyan influence, that is to say,
the discriminative school amongst the thinkers
on the psychology of the self, witness the
earliest discrimination made between the several
functions of the mind or inner psyche through
which the self works and knows. “Whereby one
sees or whereby one hears, or whereby one smells
odours, or whereby one articulates speech or
whereby one discriminates the sweet and the
unsweet; that which is heart (hrdaya) and
mind (manas)—that is consciousness (samjnana),
perception (ajnana), discrimination (vijnana),
intelligence (prajnana), wisdom (medhas),
insight (drsti), steadfastness (dhrti),
thought (mati), thoughtfulness (manias),
impulse (juti), memory (smrti),
conception (samkalpa), purpose (kratu),
life (asu), desire (kama), will (vasa)”
(Ait. Upa.III.5.) All these are appellations of
intelligence (Prajnana). It is clear from
the above tht it will be futile to argue that
the earlier writers were not aware of the entire
range of functions that the self as a conscious
existence engages in. The later development or
the development due to further discriminative
activity on the part of the scholastic samkhyans
has been to reduce these to a general plan of
gradation of higher and lower so as to derive
the lower from the higher.16 In
this function of grading according to higher and
lower levels of conscious activity they have
placed the Buddhi as equivalent to
vijnana at the top, and the will,
steadfastness, at the level of the ahamkara,
for these are the chief characteristics of
egoity, and the rest are distributed to manas
(or citta in Yoga). The location of the
central self at the heart (hrdaya) is
unique to mystico-religious consciousness.
The localisation
of functions of the several planes or levels of
consciousness will be seen to have not developed
very much in the minor Upanisads except in
Sariraka Up. That is a development that has
happened in tantra.
The psychic
apparatus (or origin) which is to be considered
to be distinct from the self consists of four
phases. The antahkarana corresponds with
the physical brain and other spinal centres.
Manas, buddhi, ahamkara and citta
are stated to be the four phases.17 Their
functions are certainty, certitude, egoism and
flitting thought. The Paingala Upanisad
says “Out of the collective three parts of
sattva, He created the antahkarana.
Antahkarana, manas, buddhi, citta, ahamkara
are the modifications. Sankalpa,
niscaya, smarana, abhimana, anusandhana are
their functions.” In the above description
antahkarana is given a general
characteristic of volition or creative volition
which reveals that the rest are but subordinate
to this purpose. All certainty, memory, egoism
and enquiry refer to and answer to the purpose
of will. In other words, the psychic organism
from the very first is directed outwards, even
as the sensory and motor organs are extraverted.
The Sarvasara Upanisad, on the other
hand, mentions four only excluding the
antahkarana. The Trisikha Up. follows
the Sarvasara Up. The Antahkarana
consists not merely of the above four but also
the suksma jnanendriyas (subtle
sense-organs). Those are all of atomic size. The
lingasarira is antahkarana with
all its composites.
Manas
is the specialising and sensory co-ordinating
organ, and is the ideational centre, next only
to buddhi, Gnostic mind, as it partakes
of less sattva than that, but all the
same it is more closely linked up with sattva
activity or cognitive or cit-activity
than the sense-organs. Paingala Up. says
that buddhi is higher intelligence and
has the function of memory (smarana).
Manas acts as an extravert associative
memory rather than as introvert memory of the
buddhi. Some writers have stated that ‘Manas
is that which determines, mistakes, doubts and
defines.’
In this case it
stands for the entire antahkarana. Some
writers denote by manas, the sensorium,
while citta is of mental modification,
citta-vrtti, which includes all vasanas,
emotions, desires, and subjective features.
It is in this sense Patanjali uses the word
citta in the second sutra of his Darsana.
The control of subjective factors it is that
leads to the apprehension of the true nature of
objects out side as also within, for it must be
borne in mind that Patanjali was a realist who
treated all experiences and objects to be real
and not unreal as the idealists hold.
Amrtabindu Up.
speaking about manas describes the
variations in the following manner, and its
description reveals that it did not make any
distinction between manas and citta.
“Manas is said to be of two kinds, the
pure and the impure. That which is without
desire is the pure, and that which is desireful
is the impure.”17 Manas
is the cause of both bondage and freedom, if it
is impure it leads to bondage and annihilation.18 Manas
is the cause of samsara when it becomes
corrupted by desire. Maitrayani Up.
describes manas in the same manner as
above.19 It
is of two kinds, it says, the pure and the
impure. The impure is that which is full of
desire for enjoyment (kamasankalpam).
Desire is the root, and sankalpa is in
most cases traceable to desire, though it is
indeed not capable of being applied to the
desire for emancipation from samsara.
Tejobindu Upa. describes that manas
is the cause of three pains, the passions,
anger, bondage and all the miseries, faults and
even various forms of time, and that this is
known as sankalpa.20 The
Mukti Upa. says that manas is
sankalpa.21
Maitreya Up.
says
that “Citta alone is samsara. It
should be cleaned with effort. Whatever his
citta (thinks) of that nature he becomes.
This is a supreme mystery. With the purification
of citta one makes both good and bad actions
perish.”22 The
Annapurna Up. expresses this more tersely
“Attachment of citta towards objects
leads to sorrow, and when it renounces them it
leads to joy.”23 Maitreya
Up. puts this point very clearly almost
recalling the samkhyan view that disunion from
prakrti leads to liberation. “Just as citta
becomes united with objects it comes across, why
should not one be released from bondage when one
is united with Brahman”,24 thus
focussing the main issue of Vedantic thought as
not so much on the disengagement from matter or
outer objects, (under which category even
desires and volitions are included in a sense)
as the union with the Supreme Brahman. It is
this latter which is more important and the
instruction to restrain the mental
modifications, described as citta-vrtti
is a necessary preliminary subordinate to the
Brahma-prapti. On this point, the
Isavasyopanisad (12-14) describing the need
for asambhuti and sambhuti
upasanas, shows the need to get rid of all
obstacles to Brahma-prapti as subordinate
to the Brahma-prapti-upasana.25
We have shown
that no clear distinction is available in the
minor Upanisads between the two terms manas
and citta and that they are used almost
interchangeably. But it can be stated that
manas is the sensorial counterpart of the
citta, the volitional aspect, of the
antahkarana both of which are objectively
turned, that is to say, hankering after objects
of the outer world.26
The Sariraka
Upanisad however localises the several parts
of the antahkarana. “The seat of the
manas is the end of the throat, that of
buddhi the face, that of ahamkara is
the heart and that of the citta is the
navel.”27 It
can clearly be seen that manas being
localised at the throat signifies that manas
is the organ related to speech, the link between
ideation and action. The buddhi placed in
the face or more properly at the ajna cakra28 signifies
the thought-level, whereas the ahamkara
to be possessive-sense or the sense of
possessing, whilst citta placed at the
navel or the adrenalin-gland reveals the emotive
character of this function of mind. Altogether
the localisation of these four aspects of
antahkarana reveals that the Minor Upanisads
were aware of the levels of thinking which
descends from the pure ideational level of
intuition or vijnana down to the
sensorial and emotive levels which are placed in
the trunk, or what modern physiologists will
say, the spinal level.
The psychological
understanding of Yoga methodology has to take
into consideration both the
physiological-material and the psychic apparatus
consisting of manas, buddhi and
sat-cit-ananda. It is clear from the
writings of ancient thinkers that they were
aware of the need for localising functions of
mind and sensory action as also of the several
mental processes and over-mental and supramental
processes. That they placed these in the head
(or brain) whilst they also saw that the vital
functions were in the abdominal region is also a
great fact. The Paingala
29 Upanisadic
description of the linga-sarira localises
the functions. The functional description of
these sheaths by the Paingala and
Sarvasara and others reveals one other
significant fact, namely, that these several
sheaths are available in the bodies of living
creatures and not of the dead, for these are
said to go away with the soul with the exception
of the annamaya sarira.
Expressing the
functional unity of the sheaths we can say that
when the self functions on the physical or gross
level it evolves the atomic or electronic system
of being. When it seeks to move or grow or
expand beyond its own relative ambit of material
existence, it assumes sensory life, it becomes
capable of response to outer environment in two
ways that is of perception and action. The
development of the intellectual perception is
due to the soul acting more efficiently in a
larger ambit or seeking to do so. All these
several levels of conduct are sustained by its
own self-energy known as the primeval desire or
karma. When the soul is able to control
and sustain and lead or evolve these sheaths
towards integration through subordination of the
lower sheaths to the higher sheaths till it
manifests its own overt control or conscious or
supraconscious control over these from out of
its own self-nature as saccidananda, it is said
to have attained yoga-siddhi or
liberation or jivanmukti.
The importance of
the linga-sarira thus consists in its
being closely associated with the soul. Indeed
it determines the nature of the sensory and
motor organs of the individual, suitable to its
karma. The prana is the connecting link between
the mental and the material impulses or vital
impulses or mind-energy. In one sense we may go
further and affirm that it is that which links
up the five sheaths, but then its highest form
will be known as the Samana30 the
“equalizing breath” one of the five pranas.
Pranas as such exhibit no such selfish
propensities and all their functions are
directed towards the maintenance of the bodily
system only. Buddhi stands as a conscious
principle of life and prana as the
non-conscious (active) power sustaining the
body.”31 We
have to understand the five-fold nature of this
prana which functions in the body in
five-fold ways according to the order of
existence or the sheath relevant to each of
these.
The Upanisads
hold that Vayu and Akasa (air and
ether) act primarily between the psychical
manas, and buddhi; some interpose
between these two ahamkara or egoity,
while some others place it earlier than
buddhi, and the purely gross organs formed
out of heat, water and earthy elements. Vayu
has a throbbing movement, and its movement (spandana)
helps to carry the impulses either way from or
to the sense organs and psychic organism
antahkarana. In either case, it is clearly
known that its function is of electro magnetic
type and its penetrative movement is such that
it makes way for itself, or interspace is
created by itself. This interspace is something
ever available in all elements or organs that we
have because of the pancikarana (quintuplication)
assumed by the Upanisads. Thus not merely vital
energy but vital energy conjoined with the
etheric electro-magnetic energy is at the back
of all organic processes more or less as the
case may be.
Having thus
described the functional activities of the
psychic organism, which are all suksma or
rather placed in the suksmadeha, we shall
sketch the nature of the suksma-sarira
itself. As already stated the suksma-sarira
is upheld by the akasa and prana.
The thought, sense, emotion are three levels of
the jnana, but they are incapable of
directly operating except through akasa
(ether of sound, of so-called electrical energy)
and prana (breath of touch) which
integrates the several functions of the jnana.
The connecting links between the Vijnana,
Manas, and citta are those fashioned
by etheric and pranaic activity in nadis or
psychonic paths, which are the correlates of the
neuronic paths. The psychonic system is similar
too the neuronic system. The nadis are
evolved by the activities of the akasa
and prana-movements.32 The
growth of the psychic structure is thus
essential by on a par with the growth of the
evolution of the highly integrated nervous
system, as also the circulatory system of the
material level. The endocrine system helps the
several systems of matter, water (blood), (fire
nervous), air (breath) and thus is rightly
called the harmonic system. But the vital
activity of prana is more that of the
respiratory system, since all the activities of
the prana refer to the movements of
prana which as samana integrates the
several systems and organizes the psychonic and
neuronic pathways.
Prana it is that
organizes all and relates the separate organs.33 Prana
is the connecting link, and it is itself a form
of akasa (sound-movement or nadaja). It is
subtle and pervades the entire psychophysical
organism. It is governed by the will or the
mind.34 Prana
is life. Breath is just a function of prana on
the physical plane, and control of breath it is
that leads to enhanced vitality. “Prana is
called Vayu because of the aerial
operation to modification of the internal
instruments arises from their being susceptible
of a sort of motion similar to that of air, and
from their being governed by the same deity.35
Because of its
linking up all the planes and systems physical
and psychical it is called the sutratma.36 “Through
it one inspires (in-breaths) and out-breaths and
moves. Without it no organ will work. Through
air the current cf blood is driven into the
nadis from the plexus of the heart.”37 Chandogya
Up. has given us an earlier version of this
all-pervasive or all-linking movement of
prana. “As spokes are fastened in the hub,
so on this vital breath everything is fashioned.
Life (Prana) goes on with prana.
Prana gives (life) to a living creature (prana)”
(VII, 15, 1). The greatness of prana is
intimated, by the Brahadaranyaka Up.
also. (IV 1.5.; VI 1. 1. 7-14) Prana vayu
is stated to be ten kinds according to the seats
or portions of the body it occupies.38 Prana
is stated to be created out of the rajas-essence
of the five-fold elements.39 Pranas
typify activity and as such are said to
belong to the rajas-essence, even as the mind is
stated to be sattva. The Sandilya Up.
refers to the location of the five principal and
five subordinate vayus. “Prana, Apana, Samana,
Udana, Vyana, naga, kurma, krkata, devadatta and
dhananjaya, these ten vayus move
in all nadis. Prana moves in the
nostrils, throat, navel and the great toes and
the lower and upper parts of the Kundalini.
Vyana moves in the ear, eyes, the loins,
ankles, the nose, throat and the buttocks.
Apana moves in the anus, genitals, thighs,
knews, stomach, seeds, loins, calves, navel and
the seat of fire (Manipuraka). Udana
lives in all the joints and also in the
hands and legs. Samana permeates all
parts of the body.”
40
But there are
slight variations of the above descriptions in
the Amrtanada and the Maitri panisads:
the former states that it is Vyana
(not samana) that flows through out the
body (vyanah sarva-sarira-gah) and speaks
of samana as established in the navel (nabhisamsthitah).
For a similar view the Yoga-Cudamani Up.
can be seen. The latter Upanisad says “Prana
…. includes inhalation and exhalation, while
apana refers to tht movement of breath
which takes place in the excrement and urine and
semen, Udana as described seems to refer
to eructation. Samana is the breath which
carries on the process of digestion. Vyana
is that breath which is always present even when
there is no breathing activity upward or
downward,41 and
therefore both prana and apana may
be stated to be dependent upon it. The sense in
which samana is a higher form of vyana
is confessedly obscure, but may be suggested
tentatively that while the latter represents the
breath ever-present in the body merely as a
support of prana and apana, the
former is the same breath considered as active
in digestive process. The sense in which
udana is looked upon as between vyana
and samana is also quite uncertain. As
samana is vyana engaged in digestion
and as vyana is of course (cf.
definition) present before and while food is
being taken, therefore it is not impossible to
conceive that it is in this sense that udana
is between vyana and samana.”42 Prof.
Ewing continues to describe the breaths further
thus: “Prana ascends upwards Apana
moves downwards. Vyana is that by which
these (prana and apana) are
supported (anugrihita). Samana is
that which conducts into apana the
grossest element of food and distributes—samanayati—the
subtle (elements of food) into the various
portions of the body ange ange. “It (samana)
is a higher form of vyana—uttaram
vyanasya rupam—and between them is the
production (or rise) of udana.”43
These then the
five forms of the principal breath, prana or
life and in it its self-nature sinks into the
heart where it resides. Says the Garbha Up.:
“Prana descends lower and lower as the
time of breath approaches and finally settles in
the heart when the child is born.”
The subordinate
airs (vayus) have the following
functions: naga functions in vomiting and
other expectorative activities, kurma for
movements of eye-lids; krkara causes
hunger etc., devadatta for movements of
idleness etc., (or quietude) and dhananjaya
for expectoration of Phlegm.”44 These
secondary or subordinate airs are as may be seen
not so clearly seen to have anything other than
localised feelings of movement that are
involuntary.
Thus it can be
seen that prana is not air but the
principle of movement, not atmospheric air nor a
material effect such as gas generated during the
process of digestion. Susruta, the most
important doctor of Ayurveda in ancient times,
defines it as a force which sets the whole
organism in motion. “It is the principal factor
which determines genesis, continuance and
disintegration of the living body. Its vibration
takes a course as the controller of the
correlative functions of the system.”45 Thus
it is essentially the activity of the samana,
the harmoniser, or, the vyana that is
the all-enveloping motion element. As I have
said already if we conceive this breath or
prana as having the quality of touch as the
Upanisads have affirmed, it gets the further
ability which mere nada (sound) does not
possess to link up or form the psychic synapses
which are such important elements in the
integrative activities of the autonomous order.
The Upanisads
also describe these pranas to have
certain colours. Amrtanada Up. speaks of
prana as having the hue of coral
(blood-red-gem), apana as having the
colour of indragopa (an insect of red or
white hue); Udana as pale white (apandara),
and vyana as the ray of light (arcis).
The samana is of pure milk and crystal
hue. Ya is the bija of prana and
vayu; Ra is the bija of apana
and Agni; La of vyana and
Prthivi; Va of udana and jiva; Ha of Samana
and the Supreme Brahman: that is the reason why
the term Prana is used to denote all
types of breaths as it has the bija of vayu
itself.
Thus Prana
is the most important vehicle of the self in
this control, sustenance, and upholding of the
activities of the body. It links the suksma
and the sthula sariras. It is also stated
that the prana extends about twelve
digits above the body.46 In
conjunction with nadis on the one hand
which are the akasaic paths and the nerves which
are the subtle nerve-paths (of fire) spread all
over the body, it organizes the entire system on
dynamic lines. It works in conjunction with fire
and other elements in one body.
In the nervous
system of the individual, the subtle nerves are
the pathways organized in a network, like a
telephone exchange, with several centres or
plexuses. The physical body it has been stated
as composed of the agni, water and earth
elements, that is to say of heat, fluids and
material portions. There are stated to be three
types or forms of agni47 In
the heart of persons there is an internal
agni Vaisvanara, which is of three forms,
Jnanagni, that pertains to the mind,
darsanagniI that pertains to the senses and
Kosatagni that pertains to dahara
and digestive organs. It may be stated in this
context that agni considered as the
element of heat in the body is but the prana
vayu which has evolved these agnis.
Further we have another interesting fact to bear
in mind. The Upanisads describe five levels of
akasa, namely akasa, parakasa, mahakasa,
suryakasa and paramakasa. “That which is of
the nature of darkness both in and out is
akasa. That which is of the nature of
darkness both in and out is akasa. That which
has the fire of deluge both in and out is
mahakasa. That which has the brightness of the
Sun both in and out is Suryakasa, and the
brightness which is indescribable, all pervading
and of the nature of unrivalled bliss is
paramakasa.”48 We
have already referred to the threefold
Vaissvanara Agni, the statement of the four
different levels of its operation such as the
thought, sensation, and digestion and emotion (dahara).
The cakras are indeed the sixfold centres
of the subtle body of ether, air and Agni.49 We
have also the five fluids typified by the
glands; and the vata, pittha and kapha
theory of the Ayurveda in one sense links up the
three elements of water, fire and vayu in its
diagnosis of the health and harmony of the body.50
47 cg. Garbha Up.
48 Mandalabrahmana Up.iv
49 cf. My article JSVOI.I Where
this subject was fully discussed.
50 cf. Mh. B. Santi. Ch.74.
2.17 YOGA PSYCHOLOGY IN THE MINOR UPANISADS
Levels of Consciousnesstc
"Levels of Consciousness"
CONSCIOUSNESS is
the most important item in psychology, whether
it is considered as a function of a spirit, or
the soul, or as spirit (psyche) itself.
Consciousness is stated to be of many kinds,
though to say so may appear to be not altogether
warranted. This division into kinds depends upon
the kinds of objects and creatures wherein it is
seen to appear or manifest. Thus we can speak of
metal-consciousness, plant-consciousness,
animal-consciousness, human-consciousness, daiva-consciousness
and Absolute-consciousness. This fact is already
apprehended by the Aitareya and
Taittiriya Upanisads.2 There
are other divisions also according to the number
of sensory organs manifested in any creature.
Thus we have to concede the fact that
consciousness is involved in the several stages
of life or manifestation. There are degrees of
its involution in matter, plant, animal, human
and these stages may well be recognized as the
annamaya, pranamaya and manomaya stages or
levels of consciousness. If we agree to view the
whole creative process as the manifestation of
the latent power of self-involution of
consciousness in its own activity, then it
becomes also clear that matter itself is not
merely a product of consciousness, but also a
closed enveloper of it for some secret occult
purpose which could only be drawn out by the
higher consciousness acting on it.
Several theories
have arisen on this account. Some keep the
Consciousness (the Absolute Consciousness) in
its native purity and explain the whole process
as a veil of Maya (delusion) without affecting
the nature of that consciousness in any manner
but all the same revealing that consciousness as
differentiated to the differentiateds.
Some others hold
that the whole process of manifestation is an
action by that consciousness itself which is
eternally embodied in matter and souls, to whom
these are of the nature of eternal modes or
bodies. These modes are subtle in the causal
stage of the Absolute and these become gross in
the effect state of the self-same Absolute. The
Absolute is a Will and a Personality of extreme
Infiniteness and Fullness and Auspiciousness.
There is a third
view which holds that the Absolute though a
consciousness is a unity in multiplicity and all
the planes of life and matter and mind are but
self-positings of its descent which it
thereafter links up in its own primal
consciousness in and through an ascent of itself
through these self-positeds.
This view reveals
the reality of all states even like the second
view already stated and visualises the organic
ascension of all stages and states of
consciousness ultimately in the Absolute
Consciousness. No doubt some persons will hold
that consciousness being an activity should not
be made into a substance that can be a unity in
multiplicity, much less an eternal unity in an
eternal multiplicity; and secondly to hold that
consciousness can become degraded into matter or
inconscience is also to hold that the Absolute
can never remain pure, for we cannot by any
means determine how any portion of the eternal
unity or its multiplicity can ever become
utterly ‘de-consciousised’ except by an
arbitrariness posited in the very nature of the
Divine Consciousness. But this need not be a
grave objection if we can hold that the Divine
Consciousness is divine even in and through the
various formations of itself as matter and mind
and breath and other activities in their several
configurations or constellations, and yet we may
grant to each of these a limited independence or
differentium in respect of activities engendered
by the status of their stages as matter, breath,
or mind. Thus we will find that each of these
stages has an autonomy engendered by earlier
actions (and nothing exists which has not some
sort of action, repetitive or creative or
initiative or reactive).
It is the
integration of these three or five or seven
levels of consciousness that is aimed at in
Yoga, which is an effort to arrive at the
liberation of consciousness or rather the energy
of consciousness from the lower levels since
every level is aware of that which is higher but
is unable to realise it due to its primitive
habit or organization. This release of
consciousness from the lower form can happen in
only one manner. That is possible only when the
lower form sees the pressure of the higher level
on itself and is unable to stand the strain of
such a higher level or secondly, when the lower
level or its manner has become impossible due to
changing conditions that demand newer patterns
of behaviour. Yoga is the need to liberate
oneself from a lower level by recourse to a
higher level of consciousness. That this Yoga
may be framed up in such wise as to be limited
to particular occasions has also been shewn by
the Gita when the Lord has stressed on
the fact that there are four kinds of seekers;
the arta, jijnasu, artharthi and Jnani
(VII.16). The integral seeker is the last
mentioned knower, who integrates or seeks to
integrate the entire cosmic consciousness within
himself and in all his parts, so as to appear to
have almost lost every kind of difference or
counter position in being as in action, and
whose oneness with Isvara is complete in all
planes and powers and manifestations. Thus
ancient Indian psychology was fully aware of the
several levels of consciousness3 which
according to them were first stated to be three,
then five and then seven. The highest or the
Absolute Consciousness that was absolutely freed
from the bondage to the relative consciousnesses
of the lower levels was, undoubtedly, the aim of
almost all the mystics of the Minor Upanishads;
and this accentuation of the importance of the
higher or Absolute Consciousness to spiritual or
real existence led properly to the abnegation of
the life of the spiritual beings in and through
the lower formations of spirit itself. It is
this self-same distrust of material existence or
vital or mental existence that led also the
postulates of Maya and Pudgala and Samsara with
their unending repetitive movements in birth and
rebirth and bondage to bondage.
3. I
have elsewhere pointed out that the three levels
jagrat, svapna and susupti are comparable to
levels of consciousness.
The truth of
existence is its truth in consciousness, and for
consciousness. The reality with which we are
confronted is a more or less organic structure,
whereas the ‘we’ who confront such a reality are
indeed organic creatures (mind-bodies) if not
soul-bodies. But the truth that will be realized
as ultimate will always be only in respect of
the Absolute Consciousness. The only question
that will arise is: can such a consciousness be
possible to us who are finite and are yet
dwelling in bodies which limit simply because
they are yet unable to devise or have not
devised ways of responding to such a
consciousness, or more properly since such a
consciousness has not yet devised its own
instruments for its own imperial action or
integral being even in terms of this present
organism? This question again has been answered
in two ways: the first consists in denying
ultimate reality to the physical structure and
our own finiteness incident upon this
conditioning in such psycho-physical structures,
a denial which will land us straight into the
Absolute Consciousness consequent on the
sublation of the present consciousness which is
more neatly an inconscience and ignorance rather
than consciousness. The second consists in
affirming the reality of the finite along with
its infinite possibilities. This leads to the
affirmation of the possibility of sublimation or
divinisation of the entire structure in terms of
the Absolute Consciousness apprehended in
oneself as the foundational Consciousness at the
back of all natural processes or biological and
psychological processes so far attained by man.
The former seeks to land elsewhere; the latter
seeks to attain here; the former is said to be
direct and immediate, whereas the latter is
indirect and mediated by series of steps or
ascents and integrations and therefore halts.
But there is
truth in about the same measure in all the
states as in the Absolute, though to say so may
be considered to be an exaggeration. The
Absolute lives and moves in the relative, even
as the relative live and move and have their
being in the Absolute.
The three states
of consciousness usually spoken of in the
Upanisadic literature are the ‘Waking, the
Dreaming and the Deep Sleep’. The
Mandukyopanisad has given a classical
exposition of these three states and it has
correspondentially explained these three states
with the help of the Pranava, (the primary Nada
or Sound). The Jagrat or the waking state is
that of Vaisvanara,4 or
of the world (Visva) in which state all the
sensory and motor organs and the mind are fully
active in respect of the world of manifestation.
The svapna or taijasa (or of the tejas) is a
state wherein the motor organs are suspended
from action and there is consciousness of inner
or internal objects engendered by the waking
life in the form of images, which are called
subtile objects also. The susupti is the state
of Prajna wherein the sleeper neither perceives
external objects or subtile internal objects nor
experiences dreams. The Prajnana Purusa
is entirely blissful in himself,
‘knowledge-faced’. The Narada-parivrajaka Upa.
speaks of the Jagrat as sthula-prajna, and of
the Svapna as suksma-prajna, and the
susupti as Pra-jnana-gnana.5 It
further adds that these three states are
impediments to all creatures hankering after
peace. The Kaivalya Upa. speaks of the
waking state as the state wherein there is
enjoyment of women, food, drink and other
diverse enjoyments.6 The
Varaha Upa. with apparently quite a
different sense speaks of the Jagrat or
waking state as the state when the Buddhi is in
full bloom.7
There is
again the ancient Jaina view that the fullest
consciousness in awareness is possible only when
the senses do not restrict the knowing to the
restricted content of the phenomenal world. Thus
we find that in these definitions of the waking
consciousness there is said to be extraverted
activity alone and that this extravertedness is
consequent upon the sensory and motor organs
which are stated to have become outward-directed
as the Katha Upa. has stated.8
This Jagrat state is not comparable with
the levels of consciousness such as the
reflexive or instinctive stages of conduct in
modern psychology. It is more alike the mental
and practical consciousness of modern
psychology.
4 Mand. Upa. 3, 4, 5. cf. Yoga Sutras:
III. 15; my ‘Living Teaching of the Vedanta’:
Sec I. pp 5—12.
5 Narada P. Upa. 8 cf.5.
6 Kaivalya Upa.
7 Varaha.II.
8 Katha Upa. II. I.
The dream
psychology is more important and interesting.9 Some
Upanisads say that Dream is sankalpa and nothing
else. The Varaha and the Paingala
Upanishads define dream as the ‘moving about
of buddhi in the subtle nadis’.10 The
Brhadaranyaka Upa. has given the
explanation that it is due to the power of
imaginative reconstruction of self-experience.
But dreams are also due to physiological
disorders such as windy humour or biliousness or
phlegm or influences of God or due to one’s own
habits or what a man does by way of
prognastication.11 The
subject in the dream state is purely imaginal
and these dreams are not all of the same order.
The Mandukya gave the final description
that it is the state of tejas or illumination,
thus referring to the freedom of the subject as
consciousness, creative and luminously active.
But this freedom is restricted and limited to
the psychic being and does not emerge into the
actual life except when such dreams are
prophetic. This prophetic dream is a different
type from the others and belongs to the realm of
psychic apprehension of the future—bhavisyat-jnana.
It is, therefore, stated to be due to the
influence of God or supermental powers. It is
the level of the Unconsciousness in relation to
the awaking consciousness, though it is not
unconsciousness at all.
Dreams form an
interesting study by themselves but from the
standpoint of the Upanishads, the dreams are
used as analogies to illusion or self-delusion
and both the Jagrat and the svapna are equated
to one another in the realm of illusion. The
Sarvasara Upa. which is a chapter of
definitions describes the three states as
experienced by the soul in relation to the
entire system of categories in the Jagrat, in
relation with the vasanas (affinities or
potencies) and fourteen categories omitting the
motor organs in the svapna and in absolute
non-function in the susupti. It would be
of great interest to modern psychology to note
that from the general theory of the Upanishads
that the really crucial state of experience is
the turya, the fourth which is the real
Jagrat, or awareness rather than the
vaisvanara or svapna-taijasa. The
third state of susupti which is stated to be
achieved at the heart,
12 to
which the soul is stated to be going everyday
without knowing it,13 where
the divine dwells in all hearts, is the state
when there is absorption14,
and control exercised by the Prajna15.
This is the state of peace, it is also the state
of trance, the primitive trance, when the citta
or mind is made unconscious because removed from
the contact with the inner soul or psychic
being. It is then in the state of aparidrsta as
the Yoga Sutra states (III.15). Thus controlled
by the prajna it does not move about but
becomes quiescent. Without this quiescence there
can be no real ascent into the turya or the
fourth, where the Self is manifest even without
the help of the sensory organs and motor
movements. The susupti thus forms a
bridge to the higher and it is also to be known,
or one has to become aware of it, as the sleep
of the senses and the citta.16 or
lower mind. Sleep is the union with the self as
the Chandogya Upa. states (VI.8). The
Naradaparivrajaka Upa. speaks about the
three states already mentioned in terms of this
Prajnana or Prajna. The Jagrat
is the gross prajna; the svapna is
the subtle prajna; the susupti is
prajna itself. The first is the trifling
prajna, the second is dual prajna,
the third is the internal prajna. All the
states are held to be yet states of ajnana
or karmic limitational activity of
consciousness, since they are limited by the
body-consciousness in some manner. The sleep
state is sometimes held to be a difficult state
to investigate or know about except through
inference. The content of this state it is
impossible to know. But this state is
correspondentially linked up in Yoga with the
psychic condition of the preliminary peace on
which foundation alone any further or deep
experience can be built up. This state may also
be called the Night of the soul. It is the
akasa, which is of the nature of darkness
both inside and outside, as the
Mandalabrahmana Upa. (IV) says. Beyond this
state alone lie the other akasas such as
the Mahakasa which is or has the fire of
deluge in and out; then there are the
Suryakasa and Paramakasas.
That is the
reason why the fourth state is stated to be the
most important step in Yoga, the turya, which
reveals the higher three levels of consciousness
beyond the limited body or the limitations of
the body. The movement into that consciousness
that is supra-sensory, can only happen through
the path transcribed already, that is through
the subliminal svapna which is penetrated
further and deeper in the susupti, the prajna.
It is because of this fact of so-called nivrtti
or interiorising, that is not introspecting,
where the mind that is but the configuration of
our habits and instincts and cravings is simply
‘overpowered’ (as Gaudapada states in his Karika
(iii.35), that there happens a leap into the
supramental. As the Naradaparivrajaka Upa.
says “It is through Visva and others in
order that the realization of Parabrahman should
be attained.”17 Thus
when Sri Aurobindo explained in his masterly
work Life Divine that the prajna
has to be understood in a deeper and profounder
sense than the ordinary thinkers have done he
was stating the Upanisadic truth or rather
drawing the attention of all to the truth that
true consciousness cit, that is sat
and ananda, is to be arrived at through
the prajna that is really jnana
not unconsciousness or mere suspension of
activity. For in truth it is the first step in
the sadhana of Consciousness, the levels of
sensory and motor experiences being but
activities of consciousness in the levels of
ignorance or matter and vitality. We arrive at
the true nature of Consciousness or jnana
or prajnana or vijnana only via
the subliminal, which is known to have two
divisions the dark side of ignorance and wish
and sankalpa, the bright side of knowledge and
inward light and transcendence. It is because
this fact has not been grasped by scholars
unacquainted with the nature of the prajna
and consciousness that there have occurred large
criticisms about the nature of yogic psychology.
The prajna state is the state of pure
buddhi or cognisance.
In the
understanding of the Upanisadic theory of levels
we find that we have to see that the Upanisadic
psychologists were more interested in going
deeper into the nature of consciousness even as
it manifests itself in the subliminal svapna and
susupti, and by that process arrived at the
consciousness that was so focalised as to be
just identical with the trance state but not
quite. The transcendence of consciousness over
its own bodily tenement was the goal aimed at
for there seemed to be no other way towards
perfect omniscience or liberation. No doubt
modern psychologists are not prepared to
conceive of this possibility of knowing
extra-sensorily. The Varaha Upanishad
describes the seven stages of ascent of
consciousness (bhumikas) which resemble
the stages of purification, that leads towards
the turiya consciousness.18 The
Yoga Sutra commentary Maniprabha also
mentions the seven stages of this process.19 But
it is the Aksyupanisad that mentions the
Yoga bhumikas.20 The
third stage here is called the jagrat,
the fourth is called the svapna, because
in this stage the seer sees everything of the
world as if it were dream (pasyanti
svapnavallokam). This is stated to be the
state when one views things of the world as of
equal value or worth and attains equality or
poise of being in respect of them as being
illusory products. The fifth state is stated to
be the susupti or susuptighana. The sixth is
stated to be the turiya whereas the last is
stated to be the state of videha-mukti
(release from the body).
Therefore, it
would be clear that the different meanings given
to the several terms depend upon the kinds of
approach that are made and the terms jagrat
and svapna and susupti do not mean
the same thing in Yoga as what they denote in
ordinary life.21 For
it is stated also in the Gita, that what
is day for the yogin is night for the ordinary
man and vice versa. The levels from which the
lower sensory and motor activities are surveyed
are supersensory both subtly conceived and
grossly conceived.
The turya
state has had the fortune of being spoken about
in most extravagant terms. It is calmness, it is
non-dual, it is the unlimited mystery difficult
of attainment22.
This is the most real and permanent state.23 It
is the plane of sectacy, which permeates or
should permeate the lower states24.
It is stated to be dhvanyatmaka.25 It
is stated to be the state of peace. It is the
state of self in its true nature as saccidananda.
It is stated to be the aksara.26 It
is the state wherein all the vasanas are
transcended. It is the supreme abode. It is the
incorruptible state of knowledge, integral and
unitary. It is the dharma-megha. It is the state
experienced in the head or sahasrara27.
It is the state of perfect unity with the Divine28.
It is the experience of the Mahakasa, beyond
which remain the further levels of Divine Mind
such as the suryakasa and paramakasa, or the
turyatita. It is called the seventh stage in the
Jnana levels,
29 and the
sixth in the Yoga-bhumikas.30 It
is in this state that one begins to have real
padarthabhavana. It is called the state of
samadhi and taraka. This is the way towards the
perception of the eternal being who is the self
through whom one loves all things, wife and
child and others31.
He is to be realized in the heart, who is of the32 size
of the barley or rice, or of the size of the
thumb, the Vamana33.
This experience must be and has always to be
achieved in one’s own heart, for by that
realization the knots of ignorance are
ultimately and finally cut, as the Brha. Upa.
(IV. III.6) says. It is the integral Pranava
34.
The turya state
leads us to the Gnostic being or true jagrat
which can permeate the entire lower levels, and
divinise them or sublimate them. True education
or knowing consisted in ancient practice in this
process of divinising of the lower jagrat and
svapna and leading through the deep sleep of the
senses to the waking state of the central
consciousness which is of a nature identical
with that of the Divine. The earlier Upanishads
like the Mandukya stop with these four
stages, for the fourth or turya really is the
beginning of the consciousness of our true
nature distinct from the matter and its
categories of evolutes. Then alone we are
beginning the true journey of life in the
Divine. The self knows the Self of all, who is
the self in the Sun and Earth and beyond. That
consciousness is the apprehension of the
turyatita, beyond the head or above the head. We
may perhaps consider that these are states of
being and knowing that pertain to the close
intimacies with the central reality in all, the
Divine, the Nirguna, the Eternal, who is also
described as the Sunya35 or
the void of sensory being and knowing and
enjoying, and momentariness and restriction.
Some hold that the turyatita may correspond to
the nirvikalpaka samadhi or asamprajnata samadhi,
which is stated to be the experience of absolute
identity with the Divine. It is also stated to
be the state of unsupportedness, niralamba36.
It is the state of amanaska37.
The turya and the
turyatita states thus conceived in relation to
the Raja Yoga are mainly deepening trance
states. Whereas it is not so when these states
are considered as Vedantic or Jnana-states. This
has a profound difference. Even the nadopasana
or the pranavopasana leads only to the
trance-states. There thus follow directions
regarding the videha-mukti38.
The problem of the levels of consciousness thus
get a purely internal experience, even though so
far as the so-called Jivanmukti state is stated
to be a state of freedom on all planes of
consciousness. The permeation of the turya
(self-state) and the turyatita (or Brahma-sampatti)
of the lower levels of consciousness, is not
fully conscious or direct but mediated by the
trance-state. That is one of the main reasons
for these yoga methods failing to solve the
problem of life. They imply withdrawal and
renunciation of the waking life that we know;
they faintly promise the release even from the
world-life-worries gradually if not, not at all.
Indeed the illusory theory gets upper hand and
the seeker after Yoga has just to liquidate
himself on the planes of our ordinary
consciousness. It is true that these states also
involve the acquisition of powers or siddhis,
even contact with the powers of the spiritual
world called the devas, yaksas etc.39 But
all these do not help the evolution of the
ordinary man.40 That
is one of the strongest criticisms levelled
against the developments of the Minor
Upanishads. The Minor Upanishads are in one
sense the products of experiences in several
kinds of Yoga and the levels or bhumikas are
states on the path, and all these states were
recorded as experienced. So far they mark a
great chapter. These experiences have also
befallen to mystics of other nations. In the
literatures of the Buddists,41 Saiva-siddhanta,
Virasaivism, Tantricism we have further
developments recorded. But in none of these we
find the original clarity of the simple
Upanisadic paths of the earlier seers.
Speculative psychology is not the word to be
used in this connection, however. There is for
the seeker after the path of these yogas enough
guidance given, but then the question will
always recur: is it worth all this effort? As
Sri Aurobindo has remarked: “Trance is a way of
escape—the body is made quiet, the physical mind
is in a state of torpor, the inner consciousness
is left free to go on with its experience. The
disadvantage is that trance becomes
indispensable and that the problem of the waking
consciousness is not solved, it remains
imperfect.” It is because of this that all the
rich promises of the yoga of the minor Upanisads
do not evoke the enthusiasm of the ordinary man.
They appear to be, with all their charms, ways
of escape from the main problem of divine
evolutionism, the discovery and the recovery of
the Divine in the physical mind, as in the inner
mind.
41 Cf.
J.S.V.O.I. Vol.III p.77 ff: Buddhist and Yoga
Psychology.
Note:— My friend Prof. Dr. B.L.
Atreya has worked on the correlation between the
Minor Upanishads and the Yoga Vasistha very well
and in a deeply scholarly manner. The dates he
assigns to these Minor Upanishads are after that
great work. But some of these are likely to be
earlier and some indeed appear to be very late.
If these are taken together here, it is because
psychical experiences appear undatable.
2.18 THE PSYCHO-PHYSIOLOGY OF THE MINOR
UPANISADS
The
psycho-physiology is the Upanisads is as a rule
considered by most thinkers to be speculative
and mystical and unreal. But the amount of
knowledge displayed by them regarding this
subject is so very vast, and though obviously
unscientific in the modern sense of the word,
that it seems to have considerably influenced
all the other schools of thought, which
proliferated from it.
The nadis
and the cakras are psycho-physiological
structures, and deserve to be studied from the
material available in the minor Upanisads. We
may affirm that though these Upanisads cannot be
placed alongside the Upanisads of the earlier
age, and though these are not all of the same
quality as those earlier outpourings and
thoughts, yet they at least reveal a vast amount
of speculation during the period anterior to the
Upanisads and prior to classical literature.
That at places these might have borrowed ideas
from the medical sciences needs no saying. Some
of them are frankly sectional, some others are
mainly Yogic, still some others are devoted to
affirming certain physiological ideas of the
Ancients.
The nadis
(nerves) are psychical as well as physical
structures conveying impressions from the centre
to the periphery and from the periphery to the
centre. Infinite are these nadis in the human
organism and these have the property of air (vayu)1.
They are vital in their function and are good (hita)
to the system. Some of these are gross, but most
of these are extremely subtle. But all of them
are placed in the suksma sarira.
The concept of the Suksma sarira is most
clearly presented in the Samkhya system. It is
true that the medical writers like Susruta have
developed a system of diagnosis on the basis of
nadis, but these nadis are of
physiological nature such as bile, phlegm and
wind. These nadis are not subtle in the
psychical sense but in the physical sense of
being very minute. Yoga seeks to remove the
centre of activity from the nervous system of
the physical body to the Nadi-system of
the psychic body. The entire body is pervaded by
nadis of both varieties, and there
presumably exists correlation, if not actual
contractual relation, between these two systems.
In this connection it must be mentioned that
there is absolutely no reference to these
psycho-physiological apparatus in the
Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali.
The Sandilya
Upanisad says “As the leaf of the Asvattha
tree is covered with minute fibres, so also is
this body permeated with nadis.” The
Trisikhi Brahmana Upanisads says that the
72,000 nadis are both gross and subtle:
dvasaptati sahasrani sthula suksmas ca nadayah.
2
The
Garbha Upanisad states that there are
seventy-two tubes with seventy-two nadis
between them, of which three are important,
namely, Ida, Pingala and Susumna, the fourth is
Puritati and Jivata is the fifth. Above
Jivata is the bile (liver) and near the
bile (liver) is Puritati. The
Sandilya mentions fourteen nadis
“Ida, Pingala, Susumna Sarasvati, Varuni, Pusa,
Hastijihva, Yasasvini, Visvodhari, Kuhua,
Sankhini, Payasvini, Alambusa and Gandhari.”3 Of
these the Susumna is the supporter and sustainer
of the Universe and the path of salvation.
Dhyanabindu mentions only ten nadis,
leaving out Visvodhari, Payasvini, Sarasvati
and Varuni.
The enumeration
of the nadis we have stated was 72,000 in
the Brhadaranyaka, and 72 in the
Garbha, which is a physiological Upanisad.
The Katopanisad mentions this number to
be 100. “The heart has one hundred and one
nadis; of them one has issued through the
head. The self comes and goes up through it and
attains immortality, while the rest going
differently ways help to make it go out (into
existence.)” (II. 3. 6). All the Upanisads agree
in treating Susumna to be the most
important; next in importance come the Ida and
the Pingala. It is not only said to be the
supporter of the body as spinal cord but also
the whole microcosm. It is claimed by certain
Upanisads and Yogic treatises to be the channel
of the Kundalini sakti. So much so it is
described as follows Susumna visvadharine
moksamarga cacaksate.
The Varah
Upanisad mentions Jvalanti, Nadarupini,
Para-randhra and Susumna as the supports of
Sound, Nada. Nada or sound thus is said to be
causative of the physical or psycho-physiology
tracts. The motion of akasa or prana which is
indicative of the movement of the impulses of
life beget the psycho-physiological paths and
the physical basis also. The need produces
the organism for the perpetuation of the
movement.4
The three nadis
Ida, Pingala and the Susumna are said to carry
prana always. It would not be correct to say
that the same kind of Prana flows through all
these three or ten or hundred and one, and
seventy-two or seventy-two thousand. The types
of Prana are five. The Ida is said to be the
vehicle of Prana, the Pingala of apana, and
Udana is carried by Susumna. The Ida is said to
have the Moon as its devata, it conveys
cold air or amrta, whereas the Pingala
has as its devata the Sun the hot air and
mrtyu. The Susumna conveys Agni, and it
leads to salvation.
These nadis
have several colours, as the Garbha says:
nanavarnas samsrtah. Prana is the
primeval force through which the vital movements
of the body and its growth are achieved. The
courses of Prana are described in various
ways. The diversifications in functions have
entailed the formations of these sound-courses
and vital-paths and even fluidic ducts and
endocrine channels.
These nadis
meet one another or constellate and form
plexuses. That is to say, they form nerve-centres.
Or rather these nadis are found to
proceed from and return to certain definite
number of nerve-centres called plexuses and
cakras, (lit. wheels). The Upanisads liken these
to the spokes of a wheel. The integration of the
nervous-paths resembles clothmesh to some
others—patavat samsthitam.
A complete
description of these radiating neural paths and
the cakras is given by the Sandilya
Upanisad.
“The body of every sentient
being is ninety-six digits long. Prana extends
twelve digits beyond the body. He who through
the practice of Yoga reduces this Prana within
his body so as to make it equal to or not less
than the fire in it becomes the greatest of
Yogins …
5. Two digits above the anus and two
digits below the sexual organ is the centre of
the body and four digits in length and breadth
is situated an oval form. In its midst is the
navel … Lying in the middle of the navel and
above it is the seat of the Kundalini …
Depending upon the Kundalini which is situate in
the centre where are fourteen principle nadis.
Susumna is said to be sustainer of the Universe
and the path of salvation.6 Situated
at the back of the anus, it is attached to the
spinal column and subtle and is vaisnavi.
On the left of the six Susumna is situated Ida
and on the right is Pingala.
The moon is of the nature of
tamas and the sun of rajas. The
poison-share is of the Sun and nector of the
moon. They both direct time, and Susumna is the
enjoyer of time. To the back and side of Susumna
are situate Sarasvati and Kuhuh respectively.
Between Yasasvini and Kuhuh stands Varuni.
Between Pusa and Sarasvati lies Payasvini.7 Between
Gandhari and Sarasvati is situated Yasasvini.8 In
the centre of the navel is Alambusa. In front of
Susumna there is Kuhuh which proceeds as far as
the genital organs. Above and below Kundalini is
situated Varuni which proceeds everywhere.
Yasasvini which is beautiful proceeds to the
great toe. Pingala goes upward to the right
nostril. Payasvini goes to the right ear.
Gandhari goes from the back of Ida to the left
eye. Alumbusa goes upwards and downwards from
the root of the anus. From these fourteen nadis
spring others …”
Almost an
identical description is given of the
cross-section of the nadi system at the Kanda or
nabhi cakra by the Varaha Upanisad. It
affords a corrective to the Sandilya
description. It will be noted however that in
the Sandilya description Hastijihva and
Visvodhari are not located. The Varaha
gives this description.
“Nine digits
above the genitals, there is a kanda (plexus) of
Nadis which revolves oval-shaped, four digits
high and four digits broad. It is surrounded by
fat, flesh bone and blood. In it is situate a
nadi-cakra having twelve spokes. Kundalini by
which this body is supported is there. It is
covering by its face the Brahmarandhra of
Susumna. By the side of the Susumna dwell the
nadis Alambusa and Kuhuh. In the next two spokes
are Varuni and Yasasvini … On the spoke south of
Susumna is in regular course, Pingala. On the
next two spokes are Pusa and Payasvini. On the
spoke of Susumna is the nadi called Sarasvati.
On the next two spokes are Sankhini and Gandahri.
To the north of Susumna dwells Ida; in the next
is Hatijihva, and next to it is Visvodhara.”
There is possible
a misunderstanding here regarding the exact
location of the Kundalini. The same Upanisad
however dispels it thus: “In the centre of the
anus and the genitals, there is a triangular
Muladhara. It illumines the seat of Siva on the
form of bindu (point). There is located the
Parasakti named Kundalini.” This passage clearly
states that the place of Kundalini is not the
solar plexus (nabhi cakra or kanda) but the
centre lower down namely the Muladhara. All this
physiological speculation reveals a body of
belief that there were other channels of
transmission of activity than the merely
physical motions or even the mental currents.
The fact of correspondence is fully recognized,
and the parallelism that haunted the theorists
of matter and mind finds a counterblast in this
psychonic interpretation of the relationship
that subsists in the human organism. The spirit
manifests itself as matter whilst retaining its
power and control over it.
Susumna: The
Prana which has brought it into being continues
to sustain it. Prana moves here upwards as udana
as9 a
spider flies to and fro within a web of fine
threads. Tamtu panjara madhyastha lutika
yatha bramati tathasou tatra
pranascasati,dehosmin Jivah pranarudho bhavet.
The Susumna alone is situated within the spinal
cord and vertebral column. (vina-danda). It
alone passes through all the ganglia of the
spinal cord. There are six such ganglionic
structures.10 It
passes through all of them like the shining
thread of lotus, or rather like the lotus-stalk.11
“The Susumna which runs from
the Muladhara to the Brahmarandhra has the
radiance of the Sun. In the centre of it is
Kundalini shining like crores of lightning and
subtler than the lotus stalk.”12
All the plexuses
are turned downwards. This downward bent of the
Cakras is said to explain that evolution that
has happened has been downwards from the highest
spiritual height of the Sahasrara to the lowest
material muladhara. The fulfilment of the
Pravrtti so to speak of evolution, lies in the
upward movement of the Kundalini through the
aforesaid cakras which now have to be inverted
or made to have their face upwards, urdhva-mukha,
This reversal of the faces of the lotuses called
cakras, is achieved by the special methods of
awakening the Kundalini in the Susumna.
Each of these nadis is said to have a presiding
deity. We have already mentioned that Moon is the deity of Ida and Sun of
Pingala. Siva is said to be the Devata of Susumna. But Agni is mentioned as the
deity by other Upanisads. Hari for Ida and Brahma for Pingala,13 are
claimed to be the deities of the nadis by the Darsana Upanisad which
reveals its aim to synthesize the three gods. This is the adhi-daiva
aspect of the nervous organization.Cakras: So much has been written on these
plexuses that it appears really necessary to ask the question: what do these
plexuses mean? But the meaning of the question appears not to need any
explanation when we consider that most Yogic schools accept these centres of
psychic force as typifying the contact-point with the physical and neural and
other functions. The Cakras or wheels or lotuses are six. The seventh is the
thousand-spoked Sahasrara, in the Brain. The Nrsimhapurvatapaniya
Upanisad mentioned14 that
all the cakras have evolved from the Sudarsana (the Muladhara) which changes or
undergoes transformations into six, eight, twelve, sixteen and thirty two spokes
or petals respectively.“In the six-petalled lotus the six lettered mantra of Narayana, and the twelve-petalled
lotus had the twelve-lettered mantra of Vasudeva. And in this case ordinarily in
the sixteen petalled lotus are the sixteen kalas (vowels) sounded with bindu or
anuswara. The thirty-two petalled lotus is really twe-petalled because there are
two mantras here each of sixteen letters of Nrsimha and his Sakti.”15
The evolution of
all the cakras are also said to be due to the
evolution of the Sri Cakra which is described by
the Tripura-tapaniya Upanisad. The Sri
Cakra which is horizental at first, evolves
vertically and realizes planes of consciousness
and manifestations. The human organism is the
result signifying this microcosmic development
of the Sri Cakra. The whole description is so
very mystical that it is impossible to unravel
the mystery of this description.
The first cakra
is the Muladhara, situated between the anus and
the genitals. The second is the Svadhisthana,
the third is the Manipuraka, the fourth is the
Anahata, the fifth is the Visuddha, the sixth is
the Ajna. The place of the Kanda is the navel,
and is also identified with the Manipuraka or
Nabhicakra.16 There
are many more centres mentioned such as nine by
the Soubhagyalaksmi and the Mandala
Brahmana Upanisads including the Sahasrara.
The Soubhagyalaksmi mentions Adhara,
Sudarsana, (2) Svadhisthana, (3) Manipuraka, (4)
Hridaya, (5) Kanta, (6) Talu (a cakra at the end
of the Uvula),17 (7)
Bhrucakra (tadeva kapala kandam vaksiddhi
bhavati). (8) Ajna, (9) Akasacakram navamam.
In the above list
we find that an unusual distinction has been
made between the Bhru cakra and the Ajna cakra,
and an additional cakra at the Uvula is
mentioned. The Yogaraja Upanisad calls
the eighth cakra Brahmarandhra, which intimates
the Nirvana state: Brahmarandhram syat param
nirvana sucakam. The same Upanisad calls the
seventh cakra Bhru cakra, and does not mention
the name Ajna. The two cakras Bhru and Talu are
placed below the Ajna by the Soubhagyalaksmi
Upanisad. Proceeding further into the analysis
of the descriptions of the cakras, we find that
the Soubhagyalaksmi Upanisad calls the
final cakra not Sahasrara descriptively, but as
Akasa-cakra, Etheric centre, thus giving support
to the Mandala Brahmana Upanisad
description of the Highest Consciousness as
Akasa or Paramakasa-consciousness. It also
mentions this cakra to consist of sixty-petals,
which are upturned and possessing urdhva-sakti,
upward moving power.18 The
Varaha Upanisad mentions a dvadasanta.
This dvadasanta or twelfth centre is usually
identified with the Sahasrara or Parama-akasa.
It is, however, very difficult to state exactly
this differences between the bhru and the Ajna cakra. From the Yogaraja
Upanisad we find that even the names of Brahmarandhra and Nirvana-cakra are
applied to the sixth centre, the Ajna and not to the Sahasrara, which is said to
be legitimately that.The Yoga cudamani mentions the number of
petals of the several cakras. The petals might be treated to be spokes also or
nerve radiations. The Adhara has four petals, the svadhisthana has six petals,
the Manipuraka has ten, the Anahata has twelve, the Visuddha has sixteen and the
Ajna has two Petals. The Sahasrara has a thousand petals.19It would be of great interest to find out the
actual relation between these cakras and the centres in neurology. An attempt
was made by Dr. Vasant Rele in his Mysterious Kundalini. The notion of
centres involves the diversification of functions and elements within the body,
into different types of energy in the organism. The doctrine of Cakras could be
compared favourably with the functions of the endocrine system. But it must
remain a speculation as to how the upanisadic writers were able to identify the
functions of the body and develop a doctrine of integration within the body.
Muladhara:— This
is the first cakra. It is called the Mahacakra (sudarsana).20 In
the Adhara of the anus, there is a lotus of four
petals (caturdalam). In its midst is said to be
the Yoni, the womb, called Kama.21 It
is worshipped by the siddhas or those who have
attained the highest conquest of life. The
muladhara is in the anus.22 “In
men two digits above the anus and two digits
below the sexual organ in the centre of the
body.” Here is a region of fire which is
triangular in form and brilliant as molten gold.
In the centre of the anus and the genitals,
there is a triangular Muladhara. It illumines
the seat of Siva of the form of bindu. There is
located the supreme Sakti named Kundalini. From
that seat arises Vayu (wind) From that seat fire
increases. Hamsa is born from that place. From
that seat Manas originates. Kundalini assumes
the eight forms of Prakrti namely Mulaprakrti,
Ahamkara, Manas, and the five elements23 and
attains Siva by encircling and dissolving itself
in Siva24.
This Kundalini sleeps there like a serpent and
is luminous by its own light … Full of energy
and like burning gold know this Kundalini to be
the power of Visnu.25 It
is the mother of the three qualities. It
embraces all the nadis and it closes by its head
the opening of Brahma-randhra of the Susumna.26
This Muladhara in men is triangular in form and
is brilliant as the molten gold is situated in
the middle of the body.27 This
centre is usually said to be the seat of
earth-element, but interpreted by the symbol of
the triangle, it is the seat of Fire.28
20.
Dhyanabindu Upanisad: Yoga Kundalini II:
Hamsa, Bhavana, Yogacudamani, Yoga Sikha
Upanisads.
21.
Dhyanabindu 44, 45: Yoga Cudamani
Upanisad.
22.
Varaha Upanisad.
23.
Yogakundalini Upanisad I. Sandilya I.
24.
Yogacudamani Upanisad Astadakundalakrtih.
cf. Bh. Gita which mentions that the lower
nature becomes eight-fold. VII. 4.
25.
Yogakundalini Upanisad I.
26.
Dhyanabindu Upanisad.
27.
Yogakundalini Upanisad I.
28.
Yogatattva Upanisad.
It would appear
from the foregoing that Kundalini is the power
of Visnu that seeks union with Siva, illumining
as it does the seat of Siva who is of the form
of point-focus.
It is also clear
from the above description that Kundalini is so
to speak the mother or parent of all evolution
of the body. This initial nucleus of life whilst
evolving the several planes, yet contains within
it all the potencies of unity. This Kundalini is
not only the parasakti, it is also the prakrti.
Thus the theory of the Minor Yoga Upanisads
reveals the stress laid on the form by which the individual organism begins to
grow into the human body, or for that matter, any material body. The germinal
nature of the Muladhara is as clearly pointed out just as the power of
manifestation into the varied physical elements as much as Fire and Air, and
Earth as well as the psychic centres called cakras or kandas are formed
by it. The importance of this centre lies in its being the centre of physical
manifestation, itself a combination of Earth and Fire forces. The individual
body is thus developed from this seat. Alice. E. Bailey in her book The Soul
and its mechanism holds that Muladhara corresponds to the Adrenal gland. But
neither from the stand-point of function nor from the point of view of location
is it correct.All these it may be readily admitted are
speculative and fanciful. But we have later Yogins also holding the view that
behind all those fanciful structures there lies an element of truth. This
element of truth, they hold, could only be discovered by introspection and in
Yogic trance. That the whole attitude is far removed from objective observation
and experimentation seems immensely clear. That however need not invalidate the
psychological truth behind this scheme or description. Despite the claim made
for chemistry and physics, we find that the modes of perception are not more
than the five enumerated by Indian Psychology. We also find that the plexuses
and glands (endocrine) are placed in close juxta-position in the body and
mutually re-enforce the activities of one another. Prof. Sajous29
has clearly pointed out the integration
of the endocrine systems with the neural. He has demonstrated the importance of
the harmony between the two. The movements in the neural systems are suggested
to be of the chemico-electrical kind. The endocrine system operates on the lines
of fluidic injection, whereas we can assume fairly rightly that the operation in
the cakra-system is by means of vital-psychic force of concentration, which
includes within it control of the activities of all the sense-organs, the
heating of the body through Prana, and damming of all energies and forcing them
to move in the spinal cord and through it urge it to move upward to the crown of
the head or brain so as to re-enforce consciousness.
2.
Svadhisthana: The plexus at the genitals is
spoken of as the Svadhisthana because prana is
here with its own sound. – sva sabdena prana
svadhisthana tadasrayam. It is said to be
the genital organ itself. The cakra is in the
sphere of the basic plexus and it has a figure
of molten gold and shining like streaks of
lightning. It is the seat of the water element.
This cakra has six petals (sad-dalam)30
3. Manipuraka
: This important cakra is usually identified
with the solar plexus even as the previous one
is identified with the genitals. The name
Manipuraka is given to it for the reason that
the ‘body at this point is pierced through by
vayu (prana) like gems by a string (the Susumna).
“Like a gem pierced through by a thread the
Kanda is pierced by the Susumna. This cakra in
the region of the navel is called manipuraka,”
says the Yoga Cudamani Upanisad. “The
soul is urged to actions by its own karma,
virtuous and sinful, it whirls about in this
great cakra of twelve spokes, so long as it does
not grasp the truth,” says the Dhyanabindu
Upanisad.31 This
centre is the centre of fire, Agni—pavakassaktim
adhyetu nabhicakra vyavasthitah, as the
Brahmopanisad says.
The Varaha
Upanisad places the Kundalini at this centre,
and remarks that Jvalanti, Nadarupini,
Pararandhra and Susumna are the basic supports
of Nada (Kundalini). These four are said to be
of ruby colour. Though Kundalini is at the
Muladhara, it is also at every other centre
including the Manipuraka, being supported by the
Susumna, which extends the whole length of the
vertebral column (vinadanda). The meaning
is that Kundalini in its present pravrtti aspect
stands coiled up at the three lower centres, the
Muladhara, Svadhisthana and Manipuraka, and has
control over the physical, vital and neural
centres of the body.
On this point
Arthur Avalon writes that the two descriptions
are not conflicting. “The Merudanda is the
vertebral column which is the axis of the body
is supposed to bear the same relation to it as
does the Mount Meru to the Earth. It extends
from the Mula or Muladhara to the neck. Susumna
is undoubtedly a nadi within the vertebral
column and as such is well described by the
books as the principal of all nadis runs along
the length of the Merudanda as does the spinal
cord of western Physiology if we include the
filum terminale. If we include the filum
and take the Kanda to be between the anus and
the penis, it starts from practically the same (sacrococcygeal)
region, the Muladhara, and is spoken of as
extending to the region of the Brahmarandhra or
to a point below the twelve-petalled lotus, that
is, at the spot below but close to the Sahasrara
or cerebellum where the nerve Citrini ends”32.
Thus it is explained that the coiling serpent is
stretching from the Muladhara to the Manipuraka.
Anahata Cakra:
From this cakra begins the subtle or psychic
regions of evolution. More correctly, we may
regard this as the cakra of mind, citta. This
cakra has not been adequately described by many
writers. The older Upanisads speak about a heart
centre, but that does not easily tally with
this. The Minor Yoga Upanisads do not describe
the Upanisadic centre of the heart. The Author
of the Serpent Power has given a full
description of the centre in both the aspects,
and it is extracted here for the sake of
clarification.
“The heart lotus is of the
colour of banduka flower (red) and on its
twelve petals are the letters Ka to Tha with the
bindu over them, of the vermillion colour.
In its pericarp is the hexagonal vayumandala of
a smoky colour and above it surya-mandala with
the trikona lustrous as ten million flames of
lightning within it. Above it the vayu with the
bija of a smoky hue is seated on a black
antelope fourarmed and carrying a goad (angkusha).
In his (vayubijas) lap is three-eyed Isa,
like Hamsa (hangsabha) his two arms are
extended, in the pericarp of this lotus seated
on a red lotus, is the Sakti Kakini. She is
four-armed, and carries the noose (pasha)
the skull (kapala) and makes the boon (vayu)
and fear-dispelling signs (abhaya). She
is of golden hue, is dressed in yellow rainent,
and wears every variety of jewel and a garland
of bones. Her heart is softened by nector. In
the middle of the trikona is Siva in the form of
Vanalinga with the crescent moon and bindu on
his head. He is of golden colour. He looks
joyous with the rush of desire. Below him is
Jivatma-like Hamsa. It is like the steady
tapering of a lamp. Below the pericarp of this
lotus (anahata) is the red lotus of eight
petals with its head upturned. It is in this red
tree that there are Kalpa trees, the jewelled
altar surmounted by an awing and decorated by
flags and the like, which is the place of mental
worship”.33
This long
description reveals that there are two cakras
really, one major and the other minor, the first
the centre of the Susumna, the second the place
of mental worship, upasana cakra or
sthana. A doctrine of this kind of two
centres is substantiated by the Dhyanabindu
Upanisad.
33. Serpent Power: A. Avalon. p. 150 Ganesh &
Co. Madras.
“In the seat of the heart is a
lotus of eight petals.34 In
its centre is the Jivatma of the form of jyotis
and atomic in size, moving in a circular line.
In it is located everything. It knows
everything. It does everything. It does all
these actions attributing everything to its own
power (thinking) I do, I enjoy, I am happy, I am
miserable, etc.”
This same
Upanisad also mentions that the lotus has eight
petals and thirty-two filaments, confirming the
tantric description of the lower cakra. This
lower cakra according to the description of the
Dhyana-bindu, Naradaparivrajaka
and the Hamsa seems to be the seat
of Citta or cintana and of emotive ahamkara,35
which is declared to be below the heart. This
lower cakra is certainly below the position
ascribed to the Anahata. In a psychological
consideration we find that this cakra is an
Upasana cakra. Thus the Dhyanabindu
Upanisad writes:
“When it (the
Jiva) rests on the eastern petal which is cf
white (sveta) colour, then it has a mind
to bhakti and dharma. When it rests on the
south-eastern petal which is of blood colour
than it is inclined to sleep and laziness. When
it rests on the southern petal which is of black
colour then it is inclined to hate and anger.36 When
it rests on the south-western petals which is of
blue (nila) colour, then it gets desire
for sinful and harmful actions. When it rests on
the western petal which is of crystal colour
then it is inclined to flirt and amuse.”
The
Narada-parivrajaka Upanisad in its
sixth Upadesa describes this lotus, and takes it
to possess eight-fold vrttis or changes of
temperament which the Jiva undergoes as it
restlessly flies, in addition to the
Dhyana-bindu statement. “Staying at the
middle it gets, vairagya, renunciation, it knows
everything, sings, dances, speaks and is
blissful.” It is likely that the Hamsa
Upanisad mention centre when it describes
the threefold changes of states of
consciousness. “In the filament (of this lotus)
there arises the svapna (dream-state): in the
Bija (seed of the pericarp) arises susupti
(dreamless sleep-state): when leaving the lotus
there arises the turya (fourth state).”
All these
descriptions most likely applies to the dahara
lotus in whose centre is the Isa or Pundarika or
Visnu or Antaryamin as the Upasana Avatar. The
Dahara Lotus be the place of mental worship. The
Subala37 Upanisad
says “In the middle of the heart is a red
fleshy mass in which is the Dahara Lotus. Like
the lotus, it opens into many (petals). There
are ten openings in the heart. The pranas are
located there …” “Now the Dahara lotus has many
petals like a lily … The Divine Atma sleeps in
the Akasa of the heart, in the supreme kosa.” In
conformity with this the Chandogya
passage runs thus.38
“There is in this city of Brahman the small
lotus house and in it that small ether, that
should be sought for,” The Ksurika
Upanisad describes the Dahara lotus in
the passage:
“Tato raktotpala
bhasam brdayayatanam mahat, pundarikam tad
vedantesu nigadyate.”
39
The
Dhyanabindu also mentions that the lotus it
has described is the seat of Visnu. “One should
contemplate upon the Omkara as Isvara resembling
on unshaken light, as of a size of thumb and as
motionless in the middle of the pericarp of the
lotus of the heart.”40 This
same is described as the seat of the Jivatma
also, as evidenced by the following statement;
“Hrdi sthane
astama dala padmam vartate, tanmadhye
rekhavalayam Krtva jivatmarupam jyotirupam
anumatram vartate.”41
The
Soubhagyalaksmi Upanisad mentions that the
Hrdi cakra has got eight petals.
“Hrdaya cakram
astamadalam adhomukham.
Tan madhye
jyotirmaya lingakaram dhyayet.”
The Yoga
Cudamani and the Yoga sikha alone
describe the Anahata cakra, and assign to it
twelve petals,42
in consonance with the view expressed by the
tantras and the Gheranda and Siva
Samhitas.
Thus there is
disparity as between the Upanisads themselves.
The Upanisads which speak of the Hrdaya padma as
the dahara Lotus, as the seat of Pundari
daharam pundarikam vesma,43 intend
to speak about the seat of meditation, and not
about the psycho-physiological cakra, the
Anahata.
Some of the
Upanisads which mention the names of the cakras
do not describe all of them; they describe the
lower centres only. To this class belong the
Varaha, Sandilya Upanisads. The
Yogaraja Upanisad which does not belong to
the orthodox 108 Upanisads, of which there is a
copy in the Adyar Library, mentions this centre
apparently,44 and
calls this the seat of the Jiva, thus making it
identical with the Dahara lotus. The Yoga
Kundalini merely mentions45 the
number of cakras without describing them. The
Hamsa46 mentions
the path of ascent through the centres from the
Muladhara to the Sahasrara, but it does not
describe the centres. The Yoga tattva
Upanisad speaks of this cakra as
established in the heart and that it is
inverted—hrdi sthane sthitam padmam tasya
vatkram adhoumukham.47 The
Physiological Upanisad, Sariraka, does
not mention the centres at all, and the
Garbha Upanisad mentions them without
describing them.
All this shows
that tantric influences might have been at work
in regard to the Yoga Kundalini, Yoga
Cudamani and Yoga sikha Upanisads,
whereas the Upanisads which declare only the
Dahara lotus might conceivable be nearer to the
older Upanisads.
The twelve petals
of the Anahata are assigned to the twelve
letters. The attribution of eight petals to the
Dahara lotus represents the eight-fold vrttis
of mind. In either case the attributions of
petals or rather spokes (afferent or efferent
nerves) to them is significant.
Dahara Lotus:
The Paingala Up.48 declares
it to be the place of the Antaryamin Visnu. “It
is the actual Narayana alone that is established
in the heart.” Says the Subala49 “Within
the body is the one eternal unborn located in
the cave of the heart. The earth is his body …”.
The Nrsimha Upanisad50 says
that the objective forces of nature are
symbolically referred to in relation to the
human form as being seated in the navel, the
will to be live in the heart, and subjective
states of mind between the eye-brows.” The
importance of this centre in meditations is
greater than that of the Ajna cakra (the centre
between the eye-brows or on the forehead) for
important reasons.
It is the
residence of the Antaryamin (and the Jiva) from
which He pervades the entire body. The Jiva is
moving round and round the petals of the lotus
whereas the Supreme Divine is in the centre
established as its lord.
It is the source
of prana, vayu and by the union of prana and
apana, samadhi results. And it is from this
centre the Jiva (hamsa) moves up and
down. But one has to make it not merely to move
upward alone but also be able to lose oneself in
the central Sun of its life.
This is also, the
centre of Citta, which has eightfold vrttis or
changes. To control the citta is the function of
Yoga according to Patanjali—Yogas cittavrtti
nirodhah.
Visuddha Cakra:
This
cakra is not described as fully as others. This
is said to have sixteen spokes or petals and
situated at the throat (Kantakupa). It is
said to be the seat of vowel sounds. This is the
sentre of Akasa, (Kha) important for
khecari-vidya. It is here that Nada
(sound) for the first time becomes manifest,
individuated, vaikhari.
The Yoga
tattva Upanisad mentions that the eye-brow
centre is the centre of Akasa.
The Talu cakra
is situated very near the Visuddha, Referred to
only in a few Upanisads, it is not an important
centre at all. Perhaps from a physiological
consideration it might stand for the
parathyroid gland.
Ajna cakra:
The
two petalled lotus which is between the
eye-brows, bhru-madhya is also described as
possessing thirty two petals by the
Nrsimha-purvatapaniya Upanisad. The reason
assigned for this discrepancy is that the two
petals possess two mantras of sixteen
letters each. It is the meeting place of the two
important nadis, Ida and Pingala, and since the
Susumna passes through this as it does through
others, it can be considered to have the two
spokes or petals of Ida and Pingala.
The Sandilya
Upanisad refers to this conjunction of the
Ida Pingala and Susumna which parted at the
Muladhara (or Manipuraka). “The Moon moves in
Ida and the Sun in the Pingala. As these circle
round the Ajna Cakra the Ajna is legitimately
called the Mahakala,” (Breath being the measurer
of time). The Jabala Upanisad confirms
the Siva Samhita view of the Ajna Cakra
as Varanasi. “The Lotus which is situated in the
Muladhara has four petals in the space between
them dwells the Sun. From that sphere of the Sun
poison exudes continuously. That excessively
heating venom flows through the Pingala. The
venom (the fluid of mortality) which flows here
continuously in a stream goes to the right
nostril as the moon-fluid of immortality goes to
the left.”51
The movement of
the Ida and Pingala around the Susumna is almost
like the Cadaceus of Mercury.52 “Pingala
is the Asi and Ida the Varana.” One should know
that the middle of the eye-brows in the forehead
which is also the root of the nose is the seat
of nector. That is the great place of Brahman.”
says the Dhyanabindu Upanisad. All sins
are annihilated here – servendriya papan
nasayati tena nasi bhavati.
This Bhru Madhya
is the place one is asked to fix one’s attention
on in meditation, if it is impossible to fix it
on the heart lotus. This is, physiologically
speaking, the centre for the optic nerves, and
is invariably focussed upon in all cases of
voluntary and involuntary attention. It is
declared to be the centre of thought, manas,
sensorium as distinguished from emotional
citta. It is here that the knot of mortality
is placed. This is place of Ether—akasa—according
to the according to the Yogasikha
Upanisad Akasa mandalam vrittam devatasya
sadasivah, nadarupam bhruvormadhye manaso
mandalam vidin.53
The Tantric
literature suggests other centres namely Lalana,
Manas, Soma and others.54 These
centres are not mentioned by the Upanisads, but
the Varaha and the Sandilya Upanisads
do mention a twelfth centre which means that
they are aware of other centres also. This
twelfth centre is Sahasrara,55 therefore
there should be five centres between the Ajna
and the Sahasrara.
A description of
the stages of Omkara in the Nadabindu and
Naradaparivrajaka Upanisads reveals the
names of Nada, Nadanta, Unmani and Manonmani.
Now Unmani is considered to be a centre equal to
the Sahasrara, and to reach that stage of Yoga
means Amanaska Yoga.
From all these it
is clear that the centres of consciousness of
the high level as in the case of the lower have
been speculatively localized and identified with
certain plexuses.
Sahasrara:-
This is the highest centre capable of being
identified with the entire brain. Rich with
petals and nerves it is here that the greatest
activity of the psychic is available. This is
the centre of integration of personality not
only with itself and its body but the Divine
itself plays the chief role. It is here that
Sakti and Siva are in constant union. It is here
the Hamsa (jiva which discriminates) remains in
mystic union with its Isvara. It thus becomes
the Parama-hamsa. This is the highest fruit of
Samadhi, of Turiya consciousness. Such then is
the importance of this centre from the
psychological as well as neural levels of
consciousness that it is not surprising that it
is considered to be the pathway to the
Supreme—the Brahma-randhra. This is the centre
of Ananda—bliss of the Divine. Thus we find that
all siddhis come about to him who has by dint of
his ascesis been able to unite himself with his
inner seer and Lord at the heart. For it is only
in the company of that Lone One that one reaches
the highest centre—not by oneself, however wide
awake and full and persevering. It is the
important point about this centre that it means
all or none. No partial attainment is possible,
that is, the centres presumed to exist in its
wide bosom are of the transcendental integrating
variety. They form a unity in multiplicity.
The study of the
Cakras inevitably leads one to the study of the
socalled knots of existence. The knots are of
three kinds, the knot of creation, the knot of
sustenance, (permanence) and the knot of
destruction, Brahma, Visnu and Rudra. The Brahma
Granthi is placed rightly at the centre of
procreation the Svadhisthana, the Visnu granthi
appropriately at the heart, and the Rudra
granthi at the Ajna Cakra of tapas of
askesis that burns up all ignorance.
Brahmagranthi rakaro ca
visnugranthirhrdasamsthitam
Rudragranthirbhruvormadhye…56 These
are three inverted triangles in the primary
cakras, Muladhara, Anahata and Ajna. Belonging
to the three planes physical-vital and
mental-vital and supramental-mental.
The Brahmagranthi
is placed just about the space between the
Muladhara and the Svadhisthana.57
“Really speaking
these (six) (cakras) signify the roots or
origins (of the Universe) as said in the fourth
chapter of the Dattatreya Samhita. The Muladhara
and the other five cakras are together called
Kula: there are three knots among them.
These three are called Devi cakras. The
earth and water cakras58 are
indicated by the Brahmagranthi. The next two
powerful and shining cakras are fire and sun,
these two are indicated by Visnu-granthi, this
shining one confers all the siddhis. The next
two cakras in the form of air and ether are
indicated by the Rudragranthi, the seat of
mighty benefits.”59
All the cakras
(lotuses) are inverted with their faces turned
downwards. As Kundalini passes through them with
terrific velocity she upturns them and in this
correct position or Urdhva-mukha they are very
beneficial and powerful. The Varaha Up.
mentions this process. “At first in this
brahmagranthi there is produced a passage. Then
having pierced the Brahmagranthi, he pierces the
Visnugranthi and then he pierces Rudragranthi.”
The Yoga Kundalini Up. says “Kundalini
being heated by heated by Agni and stirred by
Vayu, extends her body in the mouth of the
Susumna and pierces Brahmagranthi formed of
Rajas and flashes at once like lightning at the
mouth of Susumna. Then it goes it goes up
through Rudragranthi.60 and
above it to the middle of the eye-brows having
pierced this place61,
it goes up to the Mandala (sphere of the
Sahasrara).” The same Upanisad gives an
identical description at another place. The
knots are knots of maya-sakti movements towards
externalising and objective attraction,
attachment and egoism. The knots are the ‘points
of convergence of the three groups of our
life-activities’ and are “points at which
converge of each of the three groups” taken two
by two.
The sketch we
have given of the nature and location of the
Cakras and the granthis is what we find to be at
once speculative and mystical. But there is here
to those who see beyond the efforts to localize
functions and spheres, an amount of truth. The
whole group of cakras are the subtle counterpart
of the physical sheaths (levels) and reveal an
activity of integration of the functions
belonging to the several sheaths (levels). The
knowledge of one sheath is impossible without a
corresponding and increasing knowledge of the
others. The higher the development, the greater
the recognition of the partialitas-nature of
knowledge that one has. The spheres called
granthis really are crucial points. Note has to
be taken of the fact that they are called
Devi-cakras, though named masculinely as the
knots of Brahma, Visnu and Rudra.
The aim of a
realized consciousness is to organise integrally
all the planes of human beings.This aim is said
to be mainy of the Hatha-Yogi .This shows that
the Hatha-yogi felt the need for a more fine
understanding of the psych-physical relation
than the other Yogins who grasping the truth of
the higher condemned all these types of Yoga to
the illuding category.The integral Yogi on the
other hand does not sacrifice the body or the
mind but tries to make them the temple of the
indwelling spirit. This is the integral
possibility. It is not purification that is
sought after by the Yogi, but transformation of
the human nature itself so that on all planes
and at once the highest Consciousness, might act
even like the devas, or rather more correctly,
like the eternals who are greater than the gods.
The physiological
descriptions are psychonic descriptions and
tally well with the physiological theories of
the plexuses and the glandular organization as
demonstrated by professor Sajous and Prof.
Dakin.62 It
should not be forgotten that the descriptions
are not of the physiological material order but
of the vital and subtle order. Having opened the
heart you cannot ask for the anahata cakra; it
is in situ that you must find it,
and the in situ in this case means
the living being. It is difficult enough
in psychology to find adequate explanations for
mental processes, it is still more difficult
when one is asked the correlate the psychic
behaviour with the psycho-physical apparatus of
the subtle order of electric movements and
etheric impacts with a lot of sectarian and
mythological figures thrown in.
62
Modern Biological Problems: Dakin p.27.
APPENDIXtc "APPENDIX"
The cakras are
accepted by the systems of Vaikhanasas and their
accounts agree with the account given in the
Minor Upanisads.
Sri
Bhagavadarcaprakaranam
(Vaikhanasa Granthamala ed.p.60 ff). The
order of arrangement in mentioning them is not
clear. The adhi-devatas of the centres (cakras)
however are different according to the theory of
Arca followed by the Vaikhanasa school. Narayana
is situate at sahasrara. Adimurti at the Ajna,
Aniruddha at Visudda, Acyuta at the Anahata (Hrdi
cakrs), Sudarsana at the Manipurakka, purusa at
the Svadhisthana and Visnu at the Gudasthana.
Marici Samhita
(another Vaikhanasa text) give the description
of the body describing the several centres: P.
500ff.
Gudasthana
vahni-mandalam, hemabham trikona vahni mandalam
Purusa Kandasthanam Dvadasarayutam
cakram, tatra cakre Punyapapa pracoditas tantu
Panjara Madhyasthe lutika iva pranarudhah
pravartate (Bhramati) Jivah. Nabhaur
Urdhve kundalini Saktih.
Hrdayas
arkabimbam tasmin sakarabijanvitam sahasra
jvalayutam jyotirjvalati. Tanmadhye mandala
puruse visnumurtih. (Surya mandalam).
Nasaagre
suddhasphatikasamkasam candrabimbam … Tanmadhye
mandala puruse Narayanamurtih.
Marici Samhita
describes the yogi siddhis that accrue from the
meditations on the several centres: p, 502 ff.
The Jayakhya
Samhita (Baroda ed.) (an important
Pancarastra work) does not mention the names
of the Cakras. It gives a detailed account of
the Bhuta-suddhi and Deha-suddhi and also the
formation of the subtle mantric body which is of
great importance in worship. It mentions the six
steps of the Atman: satpadi hyatmatattva. (X.
verse 64 pp. 90)
It mentions only
one cakra mainly the prabha cakra which is
situated at the Nabhi (verses 25 and 68).
Prabhacakre, whose sakti is the
Vaisnavi-prabhacakram-nabhisthitam). There
is mention of the Susumna and its upward path.
Ahirbudhanya
Samhita:
A very important
Pancaratha work, (Vol.II, 31st Chapter,
Adyar Edition). There are 72,000 nadis
established in the human body. The Muladhara is
called the Vahini-mandalam or the region of
fire. The Nabhi cakra of twelve spokes is
declared to be the place where the Kundalini
resides. It is there that one should meditate on
the Sudarsana, the power of Isvara.
sikha sthane
nabhi cakre hrdayamburuhe tatah,
Kantakupe
bhruvormadhye jihvamule tathaiva ca,
manoh
sadaksaranyesu kramenaiva vicintyayet.
(xxxii chap.50 verse)
Cakras are dealt
with generally in extenso in the tantrik works,
Pratyabhjnadarsana, Soundaryalahiri,
Mahanirvana-tantra. Kundalini is the most
important principle of power of creation and
realization. Cf. Kasmirian Saivism: J. K.
Chatterjee.
The System of
cakras according to Gorakhnath:
Gopinath Kaviraj:
P. W. S. B. Studies Vol.II, p.85.
Siva Samhita,
Gherenda Samhita and Suta Samhitas
make mention of
the Hatha Yoga or Kundalini Yoga.
Sangita
Darpana of
Damodara mentions
the cakras (13ff-24 verse) thus:
Gudalingantara
cakram adharakhyam caturdalam …
It thus includes
Lalana a cakra of 12 petals at the Uvula,
and also states that the Ajna has three petals
instead of two ascribed to it by all other
writers. Further it states that there are higher
centres like Soma and Manas. We
find also that in the states of consciousness,
there are stages corresponding to these like
Unmani, Manomani, Amanaska etc. The aim has
been localization of states of consciousness in
the material subtle or gross or mantric (etheric)
body.
2.19 THE GITA AND THE
KATHOPANISHAD
I
Ancient Vedic
Thought is a mine of information for all seekers
after knowledge. The Gita is said to be the
essence of the Vedic Thought. The general
tendency therefore has been to study the Gita
and claim that all is known when it is known. A
correct appraisal however seems to demand that
after reading and understanding the Gita if one
goes to the source, the Veda, one would find
great treasures. The Gita was wonderfully
expounded to Arjuna by Sri Krishna for the sake
of granting the final word, the word that would
save humanity really. The Gita has many passages
which are common to the Upanishads. In this
short paper it is shown how the passages in the
Kathopanishad and the Gita are addressed to
different adhikarins. It is well-known
that what is sauce for the goose is not sauce
for the gander. Different psychological
conditions and abilities have to be dealt with
differently. This principle the ancients knew
is sound. It prevents waste of energy and on the
whole secures maximum social and spiritual
benefit.
The problem of
the Kathopanishad is the problem of attainment
of the immortal status through Yajna or works.
That Yojna secures the immortal abode, from
which there is no return to the mortal
existence. The second problem is the problem of
knowledge as to what happens to a soul on
liberation? These two problems were presented to
Yama by Naciketas in the form of two boons, the
second and the third. Yama grants the two boons
: but he considered the third boon more
important than the second. Even though the first
knowledge, namely the knowledge of the
construction of the Naciketa fire-altar leads to
the supreme peace, the knowledge of the state of
the soul after liberation is said to lead to a
higher status of being – the Paramam Padam from
which there is no return. There is conquest over
death and birth from the first knowledge itself.
This cannot be mere preyas and the
Taittiriya Brahmana and the Mahabharata versions
do not think so. The Upanisad however almost
seems to suggest that the goal arrived at by the
Naciketa fire alter is lesser because Yama makes
a great point about the imparting of the great
secret whilest he made no protest of any sort
for imparting the knowledge of the Trinaciketa-fire-altar.
Are we entitled to draw the conclusion that
preyas was taught in the second boon and the
sreyas in the third boon? And does it
suggest itself to us that these two boons indeed
refer to the Isavasyopanisad passage: “avidyaya
mrtyum tirtva vidyaya amrtam asnute”? Or shall
we be correct in interpreting this to mean that
the benefits that accrue to the follower of
Sankhya (jnana-marga) are identical with the
results that accrue from the path of karma as
Sri Krishna has stated in the Gita:
Samkhyayogau prthag balah pravadanti na
panditah!
Ekamapyasthitas samyag ubhayor vindate phalam !
V.4.
This is an
important point to remember because some great
commentators like Sri Sankaracarya do consider
that the second boon is of the order of
preyas whereas the third boon is of the
sreyas. The internal mental condition of the
asker of the boons seems to be absolutely
against any desire for preyas. He was
unseduceable. Nor was he afraid of death.
In the Gita the
first problem is that of life and death. The
great slaughter of kinsmen had to be done for
the establishment of righteousness and of rights
understood in a social sense. Arjuna did not
like to kill those whom he revered and he was
upset by his own imagination of the consequences
that might result from the war. Sympathy, awe,
terror at the prospect of social collapse of
values made him shrink from the carnage.
Weak-mindedness, sense of guilt and sin seem to
have characterised the great warrior. In
contrast to this attitude we find Naciketas who
has been gifted away to Death, Mrtyu or Yama,
saying:
“bahunam emi prathamo bahunam
emi madhyamah!
kim
svid yamasya kartavyam yan mayadya karisyati!!
anupasya yatha purve pratipasya tathapare!
sasyam iva martyah pacyate sasyam iva jayate
punah!!” I.5-6.
This was the
psychological development of the soul of
Naciketas which had already contemplated on the
process of birth and death and its rebirth in
the world even like corn. There is no trace of
fear in the words of Naciketas, no anxiety or
sorrow to embitter his passage to death. Even
the very words are almost repeated by Sri
Krishna when he tells Arjuna:
bahuni me vyatitani janmani
tava carjuna !
tanyaham veda sarvani na
tvamvettha parantapa!!”
Naciketas, though
not like the Avatar, knew the process and even
the other instruction that later on in the
Upanisad comes from Yama, that neither is one a
killer nor the other the killed, for the first
boon of Naciketas was to request Yama to make
his father kindly to himself. To seek the
welfare of one who was unkind to oneself is the
expression of the inward understanding of the
truth that neither the killer nor the killed are
really responsible. Naciketas arrives at a point
when the question of fear of death seems to
torment or terrify him no longer. He is a jnani,
who had arrived at the point when he seeks the
highest truth alone, whom the Gita had described
– “bahunam janmanam ante jnanavan mam prapadyate!”
Rightly then Naciketas was a sreyas-seeker, a
brahmana fitted for the Brahman-knowledge,
Brahma Jnana. The Gita is addressed to an
enlightened warrior, an artharthi rather than a
jnanarthi, and an arta (a distressed person)
despite the use of the word “sreyas” in
“yacchreyah syan niscitam bruhi tan me sisyas
teham sadhi mam tvam prapannam”. (II.7). Sri
Krishna no where advises Arjuna to take up the
dharma of the higher but exhorts him to do the
duty of his station and birth, though for the
understanding of these it was obviously
necessary to traverse the whole field of
knowledge (tattva), means (hita),
and ends (purusartha). The word ‘sreyas’
in this context is a limited one; it means what
is good or best under the circumstances for
Arjuna, which would make him sinless (apapa).
The problem of the conflict of Arjuna was in a
sense much more difficult than what we find in
the Kathopanisad.
Despite the
identity of the passages in the Katha and the
Gita the climate of the one is different from
that of the other. The higher consciousness of
the Upanisad has to be taken into consideration
in interpreting the passages there, whereas in
the Gita, the Lord has descended to teach a
dharma which is needed for the worldly and the
laymen which will lead them to the higher
dharma.
II
The Kathopanisad
analogy of the chariot and the Charioteer
(I.iii.3) is also meant in the Gita. But the
Lord almost shows the importance of the self in
the government of the entire body. The
charioteer atma is to be known only through
effort by the Yogins- “yatanto yoginascainam
pasyantyatmanyavasthitam” XV. The Katha seems to
suggest that the self is the category that
controls the senses that run after the objects
of sense and yoked to the manas it should
control them thoroughly and always. And it is in
the context of self-government or government by
the self, Sri Krishna intimates it is government
by the Supreme Self in all beings that leads to
right government. The government may be by Kama
when it would be mightily used for the
destruction of all, for Kama is mightier than
indriyas, manas, buddhi and is itself dominant
over all. This is said to be the meaning of the
great verse III. 42 Gita :
Indriyani paranyahur indriyebhyah
param manah!
Manasastu para buddhih yo buddheh
paratastu sah!!
by Sri Ramanuja.
The following are
Kathopanisad verses (III. 10-11).
Indriyebhya para hyartha arthebhyas ca param
manah!
Manastu para buddhir buddher atma mahan parah!!
Mahatah param avyaktam avyaktat purusah parah!
Purusan na param kincit sa kastha sa para
gatih!!
Here it is the
distinctions between the categories of being
showing how the subordination of all the prior
categories had to be done to the higher ones in
a deliberate manner. Thus one reaches the Higher
who controls all the other categories, through
discrimination. There are two masters clamouring
for charioteership, Kama and Atma. Both are
superior to the vikritis, buddhi downward and
Atma is superior to Kama which is but the form
of Prakrti.
Whether it is
Karmayoga or Jnana Yoga it seems to be necessary
to make the self the master of works as of
knowledge. The Gita goes in this sense in
advance of the Katha when it instructs the path
of Surrender to the Lord and the doing of all
duties, works and thoughts as offering to the
Lord alone. By this devotion to the Lord
increases and man begins to enjoy not merely
that which is good (sreyas) but also that which
passes for ‘preyas’. Such wealth that one gets
as an instrument of service to the Divine and
not as an end sought after.
Therefore I have
put down my reflections on the two works in the
hope that scholars would consider the Upanishads
to be in general addressed to the jnanarthins
rather than mere moksarthins and dharmarthins.
Hinduism has works suited to all but it should
be noted that proper understanding of them can
only be had if we take their context and
climate.
A CLUE INTO THE NATURE OF THE RELATIONSHIP INTO
THE MYSTICAL AND RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS AS SEEN
IN THE INTERPRETATION OF THE ISAVASYOPANISAD BY
SRI VEDANTA DESIKAtc "A CLUE INTO THE NATURE OF
THE RELATIONSHIP INTO THE MYSTICAL AND RELIGIOUS
CONSCIOUSNESS AS SEEN IN THE INTERPRETATION OF
THE ISAVASYOPANISAD BY SRI VEDANTA DESIKA"
THE mystical
consciousness is different from the religious.
Mystical Consciousness or Cosmic Consciousness
is characteristically typified by the pioneers,
liberators and idealists, who envisage a state
of existence that is planetary or extra-worldly.
The mystics are, because of this consciousness,
iconoclasts governing their lives from some
supreme principle or vision or sense of
responsibility to higher forces immanent and
transcendent within them. They have a sense of
values and the ordinary world is worthless in
their eyes. Sacrifice and struggle is their
vocation. They may be born amidst traditions,
and they may even embrace them, but they are
never their slaves and followers. They adapt
them to changing conditions with an eye to the
Goal of mankind. A far-off look, a wide-awake
intelligence and a stubborn resistance to all
that lead to bondage of the human spirit are
signs of the genuine mystic. They are
mumuksus, seekers after liberation, which is
to them the Reality of being. They are negators
of negation, annihilators of limitation; they
are not of the earth, conventional, abiding and
obedient.
As the Mystical
Consciousness can only occur in advanced and
mature minds, though mere traces of it can be
found in the primitive vital surgings of the
individual who struggles and survives against an
environment that seeks to devour him, it has
been acclaimed as the only truth of being, the
highest Consciousness of which we are aware, the
Mystical Consciousness in so far as it is a
force of great vitality and importance to
progress and self-realization, is indispensable
to life itself. Aspiration is everything. And
aspiration for svarajya is most valuable.
Mystic Consciousness is aware of value as ideal,
which must be realized. It is the Promethean
force and Dionysic in its frenzy which brooks no
barrier, however highplaced. Mystic
Consciousness is the bearer of value, the
highest and the greatest of which the human
consciousness is aware. But this should not
blind us to the existence of another attitude
that claims an equal importance in human life.
The religious
attitude is apparently a more peaceful one,
realistic and possessed of the Consciousness of
dependence on some higher principle of Being.
Supreme Faith in its rationality and justice and
dependence utter and entire on it and reverence
and wonder at the ways of the Providence and
Deity are characteristics of the religious
attitude. Loyalty or faith is absolute. The
sense of the comforting nature of the Belief in
the Divine is present. Love for the creation as
the solution of man’s misery is not a
prominently present as the love for the Creator.
The primitive human being or men of low mental
calibre cannot appreciate the majesty of the
cosmic phenomena, much less can they appreciate
the inroads on nature that the human being has
made in the transformation of the natural
surroundings. Progress has been registered, but
to the religious man, all these are achieved,
and more are achievable, only through the Will
of God. God is all in the view of the individual
religious man. The summum bonum of life
is realization of God rather than
self-realization. But the religious attitude has
another characteristic too which is that it
leads to the birth into Divine Consciousness and
enjoyment of the Divine. Sambhuti or
birth into Divine Consciousness is the aim and
effort of all religious people. To enjoy the
Divine Lord through surrender to his will is one
of the most significant features of the
religious consciousness, more significant than
the other features of following rituals and
observing other practices. This is what the
Commentator of the Isa Upanisad makes out
of the significant and pregnant phrase
Sambhuti-birth. The use in the context of
two words, Asambhuti and Sambhuti
is dynamic, and informs the praxes that have to
be undertaken by the seeker. The practice
of the destruction and the practice of birth are
two stages of a single phenomenon, but they are
both needed. The results that occur from them
are individual results, resulting in the
knowledge of the Divine which alone confers the
boon of Amrtanubhava
immortality-experience. The sense of
creatureliness, dependence, recognition of the
Highest Being as in all things and beings, as
controlling, ordering and destining all
creatures, as the supporter, creator as well as
destroyer, are indeed included in the definition
of the Divine Lord. The darkness of the night,
and the deepening frightfulness of the forests,
the high protrusions and huge sizes of the rocks
and boulders, wide expanses of water and deep
gorges and ravines are phenomena that strike
terror in human hearts, and display the
greatness of the Creator who far surpasses any
calculation of strength by us. The glory of the
stars and regularity in the periods of the day
and night, and all eclipses reveal that the
ruler is governing the world according to Order,
Rta. Even Kant and Goethe succumbed to
the religious attitude because of the
Supernatural nature of the Divine Order. They
could unsettle Nature, make it phenomenal, but
God they never could dislodge. The Ontological
argument of Anselm could never be divorced from
the Cosmological. Des Cartes built up his entire
doubting system on the basis of this axiom of
Inner Ruler, Deamon who must exist to
delude at least but who would never condescend
to delude him.
The religious
consciousness then is existent; it is
law-abiding rational, and never sensational. It
is aware of the greatness and grandness of
Creation, and aware also that the human
individual can never be its creator. It seeks to
know, to understand, to solve the mystery, the
most central, of man’s dependence and existence
in the total order of things. To experience it
is the one and only aspiration. The main
features of such a consciousness so far as the
west is concerned is found in the lives of
Spinoza and Leibniz who were pluralists and
conscious of their dependence on the Divine. The
Bhakti cult rests profoundly on the feeling of
dependence and a seeking after the fullest
exemplification of that dependent relation.
Those schools are fundamentally religious
systems, which teach the practice of dependence
on the One supreme Lord. Theism or the
acceptance of God is the acceptance of the
dependence of man and all creatures on Him, in
whom they live and move and have their being.
That the bhakti might be explosive and emotional
or rational and resigned does not in the least
take away from it the quality of utter
dependence on God.
Man is met in the
life of the bhakta as part of God, and only
through God are others realized as brothers and
participators in God’s Lila.
In mysticism
then, life is an adventure, a progress made by
the individual, a purusakara towards the ideal
of utter self-realization not different at
earlier stages from the seeking of independence.
This struggle for independence is quite
different from the struggle for dependence. But
on a profounder consideration, just like the
doctrine of negation where all negation is
determination, so also all struggle after
independence (negation) is indeed the struggle
after dependence (affirmation) on God. It is
this significant fact that is evident from the
Upanisadic teaching.
The history of
the growth of Indian thought might well be said
to illustrate the two tendencies. It is
undoubted that the Idea of God is the first and
foremost feature. In fact, the Rg Veda is said
to represent the evolution of God through the
gods who belong to several planes and represent
the incarnation of the forces of various malefic
and benefic kinds. The recognition of the
two-fold nature of the forces itself is
sufficient warrant for the impending struggle,
religious as well as ethical. Gods of light and
life are invoked against the forces of darkness
and death. But it is clear that the hope and
trust in the Divine alone can make life triumph.
God must become the master of Maya and indeed
utilize it for manifesting his greatness. The
dialectic works thus towards the distinct
superiority and lordship of the Divine Lord.
Knowledge of the Divine leads to transcendence
and conquest over death and disintegration,
defeat and disaster. Action that men do must be
action that is sanctified by knowledge. Ignorant
action it is that leads to death, whereas action
that is governed by knowledge is what leads to
liberation and true creation. The seer who sees
far beyond the present, whose vision transcends
the limits of ordinary perception, one who is
kranta-darsi, executes his action from the
transcendental standpoint, sub specie eterni
it may be, for that is the meaning of the
kranta-darsi; a free man thus is one who in
almost every respect resembles his God.
The mystical
consciousness also has this danger of being
diverted to mere struggle after abstract
freedom, kevalatva. The Samkhyan
Purusa is the standing witness of mere
freedom. Such a being who stands alone in his
isolation is little comfort. Nor is the
Buddhistic Buddha who has attained Nirvana very
different from such a lonely figure. It is
impossible for such lonely creatures to survive
their loneliness. It is with characteristic
brilliance that the Vedic passage intimates that
God even feeling lonely sought out His Creation.
Even the transcendent requires the phenomenal,
the Divine the human. No wonder the fall (or at
least the so-called fall) from the supreme
Isolationism of Samkhya and Buddhism to the
latter stages of the same doctrines is
significant of the truth. Just as the
intellectualized fictions of ritualism or
representative symbolism cannot long sustain an
atmosphere of non-empiricism or
pseudo-empiricism and has to come to terms with
Yathartha-jnana, real knowlege of the
concrete human situation and knowledge and
growth and struggle (as Platonism also fully was
made to feel), so also mere struggle after
liberty from all limitations and impediments has
to come to terms with the realization of the
Supreme on whom all are dependent, and indeed
has to join its forces with such an effort.
Such then is the
general thesis of the paper. The fact about our
spiritual life consists in a four-fold activity.
First and foremost the realization and deepening
consciousness of the living presence
which can be said to be synthetic knowledge.
Such a knowledge far from being mere
intellectualization of life is a dynamic source
of all action. Knowledge becomes the bed-rock of
synthetic action. Such action and such knowledge
intermingle so fully that in the words of
Bergson, knowledge and action (ubhayor saha)
are indistinguishable.
To know is to be.
Equally to know is to practise the destruction
of barriers to understanding and progress of
spiritual life. And to make all efforts are
rebirth or birth into the Spiritual
Illumination. It is this fourfold intermingling
that constitutes an integral yoga. Body and mind
and Spirit and Realization all participate in
the Yoga.
The psychology of
the Saint shows not merely the dynamic introvert
struggle of the Mystic but also the extrovert
adoration of the Deity whom he apprehends. The
problem of relationship between religious and
mystical consciousnesses is not to be studied
either in isolation or in their initial
expressions. The maturity of these ought to be
considered. The saint is neither a demented
idealist, a self-hallucinating individual nor an
insane dictator struggling to be All and
Everything in himself. The Saint is a mature
being and in a sense a realized soul, a mahatma,
an integral Self. This being the case we cannot
entertain the views of Santayana or Leonard
Woolfe or of those psychologists of Religion who
consider religious (mystical) experiences to be
regressions of personality into the primitive,
or invasions of the primitive libido of the
normal. The mystical consciousness, if it be
studied in its normal evolution, gradually sheds
away the barriers to fullest experience and
realizes its place in the Ultimate scheme of
things. The religious Consciousness when it is
traced from its origins also reveals the final
end to be the realization of the freedom from
all barriers except the one and fundamental and
inalienable realization of the Unity of the
Individual in the All, an
aprthaksiddha-sambandha of the finite with
the infinite including, however, in every other
respect equality.
Thus the
realization of the Unity is foundational in the
mystic as well as the Religious effort. This
realization is of the form of Vision and
Experience rolled into one, and means the
liberation from death as well as enjoyment of
Immortality or bliss (amrtatva).
Intuition is the result of both ; but this
intuition is at once Atmanubhava as well
as Brahmanubhava in its final fullness.
The mystic, if he merely pursues the path of
destruction of barriers without the initial
knowledge of the Omnipervasiveness of the All in
All, will end in darkness and ignorance.
Religious Consciousness, if it excludes the
realization of the freedom from barriers and
concentrates on the Brahmanubhava alone, will,
it is affirmed, lead to greater darkness or
rather ignorance. The point made out is that
such crises might occur or rather have occurred.
We can trace the danger of the former, but it
appears at first sight difficult to affirm the
latter. All the same, it is a fact that the two
must go together, the freedom from barriers to
true realization is part and parcel of the
effort to realize Brahman-Experience.
Sri Vedanta
Desika points out that these two are essentially
the Unity regarding the Experience of Brahman,
and both must be practised together. Here he
speaks as a Yogin, and not as a mere
interpreter. He starts his commentary that the
first and fundamental illusion of man is
regarding his own freedom, but that does not
permit the individual to surrender his
activities which shall further or advance his
realization of the Brahman. Actions, obligatory
actions as prescribed by the sastras,
have to be performed, and proscribed actions
must be given up. To perform actions that tend
to realize mere darkness of the soul, ignorance,
is to nullify oneself. It is prescribed action
that has to be done, and all prescribed actions
have as their test the Omnipervasiveness and
Control of the Deity mentioned in the opening
mantra of the Isavasyopanisad. The
descriptions of the Deity that follow are all
intended to guide the action of man from the
altitude of dharma, the real dharma of the
individual being dependence on the supreme Lord.
The divine sustains the actions of all
individuals but it is the individual who has to
do the actions in accordance with his own inner
svadharma, which is the dependence on the Lord,
(paradhinatva). By such a supreme
paradhinatva, the individual realizes a
state of being non-different from the Lord
Himself as shown exquisitely by the first and
second case-endings of the Mantra XI which could
be interchanged without losing the meaning and
import of the mantra. Then comes the
instruction of unitary practice of Action and
Knowledge intimated in the first and second
verses as well as the unitary practice of
Asambhuti and Sambhuti, destruction
of barriers to Brahmanubhava and the effort to
realize Brahmanubhava. That Brahmanubhava is
called also Birth, sambhuti, is a
well-established fact. That in the Upanisads
also such a usuage is available is proved by
the quotations from the chandogya Upanisad.
Sarvakarma
sarvakamassarvagandhassarvarasas sarvamidam
abhyatto ‘vakyanadara esama atma’ntahrdaya e t a
d b r a h m a i t a mitah
pretyabhisambhavatasmi.
Again
‘Syamacchabalam prapadye sabalacch yamam
prapadye’ sva iva romani vidhuya papam candra
iva rahormukhat pramucya dhutva sariram akrtam
krtatma brahmalokam
abhisambhavamityabhisambhavami (Chand. Up.
VIII. Xiii.1.)
In both these
places the ordinary translation is that of
attaining the Brahmaloka. That is indeed the
birth into reality which is everything.
Therefore the Isavasyopanisad usage of
sambhuti has its connection and integration
with the Chandogya passage and has to be
interpreted in the same manner.
The merit of this
usage is clear when it is discovered from the
context that the teaching here is regarding the
practice of Brahmanubhava and nothing less. Once
the meaning of Sambhuti is fixed, then,
the meaning of its negative Asambhuti is
easily discovered. The asambhuti means
the destruction of birth. But can we ever
practise anything that is positively destruction
pure and simple and can asambhuti or
destruction mean destruction alone? Destruction
is here defined as that destruction which leads
to conquest over destruction or death. Thus the
asambhuti here intimated is the
destruction of death, and death means the
surrender to forces that lead to ignorance.
Asambhuti thus involves double negation,
negation of negation. This construction is
peculiar and yet this is valid because of the
context wherein it is used. The phrase does not
occur anywhere else in the Upanisads, and
therein lies the uniqueness of this
meaning. This is therefore another crucial
passage in the explanation and interpretation of
the Upanisadic philosophy.
The mystical
consciousness being the dynamic “other” (itara)
of the religious, and the destroyer of the
barriers to birth or knowledge of the Divine, a
negator or negation, is what is identified here
as Asambhuti. Sri Sankara’s view that
Asambhuti must be taken to be pralaya,
is undoubtedly worthy of consideration taken
independently out of the context, but is ruled
out in this context. Nor could birth and death
be practised together by any individual. One
cannot practise either destruction or creation
on a universal scale. The meaning that birth
itself promotes dissolution* is undoubtedly a
better rendering than that of Sankara, but then
these are two processes or turn-efforts aimed at
realizing ends which are different. The use of
the word asambhuti is not significant, so
significant as to yield the meaning of the word
in the earlier passage as that which leads to
the darkness of ignorance (v. 12). Nor is Sri
Madhvacarya’s rendering of the two words
asambhuti as destroyer and sambhuti as
creator acceptable though from a theist’s
standpoint it is by far the most acceptable. God
has to be meditated upon not only as creator but
also destroyer or rather as both. (cf.
Vedanta Sutras which speak of Brahman as
creator, destroyer etc. Janmadyasya yatah
I. i.2). Sri Vedanta Desika finds that the whole
Upanisad is based on the foundation of an
instruction of the Guru to his pupil, and the
second half of the Upanisad is devoted to the
instruction of practice.
Moksa
and Ananda
are the two fruits of all practice, freedom from
limitations as well as enjoyment of the Brahman
are two results that Mysticism in
conjunction with Religious consciousness
achieves. Radical mysticism which is
indistinguishable from emotional outburts which
produces more heat than light, tends to realize
the hallucinatory freedom. Radical
fundamentalism erroneously called religious
consciousness leads one to the contracted and
perverted emotionalism of the opposite kind. To
escape from both, without abandoning the crucial
essence of these two thirsts or instincts is the
method of synthesis. The synthesis must be
organic and not merely a patched-up compromise.
Emotion is the one thing that has to be
canalized and made to perform the
liberating-task as well as realizing-task of
Man. Else Split-personalities will result. The
corrective to the mystical consciousness is the
intelligent understanding of the Universal Being
taught in the opening mantra. The
corrective to the religious is the acceptance of
the mystical goal the realization on the plane
of life the fullness of existence characteristic
of the Divine. Life to be significant must
embrace the richness, and the fullness of the
Divine life here, and on this plane of human
thought too.
The organic
fusion of the mystical and the religious under
the aegis of the all-saving knowledge of the
Omnipervasive Divine Lord, leads to the profound
sense of the Organic which is the truth of
existence; the unitas multiplex of all
existence is thus realized in a wonderful
manner, intimated by the most luminous statement
of Unity expressed by the phrase So’ham asmi.
A close study of
the commentary of Sri Vedanta Desika will throw
significant light on the Upanisadic philosophy.
The approach towards the understanding of the
basic concept of Unity in terms of the Organic
Theism of Ramanuja and Sri Vaisnavism is found
to yield better results than any other approach,
now that Absolutisms and Realisms, Personalisms
and Holisms have been found to present
unsynthetic studies of great problems.
2.21 THE BHAGAVAD GITA AS MAHATMA GANDHI SAW IT
The Bhagavad Gita
was dear to Gandhiji. It was for him like a
Mother – a refuge which a child gets-in times of
distress. It was a comforting experience to turn
to the Gita for him to solve all problems, and
his problems were varied – individual, familial,
social, and political, and above all human. To
every problem he got an answer or atleast a
counsel to wait, to watch, pray and listen, so
that the still inner voice could be heard.
The Mahatma found
in the Gita the philosophy perennis. It was a
dynamic practical spiritual guide and no
metaphysically subtle work, and no psychological
and theological thesis. It did not so much
prescribe a solution as inspired one. Thus it is
not as a rigid code of conduct but as a
discoverer or illuminer of one’s path that it
became the companion of the Mahatma.
Whilst the Gita
comprises several methods such as Karmayoga,
Jnanayoga and Bhaktiyoga, basic to all these
means and modes, according to Gandhiji is the
one factor, anasakti-desirelessness,
detachment, dissociation from selfishness. As
between the two modern interpreters of the
Gita’s Yoga, Tilak and Sri Aurobindo, Gandhiji
strikes a middle path. Selfless action there is
and a divinised self-offering of action also
there is in the Gita, but the Gita hews the path
of discernment and selection of that duty when
conflict emerges in the sphere of duties
themselves. It is not necessary to hold that Sri
Krishna admonished Arjuna about mistaking the
right duty as the wrong one or vice versa, but
that conflicts between ethical and political
duty have to be resolved by an appeal to the
Divine Truth. Worship and devotion to Truth are
the primary conditions – ayatanam – of all yoga.
Satyannasti paro dharmah. The Gita is basically
a work of supreme ethico-political importance as
contrasted with the earlier views of the
Acharyas that it is a work of Moksa. Understood
in a political sense, moksa became equivalent to
liberation from foreign domination – para
dharma – and this twist to the original
meaning had remarkable results – it worked a
revolution in the modes of thought in India.
Greatest of all
the most intriguing points to a student of
Gandhian thought is the reconciliation that
Gandhiji inwardly effected between the Gita as a
counsel for War and his own supreme discovery of
Non-violent Resistance or Satyagraha.
Paradoxical, even as Stanley Jones said, where
the contradictories held themselves in tension,
so too this invincible spirit of resistance of
Evil and the equally firm adherence to Ahimsa
and Satya, revealed a supreme tension which
emotionally moved millions to self-sacrifice and
unyielding courage in the face of brute force.
The war was turned inward against all those
forces which stimulated in others fierce strife
and hatred, and the result was the inward reign
of love and knowledge and self-power. The use of
this inward soul-force in one’s dealings, even
with misguided enemies or foes stimulated in
them responses of compassion and love. Thus it
is by evoking human love in the breasts of all
men, and love for truth and goodness in one’s
foes by one’s own scrupulous observance that one
conquers the evil. The evil in the evil doer is
thus expunged and the wicked man turns into a
human being. Satyagraha thus is indeed a
paradoxical combination of force and truth by
love. The Gita in its final phases shows that
faith in God’s omnipresence and the pursuit of
one’s true duty will lead to a life without fear
of sin. Gita however is that which breathes the
love of God as the mighty solvent of all human
distresses. In his own life, Gandhiji showed the
strictest obedience to the divine will and
cheerfully underwent all hardships as the gift
of God. The Gita taught him a life of godliness
in God for God. Though he loved India yet God
was his supreme concern. Satyagraha renders
violent ways of resolving conflicts otiose and
childish and impossible.
A daily
recitation of the reading of the Bhagavad Gita
is not a ritual but a regenerative work when it
is done with the spirit of love of God, and
inward surrender and service of all. Gandhiji
made the Gita not merely popular but a precious
contribution to the people of all strata of
Indian social life.
The message of
the Gita’s ‘wisdom through love and action”, and
in his life he strove strenuously to live upto
it, and in death he revealed the great truth
more vividly than ever. As Vincent Shean
remarked “The Gandhi-Gita triumphs over the
unanimous dissent of the scholars by the
dramatic perfection of the life given to it”.
2.22 CRITIQUE OF REVELATION
Nicolas Berdyeav,
the noted Russian theologian and mystic in his
various works has propounded the need for a
critique of revelation.
“A critique of
revelation presupposes reason clarified inwardly
by the truth of revelation ..... critique of
revelation presupposes too that God is not
higher than Truth and is not subordinate to
Truth. He is existent Truth, God is mystery, but
he is also Truth, spirit, freedom, love
conscience. God is the overcoming for my sake of
the pain of alienation, he is for me the
attainment of joy”.
And speaking on
the criterion of Truth he writes:
“The criterion of
Truth is in the subject not in the object, in
freedom not in authority, the importance of
which is merely sociological. The criterion of
truth is not in the world and not in society but
in spirit, and there is no criterion of spirit
outside spirit itself.*
“The critique of
revelation of which I am thinking has to take
line which is the direct opposite of that in
which it has moved from the beginning of modern
times, in natural religion and deism, in
rationalism of all shades in rationalistic and
moralistic interpretations of Christianity. In
opposition to all this it must move in the
direction of mystery and mysticism and towards
the over-coming of theological rationalism. It
is not critique by the reason of the centres of
enlightenment but a critique by the Spirit ...
The move..... is towards primary spiritual
experience towards the existential subject not
towards the ‘natural’ but towards the reverse of
the objectified nature, towards spirituality”.*
A recovery of the
Spirit’s experience or experience by the Spirit
of the Spirit alone can be the critique of
revelation. A critique of revelation is a
desideratum and was found to be necessary in
India very early. In fact the whole literature
of the Upanisads can be said to be a critique of
revelation. Mimamsa was the original word used
for this purpose. The kena up. mentions that it
is possible to understand the Ultimate Reality
or its truth only by means of Mimamsa (Yadi
manyase suvedeti dabhram evapi nunam tvam vettha
brahman rupam, yadasya tvam yadasya ca
deveswatha humimamsyam eva te manye viditam.
II.i.). Mimamsa in a sense is a logic of the
Revelation as applied to this kind of
literature. We can see that the teachers of
seers of the Spirit did not bring in logical
arguments and objective data. On the contrary
they have clearly explained and instructed the
realisation of the spirit knowing which one
knows all in their truth. Since such knowledge
is no objective knowledge, no utilitarian tests
or pragmatic tests were applied to. It is in
their inner spiritual conformity rather than any
extraneous authority especially of some lower
and dubitable knowledge that they can sustain
themselves as truth, in fact it is an
extraordinary falling back on the common man’s
sense-knowledge and inferential apparatus to
make spirit rational or amenable to man’s
sensate objectified mind as happens when the
criteria of workability and inferability are
applied to this field of this knowledge (Vada or
Vedanta). The intrinsic truthness of the Veda is
something that cannot be sacrificed at the altar
of lower level experiences.
The method of
interpretation of the Veda then would
necessitate a faithful spiritual awakening in
oneself to see the whole as the spirit would see
it. This may be considered impossible to the
ordinary man-but then, is there a right for any
ordinary man to insist upon the moon coming to
him or seeking to catch the image in the mirror,
or cry out against those who declare that not
until one can resist the temptation to accept
the so called intelligible as such because seen
or reasoned, is one fit to have the necessary
condition to be aware of the higher worlds?
The Criterion for
the real truth is not therefore outside itself
but it is to be perhaps accepted as a matter of
faith at the beginning. Faith (sraddha) is
necessary not as an ultimate but as token of the
willingness to experiment with real subjectivity
and transcendence of the lower levels that tend
towards objectification, materiality, sense
mystifi-cation, and all those arts and crafts
that mind has been habituated to in its long
journey of materialistic objectification for
existing in the phenomenal world.
Some of the basic
mistakes made even by theologians in respect of
Mimamsa are (i) to think that reason is the only
instrument of truth or verification of even
higher knowledge a reason that is tied down to
the sensory, (ii) that the universals of
religious experience are of the same order of
generality as rational generalization, (iii)
that one has wither to be dogmatically asserting
the objectivity of the Vedic knowledge whether
it stands to ordinary reason or otherwise, but
nevertheless refuse for them another method of
cognitivity or knowing which will grant a
restoration of meaning rendered meaningless by
ordinary experience and interpretation.
It is these
points that have often led to conflicts in the
Mimamsa.
That reason is
not qualified in this area of experience would
be granted by all those who would find that
justification of transcendental truths
impossible. Thus revelation would be considered
to be irrational, not in the derogatory sense
but in the sense in which the impotency of
reason is accepted. This would appear to be a
great disaster. But as in science when the
Euclidean conception of Space was asked to be
dropped and the Einsteinian conception was
substituted, worlds did not fall, but greater
progress was rendered possible. But when we seek
to get beyond the twin coordinates of life and
speak about timelessness, undoubtedly there is
said to be irrationality and meaninglessness.
One may well ask to whom? Certainly to the
finite mind or the mind habituated to the
coordinate system accepted conventionality by
ordinary men.
Similarly many of
the Philosophical problems posed before the
transcendentalist could be shown to be what they
are to those who have tried to abolish all these
meaningful categories such as causality and so
on. Indeed the Upanisads do speak of those who
have attained the Ultimate as getting beyond all
these limitations* (Isa: 8 : Sa paryagat akayam
avranam asnaviram, Suddham etc., and as one who
had begun to see all things in their eternal
nature – yatha tathyato arthan vyadadhat
sasvatibhyah samabhyah).
Thus it is not
enough to listen to the Veda: they require
orientation of the mind and the senses, the
buddhi and the entire structures we have built
up. Thus the outward-turned sense organs and the
outward moving motor-organs have to get
in-turned and one should loosen one’s hold on
the objects so that one could get an internal
knowledge of them through spirit rather than
sense. ** The mind too has to be turned inward
so that it can become dispassionate and see from
the standpoint of its own truth – the Spirit
that moves it, Logics of the objective or
materialistic mind depending upon what is called
the known inferring the unknown are bound to
hinder the experience of the Spirit.
Religious methods
also try to proceed in some cases to adopt the
familiar means to attain the ultimate ends.
These methods have proved rather useless in
bringing about true spiritual experiences.
Induction of so-called religious and spiritual
states by means of material aids, asanas,
breath-control etc or even by concentration on
significant symbolic objects and idols have
surely helped the experience of these psychic
states of exaltation or even trance but they
have been shown to be not truly spiritual states
that grant sense of Existential Spirit or Truth.
Thus religion is
the last resort has to abandon its popularising
role. In fact religion as a materialisation of
the Spirit has done more harm to the individual
than good. Religion supported by revelation has
to turn to revelation that includes the practice
of spiritual freedom rather than merely chant it
or create conditions merely for preserving the
revelation in letter.
Revelation is not
merely vision; it is a direction of the Spirit.
It is this spiritual obligation directed by the
authentic Voice of the Infinite, heard in the
hearts of the seeker of the Spirit that is
reproduced in the creative Act of the universe.
Indeed it is this Creative direction that
liberates as it unifies or unifies as it
liberates the mind and the heart and the other
powers and faculties of the soul, that is of
dynamic importance. Religion is no escape from
reality or an illusion of the psyche or a dope
for the life of the seeker, though it may be all
these to the materialist albeit religious in the
commonsense sense of that word. It is in the
spiritual activity, flaming towards freedom and
ecstacy of creative unfoldment of the eternal in
the mortal and the world, that spirits regain
religion to itself and liberate it from the
shackles put upon it by well meaning theologians
and priests.
Revelation
demands the activity of spiritual life. It is
clearer that in doing thus it creates for itself
a nucleus of spiritual souls who form themselves
as a sangha. – society or community of the
existence of God and this is no body of society
or cooperatives or humans as such. It is the
body of the Divine Spirit - not a collective
unity or collective. In each and every one, the
Spirit wholly being present is present in all as
well wholly. This is the mystery the Upanisad
says, which is beyond all description and
communication. It is the supreme Experience
which alone can dispel the tragic pessimism of
the philosophers and logicians of despair.
Religion requires
Carya-called later Brahama-carya the life lived
in the spirit of the Ultimate Brahman. Though
Brahman is the origin of all matter and life and
mind and all the manynesses in each aspect of
these created worlds, the activity, imperative
of conduct, of spirit leads to it alone and
should lead to it alone.
That these have
been thoroughly forgotten or restricted shows
that there has happened a gulf or separation
between revelation which has been said to be a
body of truths of the transcendental order and
the Brahmanubhava or spirit. Revelation was not
made an instrument or means towards the
realization of interior attainment of the
spirit: it was assumed as Pramana but not as
Upaya as truth as it means. These two are
inseparable in Spirit. The Divine described as
satya or sat and cit and Ananda does not
separate the attainment from truth. Existential
truth or reality is superior to mere truth that
does not separate the attainment from truth.
Existential truth or reality is superior to mere
truth that does not pass on to the level of
existence. It may remain ideal in the sense of
the term used by logic of the understanding
which separates being from truth and finally
declines to judge truth by being or doing.
Ofcourse all this is at the level not of the
utilitarian sensate men but at the height of
interior yearning for Reality and freedom that
is beyond the terrestrial and the material – the
regions of the opaque and the divided.
That revelation
insists on this obligation of attainment is a
fact that is forgotten or bypassed by mimamsists
both of the over-intellectual type and the
over-devotional type. But it is nonetheless
brought home to them that the dynamics of spirit
entails this integral pursuit of the Divine in
Peace as in Action, in Creation as well as
Destruction and in Being. But it is the higher
law of freedom that operates not the law of
restriction and bondage that is true of all
created planes of being – or lower worlds so to
speak.
Revelation is not
a mere passive recipience of the vision however
sub specie eternitatis – even as Spinoza’s
entailing prayer and so on as in the Hymus of
the Saints, but something that claims a Service
through love, a service in God-comradeship of
which the Veda speaks gloriously – dva suparno
sayuja sakhaya.... two birds, (Spirits free in
their wings and strong linked together in union
and comrades -) thus they soar and live the life
of freedom unabridged whether eating or fasting,
in the eternal. God stoops to the soul more than
Himself for in that lies His supreme
spirituality in eternal dynamism.
Revelation is
truth and existence and also joy. This is why it
has been called sat cit and ananda in the Veda.
Not only the content delivered by the Veda is
Brahman, it is also called the Brahman – the
Sabda Brahman. In this sense its supreme quality
is liberating rather than restricting.
The praise
offered to the Veda is immense because it does
all the functions of the real parent or God
himself in so far as it takes one to yonder
shore of being and is infallible.
The Risis or
Seers of the Veda form a holy Group – or
spiritual community. The Vedic authority is
firstly in itself as the authentic voice of the
Ultimate Reality spoken to these dedicated
channels or souls and secondly in the Risis
themselves too who are the inward spiritual
community. For them in the language of Nicolas
Berdyeav the criterion of truth is “found in the
Spirit, it is the one and only guide”. ....
Those who live in the spirits and by it wholly
have no external test. Their knowledge has a
self-certifying nature. The Sat Sangh or
spiritual community or Veda Parisad is its own
authority. Berdyeav remarks, “It is remarkable
that all the religious philosophies of India is
founded upon the inward authority of ancient
sacred books and is an exposition of the
Vedanta”. (P.60.T&R.).
The Vedic
authority (parisad) had become the archetype of
later Buddhist canons. The Buddhist from the
very beginning insisted upon the importance of
the Sangha or community as the authority in
spiritual matters – an authority that was
unquestionable because based on the highest
spiritual realisation. In this it merely
followed the strict so called attitude of the
Vedic group. In fact their very oath or prayer
contains the seeking or refuge in the Sangha
along with Dharma and the Buddha. Even so has it
been in the Jaina and other schismatic
religions. But the ultimate authority of the
Veda or Revelation was not given up except in
the case of the materialist who took refuge only
in his sense knowledge and inferential knowledge
and hedonistic human pleasures and so on.
Revelational
truth is of the truly evolutionary nature. It
does not state truths about things as they are
or about truths as they are discovered by the
extension of knowledge through generalisations.
It may attempt to communicate the authentic
truth by means of analogies drawn from
experience of the limited only in so far as they
reflect the transcendent. In itself it is of the
eternal to which all individuals move or
compelled to move as if by an eternal
attraction.
There have been
some religious seers who have found that the
revelation is a matter for book or grantha or
Bible or Koran or the Tripitataks and so on
following on the footsteps of the Veda so to
speak, consciously or unconsciously. The
tendency to make one book of great spiritual
merit the authority is so constantly seen that
one could well ask what book is your authority.
A written word is as sacrosanct as, if not more
than, the spoken word.
The Veda
peculiarly is called not the written word or the
spoken word but the heard word. The meaning of
this is that it has been heard in the heart by
the seer or who has seen and heard
simultaneously. The Seer is called mantra-drata
(from which comes the word darsana for a
philosophy understood as a way to truth rather
than a way of thinking or rationalising the seen
and the heard which is what it has become now).
All present day philosophy is natural
philosophy-the sensate knowledge being the basis
for philosophising about the nature of reality
as a whole. The unity of the spiritual vision
and audition and perhaps one should add the
repetition of the heard word (vak) is the most
important part of this is spiritual transmission
of truth – experience-bliss.
The Veda has to
be considered to be truth even when it
contradicts the cherished ideas of all ordinary
people. But its falsity if it could be declared
at all cannot be affirmed so long as we do not
actually attain that spiritual state in which it
claims it’s authenticity. Faith is the only
guide in this matter and faith presupposes as
Berdyeav says “cognition by spirit as a whole”.
Since revelational truth demands this faith and
integral dedication to follow it in the face of
all sensory and rational factors to the contrary
(not necessarily) it is something rejected by
the materialistic mind or the more easy-going
mind. In fact the ordinary man has been bred up
with the knowledge (?) that there can be no
certainty at all in any thing; that relativity
is the only possible guide (?) that one need not
be surprised if the most absurd things turn out;
and contradictions are produced naturally
dialectically that evil will produce the good
and the good will produce the evil and so on.
Revelational fitness is a great thing and that
test for fitness for revelation is firstly some
thing no one knows how to administer and
secondly something no one wants to be
administered and found wanting. Thus we find
that experience called spiritual experience
which alone can justify or verify the Veda (or
for the matter of that any true spiritual work)
is neither sought after nor granted. But when
sought and gained it is the most valuable
attainment, siddhi or prapti ever granted to man
by God: for he gains of the freedom of the body
of God-bliss, immortality, and eternity,
existential truth infinity.
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