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ANALYSIS
PREFATORY
Plan of the
Upanishad
THE
Upanishads, being vehicles of illumination and not of
instruction, composed for seekers who had already a general familiarity with the
ideas of the Vedic and Vedantic seers and even some personal experience of the
truths on which they were founded, dispense in their style with expressed
transitions of thought and the development of implied or subordinate notions.
Every verse in the Isha Upanishad reposes on a number of
ideas implicit in the text but nowhere set forth explicitly; the reasoning also
that supports its conclusions is suggested by the words, not expressly conveyed
to the intelligence. The reader, or rather the hearer, was supposed to proceed
from light to light, confirming his intuitions and verifying by his experience,
not submitting the ideas to the judgment of the logical reason.
To the modern mind this method is invalid and inapplicable;
it is necessary to present the ideas of the Upanishad in their completeness,
underline the suggestions, supply the necessary transitions and bring out the
suppressed but always implicit reasoning.
The central idea of the Upanishad, which is a reconciliation
and harmony of fundamental opposites, is worked out symmetrically in four
successive movements of thought.
first
movement
In the first, a basis is laid down by the idea of the one and
stable Spirit inhabiting and governing a universe of movement and of the forms
of movement. (Verse 1, line 1)
On this conception the rule of a divine life for man is
founded, — enjoyment of all by renunciation of all through the exclusion of
desire. (Verse 1, line 2)
There is then declared the justification of works and of the
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physical life on the basis of an inalienable freedom of the
soul, one with the Lord, amidst all the activity of the multiple movement.
{Verse 2)
Finally, the result of an ignorant interference with the
right manifestation of the One in the multiplicity is declared to be an
involution in states of blind obscurity after death. (Verse 3)
second
movement
In the second movement the ideas of the first verse are
resumed and amplified.
The one stable Lord and the multiple movement are identified
as one Brahman of whom, however, the unity and stability are the higher truth
and who contains all as well as inhabits all. (Verses 4,5)
The basis and fulfilment of the rule of life are found in the
experience of unity by which man identifies himself with the cosmic and
transcendental Self and is identified in the Self, but with an entire freedom
from grief and illusion, with all its beomings. (Verses 6,7)
third
movement
In the third movement there is a return to the justification
of life and works (the subject of Verse 2) and an indication of their
divine fulfilment.
The degrees of the Lord's self-manifestation in the universe
of motion and in the becomings of the one Being are set forth and the inner law
of all existences declared to be by His conception and determination. (Verse
8)
Vidya and Avidya, Becoming and Non-becoming are reconciled by
their mutual utility to the progressive self-realisation which proceeds from the
state of mortality to the state of Immortality. (Verses 9-14)
fourth
movement
The fourth movement returns to the idea of the worlds and
under the figures of Surya and Agni the relations of the Supreme Truth and
Immortality (Verses 15,16), the activities of this life (Verse 17),
and the state after death (Verse 18) are symbolically indicated.
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FIRST
MOVEMENT
THE INHABITING GODHEAD:
LIFE AND ACTION
Verses 1-3*
THE BASIS OF COSMIC EXISTENCE
God and the world. Spirit and formative Nature are confronted and their
relations fixed.
COSMOS
All world is a movement of the Spirit in itself and is mutable and transient in
all its formations and appearances; its only eternity is an eternity of
recurrence, its only stability a semblance caused by certain apparent fixities
of relation and grouping.
Every separate object in the universe is, in truth, itself the whole universe
presenting a certain front or outward appearance of its movement. The microcosm
is one with the macrocosm.
Yet in their relation of principle of movement and result of movement they are
continent and contained, world in world, movement in movement. The individual
therefore partakes of the nature of the universal, refers back to it for its
source of activity, is, as we say, subject to its laws and part of cosmic
Nature.
SPIRIT
Spirit is lord of its movement, one, immutable, free, stable and eternal.
The Movement with all its formed objects has been created in order to provide a
habitation for the Spirit who, being One,
*1 All this is for habitation by the Lord,
whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion. By that
renounced thou shouldst enjoy; lust not after any man's possession.
2 Doing verily works in this world one should
wish to live a hundred years. Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this;
action cleaves not to a man.
3 Sunless are those worlds and enveloped in
blind gloom whereto all they in their passing hence resort who are slayers of
their souls.
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yet
dwells multitudinously in the multiplicity of His mansions.
It is the same Lord who dwells in the sum and the part, in the Cosmos as a whole
and in each being, force or object in the Cosmos.
Since He is one and indivisible, the Spirit in all is one and their
multiplicity is a play of His cosmic consciousness.
Therefore each human being is in his essence one with all others, free, eternal,
immutable, lord of Nature.
TRANSITIONAL THOUGHT
AVIDYA
The object of habitation is enjoyment and possession; the object of the Spirit
in Cosmos is, therefore, the possession and enjoyment of the universe. Yet,
being thus in his essence one, divine and free, man seems to be limited, divided
from others, subject to Nature and even its creation and sport, enslaved to
death, ignorance and sorrow. His object in manifestation being possession and
enjoyment of his world, he is unable to enjoy because of his limitation. This
contrary result comes about by Avidya, the Ignorance of oneness: and the knot of
the Ignorance is egoism.
EGO
The cause of ego is that while by Its double power of Vidya and Avidya the
Spirit dwells at once in the consciousness of multiplicity and relativity and in
the consciousness of unity and identity and is therefore not bound by the
Ignorance, yet It can, in mind, identify Itself with the object in the movement,
absorbingly, to the apparent exclusion of the Knowledge which remains behind,
veiled at the back of the mentality. The movement of Mind in Nature is thus able
to conceive of the object as the reality and the Inhabitant as limited and
determined by the appearances of the object. It conceives of the object, not as
the universe in one of its frontal appearances, but as itself a separate
existence standing out from the Cosmos and different in being from all the rest
of it. It conceives similarly of the Inhabitant. This is the illusion of
ignorance which falsifies all realities. The illusion is called ahamkāra,
the separative ego-sense which
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makes each being conceive of itself as an independent personality.
The result of the separation is the inability to enter into harmony and oneness
with the universe and a consequent in-ability to possess and enjoy it. But the
desire to possess and enjoy is the master impulse of the Ego which knows itself
obscurely to be the Lord, although owing to the limitations of its relativity,
it is unable to realise its true existence. The result is discord with others
and oneself, mental and physical suffering, the sense of weakness and inability,
the sense of obscuration, the straining of energy in passion and in desire
towards self-fulfilment, the recoil of energy exhausted or disappointed towards
death and disintegration.
Desire is the badge of subjection with its attendant discord and suffering. That
which is free, one and lord, does not desire, but inalienably contains,
possesses and enjoys.
THE RULE OF THE DIVINE LIFE
Enjoyment of the universe and all it contains is the object of world-existence,
but renunciation of all in desire is the condition of the free enjoyment of all.
The renunciation demanded is not a moral constraint of self-denial or a physical
rejection, but an entire liberation of the spirit from any craving after the
forms of things.
The terms of this liberation are freedom from egoism and, consequently, freedom
from personal desire. Practically, this renunciation implies that one should not
regard anything in the universe as a necessary object of possession, nor as
possessed by another and not by oneself, nor as an object of greed in the heart
or the senses.
This attitude is founded on the perception of unity. For it has already been
said that all souls are one possessing Self, the Lord; and although the Lord
inhabits each object as if separately, yet all objects exist in that Self and
not outside it.
Therefore by transcending Ego and realising the one Self, we possess the whole
universe in the one cosmic consciousness and do not need to possess physically.
Having by oneness with the Lord the possibility of an infinite free delight in
all things, we do not need to desire.
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Being one with all beings, we possess, in their enjoyment, in ours and in the
cosmic Being's, delight of universal self-expression. It is only by this Ananda
at once transcendent and universal that man can be free in his soul and yet live
in the world with the full active Life of the Lord in His universe of movement.
THE JUSTIFICATION OF WORKS
This freedom does not depend upon inaction, nor is this possession limited to
the enjoyment of the inactive Soul that only witnesses without taking part in
the movement. On the contrary, the doing of works in this material world and a
full acceptance of the term of physical life are part of its completeness. For
the active Brahman fulfils Itself in the world by works and man also is in the
body for self-fulfilment by action. He cannot do otherwise, for even his inertia
acts and produces effects in the cosmic movement. Being in this body or any kind
of body, it is idle to think of refraining from action or escaping the physical
life. The idea that this in itself can be a means of liberation, is part of the
Ignorance which supposes the soul to be a separate entity in the Brahman.
Action is shunned because it is thought to be inconsistent with freedom. The man
when he acts, is supposed to be necessarily entangled in the desire behind the
action, in subjection to the formal energy that drives the action and in the
results of the action. These things are true in appearance, not in reality.
Desire is only a mode of the emotional mind which by ignorance seeks its delight
in the object of desire and not in the Brahman who expresses Himself in the
object. By destroying that ignorance one can do action without entanglement in
desire.
The Energy that drives is itself subject to the Lord, who expresses Himself in
it with perfect freedom. By getting behind Nature to the Lord of Nature, merging
the individual in the Cosmic Will, one can act with the divine freedom. Our
actions are given up to the Lord and our personal responsibility ceases in His
liberty.
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The chain of Karma only binds the movement of Nature and not the soul which, by
knowing itself, ceases even to appear to be bound by the result of its works.
Therefore the way of freedom is not inaction, but to cease from identifying
oneself with the movement and recover instead our true identity in the Self of
things who is their Lord.
THE OTHER WORLDS
By departing from the physical life one does not disappear out of the Movement,
but only passes into some other general state of consciousness than the material
universe.
These states are either obscure or illuminated, some dark or sunless.
By persisting in gross forms of ignorance, by coercing perversely the soul in
its self-fulfilment or by a wrong dissolution of its becoming in the Movement,
one enters into states of blind darkness, not into the worlds of light and of
liberated and blissful being.
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SECOND
MOVEMENT
1. BRAHMAN:
ONENESS OF GOD AND THE WORLD
Verses 4-5*
BRAHMAN — THE UNITY
The Lord and the world, even when they seem to be distinct, are not really
different from each other; they are one Brahman.
"ONE UNMOVING"
God is the one stable and eternal Reality. He is One because there is nothing
else, since all existence and non-existence are He. He is stable or unmoving,
because motion implies change in Space and change in Time, and He, being beyond
Time and Space, is immutable. He possesses eternally in Himself all that is, has
been or ever can be, and He therefore does not increase or diminish. He
is beyond causality and relativity and therefore there is no change of relations
in His being.
"SWIFTER THAN MIND"
The world is a cyclic movement (samsāra) of the Divine Consciousness in
Space and Time. Its law and, in a sense, its object is progression; it exists by
movement and would be dissolved by cessation of movement. But the basis of this
movement is not material; it is the energy of active consciousness which, by its
motion and multiplication in different principles (different in appearance, the
same in essence), creates oppositions of unity and multiplicity, divisions of
Time and Space, relations and groupings of circumstance and Causality. All these
things are real in consciousness, but only symbolic of the Being, somewhat as
the imaginations of a creative Mind are true representations.
*4 One unmoving that is swifter than
Mind; That the Gods reach not, for It progresses ever in front. That, standing,
passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the
Waters.
5 That moves and That moves not; That is far and
the same is near; That is within all this and That also is outside all this.
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of itself, yet not quite real in comparison with itself, or real with a
different kind of reality.
But mental consciousness is not the Power that creates the universe. That is
something infinitely more puissant, swift and unfettered than the mind. It is
the pure omnipotent self-awareness of the Absolute unbound by any law of the
relativity. The laws of the relativity, upheld by the gods, are Its temporary
creations. Their apparent eternity is only the duration, immeasurable to us, of
the world which they govern. They are laws regularising motion and change, not
laws binding the Lord of the movement. The gods, therefore, are described as
continually running in their course. But the Lord is free and unaffected by His
own movement.
"THAT MOVES, THAT MOVES NOT"
The motion of the world works under the government of a perpetual stability.
Change represents the constant shifting of apparent relations in an eternal
Immutability.
It is these truths that are expressed in the formulae of the one Unmoving that
is swifter than Mind, That which moves and moves not, the one Stable which
outstrips in the speed of its effective consciousness the others who run.
TRANSITIONAL THOUGHT
THE MANY¹
If the One is pre-eminently real, "the others9', the Many are not unreal. The
world is not a figment of the Mind.
Unity is the eternal truth of things, diversity a play of the unity. The sense
of unity has therefore been termed Knowledge, Vidya, the sense of diversity
Ignorance, Avidya. But diversity is not false except when it is divorced from
the sense of its true and eternal unity.
¹The series of ideas under this heading seem to
me to be the indispensable metaphysical basis of the Upanishad. The Isha
Upanishad does not teach a pure and exclusive Monism; it declares the One
without denying the Many and its method is to see the One in the Many. It
asserts the simultaneous validity of Vidya and Avidya and upholds as the object
of action and knowledge an immortality consistent with Life and Birth in this
world. It regards every object as itself, the universe and every soul as itself,
the divine Purusha. The ensemble of these ideas is consistent only with a
synthetic or comprehensive as opposed to an illusionist or exclusive Monism.
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Brahman is one, not numerically, but in essence. Numerical oneness would either
exclude multiplicity or would be a pluralistic and divisible oneness with the
Many as its parts. That is not the unity of Brahman, which can neither be
diminished nor increased, nor divided.
The Many in the universe are sometimes called parts of the universal Brahman as
the waves are parts of the sea. But, in truth, these waves are each of them that
sea, their diversities being those of frontal or superficial appearances caused
by the sea's motion. As each object in the universe is really the whole universe
in a different frontal appearance, so each individual soul is all Brahman
regarding Itself and world from a centre of cosmic consciousness.
For That is identical, not single. It is identical always and everywhere in Time
and Space, as well as identical beyond Time and Space. Numerical oneness and
multiplicity are equally valid terms of its essential unity.
These two terms, as we see them, are like all others, representations in Chit,
in the free and all-creative self-awareness of the Absolute regarding itself
variously, infinitely, innumerably and formulating what it regards. Chit is a
power not only of knowledge, but of expressive will, not only of receptive
vision, but of formative representation; the two are indeed one power. For Chit
is an action of Being, not of the Void. What it sees, that becomes. It sees
itself beyond Space and Time; that becomes in the conditions of Space and Time.
Creation is not a making of something out of nothing or of one thing out of
another, but a self-projection of Brahman into the conditions of Space and time.
Creation is not a making, but a becoming in terms and forms of conscious
existence.
In the becoming each individual is Brahman variously represented and entering
into various relations with Itself in the play of the divine consciousness; in
being, each individual is all Brahman.
Brahman as the Absolute or the Universal has the power of standing back from
Itself in the relativity. It conceives, by a subordinate movement of
consciousness, the individual as other than the universal, the relative as
different from the Absolute. Without
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this separative movement, the individual would always tend to lose itself in the
universal, the relative to disappear into the Absolute. Thus, It supports a
corresponding reaction in the individual who regards himself as "other" than the
transcendent and universal Brahman and "other" than the rest of the Many. He
puts identity behind him and enforces the play of Being in the separate Ego.
The individual may regard himself as eternally different from the One, or as
eternally one with It, yet different, or he may go back entirely in his
consciousness to the pure Identity.¹ But he can never regard himself as
independent of some kind of Unity, for such a view would correspond to no
conceivable truth in the universe or beyond it.
These three attitudes correspond to three truths of the Brahman which are
simultaneously valid and none of them entirely true without the others as its
complements. Their co-existence, difficult of conception to the logical
intellect, can be experienced by identity in consciousness with Brahman.
Even in asserting Oneness, we must remember that Brahman is beyond our mental
distinctions and is a fact not of Thought that discriminates, but of Being
which is absolute, infinite and escapes discrimination. Our consciousness is
representative and symbolic; it cannot conceive the thing-in-itself, the
Absolute, except by negation, in a sort of void, by emptying it of all that it
seems in the universe to contain. But the Absolute is not a void or negation. It
is all that is here in Time and beyond Time.
Even oneness is a representation and exists in relation to multiplicity. Vidya
and Avidya are equally eternal powers of the supreme Chit. Neither Vidya nor
Avidya by itself is the absolute knowledge. {Verses 9-11)
Still, of all relations oneness is the secret base, not multiplicity. Oneness
constitutes and upholds the multiplicity, multiplicity does not constitute and
uphold the oneness.
Therefore we have to conceive of oneness as our self and the essential nature of
Being, multiplicity as a representation of Self and a becoming. We have to
conceive of the Brahman as One
¹ The positions, in inverse order, of the three
principal philosophical schools of Vedanta, Monism, Qualified Monism and
Dualism.
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Self of all and then return upon the Many as becomings of the One Being
(bhūtāni…ātmānam). But both the Self and the be-comings are Brahman; we
cannot regard the one as Brahman and the others as unreal and not Brahman. Both
are real, the one with a constituent and comprehensive, the others with a
derivative or dependent reality.
THE RUNNING OF THE GODS
Brahman representing Itself in the universe as the Stable., by Its immutable
existence (Sat), is Purusha, God, Spirit; representing Itself as the Motional,
by Its power of active Consciousness (Chit), is Nature, Force or World-Principle
(Prakriti, Shakti, Maya).¹ The play of these two principles is the Life of the
universe.
The Gods are Brahman representing Itself in cosmic Personalities expressive of
the one Godhead who, in their impersonal action, appear as the various play of
the principles of Nature.
The "others" are sarvāṇi bhūtāni of a later
verse, all becomings Brahman representing itself in the separative consciousness
of the Many.
Everything in the universe, even the Gods, seems to itself to be moving in the
general movement towards a goal outside itself or other than its immediate idea
of itself. Brahman is the goal; for it is both the beginning and the end, the
cause and the result of all movement.
But the idea of a final goal in the movement of Nature itself is illusory. For
Brahman is Absolute and Infinite. The Gods, labouring to reach him, find, at
every goal that they realise, Brahman still moving forward in front to a farther
realisation.
Nothing in the appearances of the universe can be entirely That to the relative
consciousness; all is only a symbolic representation
¹ Prakriti, executive Nature as opposed to
Purusha, which is the Soul governing, taking cognisance of and enjoying the
works of Prakriti. Shakti, the self-existent, self-cognitive, self-effective
Power of the Lord (Ishwara, Deva or Purusha), which expresses itself in the
workings of Prakriti. Maya, signifying originally in the Veda comprehensive and
creative knowledge. Wisdom that is from of old; afterwards taken in its second
and derivative sense, cunning, magic. Illusion. In this second significance it
can really be appropriate only to the workings of the lower Nature, aparā
prakṛti
which has put behind it the Divine
Wisdom and is absorbed in the experiences of the separative Ego. It is in the
more ancient sense that the word Maya is used in the Upanishads, where, indeed,
it occurs but rarely.
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of the Unknowable.
All things are already realised in Brahman. The running of the Others in the
course of Nature is only a working out (Prakriti), by Causality, in Time and
Space, of something that Brahman already possesses.
Even in Its universal being Brahman exceeds the Movement. Exceeding Time, It
contains in Itself past, present and future simultaneously and has not to run to
the end of conceivable Time. Exceeding Space, It contains all formations in
Itself coincidently and has not to run to the end of conceivable Space.
Exceeding Causality, It contains freely in Itself all eventualities as well as
all potentialities without being bound by the apparent chain of causality by
which they are linked in the universe. Everything is already realised by It as
the Lord before it can be accomplished by the separated Personalities in the
movement.
THE PRINCIPLE OF LIFE
MATARISHWAN AND THE WATERS
What then is Its intention in the movement?
The movement is a rhythm, a harmony which That, as the Universal Life, works out
by figures of Itself in the terms of conscious Being. It is a formula
symbolically expressive of the Unknowable, —- so arranged that every level of
consciousness really represents something beyond itself, depth of depth,
continent of continent. It is a play¹ of the divine Consciousness existing for
its own satisfaction and adding nothing to That, which is already complete. It
is a fact of conscious being, justified by its own existence, with no purpose
ulterior to itself. The idea of purpose, of a goal is born of the progressive
self-unfolding by the world of its own true nature to the individual Souls
inhabiting its forms; for the Being is gradually self-revealed within its own
becomings, real Unity emerges out of the Multiplicity and changes entirely the
values of the latter to our consciousness.
This self-unfolding is governed by conditions determined by the complexity of
consciousness in its cosmic action.
For consciousness is not simple or homogeneous, it is septuple.
¹This is the Vaishnava image of the Lila applied
usually to the play of the Personal Deity in the world, but equally applicable
to the active impersonal Brahman.
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That is to say, it constitutes itself into seven forms or grades of conscious
activity descending from pure Being to physical being. Their interplay creates
the worlds, determines all activities, constitutes all becomings.
Brahman is always the continent of this play or this working. Brahman
self-extended in Space and Time is the universe.
In this extension Brahman represents Itself as formative Nature, the universal
Mother of things, who appears to us, first, as Matter, called pṛthivī,
the Earth-Principle.
Brahman in Matter or physical being represents Itself as the universal
Life-Power, Matarishwan, which moves there as a dynamic energy, prāṇa,
and presides effectively over all arrangement and formation.
Universal Life establishes, involved in Matter, the septuple consciousness; and
the action of prāṇa, the dynamic energy, on the Matrix of things evolves
out of it its different forms and serves as a basis for all their evolutions.
TRANSITIONAL THOUGHT
THE WATERS
There are, then, seven constituents of Chit active in the universe.
We are habitually aware of three elements in our being, Mind, Life and Body.
These constitute for us a divided and mutable existence which is in a condition
of unstable harmony and works by a strife of positive and negative forces
between the two poles of Birth and Death. For all life is a constant birth or
becoming (sambhava, sambhūti of Verses 12-14). All birth entails a
constant death or dissolution of that which becomes, in order that it may change
into a new becoming. Therefore this state of existence is called mṛtyu.
Death, and described as a stage which has to be passed through and transcended.
(Verses 11-14)
For this is not the whole of our being and, therefore, not our pure being. We
have, behind, a superconscious existence which has also three constituents,
sat, cit-tapas and ānanda.
Sat is essence of our being, pure infinite and undivided, as opposed to this
divisible being which founds itself on the constant changeableness of physical
substance. Sat is the divine counterpart
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of physical substance.
Chit-Tapas is pure energy of Consciousness, free in its rest or its action,
sovereign in its will, as opposed to the hampered dynamic energies of Prana
which, feeding upon physical substances, are dependent on and limited by their
sustenance.¹ Tapas is the divine counterpart of this lower nervous or vital
energy.
Ananda is Beatitude, the bliss of pure conscious existence and energy, as
opposed to the life of the sensations and emotions which are at the mercy of the
outward touches of Life and Matter and their positive and negative reactions,
joy and grief, pleasure and pain. Ananda is the divine counterpart of the lower
emotional and sensational being.
This higher existence, proper to the divine Sachchidananda, is unified,
self-existent, not confused by the figures of Birth and Death. It is called,
therefore, amṛtam. Immortality, and offered to us
as the goal to be aimed at and the felicity to be enjoyed when we have
transcended the state of death. (Verses 11, 14, 17,18)
The higher divine is linked to the lower mortal existence by the causal Idea² or
supramental Knowledge-Will, vijñāna. It is the causal Idea which, by
supporting and secretly guiding the confused activities of the Mind, Life and
Body, ensures and compels the right arrangement of the universe. It is called in
the Veda the Truth because it represents by direct vision the truth of things
both inclusive and independent of their appearances ; the Right or Law because,
containing in itself the effective power of Chit, it works out all things
according to their nature with a perfect knowledge and prevision; the Vast,
because it is of the nature of an infinite cosmic Intelligence comprehensive of
all particular activities.
Vijnana, as the Truth, leads the divided consciousness back to the One. It also
sees the truth of things in the multiplicity.
¹Therefore physical substance is called in the
Upanishads annam. Food. In its origin, however, the word meant simply
being or substance.
²Not the abstract mental idea, but the
supramental Real-Idea, the Consciousness, Force and Delight of the Being
precipitated into a comprehensive and discriminative awareness of all the truths
and powers of its own existence, carrying in its self-knowledge the will of
self-manifestation, the power of all its potentialities and the power of all its
forms. It is power that acts and effectuates, as well as knowledge master of its
own action.
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Vijnana is the divine counterpart of the lower divided intelligence.
These seven powers of Chit are spoken of by the Vedic Rishis as the Waters, they
are imaged as currents flowing into or rising out of the general sea of
Consciousness in the human being.¹
They are all co-existent in the universe eternally and inseparably, but capable
of being involved and remanifested in each other. They are actually involved in
physical Nature and must necessarily evolve out of it. They can be withdrawn
into pure infinite Being and can again be manifested out of it.
The infolding and unfolding of the One in the Many and the Many in the
One is therefore the law of the eternally recurrent cosmic Cycles.
THE VISION OF THE BRAHMAN
The Upanishad teaches us how to perceive Brahman in the universe and in our
self-existence.
We have to perceive Brahman comprehensively as both the Stable and the Moving.
We must see It in eternal and immutable Spirit and in all the changing
manifestations of universe and relativity.
We have to perceive all things in Space and Time, the far and the near, the
immemorial Past, the immediate Present, the infinite Future with all their
contents and happenings as the One Brahman.
We have to perceive Brahman as that which exceeds, contains and supports all
individual things as well as all universe, transcendentally of Time and Space
and Causality. We have to perceive It also as that which lives in and possesses
the universe and all it contains.
This is the transcendental, universal and individual Brahman, Lord, Continent
and Indwelling Spirit, which is the object of all knowledge. Its realisation is
the condition of perfection and the way of Immortality.
¹ Hrdya samudra, Ocean of the Heart. Rv.
IV. 58. 5.
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