A NOTE ON THE CHHANDOGYA UPANISHAD

 

first adhyaya

OM is the syllable (the Imperishable One); one should follow after it as the upward song (movement); for with OM one sings (goes) upwards; of which this is the analytical explanation.

So literally translated in its double meaning, both its exoteric, physical and symbolic sense and its esoteric symbolised reality, runs the initial sentence of the Upanishad. These opening lines or passages of the Vedanta are always of great importance; they are always so designed as to suggest or even sum up, if not all that comes afterwards, yet the essential and pervading idea of the Upanishad. The īṣā vāsyam o/the Vajasaneyi, the keneṣitam ...manas of the Talavakara, the Sacrificial Horse of the Brihad Aranyaka, the solitary Atman with its hints of the future world vibrations in the Aitareya are of this type. The Chhandogya, we see from its first and introductory sentences, is to be a work on the right and perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; the spirit, the methods, the formulae are to be given to us. Its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolised in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda; not, therefore, the pure state of the universal existence only, but that existence in all its parts, the waking world and the dream self and the sleeping, the manifest, half-manifest and hidden, Bhurloka, Bhuvar and Swar, — the right means to win all of them, enjoy all of them, transcend all of them, is the subject of the Chhandogya. OM is the symbol and the thing symbolised. It is this symbol, akṣaram,

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