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Kena Upanishad
FOREWORD
AS
THE Isha Upanishad is concerned with the problem
of God and the world and consequently with the harmonising of spirituality and
ordinary human action, so the Kena is occupied with the problem of God and the
Soul, and the harmonising of our personal activity with the movement of infinite
energy and the supremacy of the universal Will. We are not here in this universe
as independent existences. It is evident that we are limited beings clashing
with other limited beings, clashing with the forces of material Nature, clashing
too with forces of immaterial Nature of which we are aware not with the senses
but by the mind. The Upanishad takes for granted that we are souls, not merely
life-inspired bodies —into that question it does not enter. But this soul in us
is in relation with the outside world through the senses, through the vitality,
through mind. It is entangled in the mesh of its instruments, thinks they alone
exist or is absorbed in their action with which it identifies itself — it
forgets itself in its activities. To recall it to itself, to lift it above this
life of the senses, so that even while living in this world, it shall always
refer itself and its actions to the high universal Self and Deity which we all
are in the ultimate truth of our being — so that we may be free, may be plastic
and joyous, may be immortal, that is the object of the seer in the Kena
Upanishad. Briefly to explain the step by which he develops and arrives at his
point and the principal philosophical positions underlying his great argument,
is, as always, the purpose of this commentary. There is much that might and
should be said for the full realisation of this ancient gospel of submission and
self-surrender to the Infinite, but it is left to be said in a work of greater
amplitude and capacity. Exegesis in faithful subordination to the strict purport
and connotation of the text will be here as always my principle.
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THE FIRST PART
THE SELF AND THE SENSES
"By whom controlled, by whom commissioned and sent forth
falleth the mind on its object, by whom yoked to its activity goeth abroad this
chief of the vital forces ? By whom controlled is the word that men speak, and
what God set ear and eye to their workings ? That which is hearing within
hearing, mind of the mind, speech behind the word, he too is the life of
vitality and the sight within vision; the calm of soul are liberated from these
instruments and passing beyond this world become Immortals.... There the eye
goes not and speech cannot follow nor the mind; we know it not nor can we decide
by reason how to teach of it; for verily it is other than the known and it is
beyond the unknown; so have we heard from the men that went before us by whom to
us this Brahman was declared. That which is not uttered by speech but by which
speech is expressed, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which
men here pursue. That which thinketh not by the mind but by which mind itself is
realised, know thou that to be the Soul of things, not this which men here
pursue. That which seeth not by sight, but by which one seeth things visible,
know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men here pursue. That
which heareth not by hearing but by which hearing becomes subject to knowledge
through the ear, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men
here pursue. That which liveth not by the breathing but by which the breath
becometh a mass of vitality, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not
this which men here pursue."
I
In order to understand the question with which the Upanishad
opens its train of thought, it is necessary to remember the ideas of the
Vedantic thinkers about the phenomena of sensation, life, mind and ideas which
are the elements of all our activity
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in the body. It is noticeable that the body itself and
matter, the principle of which the body is a manifestation, are not even
mentioned in this Upanishad. The problem of matter the Seer supposes to have
been so far solved for the inquirer that he no longer regards the physical state
of consciousness as fundamental and no longer considers it as a reality separate
from consciousness. All this world is only conscious Being. Matter to the
Vedantist is only one of several states — in reality movements — of this
conscious being, — a state in which this universal consciousness having created
forms in itself, within and out of that as substance, absorbs and loses itself
by concentration in the idea of being a substance of form. It is still conscious
but as form, ceases to be self-conscious. The Purusha, in matter, the Knower in
the leaf, clod, stone, is involved in form, forgets himself in this movement of
his Prakriti or Mode of Action, and loses hold in full self-knowledge of his
self of conscious being and delight. He is not in possession of himself; he is
not ātmavān. He has to get back what he has lost to become ātmavān,
and that simply means that he has to become .gradually aware in matter of that
which He has hidden from Himself in matter. He has to evolve what He has
involved. This recovery in knowledge of our full and real Self is the sole
sense, meaning and purpose of evolution. In reality it is no evolution but a
manifestation. We are already what we become. That which is still future in
matter is already present in Spirit.
For that which we regard as matter cannot be, if the Vedantic
view is right, mere matter, mere inert existence, eternally bound by its own
inertness. Even in a materialistic view of the world matter cannot be what it
seems, but is only a form or movement of Force which the Indians call Prakriti.
This Force, according to the Upanishads, is composed in its action, and capable
in its potentiality, of several principles of which matter, mind and life are
those already manifest, active in this world, and where one of these principles
is active, the others must also be there, involved in it; or to put it in
another way. Force acting as one of its own principles, one of its movements, is
inherently capable even in that movement of all the others. If in the leaf,
clod, stone and metal life and mind are not active, it is not because they are
not
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present, but because they are not yet brought forward (prakṛta)
and organised for action. They are kept concealed, in the background of the
consciousness-being which is the leaf, stone or clod; they are not yet vīḷu,
as the Rig-veda would say, but guhā, not vyakta but avyakta.
It is a great error to hold that that which is not manifest just now or in this
or that place or active, does not there and then exist. Concealment is not
annihilation; non-action is not non-being, nor does the combination of secrecy
and inaction constitute non-existence.
If it is asked how we know that there is the Purusha or
Knower in the leaf, clod or stone, the Vedantin answers that, apart from the
perceptions of the Seer and the subjective and objective experiences by which
the validity of the perceptions is firmly established in the reason, the very
fact that the Knower emerges in matter shows that He must have been there all
the time. And if He was there in some form of matter He must have been there
generally or in all; for Nature is one and knows no essential division but only
differences of form, circumstance and manifestation. There are not many
substances in this world, but one substance variously concentrated in many
forms, not many lives but one life variously active in many bodies, not many
minds but one mind variously intelligent in many embodied vitalities.
It is, at first sight, a plausible theory that life and mind
are only particular movements of matter itself under certain conditions and
need not therefore be regarded as independent immaterial movements of
consciousness involved in matter but only as latent material activities of which
matter is capable. But this view can only be held so long as it appears that
mind and life can only exist in this body and cease as soon as the body is
broken up, can only know through the bodily instruments and can only operate in
obedience to and as the result of certain material movements. The sages of the
Upanishads had already proved by their own experience as Yogins that none of
these limitations are inherent in the nature of life and mind. The mind and life
which are in this body can depart from it, intact, and still organised, and act
more freely outside it; mind can know even material things without the help of
the physical eye, touch or ear; life itself is not conditioned necessarily, and
mind not even conditioned
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usually, though it is usually affected by the states of the
body or its movements. It can always and does frequently in our experience
transcend them. It can entirely master and determine the conditions of the body.
Therefore mind is capable of freedom from the matter in which it dwells here —
freedom in being, freedom in knowledge, freedom in power.
It is true that while working in matter, every movement of
mind produces some effect and consequently some state or movement in the body,
but this does not show that the mind is the material result of matter any more
than steam is the mechanical result of the machine. This world in which mind is
at present moving, in the system of phenomena to which we are now overtly
related, is a world of matter, where to start with, it is true to say, annam
vai sarvam: All is matter. Mind and life awaken in it and seek to express
themselves in it. Since and when they act in it, every movement they make must
have an effect upon it and produce a movement in it, just as the activity of
steam must produce an effect in the machine in which its force is acting. Mind
and life also use particular parts of the bodily machine for particular
functions and when these parts are injured the workings of life and mind are
correspondingly hampered, rendered difficult or for a time impossible — and even
altogether impossible unless life and mind are given time, impulse and
opportunity to readjust themselves to the new circumstances and either re-create
or patch up the old means or adopt a new system of function. It is obvious that
such a combination of time, impulse and opportunity cannot usually or even often
occur, — cannot occur at all unless men have the faith, the niṣ̣ṭhā
— unless, that is to say, they know beforehand that it can be done or have
accustomed themselves to seek for the means. Bodies, drowned and "lifeless", —
nothing is really lifeless in the world, — can now be brought back to life
because men believe and know that it can be done and have found a means to do it
before the organised mind and life have had time to detach themselves entirely
from the unorganised life which is present in all matter. So it is with all
powers and operations. They are only impossible so long as we do not believe in
their possibility and do not take the trouble or have not the clarity of mind to
find their right process.
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Life and mind are sometimes believed to descend, — as the
hypothesis is advanced—into this world from another where they are more at home.
If by world is meant not another star or system in this material universe, but
some other systematisation of universal consciousness, the Vedantin who follows
the Vedas and Upanishads, will not disagree. Life and mind in another star or
system of this visible universe might, it is conceivable, be more free and
therefore at home; but they would still be active in a world whose basis and
true substance was matter. There would therefore be no essential alteration in
the circumstances of its action nor could the problem of their origin here be at
all better solved. But it is reasonable to suppose that just as here Force
organises itself in matter as its fundamental continent and movement, so there
should be — the knowledge and experience of the ancient thinkers showed them
that there are — other systems of consciousness where Force organises itself in
life and in mind as its fundamental continent and movement. —It is not necessary
to consider here what would be the relations in Time and Space of such worlds
with ours. Life and mind might descend ready organised from such worlds and
attach themselves to forms of matter here; but not in the sense of occupying
physically these material forms and immediately using them, but in the sense of
rousing by the shock of their contact and awakening to activity the latent life
and mind in matter. That life and mind in matter would then proceed, under the
superior help and impulse, to organise a nervous system for the use of life and
a system of life-movements in the nerves for the use of mind fit to express in
matter the superior organisations who have descended here. It was indeed the
belief of the ancients that — apart from the phenomenon of each living form as a
single organised personality — such help from the worlds of life and mind was
necessary to maintain and support all functionings of life and mind here below
because of the difficulty otherwise of expressing and perfecting them in a world
which did not properly belong to them but to quite other movements. This was the
basis of the idea of Devas, Daityas, Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas, Gandharvas,
etc., with which the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Itihasa have familiarised
our minds. There is no reason to suppose
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that all worlds of this material system are the home of
living things — on the contrary, the very reverse is likely to be the truth. It
is probably with difficulty and in a select place, that life and mind in matter
are evolved.
If it were otherwise, if life and mind were to enter,
organised or in full power (such as they must be in worlds properly belonging
to them) into material forms, these forms would immediately begin to function
perfectly and without farther trouble. We should not see this long and laborious
process of gradual manifestation, so laboured, so difficult, the result of so
fierce a struggle, of such a gigantic toil of the secret Will in matter.
Everywhere we see the necessity of a gradual organisation of forms. What is it
that is being organised? A suitable system for the operations of life, a
suitable system for the operations of mind. There are stirrings similar to those
that constitute life in inanimate things and in metals, — as Science has
recently discovered, — vital response and failure to respond, but no system for
the regular movement of vitality has been organised; therefore metals do not
live. In, the plant we have a vital system, one might almost say, a nervous
system, but although there is what might be called an unconscious mind in
plants, although in some there are even vague movements of intelligence, the
life system organised is suitable only for the flow of rasa, sap,
sufficient for mere life, not for prāṇa,
nerve force, necessary for the operations in matter of mind. Āpah is
sufficient for life, vāyu is necessary for life capable of mind. In the
insect life is better organised on a different plane and a nervous system
capable of carrying currents of Pranic force is developed as one rises in the
scale of animal creation, until it becomes perfect in man. It is, therefore,
life and mind awakening in matter and manifesting with difficulty that is the
truth of this material world, not the introduction of a ready-made life entirely
foreign to it in its own potentiality.
If it be said that the life or mind attaching itself to
matter only enters it by degrees as the system becomes more fit, putting more
and more of itself into the body which is being made ready for it, that also is
possible and conceivable. We are indeed led to see, as we progress in
self-knowledge, that there is a great mental
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activity belonging to us only part of which is imperfectly
expressed in our waking thoughts and perceptions — a subconscious or
superconscious Self which stores everything, remembers everything, foresees
everything, in a way knows everything know-able, has possession of all that is
false, and all that is true, but only allows the waking mind into a few of its
records. Similarly our life in the body is only a partial expression of the
immortal life of which we are the assured possessors. But this only proves that
we ourselves are not in our totality or essentiality the life and mind in the
body, but are using that principle for our purpose or our play in matter. It
does not prove that there is no principle of life and mind in matter. On the
contrary, there is reason to believe that matter is similarly involved in mind
and life and that wherever there is movement of life and mind, it tends to
develop for itself some form of body in which securely to individualise itself.
By analogy we must suppose life and mind to be similarly involved and latent
(inherent) in matter and therefore evolvable in it and capable of manifestation.
We know then the theory of the early Vedantins with regard to
the relations of life, mind and matter and we may now turn to the actual
statements of the Upanishad with regard to the activities of life and mind and
their relation to the Soul of things, the Brahman.
II
MIND
If the Upanishads were no more than philosophical
speculations, it would be enough in commenting upon them to state the general
thought of a passage and develop its implications in modern language and its
bearing upon the ideas we now hold, for if they only expressed in their ancient
language general conclusions of psychological experience, which are still easily
accessible and familiar, nothing would be gained by any minute emphasis on the
wording of our Vedantic texts. But these great writings are not the record of
ideas; they are a record of experiences;
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and those experiences, psychological and spiritual, are a&
remote from the superficial psychology of ordinary men as are the experiments
and conclusions of Science from the ordinary observation of the peasant driving
his plough through a soil only superficially known or the sailor of old guiding
his bark by the few stars important to his rudimentary navigation. Every word in
the Upanishads arises out of a depth of psychological experience and observation
we no longer possess and is a key to spiritual truths which we can no longer
attain except by discipline of a painful difficulty. Therefore each word, as we
proceed, must be given its due importance. We must consider its place in the
thought and discover the ideas of which it was the spoken symbol.
The opening phrase of the Kena Upanishad, keneṣitam
patati preṣitam manaḥ,
is an example of this constant necessity. The sage is describing not the mind in
its entirety, but that action of it which he has found the most characteristic
and important, that which, besides, leads up directly to the question of the
secret source of all mental .action, its president and impelling power. The
central idea and common experience of this action is expressed by the word
patati, falls. Motion forward and settling upon an object are the very
nature of mind when it acts.
Our modern conception of mind is different; while
acknowledging its action of movement and forward attention, we are apt to regard
its essential and common action to be rather receptivity of objects than
research of objects. The scientific explanation of mental activity helps to
confirm this notion. Fixing its eye on the nervous system and the brain, the
physical channels of thought, Physiology insists on the double action of the
afferent and the efferent nerves as constituting the action of thought. An
object falls on the sense-organs, —instead of mind falling on the object, — the
afferent nerves carry the impact to the brain cells, their matter undergoes
modification, the trans-filaments respond to the shock, a message — the will of
the cell-republic — returns through the efferent nerves and that action of
perception, — whether of an object or the idea of an object or the idea of an
idea, which is the essence of thinking — is accomplished. What else the mind
does is merely the internal modification of the
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grey matter of the brain and the ceaseless activity of its
filaments with the store of perceptions and ideas already amassed by these
miraculous bits of organised matter. These movements of the bodily machine are
all according to Physiology. But it has been necessary to.... The theory of
thought-waves or vibrations created by those animalcular.-.in order to account
for the results of thought.
However widely and submissively (though) this theory has been
received by a hypnotised world, the Vedantist is bound to challenge it. His
research has fixed not only on the physiological action, the movement of the
bodily machine, but on the psychological action, its movement of the force that
holds the machine, — not only on what the mind does, but on what it omits to do.
His observation supported by that careful analysis and isolation in experiment
of the separate mental constituents, has led him to a quite different
conclusion. He upholds the wisdom of the sage in the phrase patati manaḥ.
An image falls on the eye, — admittedly, the mere falling of an image on the eye
will not constitute mental perception, — the mind has to give it attention; for
it is not the eye that sees, it is the mind that sees through the eye as an
instrument, just as it is not the telescope that sees an otherwise invisible
sun, but the astronomer behind the telescope who sees. Therefore, physical
reception of images is not sight; physical reception of sounds is not hearing.
For how many sights and sounds besiege us, fall on our retina, touch the
tympanum of the ear, yet are to our waking thought non-existent! If the body
were really a self-sufficient machine, this could not happen. The impact must be
admitted, the message must rush through the afferent nerve, the cells must
receive the shock, the modification, the response must occur. A self-sufficient
machine has no choice of action or non-action; unless it is out of order, it
must do its work. But here we see there is a choice, a selection, an ample power
of refusal. The practical researches of the Yogins have shown besides that the
power of refusal can be (is) absolute, that something in us has a sovereign and
many-sided faculty of selection or total prohibition of perception or thought,
can even determine how if at all it shall respond, can even see without the eye
and hear without the ear. Even European hypnotism points to
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similar phenomena. The matter cannot be settled by the rough
and. ready conclusions of impatient physiology eager to take a short cut to
Truth and interpret the world in the light of its first astonished discoveries.
Where the image is not seen, the sound is not heard, it is
because the mind does not settle on its object — na patati. But we must
first go farther and inquire what it is that works in the afferent and efferent
nerves and ensures the attention of the nerves. It is not, we have seen, mere
physical shock, a simple vibration of the bodily matter in the nerve. For, if it
were, attention to every impact would be automatically and inevitably assured.
The Vedantins say that the nerve system is an immensely intricate organised
apparatus for the action of life in the body; what moves in them is prāṇa,
the life principle, materialised, aerial (vāyavya) in its nature and
therefore invisible to the eye, but sufficiently capable of self-adaptation both
to the life of matter and the life of mind to form the meeting-place or bridge
of the two principles. But action of this life-principle is not sufficient in
itself to create thought, for if it were mind could be organised in vegetable as
readily as in animal life. It is only when prana has developed a sufficient
intensity of movement to form a medium for the rapid activities of mind and
mind, at last possessed of a physical instrument, has poured itself into the
life-movement and taken possession of it, that thought becomes possible. That
which moves in the nerve system is the life-current penetrated and provided with
the habitual movement of mind. When the movement of mind is involved in the
life-movement, as it usually is in all forms, there is no response of mental
knowledge to any contact or impression. For just as even in the metal there is
life, so even in the metal there is mind; but it is latent, involved, its action
secret, — unconscious, as we say, and confined to a passive reception into
matter of the mind-forms created by these impacts. This will become clearer as
we penetrate deeper into the mysteries of mind; we shall see that even though
the clod, stone and tree do not think, they have in them the secret matrix of
mind and in that matrix forms are stored which can be translated into mental
symbols, into perception, idea and word. But it is only as the life-currents
gain in
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intensity and rapidity and subtlety, making the body of
things less durable but more capable of work, that mind-action becomes
increasingly possible and once manifested more and more minutely and intricately
effective. For body and life here are the pratiṣṭhā,
the basis of mind. A point, however, comes at which mind has got in life all
that it needs for its higher development, and from that time it goes on
enlarging itself and its activities out of all proportions to the farther
organisation of its bodily and vital instruments or even without any such
farther organisation in the lower man.
But even in the highest forms here in this material world,
matter being the basis, life an intermediary and mind the third result, the
normal rule is that matter and life (where life is expressed) shall always be
active, mind only exceptionally active in the body. In other words, the
ordinary action of mind is subconscious and receptive, as in the stone, clod and
tree. The image that touches the eye, the sound that touches the ear is
immediately taken in by the mind-informed life, the mind-informed and
life-informed matter and becomes a part of the experience of Brahman in that
system. Not only does it create a vibration in body, a stream of movement in
life but also an impression in mind. This is inevitable, because mind, life and
matter are one. Where one is, the others are, manifest or latent, involved or
evolved, supraliminal active or subliminally active. The sword which has struck
in the battle, retains in itself the mental impression of the stroke, the
striker and the stricken and that ancient event can be read centuries afterwards
by the Yogin who has trained himself to translate its mind-forms into the active
language of mind. Thus every thing that occurs around us leaves on us its secret
stamp and impression. That this is so, the recent discoveries of European
psychology have begun to prove and from the ordinary point of view, it is one of
the most amazing and stupendous facts of existence; but from the Vedantist's it
is the most simple, natural and inevitable. This survival of all experience in a
mighty and lasting record, is not confined to such impressions as are conveyed
to the brain through the senses, but extends to all that can in any way come to
the mind, — to distant events, to past states of existence and old occurrences
in
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which our present senses had no part, to the experiences
garnered in dream and in dreamless sleep, to the activities that take place
during the apparent unconsciousness or disturbed consciousness of slumber,
delirium, anaesthesia and trance. Unconsciousness is an error: cessation of
awareness is a delusion.
It is for this reason that the phenomenon on which the sage
lays stress as the one thing important and effective in mental action and in the
waking state here, is not its receptiveness, but its outgoing force—patati.
In sense-activity we can distinguish three kinds of action — first, when the
impact is received subconsciously and there is no message by the mind in the
life current to the brain, — even if the life current itself carry the message —
secondly, when the mind, aware of an impact, that is to say, falls on its
object, but merely with the sensory part of itself and not with the
understanding part; thirdly, when it falls on the object with both the sensory
and understanding parts of itself. In the first case, there is no act of mental
knowledge, no attention of eye or mind, as when we pass, absorbed in thought,
through a scene of Nature, yet have seen nothing, been aware of nothing. In the
second there is an act of sensory knowledge. The mind in the eye attends and
observes, however slightly; the thing is perceived but not conceived or only
partly conceived, as when the maidservant going about her work, listens to the
Hebrew of her master, hearing all, but distinguishing and understanding nothing,
not really attending except through the ear alone. In the third there is true
mental perception and conception or the attempt at perception and conception,
and only the last movement comes within the description given by the sage —
iṣitam preṣitam
patati manas. But we must observe that in all
these cases somebody is attending, something is both aware and understands. The
man, unconscious under an anaesthetic drug in an operation, can in hypnosis when
his deeper faculties are released, remember and relate accurately everything
that occurred to him in his state of supposed unconsciousness. The maidservant,
thrown into an abnormal condition, can remember every word of her master's
Hebrew discourse and repeat in perfect order and without a single error
sentences in the language she did not understand. And, it may surely be
predicted, one day we shall find that the thing our
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minds strove so hard to attend to and fathom, this passage in
a new language, that new and unclassed phenomenon, was perfectly perceived,
perfectly understood, automatically, infallibly, by something within us which
either could not or did not convey its knowledge to the mind. We were only
trying to make operative on the level of mind, a knowledge we already in some
recess of our being perfectly possessed.
In this fact appears all the significance of the sage's
sentence about the mind.
(Incomplete)
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