Taittiriya Upanishad - 8. Swami Krishnananda



Monday, June 08, 2020.
Post-8.

1.

Taittiriya Upanishad
Chapter-2 : On the Bliss that is Brahmam Brahmananda valli. 
Section-1 : Brahmam is Satyam, Jnanam, Anandam - Enunciation of the Doctrine of Sheaths.
Mantram-2.

Tasmad va etasmad atmana akasa sambhutah, 
akasad vayuh, vayor agnih, agner apah, 
adbhyah prthivi, prthivya osadhayah 
osadhibhyo - nnam annat - purushah."
(Tait. 2.1.2): 


"All vegetation started from the earth." Osadhibhyo annam : The diet that we consume is nothing but the vegetation growing on earth. 

Annat purushah : Our personality is an adumbration, solidification, concretisation, clarification – whatever we may call it – of the food that we eat. 

In the personality of the human being we find in a miniature form all that has come cosmically down to the earth, right from the Supreme Brahman – satyam jnanam anantam brahma. 

So the universe is called brahmanda and the individual is called pindanda. 

The macrocosm is the universe, and the microcosm, or the individual, is a cross-section of the macrocosm. All that is in the universe you will find in yourself. You are a miniature of creation. If you know yourself, you know the whole world. 

This is why it is said, "Know thyself and be free." Nobody says "Go outside and know things." It will not serve your purpose. Know yourself and all things are known, because you are the nearest thing that can be contacted and the nearest thing containing all things that are the furthest and the remotest. 

Therefore, the Ultimate Reality is also called the nearest and the furthest. Tad dure tad vad antike (Isa 5): "Very far is It" – in terms of the spatio-temporal expanse of creation; "Very near is It" – as the Self of your own existence.

2.

The miniature individual, as I mentioned, has all the layers of the universe. 

These are the physicality of the lowest earth, the vibratory form of the prana, the mental creation or the mentation, the power of thought, which is reflected in the process of creation from the Ultimate Being Itself, and a peculiar negation that we experience in our own self in the form of the ultimate causality of sleep, which is comparable to the negation that was referred to just now in the form of the manifestation of space-time-motion. 

This individualised microcosmic representation of the cosmic layers is seen individually as a series of what is called the koshas, or the coverings of the consciousness in us. We may, in a way, say the whole universe is a covering up over Brahman.

To be continued ...



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