Lesson on The Taittiriya Upanishad - 2. Swami Krishnananda

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Friday, April 15, 2022. 20;00.

Post-2.

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When this universal Brahman is conceived as the deepest reality of an individual, it is called the Atman—the essential Self of anything. It is the essential Self and not the physical, not the mental, not even the causal sheath of your personality; all of these, as you know very well, get negated in another condition of your being—namely, deep sleep. The analysis of deep sleep is a master key to open the gates of the secret of your own existence. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor this so-called ignorant sheath can be considered as your own reality. Blissful sleep cannot be a condition of ignorance, because the experience of bliss has to go together with a kind of consciousness of that experience. This essential Being of yours indicates the character of the Universal Reality also. It is a sense of freedom and bliss that you enjoy when you come in contact with It. Do you not feel free and happy when you go into a state of deep sleep? Can the freedom and the happiness of sleep be compared with any other pleasure of this world? Even a king who cannot sleep for days together would ask for the boon of being able to sleep for some days, rather than having a vast, material kingdom. To go into your own Self is the best achievement, the highest attainment, whereas to go outside yourself, however far beyond you may go, is that much the worse for you. Knowledge of the Self is knowledge of the Absolute. Atma-jnana is also Brahma-jnana. The knowledge of the deepest in you is also the knowledge of the essential secret of the universe. So, whoever knows that supreme satyam jnanam anantam, Truth-Knowledge-Infinity, as hidden in the cave of one's own heart, directly comes in contact with that satyam jnanam anantam brahma. Simultaneously, you begin to feel a bliss of contact with all things. Saha brahmana vipascita so'nute sarvan kaman: “All desires get fulfilled there in an instant.”




In this world, to fulfil different desires, you have to employ different means. There, a single means is enough to give you the happiness of everything—not one thing after the other, successively, but simultaneously, instantaneously. In your current state, if you have one pleasure, you cannot have another pleasure at the same time, and if you want to have a third kind of pleasure, the first two must go. Thus, you cannot have varieties of pleasure at the same time because of the conditioning factor introduced by the sense organs in such experience. Your senses do not give you simultaneous knowledge of anything. When one thing is happening, another thing is forgotten. But in the contact of Brahman, there is simultaneous knowledge of all things. At one stroke everything is known, and everything is enjoyed also. It is impossible for us mortals, thinking through the sense organs and through this body, to imagine what it could be to enjoy all things at the same time.




It is not merely possessing a kingdom; that also may look like a happiness which is sudden and simultaneous. A king who is the ruler of this whole world may imagine that he has simultaneous happiness of the entire kingdom of the earth. “The entire earth is mine,” the king may feel. But the entire earth stands outside the king. The experiencing consciousness of the king does not hold under his grip or possession this vast earth that he considers as the means of his satisfaction. So the king's happiness is a futile, imaginary pleasure; really, he does not possess the world. The world stands outside. If the object of experience stands outside the experience, the experience cannot be regarded as complete. Unless the object of experience enters into you and becomes part and parcel of your own existence, you will not be able to enjoy that object. All objects cause anxiety in the mind because they stand outside the experiencing consciousness. Even if you have a heap of gold in the grip of your palm, it cannot cause you happiness. It will only cause anxieties of different types—such as how to keep it, how to use it, how to protect it, how not to lose it, and how to see that it is not leading you to bereavement. The possessor of gold and silver is filled with anxieties, and that person cannot sleep well. Even a king cannot sleep well because of the fear of attack from sources that are external to him. To be secure under conditions which are totally external to yourself is hard, indeed, to imagine.

To be continued ...



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