The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads 1.6. - Swami Krishnananda.


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Friday, January 20, 2022. 06:30.

Chapter 1: Introduction - 6.

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VIDEO : What you will be in your next birth?

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Two of the important Upanishads are the Aitareya and the Taittiriya, which are related to each other in a way, and coextensive in content—the one emphasising one aspect of the matter, and the other a coordinated theme. The Aitareya and the Taittiriya Upanishads speak of the same theme, but from two different points of view.

They try to answer the question of life by reference to causes. This is a very proper attitude, no doubt. We know very well that every question, when it is attempted to be answered, brings us to its causative factors. Why is there a disease? Why is a person sick? We ask questions of this kind. In reply, we try to find out the present cause of the situation. If one is sick, we must find out the reason behind the sickness. If there is a war, we must find out the cause behind the war. If there is some kind of discrepancy, we have to know the cause behind it. If there is any kind of tension, we argue out why this kind of tension has arisen. Unless we find out the cause of a particular circumstance, we cannot probe into the context of its circumstance, whether it is a physical, social, biological or medical one. This is a philosophical attitude we are adopting towards everything in life. There is no one who is not a philosopher, in the sense that everyone wants to know the cause of particular effects. This is the philosophical trend of thinking.

The great masters of the Upanishads moved from the lower causes to the higher ones, until they were able to grasp the final cause of things, and they gave out their conclusions, the final truth for mankind. The ills of mankind are effects in their nature, and they become causes of other illnesses to which we are heir. By the process of deep yoga and meditation in which the masters of yore engaged themselves, plumbing the depths of reality, the ultimate cause and the truths of life were unravelled. These experiences are recorded in the Upanishads.

The way in which we can encounter anything is twofold: inductive and deductive. Students of logical intelligence move from particulars to generals, which is inductive reasoning. If it is a movement from the general to the particular, we call it deduction. Both ways are permissible according to the nature of the case. Every day the sun rises in the east. We are seeing the sun rising in the east for days, months and years. We collect the particular instances of the sun rising in the east every day. Then we make a general conclusion: we say the sun always rises in the east.

But there is a flaw in inductive reasoning. Our conclusions may not be correct. The sun may have been rising in the east for thousands of years, but why should we conclude that the sun shall rise only in the east in the future also? It need not be a valid conclusion, because the sun is not bound by our conclusions. It can change its position for some reason or the other. Some law may operate differently, and tomorrow the sun may rise in the west. Induction is not valid as an ultimate form of reasoning. Going from the particular to the general may be a practically useful way of thinking, as far as things go, but it is not ultimately reliable.

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To be continued


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