The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads -2.3. - Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, March 17,  2023. 07:00.

Chapter 2: The Atman -3.

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There was a very dramatic action of God, as it were—a real drama He enacted before Himself, because there was no audience before Him. He was the director, He was the dramatis personae, and He was the audience. It is very strange! He immediately visualised Himself as the all: “Aham idam sarvam asmi”—I am this all. This universe of manifested effects is myself—naturally, because the whole effect is constituted of the substance of this ultimate cause. “I am this all.” It is as if the clay is telling, “I am all the pots”; the wood is telling, “I am all the tables, I am all the chairs, I am all the furniture.” Quite true, and it is very interesting indeed! Every effect that has come out of a single cause is that cause only. So the cause is affirming itself in every effect: “I am this all.”

But we are to enter the vale of tears after some time due to a catastrophic effect that seems to have followed from this dramatic manifestation of God. Nobody can say what has happened. We are completely screened away from this mystery. There is an iron curtain between ourselves and this mystery that has taken place. We are told not to speak about those things. The mind is repelled from the very thought of investigation into the mystery behind this event or happening. We are simply exiled for no fault of our own, as it were. We cannot even ask, “Why?” We cannot know whether it is because of the will of God that we have been exiled in this manner, or due to a fault of ours.

In certain forms of administration the subjects cannot question as to how a thing has happened, because they are subjected to the law of that administration. So, there is a peculiar universal government of God operating in a despotic manner, as it were, which insists upon its own language being spoken by everyone, and insists also on its law being obeyed in the manner it is expected. There is a sudden dropping of the curtain in this great scene of cosmic drama that is being played before us, and we do not see what is behind the screen. Now the screen has fallen. The many, which the One has become, are there, no doubt; the pots which have come out of clay are there; the effects are there. But one thing is not there, and that is the beginning of our sorrows.

When we say that the Atman alone is, we assert the One alone, to the exclusion of the many; and when we speak of the One becoming the many, we are conscious of the One and the many at the same time. Then comes the level of thinking where we are aware only of the many, and not the One. That is the dividing wall between the One and the many. The original drama was an envisagement of the many by the One. That is the grand creation. But when the curtain falls, the One is cut off from the many; or rather, the concept or the consciousness of the One is isolated from the consciousness of the many. Then there is what we call the manifestation of diversity in a literal sense. Then comes the necessity for one individual to cognise or to perceive the presence of another individual.

But, before this took place, the original Cause has taken care to see that it does not lose control over this manifestation completely. This is another aspect of the beauty of the drama. It has maintained its multiplicity with the background of the unity of its own Atmanhood or Selfhood, so that there was a peculiar intermediary condition where the multiplicity of the manifestation was the content of the total awareness of a single being, the Universal Atman that it was. And the Aitareya Upanishad tells us that the mouth burst open, speech came out, and out of it Agni, the deity, came. The eyes came out, sight manifested itself out of it, and Aditya or the sun came—and so on in respect of the various functions.

The beauty of this manifestation is a fact which we should never forget when we go further: the function comes first, and the deity comes afterwards. There is the mind first, thought afterwards, and the moon subsequently. The eye is first, seeing comes afterwards, and the sun still afterwards. The guardians or the deities of the various functions in their cosmical setup are subsidiary to the Ultimate Cause, which is the one Atman. They are not the controlling elements, as is the case with ourselves.

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To be continued

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