The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads - 3.2. - Swami Krishnananda.

Chinmaya Mission :

Chinmaya Mission Mattancherry in Cochin recently hosted a successful Balavihar Summer Camp for children from the Chinmaya Kindergarten School in Vedakkemadom. The program is ongoing and has received positive feedback from participants.

The summer camp featured different themes each day, with the first day's theme being "Selfie with Success" for the older group, and "Forget Superman, Think Hanuman" for the younger children. Activities included understanding the Chinmaya Mission pledge, discussing family values, watching short films, playing games, and dancing.

On the second day, children learnt about building strong relationships, courage, and discipline. They listened to a discourse on fighting against false values and low tendencies and participated in games and activities to build courage and discipline.

The third day emphasized living a noble life of service and sacrifice, producing more than consuming, and giving more than taking. Children debated on the topic and learnt important values.

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Sunday, April 16,  2023. 06:30.

Chapter 3: Ishvara and Jiva-2

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As mentioned towards the conclusion of the previous chapter, there was a drop of the curtain, as it were, and a sudden unexpected and unpalatable change or transformation took place by which the divinities begin to assert a sort of independence. This is the beginning of individuality. As Plato said, “Marriages always take place in the heavens first. They manifest themselves on earth afterwards.” Likewise, this can be said in regard to everything. Even wars take place in the heavens first; they reveal themselves on earth afterwards. Every function takes place in the heavens first—which means to say the adhidaivas contemplate the possibility of every action in the beginning, and these are manifested gradually into the adhibhuta-prapancha, and felt and experienced by the adhyatma, the jiva.

So there was a split of a universal character, as if every drop in the ocean began to feel its own independence. This is a very good example, because the drops in the ocean are not qualitatively different from the ocean. And it appears that, at least at the very outset, there was no qualitative distinction of the individual divinities from the total of the Universal Being. This isolation of particulars was, therefore, in consciousness. We have to underline this word because a real split is not possible; it was not an actual bifurcation, but a consciousness of one's having been bifurcated, separated, segregated from the Whole.

To give an illustration, it is perhaps exactly as one would experience in dream. There is a split of consciousness into the knowing subject and the world of experience; but the split has not taken place. If it had really taken place, we would not wake up into the integrity of our mind. But nevertheless, there is an experience of such a transformation, change and division having taken place.

The first consequence of this division is, as the Upanishad puts it, an intense hunger and thirst. Well, this is a very beautiful word, implying much more than what our usual hunger and thirst would connote. The hunger and thirst of the divinities who wrenched themselves, as it were, from the total of the Universal can be called, in the language of our modern philosophers, the constitutional appetition of the individual. It is not merely the stomach asking for food or the throat asking for water; it is the entire setup of individuality craving for experience in an objective manner. They craved for objective immortality, a thing that they had lost on account of their isolation from the Whole. They became mortal. Mortality is the consciousness of the isolation of the part from the Whole; and then every disease crops up at once.

Hunger and thirst visited these divinities who were cast into this restless ocean of experience objectively, which is what we call this samsara or the world, the universe. But how could this hunger be satisfied? The hunger and the thirst, or the appetition of the individual for satisfaction, can be satisfied only through a medium of experience. There must be a body; there must be a food to appease this hunger. Where is this food and where is the vehicle? Where is the body in which these divinities are to ride and to have their experience of the satisfaction of their hunger and thirst?

The whole Upanishad is very symbolic and metaphorical in explaining a highly spiritual experience. The divinities were archetypal, superphysical essences. These are the deities. They are not physical bodies like ours, and there was no food for them to satisfy their hunger of the appetition for contact. What were they to contact? So, they asked for an abode: “Give us a body. Give us a vehicle. We want a house to stay in.”

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To be continued

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