FOUR Maya: The Principle of Phenomenal Existence Brahman then, let us suppose, has projected in Itself this luminous shadow of Itself and has in the act (speaking always in the language of finite beings with its perpetual taint of Time, Space and Causality) begun to envisage Itself and consider Its essentialities in the light of attributes. He who is Existence, Consciousness, Bliss envisages Himself as existent, conscious, blissful. From that moment phenomenal manifestation becomes inevitable; the Unqualified chooses to regard Himself as qualified. Once this fundamental condition is granted, everything else follows by the rigorous l

A NOTE ON THE CHHANDOGYA UPANISHAD A NOTE ON THE CHHANDOGYA UPANISHAD first adhyaya OM is the syllable (the Imperishable One); one should follow after it as the upward song (movement); for with OM one sings (goes) upwards; of which this is the analytical explanation. So literally translated in its double meaning, both its exoteric, physical and symbolic sense and its esoteric symbolised reality, runs the initial sentence of the Upanishad. These opening lines or passages of the Vedanta are always of great importance; they are always so designed as to suggest or even sum up, if not all that comes afterwards

ANALYSIS PREFATORY Plan of the Upanishad THE Upanishads, being vehicles of illumination and not of instruction, composed for seekers who had already a general familiarity with the ideas of the Vedic and Vedantic seers and even some personal experience of the truths on which they were founded, dispense in their style with expressed transitions of thought and the development of implied or subordinate notions. Every verse in the Isha Upanishad reposes on a number of ideas implicit in the text but nowhere set forth explicitly; the reasoning also that supports its conclusions is suggested by the words, not expressly conveyed to the intelli

AITEREYA UPANISHAD AITEREYA UPANISHAD chapter one : section I Hari OM. In the beginning the Spirit was One and all this (universe) was the Spirit; there was nought else moving¹ The Spirit thought, “Lo, I will make me worlds from out my being.ˮ These were the worlds he made; ambhaḥ, of the ethereal waters, marīcīh, of light, mara, of death and mortal things, āpah, of the lower waters. Beyond the shining firmament are the ethereal waters and the firmament is their base and resting-place; Space is the world of light; the earth is the world mortal; and below the earth are the lowe

TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD TAITTIRIYA UPANISHAD SHIKSHAVALLI CHAPTER ONE Hari OM. Be peace to us Mitra. Be peace to us Varuna. Be peace to us Aryaman. Be peace to us Indra and Brihaspati. May far-striding Vishnu be peace to us. Adoration to the Eternal. Adoration to thee, O Vayu. Thou, thou art the visible Eternal and as the visible Eternal I will declare thee. I will declare Righteousness! I will declare Truth! May that protect me! May that protect the speaker! Yea, may it protect me! May it protect the speaker. OM! Peace! Peace! Peace! CHAPTER TWO OM. We will expound Shiksha, th

                                   

COMMENTARY 1 1 THE twelve great Upanishads are written round one body of ancient knowledge; but they approach it from different sides. Into the great kingdom of the Brahmavidya each enters by its own gates, follows its own path or detour, aims at its own point of arrival. The Isha Upanishad and the Kena are both concerned with the same grand problem, the winning of the state of Immortality, the relations of the divine, all-ruling, all-possessing Brahman to the world and to the human consciousness, the means of passing out of our present state of divided self, ignorance and suffering into the unity, the truth, the divine beatitude. As the Isha closes wit

From SHWETASHWATARA UPANISHAD SHWETASHWATARA UPANISHAD chapter four The One was without form and hue; and He, by Yoga of His own might, became manifold; He weareth many forms and hues, but hath no object nor interest therein; God into Whom all the universe breaketh up and departeth at the end of all and He alone was in the beginning. May He yoke us with a bright and gracious understanding. God is fire that burneth and the Sun in heaven and the Wind that bloweth: He too is the Moon. His is the seed and Brahma and the waters and He is Prajapati, the Father of his peoples.

FIVE Maya: The Energy of The Absolute MAYA then is the fundamental fact in the Universe, her dualistic system of balanced pairs of opposites is a necessity of intellectual conception; but the possibility of her existence as an inherent energy in the Absolute, outside phenomena, has yet to be established. So long as Science is incomplete and Yoga a secret discipline for the few, the insistent questions of the metaphysician can never be ignored, nor his method grow obsolete. The confident and even arrogant attempt of experimental Science to monopolise the kingdom of mind, to the exclusion of the metaphysical and all other methods, was a r

TWO Nature of the Absolute Brahman viewed in the light of these four great illuminations the utterances of the Upanishads arrange themselves and fall into a perfect harmony. European scholars like Max Müller have seen in these Scriptures a mass of heterogeneous ideas where the sublime jostles the childish, the grandiose walks arm-in-arm with the grotesque, the most petty trivialities feel at home with the rarest and most solemn philosophical intuitions, and they have accordingly declared them to be the babblings of a child humanity; inspired children, idiots endowed with genius, such to the Western view are the great Rishis of the Aranya