Spiritual Message for the Day – Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Baba Times Digest© | 18 August 2014 17.24 EST | New York Edition

 Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

Divine Life Society Publication: Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda

Idam brahma, idam kshatram, ime lokah, ime devah, imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad ayam atma. "This Source of knowledge; this source of power; all these worlds; all these gods; all these beings – All this is just the Self."

This proclamation is like a Brahma Astra that Sage Yajnavalkya is discharging against every kind of attachment one can conceive in this world. It is somewhat easy to accept that God is everywhere. It becomes easy because we always externalise the location of God, however much we may try to universalise Him. The everywhereness of God implies that there is space, and inasmuch as our mind is wedded completely to the concept of spatial expansion, we feel a little bit comforted when we are told that God is everywhere.

Now, Sage Yajnavalkya says the Self also is everywhere. All the fourteen worlds are the Self. Here we will not find it so easy to accept it, because we cannot spatialise the concept of Self. Our Self cannot be somewhere else, it must be within us only.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is not intended for everybody. It is a cosmic meditation. The whole thing is transcendent, beyond ourselves. Even when we think of self, we place it within ourselves. My self is inside me. But Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says the Self is not within us – it is within everybody, within everything, within all the worlds and the universes. In all space and all time, the Self is there. Can anyone close one's eyes and meditate thus? Can you place yourself in the skies and contemplate from there? But, you may say, 'this is an easy thing, I can do that, I can place myself in the skies', but when you place yourself in the skies, again you are bringing a spatial concept, which is not permitted in the case of the awareness of one's Self. Never should this meditation be attempted by an impure mind.

If anything is dear and lovable, the thing that is loved is not actually loved, it is not dear. The Self in the object attracts the Self in us and then the object looks attractive. It is not the object that is attractive, because a corpse cannot attract anybody, a dead body does not attract. It is the life principle that attracts, the Selfhood in the object is attracting. The beauty and the grandeur of the life principle, it is that which attracts. Where is this Selfhood? Again the question arises – everywhere! The whole universe you carry with you when you move. The universal Self moves with you who are the universal.

The Self need not necessarily be that imagined self inside the physical body. The universal Self should not be considered as a pervading thing, because the Self is inside, it is inside something, and it is inside the universe. The universe is not an extended form in space. The idea of 'all-pervading' also should be given up, because the Self does not pervade, It is just what It is; It is utter subjectivity incapable of externalisation. We cannot split it into the object seen. The Self cannot be an object that is visualised. It is the visualiser. Thus, 'everything' is the Visualiser only. How would you like to know the knower by whom alone everything is known? Who will know the knower?

You must read the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, especially the Second and the Fourth Chapters where Yajnavalkya pours the highest wisdom on Maitreyi and King Janaka.

"Whoever knows this possesses the whole world. He himself is the world."

Can anybody contain all things inside oneself and be at rest? This is why preliminary qualifications are prescribed: Viveka, Vairagya, Shatsampatti, Mumukshutva – discrimination, dispassion, the six virtues and longing for liberation. These preliminary qualifications are necessary. If anyone is distracted in the direction of anything else than the Self, then the Self will hide itself fully away somewhere.

In the Atharva Veda there is a Sukta called Varuna Sukta. If you have any longing, it will melt down in the fire of this inclusiveness of God-being. All this amount to one thing: that by externalizing consciousness we will achieve nothing. It is not enough if you merely internalise it also. You should neither be an extrovert nor an introvert but, if you can coin a word, an omnivert. Everywhere you perceive everything. That 'I' is not the physical 'I' with which you see the world – it is the soul observing itself in things which look like non-Self. The non-Self does not exist; but even in that so-called non-Self the Self is peeping through Its own eye.

The Plenum, the felicity, the incomparable, is the only source of bliss. The greatest qualification is wanting It; no other qualification is adequate. "I want It and I don't want anything else. I shall get It," like Nachiketas insisting in the abode of Yama: "Whatever you have given, take it back. I shall go with this answer to this great question that I have put. Without that I do not want anything else that you have offered me - long life, all joys, suzerainty over all the worlds. Answer my question."

Such determination, if there is in any one of us, the Truth reveals itself automatically. The Truth is seeking us much more than we seek it. As it is wider than our concept of itself, it is a greater force, it calls you. God calls you with greater severity of intensity than we are calling Him.

Yajnalvakya's instructions lead to Sadyo Mukti, immediate salvation and not a stage-by-stage Krama Mukti or gradual salvation -it is not a question of tomorrow but the karmas that we have performed in the previous births are sitting inside our mind like a knot, hard knot in the form of Brahma-granthi, Vishnu-granthi and Rudra-ganthi-Avidya, Kama, Karma as they call them. They are the Granthis-they have to be melted down. You cannot cut them like a Gordian knot, but melt them down by dispassion, daily meditation, and wanting That only, and wanting nothing else.

Excerpts from: Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda

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