The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad -1.7 Swami Krishnananda

Wednesday, June 10, 2020.

1.Introduction -7.

1.

The Upanishad begins with a startling exposition of the very methodology of living adopted in our country. As I tried to mention to you, the method of the Upanishad is secret, esoteric and intended to go into the meaning of action which is otherwise exoteric. I have also mentioned that the Veda has an aspect, namely, the ritual aspect, the aspect of sacrifice, performance of religious ceremony by the application of the Mantras of the Samhitas, as expounded in the section known as the Brahmanas. 

The Aranyakas go to the contemplated side of the Brahmanas, and tell us that a sacrifice need not necessarily be outward; it can also be inward; and the inward is as powerful as the outward. It can even be more powerful than the outward. The ritual that is performed by the mind, say the Aranyakas, is more puissant in the production of effect than the ritual that is outwardly performed through the sacred fire, or in the holy altar. 

The entire range of the Aranyakas is filled with this meaning, that mental action is a greater action than outward action. Its capacity is greater than external activity. Thought is more potent than word and deed. This principle is carried to its logical limit in the Upanishads.

2.

If thought is more potent than action, there may be something more potent than even thought; greater than thought, and more powerful than thought, which can explore even the content of thought itself. If action is superseded by thought, thought is superseded by 'being'. So, we go to the Upanishads where the principle of 'being' is expounded as transcendent even to the operations of thought, which, otherwise, are superior to all action outside. 

The range of the Upanishads, expounding the character of 'being' as transcendent to thought of every type, is very wide, and no one can understand a Upanishad unless one understands what 'being' is. We cannot even know what thought is, far from knowing what 'being' is. We can know how we think at a particular time, but we cannot know exactly what mind is, what thought is, where it is situated, and how it acts. 

The reason is that what we call the mind or thought is involved in a process. Inasmuch as it is involved in a process or transition, it becomes difficult of exposition and investigation. 

And what are the processes in which thought, or the mind, is involved? 

Everything that we call outward life in that the mind is involved. We always think in terms of some thing. 

That something is what we call life, or at least an aspect of life. Since every thought is an involvement in a particular aspect of outward existence, thought never finds time to understand itself. Thought never thinks itself; it always thinks others. We never see at any time our own mind contemplating its own self. It always contemplates other persons, other things and other aspects of life. 

There is a peculiar proclivity of thought by which it rushes outward into the objects of sensual life, externally, into persons and things, and never can know what it is itself. How can the mind know 

what another thing is when it cannot know what it itself is? 

If you cannot know what you are, how can you know what others are? 

But this is life a great confusion and a mess and a conglomeration of involvements in the objects of sense. 

This is called Samsara, the aberration of consciousness in spatio-temporal externality.

To be continued ...