The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad -1.3. Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, November 21, 2020. 05 : 49. PM.

CHAPTER - I : The Universe as a Sacrificial Horse-3.

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This description of the Cosmos as Horse is entirely symbolic, and highly complicated to conceive, because the purpose of the Upani?had is to bring out the psychological element that is present in the comparison that is made between the physical counterparts of the body of the horse, and the body of the universe outside. The difference between the horse conceived here, or to make a wider comparison, the case of any individual, for the matter of that, the distinction between the body of an individual, whether of an animal or a human being, and the world outside, is psychological. If it were not psychological and is really physical, an identification would be impossible. That one person is different from another person, is a psychological division. It is not physical. We have had occasion to discuss this subject earlier in some of our discourses.

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I shall give you a small example of how physical division does not exist. It is only imaginary. The bodies of people are constituted of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether. Your body, my body and everybody's body is constituted of only these things, nothing else – earth, water, fire, air, ether. If the body of one individual, 'A', is substantially the same as the body of another individual, 'B', because of its being formed of the same five elements, what is the reason for the distinction or the difference that we make between one body and another body? It is that which exists between the two bodies. The space is the cause. But space is a part of the very constitution of the body itself. So, how does this become an element of distinction? That which we regard as spatial, and, perhaps, the only reason for the distinction that we usually make between one body and another, is an element essentially present in the constitution of the body itself. So to say that space is the distinctive mark of division between one body and another is logically not tenable. It is a peculiar thinking of the minds of people that makes it impossible for them to feel the coextensive nature of bodies, as if they are connected at the bottom, like the waters of the ocean. Inasmuch as physical distinctions are not tenable ultimately, the distinctions are to be regarded as purely mental, or psychological; and therefore, a mental act can abolish the mental distinction that has been thus created.

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The entire psychology of meditation is nothing but a setting right of errors in thought; and the details of these methods we shall be considering as we proceed further. So, to come to the point, this distinction between the individual unit and the Universal Substance is to be abolished for the purpose of the removal of the sorrow of the individual. Meditation is the technique of the removal of sorrow in the sense that sorrow is caused by the segregation of the individual from the world outside. For this purpose, one enters into the technique of meditation. Now, here, the context being sacrifice, we are given a method which is ritualistic in its nature, and thus the ritualistic horse of the A?vamedha Sacrifice becomes an object of contemplation, literally, liturgically as an animal in the sacrifice, but psychologically and spiritually, as an element like any other element in creation as a whole. 

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The subject is continued in the next 

Mantra-2

"Ahar va asvam purastan mahima nvajayata. tasya pūrve samudre yonih, 

ratrir enam pascan mahima nvajayata, tasyapare samudre yonih, 

etau va asvam mahimanav abhitah sambabhuvatuh hayo bhutva devan avahat, 

vaji gandharvan, arvasuran, asvo manushyan; samudra evasya bandhuh, samudro yonih."

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"Again, this is a ritualistic peculiarity of the Brahmana, concerned with the Asvamedha Sacrifice. 

Mahima is a term used to designate certain sacrificial vessels, gold and silver, placed in the performance of the sacrifice. 

The daytime may be compared, says the Upaniṣhad, to the golden cup that is placed in the front of the horse."

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To be continued ...

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