The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Ch-1.8 Second Brahmana, Post-8. : Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, March 20, 2021. 08:35. PM.
Chapter - I :
SECOND BRAHMANA: THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE-8.
Post-8.
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And, also, another analogy is given in a passage of the Katha Upanishad as to what happens in creation. There is a reversal of the whole position, as our face is reversed in a mirror where it is reflected – the right becomes left, and the left becomes right – even so, the subject becomes the object, and the object becomes the subject, when the creation takes place, which is the essence of the whole matter. Very interesting, and very comforting, indeed! We can imagine where we are seated, and what has happened to us. God has played a very beautiful joke with us, made us great fools, turned us upside down by positing the subject in the context of the object, and the object in the context of the subject. Really, we are the objects; the universe is the subject. This is the truth. But, we think that we are the subjects, and the universe is the object, and gaze at it, look at it, try to exploit it for our own individual purposes, under the misapprehension that we are the subjects. We are subjects in the same sense as the reflected head is our head.

So, this reversal of the position of the Absolute is called M?ityu, or destruction, or death, here. Well, it is destruction indeed, when we mistake one thing for another thing by completely forgetting the original, and we are destroyed, in fact, when we are in a different paradise altogether, where we are under an illusion. And, consciousness gets reflected wherever there is this reversed position, cognised or felt, where consciousness attends. So there is a reflected consciousness, also. The entire personality of ours may be said to be a reflected structure. Even the intellect is a reflection of the consciousness of God. It is not qualitatively equivalent to God-consciousness. It does not mean that a tiny part of God is in our brains. Not so; it is reflected, which means distorted. The sun, reflected in water, may look like the sun, but it does not have the quality of the sun. It will not burn you. You cannot warm yourself by the reflected sun in the water.

There is a diversity in the form of this creation, made possible by a reversal of the position of the ultimate Reality and that reversed position assumes a consciousness of its own, originally. That is what is known as the Universal Mind. It is attended with Self-Consciousness – ?tmanv? sy?m iti. 'I-Am', the Cosmic 'I-Am', is something less than the Absolute. It is a condition that has to be accepted, subsequent to the reversal, which, again, has to be assumed prior.

The Cosmic Mind, Hiranyagarbha, as we call it in the Vedanta, is the Cosmic 'I-Am'. It is Self-Consciousness, Pure Universality. And, here is the seed of all diversity. In a sense, we may say that we are parts of this Cosmic Mind, but not, indeed, correctly. As I pointed out, we cannot regard ourselves as parts of the Absolute. Nothing that we see with our eyes can be regarded as a real representation of the Absolute. 

Thus, we have to understand that we are not parts, even of the Hira?yagarbha. We are much less than that. We are far down below the condition of Hiraayagarbha and Virat, for reasons we shall see shortly. For the time being, it is enough if we understand the actual meaning of this passage. 

There was a destruction, a Mrityu, a complete abolition of Reality, which is what the Sankhya calls Prakriti, the Vedantins call Maya, Mula-Prakriti, etc., the Potential Being, the Matrix of the universe. That becomes the seed for the manifestation of the Cosmic Mind, known as Mahat and Cosmic Ahamk?ra. The Vedanta calls them Hiranyagarbha and Virat.

To be continued ....


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