The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Ch-1.9 Second Brahmana, Post-9. : Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, March 30, 2021. 10:09. AM.
Chapter - I :
SECOND BRAHMANA: THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE-9.
Post-9.
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So׳rcann acarat, tasyārcata. āpo׳jāyanta, arcate vai me kam abhūd iti; tad evārkasya arkatvam; kaṁ ha vā asmai bhavati, ya evam etad arkasya arkatvaṁ veda. 

 One who makes this phenomenon, assumes power over this phenomenon, becomes that, is the advice with which the passage concludes. The cosmic condition is thus to be described. The Mind which was created, cosmically, in this manner, by a reversal of the content of the Absolute, this cosmic condition, is the seed of the universe. 

This seed of the universe, we call ?shvara; we call Hiranyagarbha; we call Virat, in the various degrees of the densities manifested. It assumed a joy. It became the energy of the universe. It became Vai?v?nara. Here the word 'Arka' is sometimes taken to mean Cosmic Fire, or, we may say, Universal Energy, which is also the same as the great Joy of the Universal. 'Kam' means joy, happiness. There is a happiness which is untarnished and undiminished in this condition on account of the retention of universality, though it is the seed-form of all diversity. The conditions of Hiranyagarbha and Virat are potential diversities, no doubt, but not manifest diversities. What we call diversity, responsible for the sorrow of the individual, has not taken place yet. There is no sorrow in Virat, Hiranyagarbha and ?shvara, though there is a potency for diversity. The reason is that there is the Universal Consciousness maintained yet, in spite of the potentiality for diversity. There is an organic connectedness of things in Vir?t and above, and this consciousness is maintained. Therefore, on account of the absence of the loss of universality there, the Joy of the Universal also is present. Whoever knows this becomes that; and knowing this, he is also equal to have the power of it. Knowledge and Power are identical. So the knowledge of it is necessary, by 'being it' in meditation. And then there is power that is unlimited, power that is born of unlimited knowledge on account of unlimited 'Being'.

āpo vā arkaḥ. tad yad apāṁ śara āsīt, tat samahanyata, sā pṛithivy abhavat, tasyām aśrāmyat. tasya śrāntasya taptasya tejo raso niravartatāgniḥ.?.

Here, again, we have some description of the condensation of the dense form of things, gradually taking place in the process of creation – the subtle becomes gross. The cosmic waters hardened, as it were, became solid, gradually, and the Earth element was formed. By the Earth element, what is meant here is not merely this little globe of the earth on which we are living, but the entire Earth Principle of the whole astronomical universe, through which your eyes cannot pass. The whole element of Earth can be regarded as the solidified form of this cosmic condition, the subtle nature of things which is called here, Waters. It solidified itself. From Fire comes Water; from Water comes Earth. This is the chronological order of creation of the gross forms, ordinarily speaking. S? p?ithivy abhavat: That became the Earth, the grossened form of things.

Here is the end of Cosmic creation. There is a famous passage in a text of the Vedānta, known as Panchadaśi, written by Sage Vidyāraṇya, who describes this in one Sloka: Iksānadi-praveśāntā ṣṛṣhtirīśena kalpitā. Jāgradādi-vimokṣhantah samsāro jivīkalpitaḥ.

This passage of the Upanishad, and such other passages are given their meaning in this verse of the Panchadaśi.. From the Cosmic Will down to Divine Immanence, it is ?shvara's creation. From walking till liberation, it is the individual's creation. Ishvara's creation or God's creation ends with the manifestation of the universal physical form, and God is not responsible for what the individual is experiencing. The loves and sorrows, the joys and pains, the births and deaths of the individual are not created by God. They are created by some other factor which is not to be attributed to God. The condensation of the cosmos, right from the causal condition down to the physical, through the subtle, may be said to be the manifesting activity of God. He becomes the 'All' and becomes also the consciousness of the 'All'. But the reversal of attitude, the considering of the object as the subject and the subject as the object, and the desire to grab objects for the purpose of personal satisfaction, and the capacity to fulfil certain desires and the incapacity to fulfil certain others, the getting fatigued in personality on account of the inability to fulfil all desires, the falling into sleep every day on account of the latent condition of desires unfulfilled, etc. – these are all the phenomena of individuality, not of Cosmic Being. Even the 'process' of Mok?ha, or liberation, is not God's creation, because God has no Mok?ha. He is always in the state of Moksha only. The process of bondage and liberation, the cycle of births and deaths and joys and sorrows and activity, everything of this nature is an outcome of certain subsidiary character assumed by the individual, isolated from the Universal, so that we may say that there is no sorrow down to the point of the Virat manifestation. Sorrow starts after that, when there is a split into the diverse individuals who regard themselves as self-contained, self-sufficient, self-exhaustive individuals. Each one of us regards himself as complete. That there is nothing lacking in us, is a misconception. We lack everything, but we think we are complete in ourselves, so that we have a soul of 'our own', an entire soul, which is entirely ours, independent, unconnected with others! This is called the ego-principle which affirms a total isolation of itself from others. This has happened subsequently, and anything that follows out of it is the responsibility of the Jiva, the individual, not of Ishvara.

To be continued ....

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