The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Ch-1. Second Brahmana, The Creation of the Universe. : 13.4 Swami Krishnananda.

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Saturday, August 28, 2021. 9:47. PM.
Chapter - I :
SECOND BRAHMANA : 
THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE-13.4.
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Here is a very peculiar symbolic expression, which seems to tell us that the urge for creation, the outrush of manifestation which is the principle of death, described here as Mṛityu, was not satisfied with creation up to the point of Virāt, and wanted to engulf Virāt itself in its bosom, so that creation would end with Virāt; but, it did not end with Virāt. The principle of manifestation was not satisfied with the manifestation of Virāt. The One has to become the many, further down. Well, the Virāt is the many, no doubt; manifold expression is there in this Body of the Virāt; everything can be seen there; everything is found there. So, in a way, we may say it is the fulfilment of the desire to create. But, the desire was not fulfilled. There has to be a further creation, and so, while the principle of death, which is the urge for creation, wanted to swallow the Virāt itself in its all-consuming mouth, the Virāt resented, as it were. 

It is symbolic, of course; not that there were two persons acting in two different manners. It is only a way of expressing a fact that the violent onrush of the urge for creation did not get exhausted with the manifestation of Virāt. It became more and more violent as it went down, until it saw the complete overturning of the cart, and the object sat on the throne of the subject, and that was enough. With that, the creative urge, perhaps, was satisfied. The Virāt resented the onrush of the urge for creation, which means to say, it did not accede to the idea that creation should end with Virāt. The Virāt manifested Himself further down, and his resentment is the Vāc, which means to say, the principle of speech. Here the speech means, symbolically, the Veda, and the Veda means knowledge, the Word, Vibration, Creative Force; and all that Omkāra, or Praṇava, symbolises. Then what happens?

Mantram-5 :

"Sa aikṣata: yadi vā imam abhimaṁsye, kanīyo׳nnaṁ kariṣya iti: sa tayā vācā tenātmanedaṁ sarvam asṛjata yad idaṁ kiṁ ca, ṛco yajūṁṣi sāmāni chandāṁsi yajñān prajāḥ paśūn. sa yad yad evāsṛjata, tad tad attum adhriyata; sarvaṁ vā attīti tad aditer adititvam, sarvasyaitasyāttā bhavati, sarvam asyānnam bhavati, ya evam etad aditer adititvaṁ veda."

The principle of creation which is Death, contemplated, as it were: "Why should I swallow this Virāt and end creation here? That is a very small act, indeed, if I do that. My desire is to go further. I want to consume many more things than Virāt, so that multiplicity should exceed, the multiplicity as is available in Virāt." There should be real multiplicity, not apparent multiplicity as in Virāt. So the rush for creative activity continued; the vibration which is the force of externalisation pursued its purpose. The segmentation of Virāt takes place into the Adhyātma, the Adhibhūta and the Adhidaiva, which is the beginning of multiplicity in the form of the various individuals, as we see here. The One becomes three, and the three become many. So, the Virāt did not merely stop the creative activity, but continued it further, and became many more things, in a more expressed, pointed, and clear-cut, diversified manner. What are the further manifestations?

Whatever we see with our eyes here, everything became manifest. All things down to the blade of grass, even to the atom, even to inanimate matter – all these were created. There are gradations, and various degrees of manifestation in the coming down, one below the other. And, as creation comes down to the level of lower beings, consciousness gets more and more dense. It gets more and more involved in matter, which means to say, it gets externalised more and more. There is no such thing as matter, ultimately. It is only a form of externalisation, getting more and more concretised by involvement of consciousness in space and time. Ultimately, there is no matter; it is only space-time that is appearing as matter. But, it becomes very intense, and the intensity assumes the shape of a concrete object, outside. Till that point, creation took place. Everything that we see with our eyes became manifest.

To be continued ...

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