The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad - Ch-1. THIRD BRAHMANA : Chapter-1.THE SUPERIORITY OF THE VITAL FORCE AMONG ALL FUNCTIONS - 4. Swami Krishnananda.
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Tuesday, September 21, 2021. 9:00. AM.
Chapter - I : THIRD BRAHMANA :
Chapter-1.THE SUPERIORITY OF THE VITAL FORCE AMONG ALL FUNCTIONS - 4.
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The Devas and the Asuras are two tendencies, and not substances. The tendency to unification is the divine principle, and the urge to diversification is the demoniacal principle. The sense-organs are incapable; they were defeated by the Asuras, which means to say, that the sense-organs cannot work up this unifying activity which is intended for regaining the original position of the deities of the senses. As mentioned earlier, the mistake that happened during the process of individual creation is a reversal of the subject and the object, placing them in wrong positions.
In the Aitareya Upaniṣhad, we have a more clear exposition of this descending process. The Cosmic Being manifested Himself as all things, down to the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether – which we regard as objects of sense. The five elements are the objects of our senses, but they were the last evolutes in the process of Divine manifestation. They were, therefore, part of the Cosmic Being who was the Universal Subject; and whoever knows this, also remains the Universal Subject as inseparable from this All-Being, Vaiśvānara, or Virāt.
The five elements stand in the position of the subject to the isolated individuals; and they are not their objects. The mouth of the Virāt is supposed to be the location of the Fire principle. For instance, Speech is the effect of the Fire principle. While in the cosmic realm, Fire is the effect of the Cosmic Principle, of Speech, identified with the Virāt Himself, the Fire principle becomes an object for individuals, so that human speech is controlled by the Fire principle, as it is not the case in Virāt where Speech is the controller of Fire. The Organs which are attributed to the Virāt are causes, rather than effects. And, in our case, they become effects, like reflections. The evil which we are speaking of here, the Asuras or the demons, are the tendencies to regard the Universal Subject as an object, and the desire of the individualised subject to run after the object for 'contact' with it. The gods have lost their position. They are no more angels in heaven.
We hear in the Purāṇas, stories being told that the celestials were driven away from heaven by the demons and they lost their position; they ran away; they did not know where to stand, and rushed to God for help. When the forces of desire in terms of external objects begin to operate in an intense manner, the position of the Universal Subject gets converted into that of an object, and then the gods are driven from the heaven. When the Subject is driven from its location and transformed into an object, what is really happening is that the angels are driven from heaven and the Asura has taken that position. The demon is ruling the kingdom of paradise. The idea is this: the god who is the subjective angel has become a fallen egoistic subject, under the spell of evil influences. This travesty can be obviated only if the evil element in the senses is removed. The eye, the ear, the nose, speech, etc. can regain their original position, as they had in the being of the Virāt, if the tendencies to diversification and movement towards objects are obviated by the operation of the Prāṇa. It was the Prāṇa whom evil, the Asuras, could not attack.
Everything could be affected. The eye and the ear and all the sense-organs were afflicted by the Asuras, i.e., every organ is a diversifying principle. It is not a unifying power. No sense-organ is characterised by unification or the power of meeting. Every sense has an urge to move in the direction of its own particular object. The ear has its own object, sound; the eye has the object, colour; the nose has the object, smell; the tongue has the object, taste; and the skin has its object, touch. They can never have a unifying capacity. But the Prāṇa is a unifying force. This Prāṇa, here, is represented by Hiraṇyagarbha in the cosmos. So, this section in the Upaniṣhad really deals with Prāṇa-Vidyā, or meditation on the Cosmic Prāṇa, Hiraṇyagarbha, for the purpose of which the senses have to be turned back to their own sources, and not allowed to move towards objects, which is the disease that they have contracted on account of their being afflicted by what is called the Asura.
The centrifugal tendency is the Asura; the centripetal one is the divine aspiration. The disintegrating impulse, i.e., the movement towards further and further grosser form of objectivity, is the devilish element in the senses, and the divine element is that by which they can turn back upon their own source and contemplate their inner connectedness with the other divinities. The Prāṇa mentioned here is not merely the breathing principle or the breath, so-called. Some people translate Prāṇa as breath; but it is not just that. It is the energy, a subtle force, a vitality, that which keeps the whole body in unison. If we can feel a sensation of unity in the whole body, it is because of the harmonious movement of the Prāṇa in the whole system.
Really, the body is not one whole, it is made up of parts; every cell is different from every other cell, every limb is different from every other limb. But, in spite of this diversification we are a whole. We have the heart; we have the lungs; we have the spleen; we have the liver and intestines; the hands and the feet; and the limbs and the organs, one different from the other, constituted of minute organisms called cells. But, how is it that, with all this diversity, we are able to feel a singleness of unity in ourselves?
We are a whole, an indivisible completeness. This is due to the Prāṇa which is the immediate manifestation of the ātmā-Śakti within us. Ultimately, it is the ātman which is responsible for the sense of unity within us. It is indivisible, and everything which reflects this indivisibility in some percentage may be regarded as a manifestation of the ātman. The Prāṇa-Śakti is regarded as an immediate expression of ātmā-Śakti within us, and correspondingly in the cosmos, we may say, Hiraṇyagarbha is the reflection of the Absolute Brahman.
Such a meditation is to be practiced if the senses are to be controlled, and if the divinities are to regain their positions, i.e., if we are not to stand in the need of moving towards objects of sense for our satisfaction, and the objects have to come to us of their own accord. When this is achieved, things will not be objects. They will stand in the position of our own kith and kin. They become part of our larger dimension, which they really are, but which consciousness we have forsaken on account of the subjection of the senses to the Asura principle, the urge for diversification.
Thus, this section of the Upaniṣhad is a continuation of the history of creation which was narrated to us in the earlier section. The Prāṇa is the only unifying principle within us, not the sense-organs. The contemplator on the Prāṇa becomes indomitable at once. This is one of the things that the Upaniṣhad tells us. We achieve and get endowed with a power which cannot be confronted by anybody. A contemplator on the Hiraṇyagarbha Prāṇa is a powerful being. Nobody can stand before that person.
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