The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad : Ch-1.4.1.10. Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, January 28, 2022. 6:00.PM.

Chapter- I 

Fourth Brahmana : Creation from the Universal Self : 1.

Spoken on 8 February 1977.

Discourse-10.

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Because it asserted itself as the ‘Aham’, we call it ‘I-AM’. It has no other name. That was the name of God, and that is the name of God. There is no other name, because God is Pure Self-Consciousness. This is the reason why, says the Upanishad, that even today people refer to themselves as ‘I’. 

Who are you? 

It is ‘I’. 

This is the answer one gives. If you knock at the door of someone’s house and call out, “Who is there,” the answer comes, “I,” Afterwards one may say, ‘my name is such-and-such’, but in the beginning ‘it is me’. 

What is this ‘me’? 

Nobody knows what it is, but that is the ‘you’, and so you assert yourself as the ‘me’ or the ‘I’. This feature of assertion as the ‘I’ or the ‘me’ in all individuals is due to the original assertion of the Absolute as the ‘I’. That is felt in everyone of us.

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This Supreme Person is called the Purusha. 

Why is He called the Purusha?

What is the meaning of the word? 

Purusha, here, says the Upanishad, means someone who has burnt up the evil of external contact. That Consciousness burnt up all evil, and we are told here that the evil referred to is the evil of externality. There was no externality then, and there is no evil except externality. Everything is a part of that; everything is a manifestation of that. Whatever we call evil and undesirable in this world is the child of externality. When externality is not there, evil also cannot be there. And there was no externality in the One Purusha. The evil of contact with externality does not arise when everything was the Self alone. Inasmuch as it burnt up the externality and was conscious of Itself alone, to the exclusion of everything else, therefore it is called the Purusha. And so is the case.

The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Swami Krishnananda (Discourse-8) 8 with anyone who knows this – Ya evam veda. Anyone can become like that, says the Upanishad, assuring us that we can also be like this Purusha, and destroy all evil. The evil of contact can cease when the desire for contact ceases. Desire for contact arises on account of belief in the reality of externals, and so it is an injunction to meditation on the Supreme Purusha, simultaneously.

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 Nobody can stand before that person who has this knowledge. As it was mentioned earlier, in another context, no one can compete with this person who has this knowledge of non-external Being. One who is established in this non external Universality cannot be faced by any other person in the world. He becomes an indomitable power; He becomes a Supreme master; he becomes an authority; and he becomes a source of fear to others. He becomes energy incarnate. And this is purely because of the fact that this energy is not depleted through external contact. So, he is all-powerful. And no one can stand before him; no one can compete with him; no one can vie with him in any way. 

Such a person is fit for the ascent to the state of the Purusha whose manifestations, whose glories, whose effects are described in the subsequent narrations. 

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Fourth Brahmana : Creation from the Universal Self - Ends.

Next - Chapter I. FIFTH BRAHMANA : 

PRAJAPATI'S PRODUCTION OF THE WORLD AS FOOD FOR HIMSELF

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To be continued ...

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