The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad : Ch-1.4.1.9. Swami Krishnananda.

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Tuesday, January 18, 2022. 6:00.PM.

Chapter- I 

Fourth Brahmana : Creation from the Universal Self : 1.

Discourse-9 

8 February 1977.

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Inasmuch as the Atman is the Absolute, and we cannot conceive of a relation of the Atman to space, time and cause, the Upanishad uses the word, Purushavidha, i.e., we have to regard this condition of ultimate causality, the ultimate cause as something equivalent to a Person. We regard God as the Supreme Person, because there is no alternative for us. The reason why we regard God as the Supreme Person is that we cannot conceive of a category of life which is superior to humanity. 

There are stages and degrees of life beyond the human level, of course, but they are only possibilities for us, and not actualities. The conception of a cause should have some connection with the actuality that, is in our minds. An infinite expanse of the highest, conceivable to the human mind is assumed as the cause of the manifestation of the world, the Supreme Person, Purushavidha.

 This Supreme Being, whom we regard as the God of the creation of the world, became conscious of Himself. And what was He conscious of? Of Himself only, as ‘I-Am-That-I-Am’, as the Great ‘I’. Since nothing was outside Him, there could not have been a consciousness of anything else besides Himself. The Supreme  Universal Self-Consciousness, which is identified with the concept of the Supreme Person, was conscious of Himself, or Itself, we may say, because it was neither male nor female, and knew nothing outside it, was not aware of anything external to it, because there was nothing outside it. It was Pure, Universal SelfAwareness – Atman.

 ’I-Am’. This was the Consciousness. He felt, as it were, ‘I-Am’, not also as ‘you are’, ‘it is’, etc. There was no ‘you’, ‘he’, ‘she’, or ‘it’, there. It was the Primordial ‘I’, not the ego-ridden bodily individual ‘I’, but pure, unadulterated Universal ‘I’. And this Eternal ‘I’ is reflected in other empirical ‘I’s. The Supreme principle, therefore, is the principle of Self, which is designated here as the ‘I’, so that when reality is reflected in anything, it reflects as the ‘I’ principle there. The  self appropriating and self-arrogating attitude of the individual is the outcome of this element of ‘I’ asserting itself in all things, as coming through the grades of manifestation downwards from the eternal ‘I’, which is all-comprehensive. 

So, the eternal ‘I’ is felt even in an atom to assert itself as the ‘I’, as anyone of us also is capable of asserting himself as the ‘I’. Nothing can be more valuable than the ‘I’ in a person. Nothing can be more dear than that, and nothing is worth-the-while conceiving except the principle of the ‘I’. When the ‘I’ goes, everything else also goes. So, all the associations which we regard as meaningful in life are auxiliaries to the safety of this ‘I’. We guard this ‘I’ with meticulous care. We love it immensely, and everything is loved because of this ‘I’. We love the ‘I’ so much that everything is reflected there, in fullness. 

So, the Supreme ‘I’ asserted itself? –‘I-Am’, and nothing else was.

To be continued ....

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