Truth and Understanding
Transcendent
speech is an expression of transcendent knowledge, which is identical with
transcendent truth. Our speech should be based on the reality of Being. Only
then it manifests itself as reality. Truth and knowledge are identical. Our
speech becomes true, because our speech is based on the knowledge of the true. Sanatkumara
says to Narada,"You want a knowledge which is tuned up with reality, but you
must know what reality or truth is."
Truth has to be
known as it is, and not as it appears. Truth is not what you perceive as true
in this empirical world. The whole world is not true. It is not the ultimate
truth. So, how can you say that anything in the world is true? Whatever you
speak is not true. You must know what is really true. When one knows what truth
is, then one speaks truth." Narada is instructed in this manner.
We have to know knowledge
itself, because it is knowledge that comprehends truth. What is knowledge (Jnana) and what is truth ( Satya)?
There is something higher than
this knowledge or aspiration for truth. What is that? It is the tendency of
one's being to move towards Reality. It is the very reason behind our aspiring
for Reality. How do we know that Reality is to be known? Who put this idea into
our head? We say, "I must know God," "I must search for
Reality," "I must aspire for the Absolute." How did this idea
arise in our mind? There is a tendency in us to move towards the Reality. This
tendency is prior to our consciousness of Reality. We cannot be conscious of
this urge itself, because it is prior to everything else, even becoming
conscious of anything. Nobody knows what this urge is and from where it comes. "Isvaranugrahad-eva
pumsam advaita vasana." Bhagavan Dattatreya says that perhaps it is
God's grace, or we may call it the grace of the Absolute, or the mysterious
outcome of the very process of evolution and the purpose of which is far, far
beyond our understanding.
"So, Narada," says
Sanatkumara, "beyond and prior to all that is in you including your
knowledge of reality, including your aspiration for it, behind everything, is a
tendency in you to move towards it. The mind will stop thinking completely, for
it does not know what to think at all if this tendency were not there. Only
when this tendency, this inclination of your total being towards the Reality is
there, only then can you have an aspiration for Reality, not otherwise. This is
the object of your meditation now."
Sraddha,
faith in the existence of Reality, and the working of this tendency of movement
of one's being towards Reality are almost simultaneous. How do we know that
Reality exists? That is a faith that is in our mind, introduced into us by the
very tendency of Reality urging itself forward towards its own Self-realization.
This faith is superior to thought and understanding. It is not what we call
blind faith, but an irrepressible feeling in us that Reality is. We do not have
any doubt about Its being.
When one has
steadfastness in Reality, then this superior faith also comes. A person who has
steadfastness becomes one with the Reality, as it were, in his psychological
being. This is called nishtha. Sanatkumara says that when there is nishtha,
there is sraddha, and when there is sraddha there is mati,
the tendency in one to move towards Reality.
What exactly is this
steadfastness? It is an incapacity of the mind to contemplate anything except
Reality. The very function of the mind is set in tune with the nature of
Reality so profoundly that we have virtually become that. This is the cause of
the faith in us, and the working of the tendency in us towards Reality.
Excerpts from:
Truth and Understanding – Chhandogya Upanishad
by
Swami KrishnanandaArchives - Blog
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