Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad
Divine Life
Society Publication: Sage Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda
Idam
brahma, idam kshatram, ime lokah, ime devah, imani bhutani, idam sarvam yad
ayam atma. "This Source of knowledge; this source of power;
all these worlds; all these gods; all these beings – All this is just the
Self."
This proclamation is like a Brahma Astra that Sage Yajnavalkya
is discharging against every kind of attachment one can conceive in this world.
It is somewhat easy to accept that God is everywhere.
It becomes easy because we always externalise the location of God, however much
we may try to universalise Him. The everywhereness of God implies that there is
space, and inasmuch as our mind is wedded completely to the concept of spatial
expansion, we feel a little bit comforted when we are told that God is
everywhere.
Now, Sage Yajnavalkya says the
Self also is everywhere. All the
fourteen worlds are the Self. Here we will not find it so easy to accept it,
because we cannot spatialise the concept of Self. Our Self cannot be somewhere
else, it must be within us only.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
is not intended for everybody. It is a cosmic meditation. The whole thing is
transcendent, beyond ourselves. Even when we think of self, we place it within
ourselves. My self is inside me. But Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says the Self is
not within us – it is within everybody, within everything, within all the
worlds and the universes. In all space and all time, the Self is there. Can
anyone close one's eyes and meditate thus? Can you place yourself in the skies
and contemplate from there? But, you may say, 'this is an easy thing, I can do
that, I can place myself in the skies', but when you place yourself in the
skies, again you are bringing a spatial concept, which is not permitted in the
case of the awareness of one's Self. Never should this meditation be attempted
by an impure mind.
If anything is dear and
lovable, the thing that is loved is not actually loved, it is not dear. The
Self in the object attracts the Self in us and then the object looks
attractive. It is not the object that is attractive, because a corpse cannot
attract anybody, a dead body does not attract. It is the life principle that
attracts, the Selfhood in the object is attracting. The beauty and the grandeur
of the life principle, it is that which attracts. Where is this Selfhood? Again
the question arises – everywhere! The whole universe you carry with you when
you move. The universal Self moves with you who are the universal.
The Self need not necessarily
be that imagined self inside the physical body. The
universal Self should not be considered as a pervading thing, because the Self
is inside, it is inside something, and it is inside the universe. The universe
is not an extended form in space. The idea of 'all-pervading' also should be
given up, because the Self does not pervade, It is just what It is; It is utter
subjectivity incapable of externalisation. We cannot split it into the object
seen. The Self cannot be an object that is visualised. It is the visualiser.
Thus, 'everything' is the Visualiser only. How would you like to know the
knower by whom alone everything is known? Who will know the knower?
You must read the Brihadaranyaka
Upanishad, especially the Second and the Fourth Chapters where Yajnavalkya
pours the highest wisdom on Maitreyi and King Janaka.
"Whoever knows this
possesses the whole world. He himself is the world."
Can anybody contain all things
inside oneself and be at rest? This is why preliminary qualifications are
prescribed: Viveka, Vairagya, Shatsampatti, Mumukshutva
– discrimination, dispassion, the six virtues and longing for liberation. These
preliminary qualifications are necessary. If anyone is distracted in the
direction of anything else than the Self, then the Self will hide itself fully
away somewhere.
In the Atharva Veda there is a
Sukta called Varuna Sukta. If you have any longing, it will melt down in the
fire of this inclusiveness of God-being. All this amount to one thing: that by
externalizing consciousness we will achieve nothing. It is not enough if you
merely internalise it also. You should neither be an extrovert nor an introvert
but, if you can coin a word, an omnivert. Everywhere you perceive everything.
That 'I' is not the physical 'I' with which you see the world – it is the soul
observing itself in things which look like non-Self. The non-Self does not
exist; but even in that so-called non-Self the Self is peeping through Its own
eye.
The Plenum, the felicity, the
incomparable, is the only source of bliss. The greatest qualification is
wanting It; no other qualification is adequate. "I want It and I don't
want anything else. I shall get It," like Nachiketas insisting in the abode
of Yama: "Whatever you have given, take it back. I shall go with this
answer to this great question that I have put. Without that I do not want
anything else that you have offered me - long life, all joys, suzerainty over
all the worlds. Answer my question."
Such determination, if there
is in any one of us, the Truth reveals itself automatically. The Truth is
seeking us much more than we seek it. As it is wider than our concept of
itself, it is a greater force, it calls you. God calls you with greater severity
of intensity than we are calling Him.
Yajnalvakya's instructions
lead to Sadyo Mukti, immediate salvation
and not a stage-by-stage Krama Mukti or
gradual salvation -it is not a question of tomorrow but the karmas that we have performed in
the previous births are sitting inside our mind like a knot, hard knot in the
form of Brahma-granthi, Vishnu-granthi and Rudra-ganthi-Avidya, Kama, Karma as
they call them. They are the Granthis-they
have to be melted down. You cannot cut them like a Gordian knot, but melt them
down by dispassion, daily meditation, and wanting That only, and wanting
nothing else.
Excerpts from:
Sage
Yajnavalkya in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad by Sri Swami Krishnananda
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