A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 2.2 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Thursday 26, June 2025, 08:00.
Books
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 2-2.
Chapter 2: The Upanishads:
2.The Quest for Reality:
Swami Krishnananda.

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2.The Quest for Reality:

The sages who dedicated their lives more and more to meditation in sylvan retreats rather than to the external yajnas of the Brahmanas demonstrated their superiority over others by the spiritual prowess they possessed. The sage rose above the conventional formalities of ritualistic dogma and concerned himself with the duty of mastering Nature through tapas or self-restraint, which enabled him to have a knowledge of everything in the world simultaneously. He gained omniscience and could have access to the different regions of the Universe without hindrance. Certain sages almost approximated God in their powers and could create, preserve or destroy things, if they so wished, by a mere glance or even a thought. By meditation the sage solved the cosmic mystery and attuned himself to the Absolute, or the Divine Lord of the Universe. He overcame mortality and attained salvation from birth and death. He was regarded as the supreme conqueror, and in the words of the Upanishad, 'the world belongs to him, nay, he himself is the world'. Such was the dignity of spiritual realisation. The collection of the revelations of such sages formed the Aranyakas and the Upanishads.

3.The Philosophy of the Upanishads:

The Doctrine of Creation: The Upanishads do not reject the authority of the Brahmanas or the efficacy of sacrifice. But they go behind the sacrificial cult and regard it as a spiritual exercise. The thirst for knowledge could not be quenched by a routine of external yajnas or ceremonies. It was necessary to find an answer to the question of the creation of the Universe and one's relation to it inwardly and outwardly. The creation hymn of the Rig-Veda, the Nasadiya Sukta, heralded the quest for the Absolute, and in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad the Asvamedha sacrifice is contemplated as a process of the Universe, to be regarded in meditation. From the various theories of creation advanced in the Upanishads, we may sum up the whole scheme as follows:

Brahman is the Reality, and is often identified with Purusha. The condition when Brahman is potent with the possibility of a future creation is called the Avyakrita or Unmanifest, known also as Ishvara in the later Vedanta. In the Sankhya terminology, this condition is the Prakriti of all things. When the Cosmic Will is fully projected, it is Hiranyagarbha, or in Sankhya parlance, Mahat. Hiranyagarbha or the Cosmic Intellect, when fully manifest as the Cosmos, becomes Virat. Now the subsequent process of creation is the beginning of samsara or individualisation by separation.

The universal Virat is conceived as adhyatma, adhibhuta and adhidaiva, when the diversified forms appear as divisions therein. The senses of knowledge and the organs of action, as well as the psychological functions, have their external counterparts and also their presiding deities ruling over them. Thus, the sense of hearing has sound (ether) as its physical counterpart and the deities of the quarters as its presiding deities. The sense of touch has tangibility (air) as its physical counterpart and Vayu as its presiding deity. The sense of seeing has colour (fire) as its physical counterpart in the world and Sun or Aditya as its presiding deity. The sense of taste has gustatory enjoyment (water) as its physical counterpart and Varuna as its presiding deity. The sense of smell has odour (earth) as its physical counterpart and the Asvins as its presiding deities. The organs of speech, grasping (hands), locomotion (feet), procreation and excretion have respectively Agni, Indra, Vishnu, Prajapati and Yama as their presiding deities. The faculties of thinking (manas), understanding (buddhi), self-arrogation (ahamkara) and memory (chitta) have Soma (Moon), Brahma, Rudra and Vishnu as their presiding deities. Apart from the physical counterparts and the presiding deities, the individual functions mentioned above have their locations in the body, such as ears, skin, eyes, palate, nostrils, mouth, hands, feet, genitals and anus. The psychological functions are the mind, intellect, ego, and the subconscious, including the unconscious. These details are all not fully available in the older Upanishads but have to be gathered from the elucidations in the later Upanishads.

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Continued

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