A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 2.4 - Swami Krishnananda.

 

Chinmaya Mission:

On the auspicious occasion of Toli Ekadashi, 6th July 2025, Chinmaya Yuva Kendra, Kadapa presented a vibrant theatrical offering titled “SURYA - 108”, a light and sound show glorifying the radiant and life-giving Sun God. The production, staged at the serene premises of Chinmaya Mission, Kadapa, within the sacred Sri Lalita Panchayatana Temple, captivated the audience with its dynamic blend of devotional music, dramatic narration, and luminous visuals. The show not only paid homage to the sun god but also highlighted the significance of Surya in the Vedic tradition, embodying spiritual illumination, vitality, and divine grace.

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Wednesday 16, July 2025, 06:00.
Books
Srimad Bhagavad Gita
A Short History of Religious and Philosophic Thought in India: 2-4.
Chapter 2: The Upanishads:
2.The Quest for Reality:4.
Swami Krishnananda.

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Metaphysics: 

The Upanishads hold that the universe is in essence a spiritual unity. All this is pervaded by the Lord (Isa), whatever moves or moves not. To worship Him, therefore, implies a relinquishment of one's possessorship in regard to things. Covetousness is, thus, a denial of God's existence as the all-pervading reality. Life and its activities are non-different from divine contemplation. To bear what comes with fortitude and to act without initiative is real contemplation, in the light of the consciousness that He is all things.

The Supreme Being can neither be seen, nor heard, nor thought, nor understood, with the faculties of the individual. He can be recognised where the ego is abolished. He sees through the eyes, hears through the ears, thinks through the mind, understands through the intellect and breathes through the breath; but these instruments cannot apprehend Him. One who thinks that he knows, knows not. He is known by him who does not think that he knows anything in particular. If He is known here in this life, then there is the true end of all aspirations. If one does not know Him in this life, great indeed is the loss to such a one. Sages become immortal, after death, having seen Him alone in each and every being in this world as its very Self. Hence one should adore and contemplate on Reality as Supreme Love and Delight, whereby the universe begins to reciprocate this love to the votary of such a meditation.

The pleasures of the senses are ephemeral. They wear away one's energies, and tend to one's destruction. Even the longest life with the greatest pleasure is indeed worth nothing in the end. The only desirable aim in this world is the knowledge of the Self. The pleasant is one thing and the good is another. Both these come to a man together for acceptance. The wise man discriminates between the two and chooses the good rather than the pleasant. But the foolish one chooses the pleasant and falls into the net of the widespread death, on account of attachment to personal comfort. There is really no diversity here. As an indivisible Being alone should one behold it in all these things. He goes from death to death in a series of transmigration who perceives diversity here.

By knowing it, everything is known at once. He becomes it, who knows it. It is 'all this', and it ranges above perception. It transcends the three states of waking, dream and deep sleep. It is the cessation of all phenomena, the peaceful, the blessed, the non-dual. It is Truth, Knowledge, Infinity. One possesses all things simultaneously, becomes all things at one stroke, and enjoys all things at once, who knows this as identical with his own being. Wonderful is that experience, marvellous is that man, great is his fortune, blessed are his friends, freed for ever are his relatives, gone is the bondage of those who have his blessings.

The Absolute is consciousness. It is the root of all existence. It blazes as the sun, shines as the moon, twinkles as the star. It sleeps in stones, breathes in plants, thinks in animals and discriminates in man. No part of this world is to be regarded as complete unless it is taken together with all its other parts. The sun and moon are only a part of it. The solar system is a part. The stellar regions are a part. The earth and the heavens are a part. No meditation can be perfect when any particular thing alone is taken as its object. Meditation is defective when it does not comprehend all existence. Meditation is rightly done when its object is the totality of which the visible and the conceivable are just aspects. In such meditation individuality is swallowed up into Universal Being. Here meditation itself ceases, and the object of meditation alone remains. The actions of one who knows this secret are universal actions. The food that he takes in is the food offered to the universe, and the universe rejoices in such satisfaction. The food offered to him by anyone is a spiritual sacrifice performed in the altar of creation. Knowing this, if one were to throw some grains of food to an outcaste, it shall be veritably offered into the Absolute. As children sit round their mother for food, hungry and craving for her benign look, so do all beings in this creation look to him for their existence, who knows this secret.

The Infinite alone is bliss. There is no bliss in the small and finite. Where one sees nothing else, hears nothing else, understands nothing else - that is the Infinite. Where one sees something else, hears something else, understands something else - that is the finite. The Infinite is the immortal. The finite is the mortal. The Infinite is based on its own greatness. It has no resting place or support other than itself. It is in front, behind, to the right, the left, above, below and everywhere. It is all this at once. For one who knows this, everything springs from his own Self. The whole universe, manifest and unmanifest, arises for him from his Self, and serves him without limitation of time and place. This is the consummation.

One who knows that He is the 'All' becomes the 'All'. Knowing is being. Knowledge is power. Consciousness is existence and bliss, immediately. He who seeks for the 'All' in any particular thing here, finds it not. The Eternal is not reached through the non-eternal. The permanent cannot be attained by the impermanent. The means and the end are both the Absolute.

None loves an object for its own sake. All love is for one's own universal Self. Things are dear because of the Infinite that peeps through them. The Infinite summons the Infinite in the perception of the beloved. Persons and things are not dear for their own sake. Though all love has a selfish origin in the world, it has a transcendent meaning above the phase of the seer and seen. He who knows the secret behind temporal loves knows Truth and is liberated from the thraldom of mortality. The knowledge of the Self is knowledge of everything. But he who, by an error, regards anything as being outside himself in truth, shall lose that thing, whatever it be.

Where there is duality, as it were, there one sees the other, hears the other, smells the other, speaks to the other, tastes the other, touches the other, thinks the other, understands the other. But where the One alone is, who can see what and by what, who can hear, smell, speak, taste, touch, think or understand what and by what? How can one know that by which one knows all these things? How can one know the Knower? This is the great admonition. This is the treasure-house of knowledge. If one were to give the whole earth as a gift for the sake of this knowledge, one should regard this knowledge as greater than that. Lo, this is greater than all things.

The Upanishads proclaim in this strain the content of spiritual realisation and have as their aim and objective of existence the aspiration to rise from the unreal to the Real, from darkness to Light, from mortality to Immortality.

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Next: Personal God:
Continued

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