Related LinksContents of Bookby Swami Krishnananda
Katama ᾱtmeti, is the question. Katama ᾱtmeti. yo'yaṁ vijñᾱnamayaḥ prᾱṇeṣu, hṛdy antarjyotiḥ puruṣaḥ: You ask me, "What is this Ātman which is your light, which is your support and which is your power?" It is that which twinkles through your reason and understanding and intellect. It does not fully manifest itself in you under ordinary conditions. It peeps through your intellect. You can infer the existence of this light through the activities of the understanding. You cannot directly perceive it. You can only infer its being. It cannot be perceived, because it is the very self that perceives. It is the seer, therefore it cannot be seen. You have already been told this elsewhere in the Upaniṣhad. The Ātman cannot be contacted by any ordinary means, but it can be inferred. If the light of the intellect is to be regarded as an essential property of the intellect only, how is it that we seem to be full and complete in every respect in the state of sleep when the intellect does not act? How is it possible for us to be so refreshed and so happy in a condition where the means that we employ, called the intellect, for purposes of satisfaction, does not operate? What is that which we employ in waking state for the purpose of gaining out desired ends? The means that we employ is the intellect. It is the ruling principle in our waking life When that ruling guide, the great factor of dependence, our reason itself, fails in sleep, naturally everything should get abolished. But that does not happen to be the case. Something in us continues sleep. We do not experience in sleep any sense of weariness, fatigue, exhaustion and sorrow. On the other hand, we wake up into the sorrow when we regain consciousness of the world outside. It is the world outside that causes sorrow to us, not the state of the absence of consciousness of the world outside. It is impossible that the sleep condition can be abolition of all values. Therefore, it must be a false belief which takes for granted that values are there only in the waking world. It is a futile attempt the part of people to run after things in the waking life, under the impression that values are deposited in the objects of sense outside. It is the impossibility to gain what we seek in waking life that drives back to our own self in sleep.
Every day we are tired by the search for that which we cannot get in the world of objects. Every day we are experimenting with different objects of sense and trying to see if we can discover in that object, that which we really want. The whole of the life of a human being is nothing but a series of experiments with things for the purpose of discovering whether what is required is there or not. But the experiment always fails. The days that we pass thus, wear away our senses, wear out our energies, and then we go back for rest to our own home, as it were, which is the state of sleep. Just as people go to the factory and office, get tired of work, and go back to their homes in the evening, so, as it were, the self wanders in this desert of Samsāra, in the world outside, searching in the mirage for a little water to drink and not finding it there, goes back to its mother in the state of sleep and says, "I have found nothing there; I have come back." And the Mother embraces the returned child. The great Father embraces you. The very source of friendship, affection, all vitality, energy and support, becomes your real friend in the state of sleep. How can you regard sleep as a state of unconsciousness? How can it be inert as it is generally taken to be? If it is not inert, if it is consciousness, naturally it should be a wider source of that consciousness than what we discover in the little modicum of its expression in the form of this intellect in the waking state.
This Ātman is manifest partially in the intellect, Vijñānamaya, and in the senses - the eyes, ears, etc. It is the activity of the self that is responsible for the activity of the senses. It is the energy of the Ātman that is ultimately responsible for the working of all the faculties, intellect included. Sa samᾱnaḥ sann ubhau lokᾱv anusañcarati, dhyᾱyatīva lelᾱyatīva, sa hi svapno bhῡtvᾱ, imaṁ lokam atikrᾱmati, mṛtyo rῡpᾱṇi: Fatigued with all that one sees in the waking up world, fed up with all the search that one makes in the waking life, one goes back to the other world, as it were, where the roots of being are to be discovered and contacted. The self, after its daily wandering in the world of Samsāra in the waking life, goes to the state of dream where it hopes to be free from the trammels of sense, which are veritable forms of death. The Upaniṣhad says here - mṛtyo rūpāṇi - the things that you see in waking life are forms of death. They are there like devils, there to devour. They are not your supports. The senses mistake the objects for supports, for sustenance. But the objects are destroyers because they sap the energy of the senses. They drain away the strength of your personality, and make you empty, as it were, of all that you regard as yourself. Ultimately you get nothing from this world. Inasmuch as the objects outside draw out the senses of the person, and become responsible for his death and rebirth, they are called forms of death - mṛtyo rūpāṇi. Transcending this world of death which is waking life, the individual self, with the instrument which is the mind, goes to the world of dream, and then passes on into the state of deep sleep.
This is the daily routine of the human personality, but due to some mysterious obstruction which prevents the recognition of oneself in deep sleep, there is a return of the mind once again to the waking life. It wants again the repetition of the same old routine of getting fatigued with the objects of sense due to its not finding what it seeks there, and then again going back to the state of sleep. Not discovering consciously what the state of deep sleep is, there is a return once again to the waking condition. This cycle continues, and this is Samsāra Chakra, the wheel of earthly existence.
Due to certain impulses that lie latent in the state of deep sleep, there comes as aforesaid, a necessity to wake up from sleep. The awakening from sleep is caused by the activity of latent desires which sprout into action every day, and seek their fulfilment in the directions given to them by circumstances. But, not finding what they seek in the waking world, they return once again to the state of sleep. And when the body, which has been manufactured for the purpose of serving as an instrument for the fulfilment of these impulses, gets exhausted and becomes finally unfit for action, then there is what is known as death. There is a period of transition, which varies from person to person and from condition to condition, between physical death and the time of rebirth. And then, those impulses which could not be manifested for action through the previous body, regain their strength and project themselves through the new body that is fitted into the mental structure by the circumstance of rebirth.
At the time of the embodiment, or the assuming of the body in birth, there is a forceful activity of the senses which are all driven in their own directions by the impulses inside, and what is called good or bad is a result of these actions. The goodness or the badness of an action is connected with the perspective of life, the viewpoint which the mind has in its cognition of objects, whatever it thinks being its relation with objects outside. The question of right and wrong arises when objects are entirely outside with no connection with ourselves. This circumstance cannot be avoided as long as the senses insist that the objects are outside, for their fulfilment depends upon the assumption that things are external. Hence, it is also impossible to get over the necessity to assess things in terms of ethical values. But when there is freedom from this embodiment, there is a withdrawal of the mind from the dictates of the body and the senses, and then there is no such assessment of personal values. It is the connection of the mind with the body and the senses that is the cause of virtue and vice. The disconnection of the mind from the body and the senses becomes immediately a relief for us from the clutches of these evaluations, such as virtue, vice, good, bad, etc. So, as long as there is a body, there is a question of righteousness, sin, etc., but when there is freedom from the embodiment of this personality which the mind assumes for its own purposes, there is also freedom simultaneously from unrighteousness, or evil, or sin, etc.
This traumatic activity of the mind in the waking, dreaming and deep sleep states goes on endlessly like a cycle, like a seesaw, and it does not cease, it does not come to an end, because every death or every new embodiment becomes an incentive to action. And, as is well known, every action is a process of or attempt at fulfilment of impulses within, which, however, cannot be fulfilled. So, activity becomes futile in the end, inasmuch as what is required or what is sought for is not available at the point where it is expected to be. Every object of sense thus defeats the purpose of the mind when it is considered external to the one that is embodied. When the whole life of a person is spent in this manner, in sheer experimentation with things for the purpose of the discovery of the perfection that one has lost, when life ends in this manner without any success in this search, the mind still does not realise the futility of its deeds. It only thinks that more time is needed, and that it has not been able to fulfil its purpose only on account of the shortness of duration of the lifespan. It does not realise that there has been a mistake in its very purpose. The mind never understands at any time that there is an error in its own judgment. It always justifies itself and goads the senses for the purpose of fulfilling its own impulses of desires. Until and unless the mind realises what its mistakes are, it is not possible to free it from the clutches of birth and death. As it is not easy to instruct the mind in the true state of affairs, due to its association with the ego which always asserts that it is right, it becomes impossible to avoid the cycle of birth and death, until the ego is transcended.
The transitional experience, which is called dream, is regarded as something like a borderland between waking life and complete annihilation in death. In the state of dream, we are not alive in the sense of the wakeful personality. We are also not annihilated. We are translucent and meagrely active. So, the Upaniṣhad says that the condition of dream is like a third state, apart from life and death. The waking condition may be regarded as life, and the annihilation of it is death. But dream is something between the two. It is not annihilation, and yet it is not real living. Tasya vᾱ etasya puruṣasya dve eva sthᾱne bhavataḥ: idaṁ ca para-loka-sthᾱnaṁ ca; sandhyaṁ tṛtīyaṁ svapna-sthᾱnam: There are two alternatives of action-the field of this world and the field of the other world. Idaṁ ca para-loka-sthᾱnaṁ ca: We either live in this world or in the other world. But dream is neither this world nor the other world. It is something midway between the two. So, in the condition of dream, the mind experiences certain consequences of its feelings and actions, in a manner quite different from what it does in waking and in the state of rebirth. Tṛtīyaṁ svapna-sthᾱnam; tasmin sandhye sthᾱne tiṣṭhann, ubhe sthᾱne paśyati: In the state of dream, the mind seems to be partaking of the experiences of life and death both. It is living because it is conscious of imagined objects outside, and there is activity of the mind through the psychological senses which it projects out of its own structure. In that sense, there is living, life, and yet it is not a workable living. It is a bare minimum of existence which cannot be called real life in its true definition. It is almost a passage to death, as it were. Perhaps, if the state of dream were to continue indefinitely, it would be the same as death. But this does not take place. The dream state is only of a very short duration each time. So there is either a reversal of the activity of the mind, a coming back into waking, or a temporary sinking into deep sleep. The mind in dream observes the conditions of waking as well as annihilation. It is on the borderland of destruction which is death, and living which is waking - ubhe sthᾱne paśyati.