by Swami Krishnananda
Virtue and vice act as opponents both in the individual body and in the objective universe. The battle between these two is a continuous struggle for the sake of victory of truth over untruth. Virtue is the movement of the ego towards Truth, whether it is through thought, speech or action. Vice, on the other hand, is the process of the affirmation of the ego through self preservation and through self-proclamation. The nearer the ego is to Truth, the greater is the light received by it from Truth. Virtue, therefore, is guided by Divinity. The power of virtue is in fact the power of the atman within. The power, the greatness and the glory of an individual do not belong to the individual at all. They are borrowed from the Self, and because of this, the individual passes for a great being, though in fact, it is not great. It is pride and conceit that make an individual feel that it is possessed of greatness, knowledge and power. This self assertion has to be dispelled totally before the Divinity can be realised. The story of the Yaksha’s appearance is to illustrate the quelling of pride. The quelling of pride is necessary before the realisation of Divinity. The total cessation of individuality through a dissolution of the ego in knowledge is required before the achievement of Self realisation. Without this, one does not become fit for the glorious experience. In this story, the Yaksha stands for the Supreme Brahman. Agni stands for speech. Vayu stands for prana or mind. Indra stands for the ego or the jiva. Uma stands for knowledge. But for the sanction of the Great, Divinity Speech and prana can do nothing. The mind cannot think; the glorious gods cannot shake a straw. Speech and prana are said to have approached the Yaksha or Brahman, but they could not understand that Being. Speech can express, the prana can demonstrate, and the mind can think a form or aspect of Truth, an aspect of its manifestation, viz,, the formed being, Yaksha. But the speech, the prana and the mind cannot know this Truth. They may show their vanity in trying to comprehend the Truth, but they will miserably fail in their attempt to deal with even the minutest aspect, even a straw, set before them by it. This means to say that even a drop of intuitive knowledge is not given to speech, prana or mind. They return baffled by this wonderful Being.
But when Indra, the ego, approaches the Divine Being, it vanishes, i.e., it withdraws the form of its manifestation. It is not possible for the ego to come face to face with the form of the Absolute. It would be like a salt doll entering the ocean. It would not be able to behold any form. Form shall vanish from its sight. Moreover, because the ego is the centre of vanity and pride, the Divinity shall not manifest itself before it. On the other hand, when the ego persists in its attempt to know this Truth, and does not get baffled, and is very persevering, knowledge shall dawn before it. Knowledge is represented as Uma, because it is the power of the Divine that appears first, and not the Divinity itself. The first experience is not of Divinity but of sattva-Guna,
A Guna is a mode of prakriti, and, therefore, it is represented as a female, a Sakti, or an expression of the Divine. It is Uma that instructs Indra about the Yaksha in the state of sattva, the ego is cleansed of all pride and it comes to know of the nature of the Divine. It is one step below the Divine Experience. When Uma, too, vanishes, i. e., when sattva-Guna also is transcended, the real nature of the Yaksha is revealed. There is the realisation of Brahman when all the modes of tamas, rajas and sattva are got rid of, in order. In the state of Self-experience the ego is dissolved.
Indra speaks of the knowledge of Brahman to Agni and Vayu. It is experience within through knowledge that transmits itself to speech, mind, etc. The external functions are possible because of inner experience Agni, Vayu and Indra are considered to be the greatest of the gods, because it is not possible for any other of our functions to express the Divine Being even a little; only the speech, the prana and the mind or the ego have some relations with the Divine, though these, too, cannot express it completely.
Another instruction that this story gives us is that Brahman does exist. If it does not exist, then, something else must exist. What is that something else? It may be held that the universe or the world exists. Because the universe is a collection of individuals, it means that the individual is real. But this individual is a stress of the ego. If the ego is real, it must succeed in all its attempts. The very fact that it attempts at something constantly, shows that it is not real. Moreover, the ego is subdued every moment either through external or internal agencies. One day or the other, all the egos shall be smashed. The grief of this world is the experience of the process of the subdual of the ego. It is not necessary that the Divine Being should manifest itself in some huge tremendous form to subdue the ego of a person. It shall manifest itself then and there, without fail, in such a form as is required by a particular kind of egoism. Higher egos require higher powers and lower ones lower powers for the sake of their subjugation. The Divine Being appears to take a form, not because it has a desire to take a form, but because that form of the Divine Being is the one called upon for manifestation by the necessities of the desires which manifest such a form as the counterpart of their egos in order to integrate themselves by getting negated through the agency of that form of manifestation. In other words, every form of experience is the expression of a need felt within.
The failure of the ego to assert its independence indicates that Truth must be a non-ego. Non-ego means infinitude, which posits the existence of the Supreme Brahman. Brahman appears to be comprehended in the realm of speech, thought and action. There is the feeling of knowledge of reality as long as these functions of the individual are carried on happily. This is the meaning of the vision of the Yaksha by Agni and Vayu. But the comprehension of Brahman through these individual functions is only superficial, even as Agni and Vayu can behold the Yaksha but cannot understand it. When these individual functions are defeated and when they return ashamed, accepting their defeat, i.e., when they do not feel that they are great, and, therefore, cease from further functioning, Indra or the ego starts the investigation of Brahman. But the ego cannot have such superficial knowledge of Brahman, as the other external functions had. When the ego approaches Brahman, there appears to be a loss of all knowledge, the Yaksha disappears from sight. Indra should thoroughly humiliate himself, the ego should perish, if the true nature of the Yaksha is to be revealed. The ego, therefore, merely appears to be less than the other functions. It appears to be not even as fortunate as the other functions who at least had the vision of the Yaksha. But in fact this vanishing of objective knowledge is a precursor to Absolute Knowledge. The process of the dissolution of personality appears like the death of all awareness, though it is the gateway to eternal awareness. The greatest bliss is preceded by the greatest pain. Absolute Unity always follows the destruction of multiplicity and duality. The object of perception should melt away, the Yaksha should vanish, if Brahman is to be realised. The appearance of omniscience is a state midway between individual experience and Absolute Experience, which middle state is represented by the appearance of Uma. It is also to be noted that the Yaksha appears only after that victory of the gods over the Asuras, which means that knowledge is possible only after the victory of virtue over vice, i.e., when the animal propensities are completely subjugated.
The story teaches us that everything is despicable except the knowledge of Brahman. The glory of this world is less than a straw. The greatest of the gods are nothing before the Brahman. Even the king of the gods is nothing before it. The story also shows that it is very difficult to realise Brahman, as even the best of the gods failed in their attempts to comprehend it. It further shows that Agni, Vayu and Indra became great through the knowledge of Brahman alone. Brahmajnana is supreme greatness and glory. It is vain to think that any individual has the power to act or to enjoy. It is Brahman that is, and nothing else.
Brahman is the embodiment of all qualities, powers and existence. It is possible for anyone to obtain anything in any form at any time and at any place, because the substance of everything is everywhere and in every form. With whatever conception of Brahman one may meditate on it, one experiences the form of that conception alone, to the exclusion of everything else. If one meditates on it as Supreme Love, the centre of attraction, adoration and worship, identifying oneself with Brahman, one becomes the object of everybody’s love, of all adoration and worship. One who loves Brahman shall be loved by every being of the universe. One who worships it shall be worshipped by all. If one meditates on Brahman as supreme greatness and glory, one shall become supreme and glorious. Whatever attitude we develop towards Brahman, that is repaid to us in manifold forms. The fact is that it is not possible to meditate on Brahman except by identifying oneself with it. Hence when attitudes are developed towards Brahman in the process of meditation, they are, in fact, developed towards oneself. This is why the meditator experiences whatever he superimposes upon Brahman. The best kind of meditation, however, is not to conceive of Brahman as having any quality at all, i.e., to negate all qualities that the mind thinks of. Qualities limit Brahman, and we get only what we think. The negation of qualities, however, discloses Truth as it is in itself, and the meditator becomes Brahman itself.
Meditation on Brahman is an attempt to become the Self of all beings. This is the reason why a lover of and a meditator on Brahman becomes the centre of adoration and worship. Every being loves itself the most and adores and worships itself as the best and the dearest. And since this dearest Self is reflected through a lover of Brahman, he becomes the dearest and the most adorable of all. One can relate oneself to anything and can know anything in the best possible way only when one becomes that thing. Therefore, meditation on Brahman is the effort towards obtaining and becoming everything, i. e., achieving the highest perfection in the Supreme Absolute.
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