The Inner Self is Both Immanent and Transcendent

agnir yathaiko bhuvanam praviṣṭo rῡpaṁ rῡpam prati-rῡpo babhῡva,
ekas tathᾱ sarva-bhῡtᾱntar-ᾱtmᾱ rῡpaṁ rῡpam prati-rῡpo bahiś ca. (9)

This atman is uniformly present; He is not different in different persons and things. It is not that He is big in an elephant, and in an ant, small. We are given three examples here: the wind, the sun and fire. Fire burns equally, without any partiality. It does things to all alike. It enters various objects and burns in various hues, putting on various contours, not on account of the difference in itself, but because of the medium through which it passes. “As fire is one in its original state, but when it enters the world puts on various forms, likewise the one atman that is uniformly present in all bodies appears to be varied because of the differences of bodies and intellects; and at the same time, He exists outside.” These things named ‘men’, ‘animal’, ‘tree’ are due to the atman’s intensity of manifestation. When sattva predominates, we call it a genius, because in sattva His presence is most unveiled. In the animal and vegetable kingdoms, He is revealed in a lesser degree. And when there is no manifestation of the atman, it is tamas, and so we call it a stone.

All these are His embodiments. He is uniform, One and Absolute, even as fire is. Internally and externally He is the same.

vᾱyur yathaiko bhuvanam praviṣṭo rῡpaṁ rῡpam prati-rῡpo babhῡva,
ekas tathᾱ sarva-bhῡtᾱntar-ᾱtmᾱ rῡpaṁ rῡpam prati-rῡpo bahiś ca. (10)

He is like the air: its odour is not really its property. We have scent at one place and smell at some other. “Just as the quality of the air does not limit it, the quality being due to the limitations of bodies such as room, vessel and so on; just as the odour that we attribute to the air does not really belong to it, so is the atman free from any container. He is not large or small, and also exists outside.” The properties of the world do not belong to the atman. He is Existence of all beings, and being itself is His Being.”

sῡryo yathᾱ sarva-lokasya cakṣur na lipyate cakṣuṣair bᾱhya-doṣaih,
ekas tathᾱ sarva-bhῡtᾱntar-ᾱtmᾱ na lipyate loka-duḥkena bᾱhyaḥ. (11)

How is the atman unaffected? Like the sun is He unaffected. If you spit at the sun, or praise her or abuse her, it does not affect her. If there is jaundice in your eyes, it does not affect her. “Just as the sun, the eye of all the world, is not affected by external faults seen by the eyes of all people, likewise is the atman transcendent to the world and is unaffected by it.” Change, increase, decrease, decay and death are the characteristics of the world. They do not touch the atman. Physical and ethical characteristics, characteristics of the senses and mind do not reach the atman, because He is far, far removed from the operation of the jiva’s samsara. Without the sun we cannot live, and yet nothing that happens to us bothers her. Even so, the Lord does not take either of our good or bad. Though He is immanent, He stands transcending. Far is He, internally and externally.

Happiness and Peace

eko vaśī sarva-bhῡtᾱntar-ᾱtmᾱ ekam bījam bahudhᾱ yaḥ karoti,
tam ᾱtmastham ye’nupaśyanti dhīrᾱs teṣaṁ sukhaṁ śasvataṁ netareṣaṁ. (12)

“The One, Controller, the inner Self of all things, single, undivided, indivisible, appears as this manifold universe, as you may appear manifold in dream. To the wise, beholding Him abiding in the soul, to them belongs real happiness, and not to anyone else.” Permanent happiness belongs only to those who have realised Him in their own being, and not to those who run after objects.

Happiness and peace are the subjects of mantras twelve and thirteen. To whom does happiness belong? And who is it that can have real peace? Happiness and peace belong to those, says the Upanishad, who are able to recognise the atman in His purity as the single Source of the multitudinous variety, as the Substance of all the forms that fill the universe. Yama is describing the unfolding of the world with its evolutionary and involutionary activities and its universal Centre which ramifies into the nama-rupa prapancha, the name-and-form world. Happiness is not for those who pursue this. All pleasures are created or brought about by the union of senses with objects.

We have heard of the term ‘sensation’, but people rarely understand what it means. Unfortunately for us, it is a stimulus evoked by the repulsion taking place when senses come into contact with objects. These experiences, falsely taken for union, can even be brought about by the mind contacting objects directly, without the help of the senses. The eyes get stirred into activity in perception, and so is the case with the other senses. This excitation is like the morbid irritation which the body experiences during illness. But when you get used to a particular sensation it becomes normal to you, like getting accustomed to alcoholic drinks. A person used to alcohol will not feel anything if he takes a small quantity; this is the effect of habit. Habits become values, significances and realities, so much so that we become subjected to them. Instead of our controlling them, they begin to control us.

These habits and experiences, to which we are accustomed, constitute the world of forms which are regarded as realities and appear as concrete objects, like the thoughts of dream seem solid. Desires, feelings etc., concretise themselves into solidity, and we get real experiences from non-existing objects. So to have a real experience, objects are not necessary.

On the other hand, we may not experience objects, as in sleep, and death. What is necessary is sensation, impacts on our nerves—and not objects—though they may act as agents. But if we can create those sensations by an inner technique, we can have the experience also without them.

This may be seen by an example. When a mother whose son lives abroad receives news that he is dead, she will get a shock, though he may be alive. In this way, false messages may depress us, or elevate us; and at the same time, real news may not cause a sensation when they are not known. For instance, if the boy is really dead but the mother does not come to know it, she will be well. So whether or not there is a corresponding fact, sensations can create experiences.

When we touch a live wire, it repels us. We get an electric shock. This happens because we came into contact with a force having a different voltage. Likewise, our body will burn when it touches fire, because it cannot rotate with the fire’s force. If it could, it would not burn.

We have living magnetism in us, and when two forces of different intensity or vibration come into contact with each other, there is repulsion, and we call it a sensation. Because we have five senses, the same object can create a fivefold sensation, and from this point of view we are in a world of things. The one form of Reality appears to be manifold.

What we want is an experience, whether or not objects exist, and the absence of it is the cause of our unhappiness. But until you become the object, or the object becomes you, there will be no oneness. One thing cannot become another thing; otherwise, there would be only one thing. So possession or enjoyment is an imagination; not a reality. The whole world is drowned in sensory happiness, but because of the fundamental defect—the impossibility of one possessing or enjoying the other—happiness does not belong to the objects, nor to the senses which are only means of conveyance of stimuli. Happiness belongs to that one Thing. Until It becomes a content of one’s experience, there cannot be real joy. All sense-pleasures are sustained only by the joy emanating from that one Thing. So the senses must withdraw from all contact.

The Gita says: ye hi samsparsaja bhoga duhkhayonaya eva te—all pleasures that are contact-born are sources of pain. As it is false, the world will leave us one day, and so only to whatever degree that diversity gives place to Unity, there will be true happiness.

nityo’nityᾱnᾱṁ cetanaś cetanᾱnᾱm eko bahῡnᾱm yo vidadhᾱti kᾱmᾱn,
tam ᾱtmastham yenupaśyanti dhīrᾱḥ; teṣᾱṁ śᾱntiḥ śasvatī, netareṣᾱṁ. (13)

“The One eternal among the transient, the Conscious amid the conscious, the One amid many, who grants their desires; to them who perceive Him in the soul, is eternal peace.” Peace cannot be had as long as you do not know the way. Silence or peace is not absence of outward noise or tumult; even if all people keep silent, there cannot be real peace, for there will be a burning within. Peace is another name for happiness. It is not a dead substance; it is vitality. It is not sleep. It is attended by consciousness; then only has it meaning. If you are a wealthy man but not aware of it, the fact has no meaning for you. It is awareness that gives meaning to life. Maya is nothing but the net spread out by the senses who deceive us. Under such circumstances, there cannot be peace.

Peace is the nature of the atman, as bliss is. The more you manifest Him in your life, the more you become blissful, powerful: your face glows with radiance. Not only have you peace within, but you can also radiate it outward, like the sun. “The One eternal among the transient, the Conscious amid the conscious, the One amid many, who grants their desires; to them who perceive Him in the soul, is eternal peace.” He is eternal among the so-called permanent things of the world, which are the temporarily permanent; not the eternally permanent. A building is permanent, but not eternal. While the objects of the world can be called permanent, they are not eternal; but within them is a permanent substance, the atman.

Intelligence is immanent in the human beings, in animals, in the vegetable kingdom. In the subtler realms, like svarga etc., we are in a spiritual world, not in an intellectual one, like ours. We are closer to reality there, and the senses become more and more ethereal and less and less useful, so that when we reach the highest, brahma-loka, we do not need the senses at all, and one mixes with the other, one mirrors the other, and so the world of senses is transcended by purified intelligence.

Even heavenly satisfactions of the world are only forms of that one supreme Satisfaction. The ocean can be diverted through various channels, and it can run through them with greater or lesser intensity, but the content of water is the same, irrespective of its force in the various outlets. So is the atman in the same intensity in all beings. If a mirror is clean, it will reflect well. If it is painted with tar or any other colour, it will reflect accordingly. Higher forms of life reveal greater and greater manifestations of the atman, until we come to the human level and even higher ones. When the creeper moves towards the light of the sun, it is seeking the atman in its own blind manner. When the trees strike their roots deep inside the earth, it is for His sake. When birds fly hither and thither in search of food, when animals graze in the field, they are seeking the atman. When we, human beings, work hard, it is not for any other reason but for that atman which we have not yet found. We have been creeping like plants, grazing like animals; and we have not found Him—by these means He is not to be found. These variegated forms are His great drama; but we are involved in it, and so we don’t enjoy it. Enjoyment is for the spectator, not for the dramatis personae. Such is the degeneration into which consciousness has distended.

The one Experience of the atman appears to have taken the manifold forms of this world. Suppose our different limbs became self-conscious, what would our condition be? They would fight among themselves. War taking place in one’s own body is insanity. The wars in the world are only a kind of insanity, a tension between forms which are of a single Being.

‘My dear ones, children of immortality, never can you find peace in this world which is torn asunder’, says Yama. ‘Peace is to those who recognise the one atman as present in their own self, as the supreme Enjoyer, and not as the object of enjoyment.’ ‘Know the Knower, see the Seer, understand the Understander’, say the Upanishads. Who is to understand the Understander? There is a strange way of knowing the Knower.

It is called atmasakshatkara or Self-realisation. To them who have attained belongs real peace.

tad etad iti manyante’ nirdeśyam paramaṁ sukham,
kathaṁ nu tad vijᾱnīyᾱm kimu bhᾱti vibhᾱti vᾱ. (14)

How are we to designate the atman as this or that when He is in all things? Mystics have called Him ‘That which Is’. “This is that; indescribable supreme Bliss is that Supreme Being.” It cannot be indicated by any symbol. It is anirdeshya. Nachiketas wants to know: katham nu tad vijaniyam...”Does He shine from within or from without? Is He within or without, this wonderful atman? Does He shine by Himself, or does He shine in reflection?” And Yama answers:

na tatra sῡryo bhᾱti na candra-tᾱrakam, nemᾱ vidyuto bhᾱnti, kuto’yam agniḥ,
tameva bhᾱntam anubhᾱti sarvaṁ tasya bhᾱsᾱ sarvam idaṁ vibhᾱti. (15)

“The sun shines not there, not the moon and the stars: if millions of suns were to shine they would not be equal to That whose shining illumines every light.” Which light can illumine It? We breathe because of the breath of That Breathless Being. We exist because of That Supreme Existence; all things depend on That—how could they derive vitality from anything else! In that supreme Life, this so-called sun of empirical life, this moon or mind, this fire of human desire, do not shine; all these are mockeries before the atman. Our intellect, even that of a genius, all that we regard as the highest in us, are matchless before Him. All values are borrowed from That Supreme Value, and there remains nothing, when they are returned to It. The empirical values and realities of the world are reflections of the paramarthika-satta, or Eternal Reality.

These three, pratibhasika, vyavaharika and paramarthika, are but three expressions of the One. Just as light can pass through a clear, coloured or broken glass and get reflected accordingly, the one Reality can reveal Itself in different ways. All these manifestations: matter, body, mind; earth, water, fire, air, ether etc., are rays, varying in intensity, of the same Light from which all lights come. This is the joy which sustains us. That is the ocean of ambrosia which is not lifeless nectar of the celestials, but a conscious one. This mantra is a description of the satchidananda atman.