The Self as Existent, The Concept of Reality

naiva vᾱcᾱ na manasᾱ prᾱptuṁ śakyo na cakṣuṣᾱ,
astīti bruvato’nyatra kathaṁ tad upalabhyate. (12)

“What it is that you will achieve in yoga is difficult to say. Neither words nor things can explain Him. The mind cannot in its farthest imagination touch the fringe of Him. How can you speak of Him except to accept that He is what He is.” Don’t try to understand; you will know Him when you reach Him.

The concept of Reality is the subject of mantras twelve and thirteen. It has often been held that Reality cannot be conceived of; it is beyond thought. And in such ancient scriptures as the Rig Veda we have a famous negative definition of Reality in the Nasadiya Sukta: “It could not be said that there was something or that there was nothing; such was what was before the origin of the universe.” And it ends with: “Who could say what was, because who was there to say?”

The difficulty lies in it being the Absolute while all definitions are relative. No description is possible without relations, and inasmuch as the Absolute Truth is non-relational, there is nothing with which it can be compared. It is on this account that the Mandukya Upanishad defines it as: “nantah prajnam, na bahih prajnam...” It is not light, not darkness, not above, not below... These are the ways in which we are lead to the neti-neti doctrine in the Brihadanyaka Upanishad: if you are to say something about Reality, you have to say what it is not. That the human mind is cornered in its attempt to know Truth does not solve the problem, because what one needs is not a negation of form merely, but a realisation of the Essence. Negative definitions might satisfy the logical mind, but not the aspiration of the seeking soul. The heart is pleased and the intellect convinced by a positive thing.

A peculiar urge in the human being leaves it dissatisfied in spite of the logical conclusion that only negative definitions are possible. There is no pleasure in any kind of negativity. This was observed in the Chhandogya Upanishad, where Maharishi Uddalaka says that if you negate everything, you end in a large non-being. Everything that seems to be existent has to be traced to the universal Being. So the difficulty lies in the fact that when the reason for the intellect’s resort to negative definition is forgotten, only a void is reached. It is not that we seek negativity. We have been forced by a logical necessity, in order to conceive Reality, but what we get is not Reality, but a logical conclusion. This negative definition found its apotheosis in the shunya-vada of Buddhism, the negation of all positive values, including that of existence; swallowing everything the mind can conceive of, leaving nothing positive. Maybe this is why Uddalaka makes an affirmation: “My dear child, the original Reality should be regarded as being, and not non-being.” While there is the danger of emptiness or pessimism when postulating a negative definition of Reality, there is another danger in affirming a Being of which we have no knowledge. Even the Buddha said that to say nothing is one extreme, and to say everything is another extreme, because truth lies in the middle.

The Kathopanishad, too, takes up the concept of the Supreme Reality in practical realisation. Some psychologists and gurus believe that one should not think in meditation. This idea does not seem to be correct. I happened to have an interesting talk with some ardent followers of this dogma.

“‘If you feel nothing and think nothing, what is your experience?” was my question. They said that there is no experience, because even experience is a thought which is to be set aside. This is also a negative attitude, and not a positive one of realisation. One of the tests of success in meditation is that you return from it with a sort of great satisfaction or delight. It is not that you enter a lion’s den where you find nothing. Meditation is a contact with Reality, though it may be the farthest fringe of It.

So in all our discussions of truth, we should not be satisfied merely with grammatical explanations or verbal definitions, but attempt to have a practical experience.

Is Reality positive or negative, is a crucial question. If you negate everything, if you deny Brahman, then you deny yourself, because Brahman is only another name for your own Reality. But in your effort to think of Reality, what attitude are you to adopt? In mantra twelve, the Kathopanishad says that no attempt is going to succeed easily. You cannot think It with your mind. How then can you have an idea about It? You cannot see It with your eyes, nor explain Its characteristics. Mind, speech and all senses return baffled when they attempt to know Reality.

“Nevertheless,” says Yama, “finally I might say that you should regard it as ‘being’, because what else could be said about It?” So being seems to be the attitude recommended here. Brahman is not the negation of all things, because even if It is that, It implies the existence of something: the final remainder, pursued through the process of neti-neti, is Reality. The doctrine of negation also implies your own self. What then remains? Not nothing, because that which has denied or set aside everything, that which has done the act of negation remains, and thus we come to a kind of ‘being’, and not ‘non-being’.

That is why we are advised to entertain the attitude of being, and this attitude gives comfort: the last item of existence which is identical with the bottom of our being, is Reality. That which exists is not anything which has a shape or form. They do not give satisfaction.

We have no real kinship with objects, which fact is disclosed when they desert us without notice. And so we are not finally satisfied with anything in the world, though tentatively we shake hands with them. That which is in real kinship with us, becomes us. The spirit cries for a supreme satisfaction. All beings run after that Being of being: satyasya-satyam. We all rush towards It, running in all directions, seeking It and asking for It from everything that comes across. But all give us a negative reply; no one can help us as no one has seen It.

All our searching in objects for this Reality is only an experimentation; and the answer is always negative because It is not there—outside you—in objects. You carry It with you always. It is the greatest negation, objectively; but subjectively, It is the Supreme Being or Absolute Existence which is the negation of everything external, of everything outside Brahman. So astitva or be-ness is the final resort of consciousness, and this is what consciousness realises in meditation. Chit becomes sat—this is the essence. As water enters water, or milk gets poured into milk, consciousness mixes with being in highest meditation. Hence it is not existence of this or that object, but even of the relations that exist between them. This is the positive advice in this Upanishad: “Hold onto being in meditation!”

astīty evopalabdhavyas tattva-bhᾱvena cobhayoḥ,
astīty evopalabdhasya tattva-bhᾱvaḥ prasīdati. (13)

“He should be realised as existent, and then in His transcendental nature. When He is apprehended as existent, His real nature becomes clear.”

Mantras twelve and thirteen are difficult to understand. If you must choose between being and non-being, it is better to hold onto being, because if we persist on that thought, Truth will reveal itself. This hints at the highest Upanishadic meditation which to achieve all study is done. How you are to meditate on Reality is here defined.

Being is Reality; sat is the same as chit. The sat or being which we are to meditate upon is not of objects. It is the great being which sets aside all externality. It is general existence, including your existence. It is not someone meditating on something else. It is not you meditating on God. You become a part of that on which you meditate, because you are part of the general existence. It is difficult to explain what it is, but it becomes easy in actual practice. Thus this all-inclusive meditation is jnana-marga, where you are face to face with God immediately. Here, you do not meditate on forms, because your form is merged in God—you meditate on Existence.

yadᾱ sarve pramucyante kᾱmᾱ ye’sya hṛdi śritᾱḥ,
atha martyo’mṛto bhavatyatra brahma samaśnute. (14)

Again a warning: if you have unfulfilled desires in your heart, you cannot succeed in meditation. “When all desires from the heart are cast aside, you enter Brahman here itself; the mortal becomes immortal.”

Our difficulties and problems are self-made, caused by desires. We intellectually crave for Reality; emotionally, we crave for the world. This predicament is beautifully depicted in this mantra. It is no use saying “I have no desires,” because they are not merely in the conscious level of the mind. They are also buried in the subconscious. In your dreams you can sometimes see what desires you have. When you are in a good position socially and economically, everything appears to be fine, and you seem to be desireless. But when you are thrown to the winds, when everything goes dead wrong with you and when you feel like dying, the truth comes up. These deep-lurking desires have to be cast out. Then we can meditate as mentioned here, and then we will get Brahman. Here itself Brahman is attained, and the mortal becomes immortal when all desires are cast out.

yadᾱ sarve prabhidyante hṛdayasyeha granthayaḥ,
atha martyo’mṛto bhavaty etᾱvad anuśᾱsanam. (15)

Here, the teaching is concluded. This is the instruction:

“When the knots of the heart are broken asunder, the mortal becomes immortal. This is the teaching.” The knots of the heart are avidya, kama and karma. The ignorance which screens ourselves from Reality is avidya; the desire that arises for objects on account of avidya is kama; and the daily activities due to kama are karma, by which we are tied down to mortal existence. When these are rent asunder, the mortal becomes immortal. There is nothing more to say.

The Upanishadic teaching concludes with this mantra. The knots of the heart are those centres of bondage which limit consciousness to the body and earthly existence because they limit it and its sphere of activity. While consciousness is infinite, they bind it to finitude.

These knots are identified with certain psychic centres called chakras, which special mention is made of brahma-granthi, rudra-granthi and vishnu-granthi. Philosophically and mystically speaking, they refer to avidya, kama and karma. Consciousness is tied with a threefold knot, thus being firmly fastened to world-perception rather than God-consciousness. To pierce these three is the real tripura-samhara, the feat which Lord Shiva accomplished. Nobody but He could destroy these three asuras. Likewise, we have these three knots and not any weapon will be of any avail in destroying them. They are supposed to be made of gold, silver and iron—sattva, rajas and tamas. They are our internal structure and psychic problems by which we are made finite. Just as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva had to concentrate their efforts to destroy the three asuras, a tremendous effort is necessary to pierce them. The three are inseparable from one another. They work together jointly, like the creating, preserving and transforming powers of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva; Sarasvati, Lakshmi and Durga have to work together. These knots cannot be manipulated. Most people do not even know that they exist. We cannot visualise them; they are so near to us. They cannot be separated from our normal consciousness and distorted; just as when we see through spectacles, we see objects but not the spectacles themselves.

Oblivion of God, desire to acquire things and consequent action all take place simultaneously. Extraordinary precautions have to be taken by seekers who undertake to destroy them; ordinary intelligence is of no avail.

It is at this point that people realise that the difficulty is within rather than outside. Most find fault with external circumstances, saying that the world is wretched and things and circumstances are not conducive. They feel that there is nothing wrong inside. But a complete turning of the table is necessary. Things are all right! Only, something is wrong with us; inside us. Our difficulties are personal, psychological and purely individual. Strictly speaking, we are a bundle of ignorance, desire and action, and consciousness has to struggle hard to get outside these.

The method is meditation as prescribed earlier. When this is done, there is at once a transformation of mortal consciousness to immortality. Nothing further is to be said.

Now follows a concluding set of three mantras which do not add any new knowledge, but only form the conclusion.

śataṁ caikᾱ ca hṛdayasya nᾱḍyas tᾱsᾱm mῡrdhᾱnam abhiniḥsṛtaikᾱ:
tayordhvam ᾱyann amṛtatvam eti, viṣvaṅṅ anyᾱ utkramaṇe bhavanti. (16)

Some sort of relation can be established between mantras fifteen and sixteen: while the former mentions the three knots, the latter mentions the nadis that emanate from the three knots. “There are a hundred and one currents of the heart, called nadis. One of them rises up to the crown of the head. By passing through that, one becomes immortal. But by passing through any other, one becomes fit for rebirth in some other realm.” Also in the Yoga Shastras it is said that internal to and pervading the physical body, which is constituted of flesh, muscles, blood and bones, we have a set of subtle tubes called nadis. They are subtler than the nerves referred to in modern physiology. Some Upanishads say that there are seventy-two thousand of them, and that their width is that of a hair split into hundred parts. It is through them that the prana moves, just as electricity passes through a wire. There is no part of the body where one or the other of them is not present. It is also said that we have seventy-two thousand hairs or pores on our body, though no one has counted them. These nadis form the connecting link between the physical and subtle body; thus they are psycho-physical in nature.

Of all these, a hundred and one are very important, the most important ones being three. They are ida, pingala and sushumna. The latter is the central nerve-current, and generally it does not function; either ida or pingala do, which are also called chandra-nadi and surya-nadi, the cooling and heating current respectively, flowing through the left and right nostril. These three nadis are indicators of our psychological condition too. We should not allow only one of them to work throughout the day.

So yogins influence their flow, but this is only a lower aspect of their function. In the Upanishad, we are concerned with the higher ones. Ida and pingala bring about world-consciousness. The sun and moon represent their two poles, and we roam between them. But when the energy is made to move through sushumna to the crown of the head, the right and left nostril cease to function, and breath-retention takes place. By the artificial method of kumbhaka, we force the prana in a physical way upwards. The Tantra and Hatha Yogas are concerned with this aspect, as against the psychological and spiritual ones of meditation in the Upanishads. The prana is made to flow through the central sushumna by pranayama, by exerting pressure on the muladhara-chakra and by bandha-traya. When this is done protractedly, heat is created, which causes the rushing up of energy. This is a very difficult process and is not advised for an impure mind. The technique is all right, but the person has to be very cautious. He should be without worldly cravings.

This sushumna is the trunk of which many nadis ramify in all directions, just as the branches of a tree shoot out variously. When the time of death comes, what happens?

The outer form of our system is a mixture of the five elements. Internal to it are the nadis. Internal to the nadis is the energy or vitality. And internal to these is the mind, internal to which is consciousness. There is a tremendous shake up of all five koshas at the time of death. What passes on is not consciousness as such, because that is everywhere. What passes is the mind.

Mind and intelligence, when they are animated by consciousness, make the jiva, and when we talk of death we are concerned with the jiva. Consciousness cannot move, but mind does. And when it seeks an exit, if it passes through the sushumna-nadi, it reaches immortality because of having brought about a balance. When the mind passes through sushumna, there is neither inspiration nor expiration. Whenever we are world or object-conscious, we are distracted. Just as the condition of the world is indicated by the position of the planets, the condition of the whole human system is indicated by the flow of breath. Sometimes we breathe slowly, sometimes fast, etc. The svara-shastra deals with this subject. The breathing process is an indication of our mental condition also. We are therefore not so much concerned with breath but with the cause behind it. So all the physical controls cannot directly help in God-realisation, as the process of breathing outside is connected with the mind inside.

It is very difficult to say what enters the sushumna—it not being air but prana, which is energy. It is a peculiar admixture of the psycho-physical force, the total force in the body, which is called jiva. It is this jiva that finds its exit through sushumna. And when this happens there is a harmony of consciousness, which is called samadhi. When there is world or body-consciousness, we are out of balance. Samadhi is equilibrium of consciousness between the subject and the object. The Yoga Vasistha says that our body is made up of mind only, and that we are under the illusion of it being a hard object, even as we are in dream when we see hard objects while they are not really there. In the proportionate state of samadhi, the body gets evaporated into consciousness. So if one passes away through sushumna, he becomes immortal, because there is samadhi at once. But if he goes through other nadis, the soul has to take rebirth.

aṅgusṭhamᾱtraḥ puruṣo’ntarᾱtmᾱ sadᾱ janᾱnᾱm hṛdaye sanniviṣṭaḥ,
taṁ svᾱc charīrᾱt pravṛhen muñjᾱd iveṣīkᾱṁ dhairyeṇa,
taṁ vidyᾱc chukram amṛtaṁ taṁ vidyᾱc chukram amṛtaṁ iti. (17)

“The purusha, of the size of a thumb, dwells always in the heart of men. Him one should draw out from the body, as the stalk from a blade of grass. Him one should know as the Pure, the Immortal.” Consciousness is compared to the purusha of the size of a thumb. This is for the sake of concentration and meditation. In relation to His entry into various beings, this universal Self appears to be of the size of a thumb; and He is in all.

This consciousness is to be separated from the body, like separating the pith of the munja grass or the plantain stem from its outer covering, as is done in various rituals; the covering is to be removed. Likewise, the body is to be isolated from consciousness; and this consciousness is to be concentrated on itself; then it becomes immortal. “Know this to be the Pure, Immortal—know this to be the Pure, Immortal.” This is the teaching of the Upanishad.

mṛtyu-protᾱṁ naciketo’tha labdhvᾱ vidyᾱm etᾱm yoga-vidhiṁ ca kṛtsnam,
brahmaprᾱpto virajo’bhῡd vimṛtyur anyopy evam yo vid adhyᾱtmam eva. (18)

This is something like the last Verse of the Gita: “Having received this wisdom, as well as the rule of yoga from Yama, Nachiketas attained Brahman, having been freed from impurities and death. And so will any other who has this knowledge of the inmost Self.”

This is brahma-vidya and yoga-shastra—having attained this in its totality and completeness from Yama, Nachiketas attained Brahman, because he was free from all desires. This practice of yoga, knowledge of Brahman and freedom from death is a universal truth. As Nachiketas attained, so can any other.

To this adhyatma-vidya, you take the totality of your being. It is the supreme vidya, because while all others give knowledge of things in relation to space and time, in adhyatma-vidya we gain knowledge of the Absolute Self, or ishvara. Having thus been freed from rajas and tamas, desire and the impulse to selfish action, one reaches Brahman.