The teachings of the Upanishads are expressed in the language of the Self - not of the intellect - and, hence, they do not easily go deeply into every soul, unless it possesses a responsive and burning yearning for Absolute-Experience. The soul, due to its deviation from the Truth and wandering among the shadows, finds it difficult to hear the voice of the Silence. The Upanishads suggest that even the highest achievement in the relative plane- even the creatorship or destroyership of the universe- is, from the ultimate point of view, among the fleeting shadows of phenomenal existence. The delicate tendencies which manifest themselves in the process of the blossoming of individuality into the Infinite try to cover the presence of the Truth in the inmost recesses of our being. Such psychic layers, however brilliant they may be, are, after all, layers of non-being and should not be mistaken for the Real. Even the subtlest layer is but a veil over the Truth, a "golden vessel" that hides the Essence, and must be transcended before the kernel of Being is reached. The delight of unfettered being is beyond all states of relational joy, however extreme that joy may be. The Bliss of unlimited Consciousness is the zenith of Existence, and everything other than this is condemned as untrue.

The delight of the Self is the delight of Being. It is the Bliss of Consciousness-Absolute. The Being of Consciousness is the Being of Bliss, Eternal. It does not lie in achievement but realisation and experience, not invention but discovery. The Consciousness is more intense when the objective existence is presented near the subject, still more complete when the subjective and the objective beings are more intimately related, and fully perfected and extended to Absoluteness in the identification of the subject and the object. This Pure Consciousness is the same as Pure Bliss, the source of Power and the height of Freedom. This is the supreme Silence of the splendid Plenitude of the Real, where the individual is drowned in the ocean of Being.

The Upanishads do not declare that Truth is a state of dynamic change and action, all which marks limitation and imperfection, but one of perennial calm, limitless joy and permanent satisfaction. Change is othering, altering, movement, which is activity, an effort exercised to achieve an unachieved end, which is the characteristic of an unsatisfied imperfect being. This cannot be the Nature of Truth, for Truth is ever-enduring and has no necessity to change itself.

Change is the quality of untruth and the Upanishads assert that Reality is Self-satisfied, Self-existent, Non-dual, Tranquil and utterly Perfect. An appeal to the inwardness of consciousness expanded into limitlessness is the burden of the song of the Upanishads. In this respect the Upanishads are extremely mystic, if mysticism does not carry with it an idea of irrationalism or a madness of spirit. The transcendental mysticism of the Upanishads is not the effect of an emotional outburst, but a calm transcendence of intellect and reason through a development into the integral consciousness.

The Truth, "knowing which everything becomes known" is the subject of enquiry and the object of quest in the Upanishads. The Seers dived into the very depth of Existence and tasted the nature of the Limitless Life. They entered into the Root of the universe and the branches could easily be realised their inner being through an investigation into the essential workings of the Great Root of Life. When the root is watered, the branches are automatically watered; when gold is known, all the ornaments also are known; when Truth is realised, everything is realised; for, Truth is One. Whatever system of philosophy may be derived from the Upanishads, the obvious truth goes without saying that they propound a theory that holds Reality to be indivisible, objectless and transcendent. They assert that belief in diversity is an ignorance of consciousness, and Truth is essentially a boundless Unity. They lead us from the faulty faith in the objective reality of the universe to an internal search of the veritable Self existing as the finest essence of our being. And what is even more striking is their untiring insistence on attaining Self-Perfection. To their immortal honour, they grasped the eternal fact that the knowledge of the Self is the supreme end of life, its only meaning and purpose ever, and that beings exist but for that grand Attainment of Light, Freedom and Immortality! Blessed is he, and he has truly lived a purposeful life, who attains to this height of undying joy in this very life; and he is a great loser and has lived his life in vain, who has failed to realise the Truth here (Vide Kena Up. II. 5).

The Upanishads affirm in several ways that there is no meaning in taking the phenomenal diversity as a permanent reality, and that Truth is Infinity. The common impulse to express, unfold and realise one's Self is present in all beings in different degrees or intensity. The whole process of conscious exertion to realise Truth lies in the manifesting of this deepest impulse in man and a flowing with it to expand oneself into the Infinite. As the background of every struggle in life there is this urge to get oneself established in the changeless Consciousness. Even when one struggles blindly in one's attachment to personal life for acquiring external gains, one is indeed moved, though unconsciously and wrongly, by this urge to expand oneself to Completeness.

The capability for such an expansion differs by degrees in different beings, according to the extent of the Reality manifested through them. Beings are higher or lower according to the degree of Intelligence that lights up their nature. Entities in the universe are differentiated through their modes of mentation, which are controlled by the intensity of the Truth presented by them. Nature appears to be Spirit distorted in multitudinous ways and expressed in different degrees of revelation. Individuals marked off within themselves, limited by space and time, bear a variegating relation among one another, in proportion to the depth of the Consciousness realised by them. The deeper the Consciousness realised by an individual, the nearer it is to the Eternal. The separative force is the power of individualisation and of the rootedness of the ego-sense. The greater the force with which this separative sense is suppressed to nothingness or expanded to Infinity, the more extensive and deeper is the light and the joy realised and experienced. From this it would be clear that, excepting that great fiery method of attaining Immediate Self-Experience, the process of Self-realisation must be a progressive one, and that none can fly into a higher state of consciousness without fulfilling the conditions of the lower, the lesser and the grosser states. The more limited states of manifestation have to be complied with their demands before one could reach the highest Metaphysical Being. Stricter discrimination may repudiate the view of a progressive process in Reality, but there is process in all relative conditions. and it is valid as long as duality persists. Anyhow, all is well with him whose heart is turned towards acting in accordance with the deathless law of Infinite Life. No disease, physical or mental, can ever assault him.

This important factor is forgotten by the modern man, howevermuch educated he may be. He has refused to walk freely with the workings of the Spiritual Nature and has attempted his best to centre himself in the state of individualised existence. The misery of the present-day world may be attributed to this constrictive tendency in the human being, which is ever trying to block the way of the expansion of the spiritual consciousness. The case of the half-baked material science and psychology may be specially mentioned here as being one of the forces obstructive to the happy process of Truth-realisation. The ills caused by wrong methods of education, the social and political strifes, the individual evils and the' world-degeneration are all effected by the one terrible fact that humanity has turned against the law of the Spiritual Reality. So long as this self-destructive tendency of the human mind is not controlled, and man is not shown the correct way of procedure, the unhappy world has to be contented with its fate. The remedy lies in our being sincere in taking recourse to the direct method of such Realisation here and now. Humanity has to be cent-per-cent spiritual. Those who think that they are doing injustice to the world through their act of Self-realisation have naturally to be regarded as having not gone above the credulity of childhood. For, they have forgotten that the Self which is the Absolute includes the whole universe, and far transcends it. It is the obtaining of everything, and not the losing of anything. The welfare of society rests in its spirituality. Society is a formation of bodies effected through the unconscious spiritual bond existing among beings belonging to the same genus or species. The social bond is stronger among those who think alike and who practise the same conduct. This bond is the strongest among those who are in the same level of the depth of consciousness. All this is a feeble reflection of the essential nature of the indivisibility of Existence which is One. Human beings have to know and act according to this spiritual law, and its acceptance should not be merely for the purpose of academical research, but has to be the foundation of the daily life of everyone in general. Unity in the world necessitates a heart-to-heart feeling of oneness among its inhabitants. This is the need of the hour. This is the task of the political and the religious heads. This is what is going to pave the way of blessedness to the whole universe.

The Upanishads are our guide-lights in this supreme pursuit. Let us understand and follow them with sincerity, faith, calmness, surety and persistence.