Sadhana The Spiritual Way

by Swami Krishnananda

The earliest record of human aspiration is available to us in the Veda Samhitas, the sacred literature which endeavours to visualise the reality of the universe as constituted of intelligent units filling the whole of creation - these intelligent superintending principles being addressed as gods or angels in heaven. The vision is indeed super in the sense that it attributes the character of intelligent self-hood to the pervading principles of creation and they become gods because of the fact that they are self-sufficient, self-contained and complete individuals, not requiring any accretion from the external atmosphere of creation.

Gods differ from human beings in a particular way. A god is one who does not need any support from outside (there is no necessity for filling the sense organs with the percepts of objects outside), whereas in human nature (in the case of human individuals), their very existence is made possible by the contribution made by the objects of sense. If we are not able to see things, if we cannot hear, taste, smell or touch, we would not be meaningful human beings. That is to say, the character of visibility, tangibility, audibility, etc., makes for the value that we attribute to our own selves, so that we are not pure subjects; we are also partly objects.

We require objective diet and objective sensory contribution from the world outside. All the comforts that we require in this world are entirely objective; they do not emanate from our own selves. They are material, they are social, and they are natural, and many other things. Human existence, therefore, is partially subjective and, more properly, objective. We look at things, not from the point of view of the value that we may attach to our own selves, but from the point of view of the value that we seem to be attaching to things outside.

"What does this bring to me?" "What does this person signify in my relation to that person?" "How does this world contribute to my satisfaction?" "How do things in this world have a significance in relation to myself?" so that the significance that is attached to oneself is somehow a kind of imported commodity from the world of external perception; and every one of us knows to what extent we are dependent on objects outside in the world. Every little requirement of ours comes from the world. It does not emanate from our own selves inside, which means to say, for a person to exist in this world, the world has to contribute its own might; and to a large extent, the individual existence of a human being is the substance contributed by the values attached to things outside in the world.

The gods are different in their nature. A divinity is self-existent. The Veda Samhitas address their prayers to gods like Indra, Varuna, Mitra, Surya, Aryama, and such nomenclatures are common in these sacred scriptures. But each one of these divinities is self-existent. A god is one who does not need anything from outside; sensory contributions are not called for. If you can live by your own self, you are a veritable god. But to the extent that you are expecting comforts from the outside world, to that extent you are an object rather than the divine subject.

The extent of subjectivity and self-sufficiency will determine the extent of the divinity that is in a person. The gods populating the cosmos as envisaged by the Veda Samhitas are these realities as envisioned by the sages of the Vedas, who exist as the souls of things in the world, including our own selves - the divinities are inhabiting even our own individualities. Everything in the world is inhabited and indwelled by some divinity.

The meaning implied herein is that there is a pure subjectivity of an enlarged nature inhabiting all things in the world, which is the reason why there is so much of love for one's own self ingrained in each person. Our love for our own selves is supreme. It is unmatched and unparalleled.

Why should we be so much enamoured of our own selves? Why is this self-love so predominant and persistent in every individual? Even an insect would like to love itself. It would not like to be trampled upon by anyone. Even a crawling creature has a love supremely attached to its own existence. It would not like to perish as an insect. You may say, "Why should the insect live for a long time? It is a miserable wretch. Its life is horrible. It is better if it does not exist." That is not the feeling of the crawling creature. It is a self-hood by itself.

The divinity that is pervading the cosmos is inhabiting every little speck and nook and cranny in this world, so that there is no place in space and time where these self-sufficient gods do not operate from inside.

Apart from the character of self-sufficiency of the gods, there is also another character which is the inwardness of the spirit which constitutes divinity. A god is an inward existence and not an outward performance. It is more an existence and a being rather than a doing or an activity. Our existence is mostly a performance, a work. We attach a value to a person from the extent of worth or the output of performance of a person. "What does that person do? What is his work? What is his profession? What is his status in terms of the profession?" etc., is the way in which we many a time judge the utility and value of a human individual. But the gods are not to be judged in that manner.

It is not the work that the god does which is the defining character of a divinity. Its existence itself is the value, as, for instance, in the case of the sun that is shining in the sky. The sun is all value, and no value can be compared to the existence of the sun which controls, operates, every activity in the world and all the planets. But the sun does not work with hands and feet, with an office, with a secretary, with an appurtenance, with a bungalow. Nothing of the kind is necessary for the sun, though all these things that are so valuable to us are meaningful only because of the shining of the sun in the sky. The very existence of the sun is the activity of the sun.

The more you become self-sufficient, the more also you become divine; and conversely, the more you are divine, the more you are self-sufficient. It is not necessary for you to ask for anything in this world if divinity adequately manifests itself from yourself. Mere existence is God, and mere existence also is any kind of divinity which is a particle of this divine existence operating everywhere.

This is to give you a brief picture of the manner in which the great masters, the rishis of yore, envisioned divinity in the cosmos as gods pervading everywhere. The rise of the sun, the early morn, the mid-day heat, the beauty of the sunset, the flowing of the rivers, the grandeur of the mountains, the beauty of the sky and the process of time - everything is a divinity because of the fact that each aspect of the manifestation of creation is indwelt by a divinity and it has a self-hood of its own.

Everything in the world loves itself. This is a very important point that everyone should remember. Everyone loves oneself; everything loves itself. Even an atom is a self-existent, self-love. It would not like to be split into parts, and segregated into dismembered individualities.

The capacity of the atom to maintain a cohesion by the action of the electrons around, due to which it becomes a unit of an electron or a molecule, is actually the self-hood that it is manifesting in itself. That which refuses to be other than what it is, is the self. And the cohesive forces of the world, call them physical or chemical or biological, all indicate the intense pressure exerted upon units in the world by their own self-hoods. That is to say, divinities, gods or angels are present in the hearts, in the core of the being of everything, though you may call it animate or inanimate, organic or inorganic, as the case may be.

So is the way in which the Veda Samhitas may be said to be looking at the world. The translation of the Veda Samhitas into the language of your own culture from the point of view of language and grammar will not bring out the meaning of these great proclamations of the great masters. A poetry, an exuberance of feeling, a musical note, cannot be translated into prose grammatically or linguistically. The outburst of divinity which envisioned itself in all creation which we have as the record of the Veda Samhitas is not to be translated in a grammatical fashion. All the translations that you have today are like husk, dried straw, without the essence in it.

One of the masterly interpreters of the Vedas has said that the meaning of the Vedas is in the heavens. It is not to be found on earth. The idea behind it is that a transcendent element is present in the outlook that is adumbrated in the Veda Samhitas and it is not to be seen with the physical eye of a written note-book or a printed literature. It is something that has to be felt inside.

Where the gods are abiding in the highest heaven, there you will find the meaning of the Veda mantras. You will not find it in libraries or linguistic or scholastic commentaries. This special significance attached to the vision of divinity in the world, whose verbal expression we have as recorded in the Veda Samhitas, became later on a cue to the austere contemplators of divinity whose performances and practices are recorded in a section of the Vedas known as the Aranyakas, which means a "forest treatise." People used to retire to sequestered areas, jungles, in order to live an inner contemplative life of self-sufficiency detached from all the encumbrances of outward entanglement.

The vision of the Veda Samhitas is to be considered as an outward panegyric or encomium poured on God as manifest in this vision of the cosmos. The Aranyakas are an inward vision, a contemplation of the very same thing which was outwardly glorified in the Veda Samhitas.

There is a threefold way of envisaging reality - outward, inward, and universal. The three sections of the Vedas known as the Samhitas, Aranyakas and the Upanishads pertain to these three ways of looking at the Ultimate Reality - outwardly, inwardly and universally. The inner contemplativeness of the Aranyakas ended in the deeper communion of the spirit as we have it recorded in the Upanishads.

Many of you might have come across most of the Upanishads and read them in original Sanskrit or in some translation. But as I mentioned, these scriptures are records of experience. They are not just school textbooks or a schoolmaster's notes. As experiences, as much as possible intensely recorded in verbal form, the Upanishads contain the quintessence of the Veda Samhitas and the Aranyaka texts. They try their best to portray before us the manner in which we have to commune ourselves with the Self-hood of the cosmos.

If the divinities are to be described as pure selves and if our own existence also is not to be excluded from this pervasion of the spirit, then to be true to the nature of reality or to be true to our own selves (it is always said, "To thine own self be true") and not to be untrue by transferring part of ourselves to the nature or to the outside, we have to commune ourselves with the spirit that is within us, the God that is indwelling us.

If the vision (whether of the Samhitas or the Aranyakas or the Upanishads) finally lands upon this great conclusion of the Self-hood of everything as the Final Reality that can be thought of, we would not be living a true life in this world if we are objectively conditioned. The more we require external appurtenances for our satisfaction and our existence, the more are we untrue to our own selves. We are sold to the outward world. We have become servants of nature and we are obeying the commands of the natural processes of the physical body and the biological existence of ours, ignoring the spirit that we really are.

The love that we evince in regard to our own selves can be explained only in terms of something very valuable that is in ourselves. Otherwise, so much love cannot be there in regard to one's own self. "If everything goes, let me be alive at least." This is the final love of a human being, of everything.

Let all property go; let all belongings, everything, vanish, but life is the last thing that one can expect to be granted. Permission to exist is the last desire. Why is this desire persisting so much? Even a beggar would like to continue his existence; it does not matter if he is a beggar. He is living on alms from door to door. What does it matter? But he is alive. We do not want to be a dead rich man; we would rather be a living beggar. Is it not clear - the difference? Wealth that is dead is not what we ask; it is poverty that is alive. Life is the crucial point. What exactly is this life? It is the persistence, the continuance in the process of time of a peculiar identity, a self-identical consciousness which one feels in one's own self. God speaks from within us: "You are to exist, and you are not, not to exist."

This inward communion with the true reality of one's own self (which is the divinity spoken of) is also to be respected as present in every other living being also, because if we commit the mistake of identifying this divinity with our individual spirit, we would make also the other mistake of considering other spirits as objects outside. If my spirit is inside me, the idea of insideness would preclude the inclusiveness of the spirit of other people and other things in the world, and the world would look like an external object once again. I would not be giving the same respect that is due to me, to others, also.

So, the mystical communion of the Upanishads is an advance over the worship of gods as we have in the Veda Samhitas and even the contemplations of the Aranyakas. The prescriptions of the Upanishads are difficult to comprehend. However much you may read them, very little meaning can come out because of this peculiar intricacy involved in the suggestions, the recipes,namely, everything has to be contemplated as a pure Self-hood.

"For the sake of the Self of a person, everything becomes dear in this world," says a great passage of the Upanishad.