Darshan of Swami Krishnananda in 1999

by Swami Krishnananda

26. The Essence of the Subject-Object Relation

(Darshan given in April 1999)

A visitor: The Katha Upanishad says: The sense objects are higher than the senses, and the mind is higher than the sense objects, but the intellect is higher than the mind, and the Great Soul is higher than the intellect. It occurred to me that the Universal seems to be revealed to us through its apparent contradictions on the various levels.

Swamiji: The cosmological doctrine involved in this statement is like this. There is, first of all, the Supreme Being. In Sankhya language it is called Purusha. In Vedantic language it is called Ishvara. Ishvara is the potential of creative power. In that condition, the universe is, as it were, in a sleeping state – something like the whole individual, the person, getting submerged in the state of deep sleep. The individual is not absent in deep sleep, but it is in a highly potentised condition. Ishvara is the highly potentised condition of a universal darkness, people say, in a symbolic manner, as the deep sleep also is something like a darkness. But it is the germ of the further development into that waking condition, which is called Virat – cosmic manifestation. Then there is the condensation of the universal energy into grosser and grosser objects, until it becomes the earth, solid earth.

Man is a latecomer in this process of evolution. The elements came first. God created the heaven and the earth. He did not create man first; that came afterwards, so the objects are precedent to the perception of the objects by the human being. They existed prior to these things, so they are superior to the sense organs. Sense organs perceive, but the objects determine the manner of the sensory operation. Then the mind gathers the impulses given to it by means of sensory cognition. Actually, the mind is a recorder of whatever report comes through the sense organs or the object. This is the empiricist point of view. The objects determine perception.

The rationalist point of view is the perceptional process determines the objects. You have also got in Western philosophical circles rationalists and empiricists. John Locke, Berkeley, Hume, they are empiricists. Spinoza and Descartes, Leibniz, they are all rationalists: there is an innate potentiality in one's own self, a deep rationality which decides the nature of things. But empiricists say it is not like that, and this is only an unnecessary controversy. Actually, they can be reconciled.

So the Kathopanishad's point is correct. Beyond this mind is the intellect, which sifts all reports received by the mind, as if it is a sieve. But the intellect is only an individualised operation of a human being. It is somewhat like a reflection of the cosmic intellect. This cosmic intellect is called, in Indian theology, Brahma, the Creator. Beyond the cosmic intellect is the Peaceful Being, which is Ishvara.

This is the import of this statement of the Kathopanishad. It is a very good recipe for meditation. You can raise your mind slowly from lower to higher, higher, higher, until you deposit your entire consciousness in the cosmic intellect and the peaceful universal Pure Being as such. The Kathopanishad is a masterpiece. It is meant for meditation, not merely for reading.

Visitor: Throughout creation there is the theme of apparent opposites, and this can be witnessed on every level in which it being is expressed.

Swamiji: This is explained in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.

Visitor: Yes. The body, which is our most material aspect, is nevertheless a vehicle of transcendence – the chariot. How could something which is of the grossest level...

Swamiji: This is the reason why this lad Nachiketas in the Kathopanishad could not get a correct answer from Lord Yama. He says, “You are an individualised, segmented, subjective side asking a question. The other side you have completely forgotten.”

The duality – creation started with a bang. In modern science they call it the Big Bang. There was an atomic size of substance. It is mentioned in modern physics that the whole universe was contained in a little dot as big as a full stop that you put by your pen. Who could imagine that? That measurable, or measureless, dimensionless dot contained this incredible vastness of the cosmos. There was no space and time in that dot. If the origin did not have space and time, how did the effects produce space and time? So whatever was in the cause should be in the effect. Therefore, space and time are illusions. They don't exist.

So in Indian scriptures also we have this doctrine of one becoming two, two becoming four, four becoming eight, eight becoming sixteen, thirty-two – infinitely wide, many, many, many, many, up to the ant, up to the atom.

But all this is nothing but a division between the seer and the seen, the subject and the object. We think that the subject and the object are cleaved completely, one from the other, and they have no connection at all, but it is not true. If you are sitting here as an object of my perception, and if there is absolutely no connection between yourself and myself, I will not be able to see that you are sitting here. My consciousness exceeds the boundary of my physical body and pervades an atmosphere wide enough to cover yourself also, and through that wider mind I am perceiving you. That wider mind is the Cosmic Mind.

In a broadcasting station somebody speaks and it is meant to travel long distances, but that sound that is produced in the broadcasting station does not travel. It is converted into a vibration, and that vibration travels through what they call a kind of ether. It is an impersonal thing. That ether, which is impersonal, carries the vibration but not the sound. The vibration contacts any kind of receiver which can transmute the vibration into sound. In a similar way, when we see a thing, we are not simply just seeing in a crude, glib manner. The Cosmic Mind is operating in between everything. Without that, one cannot know the other is existing.

I am seeing a mountain. The mountain is not sitting in my eyes. How do I know it exists? The Cosmic Mind is pervading everywhere. In the act of my perception of the object I connect my individual consciousness to the Cosmic Mind, and it connects itself to the other object so that they look like something connected with me directly through the Cosmic Mind. So virtually it means if you want to achieve success, you must always do it through the Cosmic Mind. Never do it individually: I am doing. There is no such person.

Visitor: Or as the Cosmic Mind.

Swamiji: Yes, yes. This is the essence of the subject-object relation, a very mighty subject, very difficult. Let me now close it today.