The Nature of the True Religious Life

by Swami Krishnananda

Chapter 6: The Purusha Sukta of the Veda

For the first time in the history of the world the great vision of religion was proclaimed in the Purusha Sukta of the Veda, which can be regarded as the most magnificent vision bequeathed to us by the ancient masters. To the seers of the Veda, religion was life. The way they conducted themselves was their religion, what they spoke was their religion, and the vision that they had about things in the world was their religion. Religion was not a textbook; it was not a scripture. It was not a study, or something heard from other people. It was something that was seen directly. This seeing is called the Veda. It is called darshana, the vision integral, not the vision of the eyes or the sense organs. It is not perception, but intuition. It is sakshatkara, or realisation, an immediate contact with the quintessential essence of things—not a mediate contact as we have through the senses in respect of the objects of the world.

Thus, in the vision which is the Purusha Sukta we have a masterly stroke, unparalleled in religious history, where man ceases to be man in his envisionment of the Cosmic Man, whom he designates in the language of these mantras as the Purusha Supreme. Those of you who might have heard of this great hymn of the Veda will know what it actually connotes. It is a short prayer, or we may say it is an exclamation, a psalm, an ecstatic expression of a tremendous upheaval that took place within the recesses of the being of the great sage who had this vision.

The central principle of the culture of the whole of Bharatvarsha can be said to be impregnated within this single small poem, the Purusha Sukta. All the scriptures are ramifications, commentaries, explanations, annotations, etc., of this central Truth; or rather, we may say, the other way around, everything else that it said in the other parts of the Veda is a large commentary, as it were, on this little poem called the Purusha Sukta. It is a little but big poem in which man contacts God. Man in his essence comes in contact with God in His essence.

To this day, it is the accepted tradition of the culture of India that religion has to be alive, actually. This is very important to remember. Religion is not what we do in the empirical sense; it is what we see with our eyes. What we see with our eyes is religion, not what we do with our hands and feet. If we perform worship with our hands, and see an image of stone with our eyes, we are not practising religion. If it is only a portrait that we are worshipping, and our eyes see only a portrait while our hands are waving a sacred lamp, that is not religion. We may wave any lamp, we may do anything with our hands and mutter anything with our tongue, but what we see is our religion. If we see only a temple erected by a mason and a metal or stone image that has been installed, this is not religion. Therefore, religion is vision, seeing, and nothing more, nothing less.

Here is India's religion before you, if you want to know what India's religion is. There is no nomenclature that can be attached to this religion. All these names that are associated with the forms of religion in the world are later developments in the history of mankind. A vision is not a racial prerogative. The one who had this vision of the Purusha of the Purusha Sukta was not a Hindu, was not a Christian, was not a Muslim. He was not a man. When man has the vision of God, he no more remains as man because man is the name that we give to an embodiment whose faculty is a conglomeration of sense organs. You can recall to your mind the words of Sri Krishna as recorded in the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita: “These eyes cannot see Me.” Arjuna's two eyes could not have the vision of the great Purusha who embodied Himself in that description of the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita.

What the Purusha Sukta means in the Veda, the Eleventh Chapter of the Bhagavadgita also means. They are one and the same. One is a Sruti, the other is a Smriti. By a Sruti, what is meant is a sacred lore that has come down to us by the lineage of Guru and disciple. It has not come through libraries or textbooks. These sacred mantras were listened to by the disciple and chanted, recited or taught by the Guru.

As a little digression before I go into the meaning of the Purusha Sukta, I would like to mention the system followed in India of the study of the Veda. It is not like study in a college or university, with which you are acquainted. The Veda cannot be chanted so easily. In a way, we may compare the system of the study of the Veda mantras to the study of music. We cannot read a book of music and become a musician. It requires a practical guidance from a person who can sing for us. We have to listen to the singing, and only then can we learn music. A mere notation in a book will not be a sufficient aid in the learning of music.

The verses of the Veda are called mantras. There are Sanskrit poems, called verses in English. There are two types of verses. One is called the Sruti, and the other is called the Smriti. The verses of the Vedas are not called slokas; they are called mantras because they are charged with a divine potency. The verses of all the other writings—including the Bhagavadgita, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Manusmriti, whatever it is—are called slokas, which means “great sayings”. A sloka is a well-said saying. A mantra is distinguished from an ordinary verse in this sense, that a mantra is a vibration pressed into the configuration, or form, of a group of expressions called words, or language. A mantra of the Veda is, therefore, condensed energy. It is not a word in the ordinary sense. It is not a language that we speak when we chant a mantra of the Veda. We are giving expression to a tremendous force and, therefore, our apparatus within also should be trained to receive the potency of the mantra which we are going to recite or chant. The modulation of the voice is very important—the intonation. As we hear a raga in music, there is swara in the Veda.

There are four feet to every mantra; and when a Veda mantra is taught, the teacher, the Guru, does not recite the whole mantra at one stroke. I am one of those fortunate ones, I should say, who had occasion to study the Vedas under a very holy man, and I know how it is taught and how it is learnt. A foot is first chanted by the Guru, and the student recites it three times. Then the second foot is recited by the Guru, and the student recites it thrice. The third foot is chanted, and then the student chants it thrice. The fourth foot is chanted, and the student again recites it three times. This goes on three times again. This recitation of a foot three times goes on three times, and so a single foot is recited nine times. Then the Guru chants two feet at one stroke. That is half the mantra, half the verse, we may say, which again has to be conducted in the same manner: three times, three times, nine times again. So you know how many times it has been recited. Then the whole mantra is chanted, not only half, again three times. The process is again repeated three times, so that it is nine times once again. When this is completed, the student will automatically know the whole mantra by heart. He need not go on racking his head. It is like mathematics. If this process is complete, the student automatically knows it by heart. Immediately the mantra is complete, and he gets up with great satisfaction: “Now I know what it is.” See, what a system they have introduced!

Likewise is every mantra taught. Religious men study the whole Rigveda, for instance, which consists of some ten thousand mantras. Ten thousand! And to study it in this way, how much time will be necessary? Some four years, at least, must be taken. To study the four Vedas, it may take a larger number of years—sometimes twelve years, at least. Nobody studies all the four Vedas. Each person is supposed to belong to one particular Veda, and I myself belong to the Rigveda school. Some belong to the Yajurveda school, and some the Samaveda school. Nobody belongs to the Atharvaveda, as it is an appendix to the Veda. The religious essence of the Veda is in the three texts called Rig, Yajur, Sama; the fourth text is only an appendix, and it is not studied, generally. Well, this is how the Veda mantras are recited—seated in a holy posture, facing the east, after taking a bath and washing the mouth, and not getting up until the study is complete.

A mantra is a great power. Why is it a power? Christ says somewhere in his gospel that what he spoke was not merely a word, it was Spirit that came from his mouth. As I told you during a previous session, all great men think alike. Whether it is a Christ or a seer of the Veda, they say the same thing, finally. It is Spirit that came out from the mouth of the great chanter of the mantra of the Veda; and when we are reciting it, we are becoming en rapport with this great Spirit that is enshrined in the mantra of the Veda.

Such a mantra is here before us in the form of the Purusha Sukta. How is it chanted? There are three types of intonation, sometimes a combination of all the three, the three being called udatta, anudatta and svarita. These are technical words of the Vedic language. A passage is chanted with a lifted voice, with a lowered voice, and with a middling voice without either raising it or lowering it. These are the three ways. Each mantra, each verse, each passage involves these three types of intonation. This is the difficulty in the recitation of a mantra.

There is the famous Mahamrityunjaya, for instance, which comes in the Veda and is a Veda mantra. I am taking the Mahamrityunjaya as an example because you are all acquainted with it and are chanting it. You may have observed that there are three types of intonation in this mantra. Please listen to the way in which I am chanting it according to the accepted tradition. Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe—this is one foot. I mentioned to you there are four feet. Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe is the first foot. The second foot is sugandhiṁ puṣṭi-vardhanam. Urvārukamiva bandhanān is the third foot. Mṛtyor mukṣīya mā 'mṛtāt is the fourth foot.

Now, tryam—that is elongated and the voice has gone up; it is called svarita. Tryamba—the ba is neither high nor low; it is just in the middle. Ba is in the middling voice. Tryambakaṁ—ba and ka are in the middle voice. They are in a straight line. They do not go up like tryam. Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe—one straight line. Su—the voice has immediately come down. Sugandhiṁ—again the voice has gone up. So you see, the three intonations are in one foot itself. Tryambakaṁ yajāmahe. Su—you lower your voice. That is called anudatta. Sugandhiṁ—that is svarita. Puṣṭivardhanam—again your voice has come down.

How can you chant this unless somebody teaches you? You do not know where the voice has to go up, where it has to be down; otherwise, it will be like broken music. Urvāru—all the three syllables are in a lower voice. Kamiva—again mi goes up, and va goes down. Bandhanān—dha goes up. Mṛt—again the voice goes down. Mṛtyor mu—mu goes up. Ṣīya—ya goes down. Māmṛtāt—the tāt goes up. This is one example of a Veda mantra. Sometimes all the three intonations are combined, and it is more difficult to chant it. I will not touch on all these things just now.

These are the techniques of intonation, and the meaning is changed if the intonation changes. This is the speciality of a mantra as distinguished from an ordinary sloka or verse. Though the word may be the same, if the intonation changes, the meaning will change.

You might have heard the ancient story where some gentleman wanted, by the performance of a sacrifice with the chanting of certain mantras, to produce a demon to attack Indra, and the performers of the sacrifice were not willing to produce such a demon. They did not want that some terrific force should come up and attack Indra. But somehow, without knowing the intention of the person for whom the sacrifice was to be performed, they had taken this engagement, and they started the sacrifice. When it was started, he said, “My intention is to produce this force to attack Indra.” They were in a greatly perplexed mood. They said, “This is very strange. Do you want us to do this kind of sacrifice?” They could not say no, they could not say yes. Once they started performing the sacrifice they could not say no, but they could not say yes either because they did not want to undertake this kind of enterprise. So they chanted the mantra as it was expected, but changed the tune, and immediately the effect was the reverse. Indraśatro vivardhasva was the mantra, which meant: “Enemy of Indra, rise up.” A force was generated.

Now, the changing of the tune connoted some peculiarity there. An enemy can be one who attacks, or can be one who is attacked. Both can be meant by the word “enemy”. So the changing of the intonation converted the mantra into a most unexpected meaning: “Great force, rise up to be destroyed by Indra.” That meaning was introduced, instead of saying, “Great force, get up to destroy Indra.” That was the intention of the man who wanted to perform the sacrifice, but these people who changed the tune put another meaning into it: “Great force, rise up to be destroyed by Indra.” Then Vritra got up, and a great war took place, and Indra destroyed him.

Panini, in his Shiksha, also says this. Panini was a great sage who was a master of Sanskrit grammar and the phonetics of the recitation of the Veda. He said that if a Veda mantra is not chanted properly according to the required intonation, it may come back upon you like a thunderbolt. And so the tradition of India does not permit the purchase of a book from a shop and a reading of it for oneself. You cannot read a chemistry book or a physics book even, what to talk of the Veda mantras. This is by way of digression. I have given you some information about the importance of Veda mantras, the glory and the force and the potency that is hidden, etc.

Now we come to the Purusha Sukta proper which, as I said, is the foundation of the religion of Bharatavarsha, wherein the vision of the Supreme Reality is proclaimed at the very outset, in the very beginning, in the first mantra itself. The Purusha Sukta says that the Great Being has countless heads, countless eyes, countless hands and feet: Sahasraśīrṣā puruṣaḥ sahasrākṣaḥ sahasrapāt, sabhūmiṁ viśvato vṛtvātyatiṣṭad daśāgulam (P.S. 1). The immanence and the transcendence of the Supreme Being is declared in this one single mantra. In one mantra consisting of four feet, the integrality, the comprehensiveness, the absoluteness, the transcendence and the immanence, all are declared. Such is the concise form in which these great ideas have been expressed in this one single mantra.

When it is said the Supreme Being has countless heads and eyes and hands and feet, etc., we remember a parallel passage in the Thirteenth Chapter of the Bhagavadgita: Sarvataḥpāṇipādaṁ tat sarvato'kṣiśiromukham, sarvataḥ-śrutimal loke sarvam āvṛtya tiṣṭhati (B.G. 13.13). Sarvataḥ pāṇipādaṁ: “Everywhere it has hands and feet, everywhere it has ears and eyes,” says the Bhagavadgita. It is quoting the Purusha Sukta, as it were. As I told you, the whole religion of India, and every aspect of it, is centralised in the Purusha Sukta, and you can find there everything that is said anywhere else.

This Great Being is all eyes and all ears, all hands and all feet, all limbs, and is pervading the Earth and the sky. Īśāvāsyam idaṁ sarvam (Isa 1), says the Upanishad: “The whole universe is pervaded by this Being.” The same thing is said here, even before that. The whole cosmos is pervaded by this Being. This is to declare the immanence of God. Now you will realise that this immanence is of a very special nature. As you go forward, onward, with the study of the Purusha Sukta, you will find that it is a novel type of immanence that is proclaimed here.

Here is an example of an ordinary daily occurrence of immanence. When you wash your clothes, you put your clothes into a bucket of water. You will find that the water enters every fibre of the cloth. You may say that the water is immanent in the cloth; every little bit of the cloth has been soaked in water, and there is no part of the cloth that is not wet. But you know the cloth has not become the water, despite the fact that the water has entered every fibre of the cloth. Cloth is cloth, and water is water. So this immanence is a very strange thing. It is an impregnation entering into the vitals of the substance, yet standing apart from it in one way. That is why, in one passage of the Bhagavadgita, the Great Lord says, “I am in all things, yet I am not in all things. I am in them, yet I am not in them. They are in Me, yet they are not in Me.” The water is in the cloth, yet it is not in the cloth, because you can wring the cloth out and dry it, and then there is no water there. The cloth is once again the same cloth. So water can say, “I am in the cloth, yet I am not in the cloth.” This is one type of immanence. But there is another kind of immanence, such as clay becoming a pot. Clay has been moulded into a pot, and clay is immanent in the pot. Now you see the difference between these two types of immanence. You cannot wring the pot out of the clay and have only the pot minus the clay. That is not possible. When the clay goes, the pot also goes. But when the water went, the cloth did not go. So that is one kind of immanence, and this is another kind of immanence.

There has been a history of study, controversy and contemplation on the actual character of the immanence of God in this world, whether it is as water entering the cloth or as clay entering the pot. How did God enter the world? We shall not enter into this controversy just now. However, the Purusha Sukta says that the Supreme Being has enveloped the whole cosmos, and if He has become the whole cosmos as clay has become the pot—the entire clay has become the whole pot, and there is no clay left out afterwards—then there is no transcendence, there is only immanence.

God is not only immanence because if that were the case, there would be no Creator of the universe. That the Creator always stands outside the universe is a great dictum of Aristotle, for instance. The cause of an effect cannot be identical with the effect. It has to be a little bit away; otherwise, it cannot be called the cause at all. If the whole cause has become the effect, then there is no longer a cause. The Creator of the universe cannot be exhausted in the universe because then we cannot call Him the Creator.

There is an element of transcendence in the constitutions of certain governments. For instance, in some democratic or republic constitutions, though the president is a part of the whole nation, in some respects he stands above it as a super-constitutional head. He maintains some power which is super-departmental. God seems to be transcendent in this way, with a super-departmental power. He can set right everything in one stroke if He wants to. But God will not interfere with the law operating, as the president does not interfere with the laws of the magistrate, the court, etc., imagining that he is above everybody. It is a law that God has Himself set and, therefore, the immanence participates in the requirements of the transcendent as a constitution of the departments of the government may participate and get associated with, yet not contradict, the supremacy of the president.

The Purusha Sukta says that God envelopes the whole cosmos, yet transcends it—ātyatiṣṭad. In the homely language of the Veda, ātyatiṣṭad means “goes above”. The Vedic language is very simple, homely, like a parent speaking, not like a professor in a college or a university proclaiming his knowledge. It is like a mother or a father very lovingly speaking that is the Veda.

A homely example is given to a child: God is above the universe by ten fingers—ātyatiṣṭad daśāgulam. By ten spans, as it were, God is above the universe. By the word “ten”, we are supposed to understand that God is not exhausted in this world, that He also stands above the world. God may be even one inch above, it does not matter; yet, He is above the world. But the annotators, the understanders and the students of the Vedas tell us that “ten” does not mean merely the numerical distance of ten fingers' length or ten inches, ten cubits, etc. Ten means numberless, because there are only nine numbers in arithmetic. The last number is zero, which means there is no such thing as a tenth number. One and zero make ten; and zero, not being a positive number, is excluded from the series, and so there are only nine numbers. So when it is said that God has transcended the universe by ten cubits or ten spans, ten inches, etc., we are to understand that He has transcended the universe infinitely, not only by a little length of space. God transcends the universe infinitely, though He pervades the universe infinitely.

Sahasraśīrṣā puruṣaḥ sahasrākṣaḥ sahasrapāt, sabhūmiṁ viśvato vṛtvātyatiṣṭad daśāgulam. The declaration that the Supreme Being is all hands and feet, all eyes and heads, shows that He has no limbs. How can there be many things in one place? We cannot have eyes where there are ears. We know very well by common sense that where one thing is, another thing cannot also be there. So how is it said that He is everywhere hands and everywhere feet and everywhere eyes and everywhere heads? There seems to be no meaning in this statement, because all things cannot be everywhere.

The idea is that the Supreme Being is neither eyes, nor heads, nor hands, nor feet. These are only symbolic descriptions for our understanding, because we cannot understand anything except in an anthropomorphic, human way. It means He can see through the head, walk through the eyes, and speak through the legs. Every limb can perform every other function, not like us where only the eyes can see, only the ears can hear, and only the legs can walk. Every limb can perform every function; every atom of creation can do anything. Every speck of space is filled with every kind of potency, and it is capable of doing anything. All might and supreme omnipotence is hidden within every speck of space, every unit of time, and every atom of man. Such is God's force. His very existence is force, His very being is power, and being and consciousness come together in the Supreme Being. This is the connotation hidden behind this symbolic statement that the Supreme Being is all eyes, all heads, etc. Such an inscrutable Almighty is immanent in the whole creation, and yet transcends it.

This is a short explanation of the first mantra of the Purusha Sukta. A little more about it I shall tell you later on.