Isha Upanishad

Appendix

[note] - situations requiring textual explication; all such information is printed in italics

[word] - word(s) omitted by the author or lost through damage to the manuscript that are required by grammar or sense, and that could be supplied by the editors

[.....] - word(s) lost through damage to the manuscript (at the beginning of a piece, sometimes indicates that a page or pages of the manuscript have been lost)

APPENDIX [1]

[Bracketed and struck through in the manuscript. See the footnote on page 378.]

From the choice of terms in this opening line certain intellectual consequences arise which we have to accept if we wish to understand the teaching of the Upanishad. First, the Personality of God & His unity. Not only is the impersonal God one Brahman without a second, but the Personal God is one without a second. There is no other person besides God in the universe. Whatever different masks He may wear, from house to house of His habitation, it is always He. The disguises may be utterly concealing. He may manifest as Brahma & Vishnu, Surya & Agni or as the Yaksha & the Pishacha; he may dwell here as the man or dwell here as the animal; he may shine out as the saint or lust in Himself as the criminal; but all these are He.

APPENDIX [2]

[Written on a separate sheet of the manuscript. See the footnote on page 378.]

The world & God. What is the world? It is jagati, says the Rishi, she who is constantly moving. The essence of the world is not Space nor Time nor Circumstance which we call Causality—its essence is motion. Not only so, but every single force & object in it is of the same nature, it is a jagat, a knot of habitual motion. The ancient Hindus knew that the earth moves & therefore the earth also was designated in ancient times by a number of words meaning motion of which jagati itself is one—ga, go, jagati, ila. They knew of the physical movement of the universe. They would not have rejected the scientific hypothesis which sees in every object a mass & arrangement, a sort of cosmos of anus,

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atoms in constant movement with regard to [each] other. But the movement here contemplated is not, as we see in the fifth verse, tad ejati & the eighth verse, sa paryagat, movement of matter, but of divine being & conscious force of which matter is only an appearance. But for the present, the Rishi is content to envisage the world as a world of motion & multitude. In essence the kshobha or formative movement called active Prakriti, in universality it is this force ordering & arranging its objects by motion, jagati; in detail it is a multitude of single objects, forces, ideas, sensations etc, all in their nature motion of this moving universe, jagat, the apparently motionless stone no less than the ever circling & rotating earth. In this motion, in the objects, forces, sensations created by it He dwells who is its Lord.

APPENDIX [3]

[Written in the top margin of two pages of the manuscript. Point of insertion not marked. See the footnote on page 380.]

Moreover we must realise the Lord in others as one with Him in ourselves. Then we shall not need to covet any man's possessions. "Do not covet" says the Sage "the possession of any man whomsoever." Dhanam means any kind of possession whatever, not only material wealth—neither the glory of the king, nor the wealth of the merchant, nor the temperament of the sage, nor the strength of elephants, nor the swiftness of eagles. For whom are we envying, whose goods are we coveting? Ourselves, our own goods. If we realise divine unity, we can enjoy them as perfectly in another's experience as in our own. Moreover, being divine in power ourselves we can get them whenever our supreme self wills without anyone else in the world being the poorer for our gain. There must be no demand, no coveting. Not when or if the mind wills, but when or if He wills.

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APPENDIX [4]

[Written separately; point of insertion not marked. See the footnote on page 380.]

Practically, therefore, the renunciation demanded of us is the renunciation by the lower unreal & incomplete self, mind, senses, vitality, intellect, will, egoism of all that they are & seek to our real, complete & transcendental Self, the Lord. And that renunciation we make not by substituting another demand, the demand to be rid of all these things & released from the fulfilment of His cosmic purpose, but in order the better to fulfil His purpose & enjoy Him utterly in His movement, in all experience & all action that He in us & through us is manifesting & perfecting. For that which we have to enjoy is not only Ish but jagat,—for as we shall see both are one Brahman & by enjoying Him entirely we must come to enjoy all His movement, since He is here as the Lord of his own movement. For this reason the word Ish has been selected as the fundamental relation of God to ourselves & the world—the master of all our existence to whom we renounce, the Lord who for his purposes has made & governs the world—for in this relation of "Lord" he is inseparable from His movement. It is a relation that depends on the existence & play of the world of which He is the ruler & master. Envisaging the ruler, we envisage that which he rules, the habitation for the sake of the inhabitant indeed, but still the habitation. We get therefore in this first verse of the Upanishad the foundations of the great principle of activity with renunciation with which the teaching of the Gita begins & the still greater principle of atmasamarpana or entire surrender to God, the uttamam rahasyam with which it culminates. We get the reason & spirit of the command to Arjuna from which all the moral teaching of the Gita starts & to which it returns, jitva shatrun bhunkshva rajyam samriddham, the command of activity, the command of enjoyment—but activity for God only, yajnartham, without ahankara, enjoyment in God only, mayi sannyasya, without desire or attachment, neither demanding what He does not take

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for Himself in us, nor rejecting what He is here to enjoy, whether the enjoyment be of victory or defeat, of the patched loin cloth of the beggar or the imperial crown.

APPENDIX [5]

[Written in a different notebook; beginning lost or point of insertion unknown. Related thematically to Draft A of "The Life Divine".]

[.....] existence, lies the justification of all that is said in the scriptures of the liberated & perfected soul. He who would be free in this world, must be detached from it, though belonging to it, above it though in it, above it in his inward conscious self-being, though in it in his outward action of Nature. He must combine with a blissful enjoyment of all things in the world, a joyous indifference to all things in the world. He must be not un-mundane but supramundane, not inhuman but superhuman. In all his acts he must have in his soul the loud laughter, the attahasyam, of Kali. He must love with that inner laughter, slay with that laughter, save with that laughter, himself perish or reign, take joy or take torture with that secret & divine laughter. For he knows that the whole world is but a divine play of the eternal Child-God Srikrishna with Himself in the playground of His self-existence. All this he cannot have unless in the roots of his conscious being he feels not concealed or subliminal, but manifest & always present to him, the Bright, Calm, Unconcerned, Unbound, Unrelated Divine Existence.

This Pure Existence is not only an impersonal state of divine being, it is God Himself in His pure personality. For in all the divine manifestation, there is always this double aspect of Personality & Impersonality. God Impersonal manifests Himself, both in the universe & transcendent of the Universe, transcending it as infinite pure Existence, infinite pure Consciousness, infinite pure Delight, the triune Sachchidananda of our Scriptures, entering world existence. He manifests in it all this quality of existence, variation of Consciousness, multiplicity of

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delight which with its changes, perversities & apparent self-contradictions makes up the marvellous web of the world. But He is also, transcending existence, the infinite Pure Existent, the infinite Pure Conscious, the infinite Pure Blissful,—not anyone, no person or individual, for He alone is, but still neither a mere abstraction or state of Being. Entering into world existence, He is All-being, God, Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Kali, Allah, the Mighty One, the Humble, the Loving, the Merciful, the Ruthless. These things are aspects of Himself to His own consciousness. Just as Sacchidananda is Triune,—not three, but One,—for when we enter deep into the Trinity we find only Unity since Existence is Consciousness & nothing but Consciousness, & Consciousness is Delight & nothing but Delight, so the Personal & Impersonal God are Biune, not two, but one, since when we enter into the depths of this Biune, we find only Unity, Existence nothing but the Existent, the Existent nothing but Existence. The distinction between them is a necessary convention or arrangement of His truth for world manifestation; it does not amount to a difference. The metaphysician fixes his concentration of Will in Knowledge only on the Impersonal & pursuing it through the world & beyond, he affirms the Impersonal God but tends to deny the Personal. The devotee, fixing his concentration on the Personal & pursuing it through the world & beyond, affirms the Personal God but tends to deny or ignore the Impersonal. Both affirmations are true, both denials are false. Neither is one greater than the other, the Impersonal than the Personal, just as in the Personal, Shiva is not greater than Vishnu, nor Vishnu than Shiva, nor the All-Being than Krishna or Kali. Such exaggerated distinctions are the errors of partial or selective Yoga fastening on aspects & ignoring the true being of God in His self-manifestation. We must accept, for our perfection's sake, the multitude of His aspects & even of His divine impersonations, but we must not make them an excuse for breaking up the inalienable unity of God.

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