Translations of and commentaries on Kena, Katha and Mundaka Upanishads and some 'Readings in the Taittiriya Upanishad' that were published by Sir Aurobindo during his lifetime.
On Upanishad
Translations of and commentaries on Upanishads other than the Isha Upanishad. The volume is divided into two parts: (1) translations of and commentaries on the Kena, Katha and Mundaka Upanishads and some 'Readings in the Taittiriya Upanishad'; (2) early translations of the Prashna, Mandukya, Aitareya and Taittariya Upanishads; incomplete translations of and commentaries on other Upanishads and Vedantic texts; and incomplete and fragmentary writings on the Upanishads and Vedanta in general. The writings in the first part were published by Sir Aurobindo during his lifetime; those in the second part were transcribed from his manuscripts after his passing.
THEME/S
[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
[note] - situations requiring textual explication; all such information is printed in italics
The view of cosmic evolution which has been set forth in the first book of this exegesis,1 may seem deficient to the ordinary religious consciousness which is limited & enslaved by its creeds and to which its particular way of worship is a master and not a servant, because it leaves no room for a "Personal" God. The idea of a Personal God is, however, a contradiction in terms. God is Universal, he is Omnipresent, Infinite, not subject to limits. This all religions confess, but the next moment they nullify their confession by assuming in Him a Personality. The Universal cannot be personal, the Omnipresent cannot be excluded from any thing or creature in the world He universally pervades and possesses. The moment we attribute certain qualities to God, we limit Him and create a double principle in the world. Yet no religion2
Brahman, we have seen, is the Universal Consciousness which Is and delights in Being; impersonal, infinite, eternal, omnipresent, sole-existing, the One than whom there is no other, and all things and creatures have only a phenomenal existence [in] Brahman and by Brahman.
In the Vedantic theory of this Universe and its view of the nature of the Brahman and Its relations to the phenomena that make up this Universe, there is one initial paradox from which the
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whole Vedantic philosophy, religion and ethics take their start. We have seen that in existence as we see it there is Something that is eternal, immutable and one, to which we give the name of Brahman, amidst an infinite deal that is transient, mutable and multifold. Brahman as the eternal, immutable and one, is not manifest but latent; It supports, contains and pervades the changing & unstable Universe and gives it eternity as a whole in spite [of the] transience of its parts, unity as a whole in spite of the multiplicity of its parts, immutability as a whole in spite of the mutability of its parts. Without It the persistence of the Universe would be inexplicable, but itself is not visible, nameable or definable except as Sacchidanandam, absolute and therefore unnameable and indefinable self-existence, self-awareness, self-bliss. But when we ask what is it then which is mutable, transient, multiple, and whether this is something other than and different from Brahman, we get the reply that this also is Brahman and that there can be nothing other than Brahman, because Brahman is the One without a second, ekamevadwitiyam. This one, eternal, immutable became the many who are transient and mutable, but this becoming is not real, only phenomenal. Just as all objects & substances are phenomena of and in the single, eternal & unchanging ether, so are all existences animate or inanimate, corporeal, psychical or spiritual phenomena of and in Brahman. This phenomenal change of the One into the Many, the Eternal into the perishable, the Immutable into the everchanging, is a supreme paradox but a paradox which all scientific investigation shows to be the one fundamental fact of the Universe. Science considers the One eternal & permanent reality to be eternal Matter, Vedanta for reasons already stated holds it to be eternal Consciousness of which Spirit-Matter are in phenomena the positive-negative aspects. This Brahman, this Sacchidanandam, this eternal Consciousness unknowable, unnameable and indefinable, which reason cannot analyse, nor imagination put into any shape, nor the mind and senses draw within their jurisdiction, is the Transcendent Reality which alone truly exists. The sole existence of this Turiya Brahman or Transcendent Eternal Consciousness is the basis of the Adwaita philosophy.
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But where in all this is there any room for religion, for the spirit of man, for any idea of God? Who is the Lord, Isha, Maheshwar, Vishnu, Rudra, Indra, the Lord of the Illusion, the Ruler, the Mighty One of which all the Upanishads speak? Who is this triple Prajna-Hiranyagarbha-Virat? Who is this twofold Purusha-Prakriti, God & Nature, without which the existence of the phenomenal world and consciousness in matter would not be intelligible or conceivable? To whom does the Bhakti of the Bhakta, to whom do the works of the Karmayogin direct themselves? Why and Whom do men worship? What is it to which the human self rises in Yoga? The answer is that this also is Brahman,—Brahman not in His absolute Self but in relation to the infinite play of multiplicity, mobility, mortality which He has phenomenally created for His own delight on the surface of His really eternal immutable & single existence. Above is the eternal surge, the innumerable laughters of the million-crested, multitudinous, ever-marching, ever-shifting wilderness of waves; below is the silent, motionless, unchanging rest of the Ocean's immeasurable and unvisited depths. The rest and immobility is the Sea, and the mutable stir and motion of the waves is also the Sea, and as the Sea is to its waves, so is Brahman to His creation. What is the relation of the Sea of Brahman to its waves? Brahman is the One Self and all the rest, innumerable souls of creatures and innumerable forms of things are His Maya, illusions which cannot be eternal and therefore cannot be true, because there is only One Eternal; the One Self is real, all else is unreal and ends. This is Adwaita. But even though Brahman be the One Self, He has become Many by His own Iccha or Will and the exercise of His Will is not for a moment or limited by time & space or subject to fatigue, but for ever. He is eternal and therefore His Iccha is eternal and the Many Selves which live in Him by His Iccha are eternal and do not perish, for they also being really Brahman the Self are indistinguishable from Him in nature and though their bodies, mind-forms and all else may perish, cannot themselves perish. He may draw them into Himself in utter communion, but He can also release them again into separate communion, and this is actually what happens. All
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else is transient and changes & passes, but the Self that is One and the Self that is Many are both of them real and eternal; and still they are One Self. This is Visishtadwaita. This eternity of the One Self and eternity of the Many-Selves shows that both are real without beginning and without end and the difference between them is therefore without beginning and end. The One is true and the Many are true, and the One is not and cannot be the Many, though the Many live in and for the One. This is Dwaita.
The only tests to which we can subject these three interpretations of the relation between the One and the Many, all of which are equally logical and therefore equally valid to the reason, are the statements of the Upanishads and the Gita and the experiences of Yoga when the Jivatman or individual Self is in direct communion with the Paramatman or Supreme Universal Self and aware therefore of its real relations to Him. The supreme experience of Yoga is undoubtedly the state of complete identification in Sacchidananda in which the Jivatman becomes purely self-existent, self-aware and self-joyous and phenomenal existence no longer is. Adwaita, therefore, is true according to the experience of Yoga. On the other hand the Jivatman can come out of this state and return into phenomenal existence, and there is also another Yogic state in which it is doubly conscious of its reality apart from the world and its reality in the world or can see the Universe at will in itself or outside itself possessing and enjoying it as an omniscient, omnipotent, all-seeing, all-hearing, all-conscious Being; Visishtadwaita therefore is also true. Finally, there is the state in which the Jivatman is entirely aware only of itself and the Paramatman and lives in a state of exalted love and adoration of the Eternal Being; and without this state3
To put the individual Self in intimate relation with the Eternal is the aim of Hindu life, its religion, its polity, its ethics. Morality is not for its own sake, nor for the pleasures of virtue, nor for any reward here or in another life, nor for the sake of society; these
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are false aims and false sanctions. Its true aim is a preparation and purification of the soul to fit it for the presence of God. The sense-obscured, limited and desire-driven individual self must raise itself out of the dark pit of sense-obsession into the clear air of the spirit, must disembarrass itself of servile bondage to bodily, emotional & intellectual selfishness and assume the freedom & royalty of universal love and beneficence, must expand itself from the narrow, petty, inefficient ego till it becomes commensurate with the infinite, all-powerful, omnipresent Self of All; then is its aim of existence attained, then is its pilgrimage ended. This may be done by realising the Eternal in oneself by knowledge, by realising oneself in Him by Love as God the Beloved, or by realising Him as the Lord of all in His universe and all its creatures by works. This realisation is the true crown of any ethical system. For whether we hold the aim of morality to be the placing of oneself in harmony with eternal laws, or the fulfilment of man's nature, or the natural evolution of man in the direction of his highest faculties, Hinduism will not object but it insists that the Law with which man must put himself into relation is the Eternal in the universe, that in this permanent and stable Truth man's nature fulfils itself out of the transient seemings of his daily existence and that to this goal his evolution moves. This consummation may be reached by ethical means through a certain manner of action and a certain spirit in action which is the essence of Karmamarga, the Way of Works, one of the three ways by which the spirit of man may see, embrace & become God. The first law of Karmamarga is to give up the natural desire for the fruits of our works and surrender all we do, think, feel and are into the keeping of the Eternal, and the second is to identify ourself with all creatures in the Universe both individually and collectively, realising our larger Self in others. These two laws of action together make what is called Karmayoga or the putting of ourselves into relation with that which is Eternal by means of and in our works. Before, then, we can understand what Karmayoga is, we must understand entirely and utterly what is this Eternal Being with whom we must put ourselves in relation and what are His relations with our self,
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with the phenomena of the Universe and with the creatures that people it. The Vedantic knowledge of Brahman, the Vedantic Cosmogony, the Vedantic explanation of the coexistence of Brahman with the Universe, the Eternal with the Transient, the Transcendent with the Phenomenal, the One with the Many, are what we have first to study.
Three verses of the Isha Upanishad describe directly the Brahman & His relations with the Universe, the [fourth] and [fifth:]
Anejad ekaṁ manaso javīyo nainad devā āpnuvan pūrvam arṣat Tad dhāvato 'nyān atyeti tiṣṭhat tasminn apo mātariśvā dadhāti. Tad ejati tannaijati tad dūre tadvantike Tad antar asya sarvasya tad u sarvasyāsya bāhyataḥ.
and the [eighth:]
Sa paryagācchukram akāyam avraṇam asnāviraṁ śuddham apāpaviddham Kavir manīṣī paribhūḥ svayambhūr yāthātathyato 'rthān vyadadhācchāśvatībhyaḥ samābhyaḥ.
We may for the present postpone the minuter consideration of the last verse and proceed on the basis of the earlier two alone.
The first conclusion of Vedanta is that the Brahman in this shifting, multifold, mutable Universe is One, stable & unmoving, therefore permanent and unchanging.
The second conclusion of Vedanta is that Brahman pervades this Universe & possesses it.
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The third conclusion of Vedanta is that Brahman which pervades, possesses, causes and governs the world is the same as the Absolute Transcendental Existence of which metaphysics speaks. Of this Transcendental Existence Vedanta always speaks in the neuter as Tat, that or it; of the Eternal Will which pervades & governs the Universe it speaks in the masculine as स, He. But in the [fourth] verse we find that to Tat are attributed that universal action and pervasiveness which is properly only attributable to स, the Eternal & Universal Will; the identification of the two could not be more complete. It is yet more strikingly brought out in the [eighth] verse where the description of the cosmical action of Brahman begins with स but the negative attributes of this masculine subject immediately following are in the neuter as appropriate only to the Conditionless Brahman and those that follow later on & apply to the Universal Will revert to the masculine,—all without any break in the sentence.
The fourth conclusion of the Vedanta is that Brahman [is] not only the Absolute Transcendental Self, not only the One, Stable Immutable Reality in the phenomenal Universe, not only pervades, possesses, causes and governs it as an Eternal Universal Will, but contains and in a figurative sense is it as its condition, continent, material cause and informing force. Tasminnapo mātariśvā dadhāti. It is in this infinitely motionless etc.
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We have now ascertained in some detail the nature of the Vedantic Cosmogony and have some idea of the relations of Brahman to His universe; but to us human beings, the crown and last glorious evolution of conscious phenomenal existence in psychophysical matter, the real question of interest is not a knowledge of the nature of the Universe for its own sake, but a knowledge of our selves. ϒνῶθɩ σεαυτóν, Know thyself, is still and always the supreme command for humanity, and if we seek to know the universe, it is because that knowledge is necessary to the more important knowledge of ourselves. Science has adopted a different view; looking only at man as a separate bodily organism it fairly enough regards the Universe as more important than man and seeks to study its laws for their own sake. But still it remains true that humanity persists in its claim and that only those discoveries of the physicist, the zoologist and the chemist have been really fruitful which have helped man practically to master physical nature or to understand the laws of his own life and progress. Whatever moralist or philosopher may say, Yajnavalkya's great dictum remains true that whatever man thinks or feels or does he thinks, feels & does not for any other purpose or creature but for the sake of his Self. The supreme question therefore yet remains imperfectly answered, "So much then for Brahman and the Universe; but what of the things we have cherished so long, what of religion, what of God, what of the human soul?" To some extent the answer to this question has been foreshadowed, but before we get our foundations right for the structure of a higher ethical conception of life and conduct, we must probe to the core in comparison with the current and longstanding ideas on the subject the nature of the Supreme Being as set forth by the Vedanta and His relations to the individual self in man which are the chief preoccupation of religion. We may postpone till later
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the question whether ethics can or cannot be satisfactorily based on a materialistic interpretation of the world and nonreligious sanctions and aims.
A question of the first importance arises at once, how far does the Vedanta sanction the ordinary ideas of God as a Personal Active Being with definite qualities which is all the average religionist understands by the Divine Idea? Whether we regard him with the Jews as a God of Power and Might & Wrath and Justice, or with the Moslems as God the Judge and Governor and Manager of the world or with the early Christians as a God of Love, yet all agree in regarding Him as a Person, definable, imaginable, limited in His Nature by certain qualities though not limited in His Powers, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent & yet by a mysterious paradox quite separate from His creatures and His world. He creates, judges, punishes, rewards, favours, condemns, loves, hates, is pleased, is angry, for all the world like a man of unlimited powers, and is indeed a Superior Man, a shadow of man's soul thrown out on the huge background of the Universe. The intellectual and moral difficulties of this conception are well-known. An Omnipotent God of Love, in spite of all glosses, remains inconsistent with the anguish and misery, the red slaughter and colossal sum of torture and multitudinous suffering which pervades this world and is the condition of its continuance; an Omnipotent God of Justice who created & caused sin, yet punishes man for falling into the traps He has Himself set, is an infinite & huge inconsistency, an insane contradiction in terms; a God of wrath, a jealous God, who favours & punishes according to His caprice, fumes over insults and preens Himself at the sound of praise is much lower than the better sort of men and, as an inferior, unworthy of the adoration of the saints. An omnipresent God cannot be separate from His world, an infinite God cannot be limited in Time or Space or qualities. Intellectually the whole concept becomes incredible. Science, Philosophy, the great creeds which have set Knowledge as the means of salvation, have always been charged with atheism because they deny these conceptions of the Divine Nature. Science and Philosophy & Knowledge take
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their revenge by undermining the faith of the believers in the ordinary religions through an exposure of the crude and semi-savage nature of the ideas which religion has woven together into a bizarre texture of clumsy paradoxes and dignified with the name of God. They show triumphantly that the ordinary conceptions of God when analysed are incredible to the intellect, unsatisfactory and sometimes revolting to the moral sense and, if they succeed in one or two cases in satisfying the heart, succeed only by magnificently ignoring the claims of the reason. They find it an easy task to show that the attempts of theologians to reconcile the difficulties they have created are childish to the trained reason and can find no acceptance with any honest and candid intellect. Theology in vain denies the right of reason to speak in matters of spiritual truth, and demands that the incredible should be believed. Reason is too high a faculty to be with impunity denied its rights. In thus destroying the unsatisfactory intellectual conceptions with which it has been sought to bring the Eternal Being into the province of the reasoning powers, the core & essence of popular religion which is true and necessary to humanity is discredited along with its imperfect coverings; materialism establishes itself for a while as the human creed and the intellect of man holds despotic empire for a while at the expense of his heart and his ethical instincts, until Nature revenges itself and saves the perishing soul of mankind by flooding the world with a religious belief which seeks to satisfy the heart and the ethical instincts only and mocks at and tramples upon the claims of the intellect. In this unnatural duel between faculties which should work harmoniously for our development, the internal peace and progress of the human self is marred & stunted. Much that has been gained is repeatedly being lost and has to be recovered with great difficulty and not always in its entirety.
If reason unaided could solve the enigma of the world, it would be a different matter. But the reason is able only to form at the best an intellectually possible or logically consistent conception of the Eternal in the Universe; it is not able to bring Him home to the human consciousness and relate the
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human soul to Him as it should be related if He exists. For nothing is more certain than this that if a universal & eternal Consciousness exists, the life and development of the human soul must be towards It and governed by the law of Its nature; and a philosophy which cannot determine these relations so as to bring light and help to humanity in its long road is merely an intellectual plaything and might just as well have been kept as a private amusement when minds of a ratiocinative turn meet in the lecture-room or the study. Philosophy can see clearly that the Universe can be explicable only in the terms of the Eternal Consciousness by which it exists. Either God is the material universe in which case the name is a mere convenient abstraction like the materialist's "Nature", or He is the Self within the Universe. If the Self, then He is either transcendent and beyond phenomena and the phenomenal Universe can only be Maya, an imagination in the Universal Mind, or else He is involved in phenomena, Consciousness His soul, the Universe His form, Consciousness the witnessing and inspiring Force, the Universe the work or Energy of the Consciousness. But whichever of these possibilities be the truth, Knowledge is not complete if it stops with this single conception and does not proceed to the practical consequences of the conception. If the universe is Maya, what of the human soul? Is that also Maya, a phenomenon like the rest which disappears with the dissolution of the body or is it permanent and identical with the Eternal Consciousness? If permanent, why then has it confused itself with phenomena and how does it escape from the bondage of this confusion? On the other hand if He is involved in phenomena, what is the relation of the human consciousness to the Eternal? Are our souls parts of Him or manifestations or emanations? And if so do they return into Him at the dissolution of the body or do they persist? And if they persist, what is their ultimate goal? Do they remain by individuality separated from Him for ever even after the end of phenomena or are both the Universe and the individual soul eternal? Or is the individual soul only phenomenally different from the eternal, and the phenomenal difference terminable at the pleasure of the Eternal or by the will of the individual Ego?
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What are the present relations of the self to the Eternal? What are sin & virtue? pleasure & pain? What are we to do with our emotions, desires, imaginations? Has the Eternal Consciousness any direct action on the phenomenal Universe and, if so, how is He different from the popular conception of God?
These are the questions which Philosophy has to answer, and in answering them the great difficulty it has to meet is its inability to find any better sanction for its conclusions than the play of speculative logic or to evolve anything better than a speculative system of metaphysics which may satisfy the argumentative faculty of the mind but cannot satisfy the reason of the heart or find its way to a mastery of that inner self in man which controls his life. Religion, however imperfect, has the secret of that mastery; religion can conquer the natural instincts and desires of man, metaphysics can only convince him logically that they ought to be conquered—an immense difference. For this reason philosophy has never been able to satisfy any except the intellectual few and was even for a time relegated to oblivion by the imperious contempt of Science which thought that it had discovered a complete solution of the Universe, a truth and a law of life independent of religion and yet able to supersede religion in its peculiar province of reaching & regulating the sources of conduct and leading mankind in its evolution. But it has now become increasingly clear that Science has failed to substantiate its claims, and that a belief in evolution or the supremacy of physical laws or the subjection of the ephemeral individual to the interests of the slightly less ephemeral race is no substitute for a belief in Christ or Buddha, for the law of Divine Love or the trust in Divine Power & Providence. If Philosophy failed to be an ethical control or a spiritual force, Science has failed still more completely, and for a very simple reason—the intellect does not control the conduct. There is quite another mental force which controls it and which turns into motives of action only those intellectual conceptions of which it can be got to approve. We arrive therefore at this dilemma that Philosophy & Science can satisfy the reason but cannot satisfy the heart or get mastery of the source of conduct; while Religion which satisfies
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the heart and controls conduct, cannot in its average conceptions permanently satisfy the reason and thus exposes itself to gradual loss of empire over the mind.
A religion therefore which claims to be eternal, must not be content with satisfying the heart and imagination, it must answer to the satisfaction of the intellect the questions with which philosophy is preoccupied. A philosophy which professes to explain the world-problem once for all, must not be satisfied with logical consistency and comprehensiveness; it must like Science base its conclusions not merely on speculative logic, but on actual observation and its truths must always be capable of verification by experiment so that they may be not merely conceivable truth but ascertained truth; it must like religion seize on the heart & imagination and without sacrificing intellectual convincingness, comprehensiveness & accuracy impregnate with itself the springs of human activity; and it must have the power of bringing the human self into direct touch with the Eternal. The Vedantic religion claims to be the eternal religion because it satisfies all these demands. It is intellectually comprehensive in its explanation of all the problems that perplex the human mind; it brings the contradictions of the world into harmony by a single luminous law of being; it has developed in Yoga a process of spiritual experience by which its assertions can be tested and confirmed; the law of being it has discovered seizes not only on the intellect but on the deepest emotions of man and calls into activity his highest ethical instincts; and its whole aim and end is to bring the individual self into a perfect and intimate union with the Eternal.
[This chapter was not written.]
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