The Essence of the Aitareya and Taittiriya Upanishads

by Swami Krishnananda

The great cause of all causes, the Supreme Being, projected this universe, and Itself arose out of the universe, as it were, in a character of immanence, not losing the transcendence of its own essential being. And all the functions that we see in our own selves, jivas or individuals that we are, were present there in their original form. But the seeds of the manifestation of diversity were also sown in the body of this Cosmic Being. There is a great difference between the original and the reflected parts that we are.

Thus it is mentioned in the Upanishad that the causative factors of all the functions were projected first. These are what are usually known as the adhidaivas or the superintending divinities, the gods of religion, the various Devatas, the supreme celestials. They began to twinkle forth in the body of this universal manifested Being. So the adhidaiva is nothing but the Supreme Being Himself appearing in part or essence as the controlling principle behind all functions in the universe.

This is the point of a sudden transformation taking place in many quarters of creation. We cannot actually have an idea as to what are the various transformations that took place. The entire constitution of the government of the universe was laid down at one stroke: “Yathatathyatah arthan vyadadhat sasvatibhyah samabhyah.” It is a nonamendable constitution. It cannot be meddled with or interfered with; it does not stand in need of any kind of change in the process of time. Such an eternal setup of administration of the whole cosmos was contemplated and laid down.

The basic principles of human experience also were laid down and made manifest in the form of the subjective experiencers, called jivas, and the objective world, known as the adhibhuta-prapancha. The individual may be called the adhyatma and the external world is the adhibhuta. The adhidaiva has already been mentioned as the controlling divinities. But all this does not happen at once. There is a gradational procedure followed. From the Cosmic-conscious Being, who as a total of the entire divinity rose up from the manifested universe, there was the multiplicity of divinities, the adhidaivas.

As mentioned towards the conclusion of the previous chapter, there was a drop of the curtain, as it were, and a sudden unexpected and unpalatable change or transformation took place by which the divinities begin to assert a sort of independence. This is the beginning of individuality. As Plato said, “Marriages always take place in the heavens first. They manifest themselves on earth afterwards.” Likewise, this can be said in regard to everything. Even wars take place in the heavens first; they reveal themselves on earth afterwards. Every function takes place in the heavens first—which means to say the adhidaivas contemplate the possibility of every action in the beginning, and these are manifested gradually into the adhibhuta-prapancha, and felt and experienced by the adhyatma, the jiva.

So there was a split of a universal character, as if every drop in the ocean began to feel its own independence. This is a very good example, because the drops in the ocean are not qualitatively different from the ocean. And it appears that, at least at the very outset, there was no qualitative distinction of the individual divinities from the total of the Universal Being. This isolation of particulars was, therefore, in consciousness. We have to underline this word because a real split is not possible; it was not an actual bifurcation, but a consciousness of one’s having been bifurcated, separated, segregated from the Whole.

To give an illustration, it is perhaps exactly as one would experience in dream. There is a split of consciousness into the knowing subject and the world of experience; but the split has not taken place. If it had really taken place, we would not wake up into the integrity of our mind. But nevertheless, there is an experience of such a transformation, change and division having taken place.

The first consequence of this division is, as the Upanishad puts it, an intense hunger and thirst. Well, this is a very beautiful word, implying much more than what our usual hunger and thirst would connote. The hunger and thirst of the divinities who wrenched themselves, as it were, from the total of the Universal can be called, in the language of our modern philosophers, the constitutional appetition of the individual. It is not merely the stomach asking for food or the throat asking for water; it is the entire setup of individuality craving for experience in an objective manner. They craved for objective immortality, a thing that they had lost on account of their isolation from the Whole. They became mortal. Mortality is the consciousness of the isolation of the part from the Whole; and then every disease crops up at once.

Hunger and thirst visited these divinities who were cast into this restless ocean of experience objectively, which is what we call this samsara or the world, the universe. But how could this hunger be satisfied? The hunger and the thirst, or the appetition of the individual for satisfaction, can be satisfied only through a medium of experience. There must be a body; there must be a food to appease this hunger. Where is this food and where is the vehicle? Where is the body in which these divinities are to ride and to have their experience of the satisfaction of their hunger and thirst?

The whole Upanishad is very symbolic and metaphorical in explaining a highly spiritual experience. The divinities were archetypal, superphysical essences. These are the deities. They are not physical bodies like ours, and there was no food for them to satisfy their hunger of the appetition for contact. What were they to contact? So, they asked for an abode: “Give us a body. Give us a vehicle. We want a house to stay in.”

Now the metaphor continues. The Great Being projected a bull before them and said, “Here is the abode for you. This is the body for you. You enter this body and satisfy your hunger and your thirst.” The divinities looked at the bull and said, “This is not suitable. This is not a proper abode for us.” Then He projected a horse. They looked at the body of the horse and concluded that the horse, too, was not a proper body for real satisfaction. Then He projected a human body. “This is correct,” they said. “We want this body only,” and they entered it.

The Aitareya Upanishad is very precise. It does not go into long details of the evolutionary process of the individual body. But certain other Upanishads, such as the Maitrayani for instance, give us hints of there having been a gradual ascent, or we may call it a descent from another point of view, of the consciousness of these individual divinities from one category of experience to another category. We may call it, in the language of our evolutionary doctrines, the rise from the abode of inorganic matter to the abode of the vegetable kingdom, then further up to the abode of the animal world, and finally to the human level. Then we find ourselves in the state in which we are.

The divinities entered every body and rejected the earlier ones on account of not finding adequate facilities for the satisfaction of their appetitions through those bodies. Even if we have a desire, there must be a proper instrument to fulfil that desire. If the instrument is defective, the desire cannot be fulfilled. So they wanted a perfected embodiment or tool for the satisfaction of their appetition—the hunger and the thirst, as the Upanishad puts it. And the human body, which is superior to the lower categories of manifestation of the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, was considered by them as the fittest instrument, and the Great Being ordered them to enter this body. “This is your house. Live in this house. This is your vehicle, and now you do whatever you like through this.” They entered. How did they enter?

Here is the peculiar characteristic of the individual explained in contradistinction with the original status of the divinities in the body of the Cosmic Being. The Upanishad mentions that when the divinities were originally projected from the body of the Cosmic Being, there was first the location of the function, for instance, the mouth; then there was the urge of the expression of that location in the form of speech; and then the divinity Agni, the presiding deity over speech, manifested itself—and so on with every other function.

Thus, the god or the divinity came afterwards; the function came first, so that the controlling principle of even the divinities was co-extensive with the existence of the Universal Being Himself. The gods were not independent, but were dependent on the Total from which they were projected. The gods were not the controllers; rather, they were controlled by the forces that worked integrally behind them, which arose from the total being of the Universal Virat.

But now, what has happened is that when the divinities entered the human body, there was a reversal of the whole process. The human functions correspond to the universal functions in the same way as the functions in a reflected image correspond to the functions in the original that is reflected. Or, to give another example, when we look at our face in a mirror, there is a reflection of the face seen in that mirror, but there is a reversal of parts taking place—the right looks left and the left looks right. Also, if we stand on the bank of a river and see our reflection, we will find the head as the lowermost position in the reflection, though it is the topmost in us, the original.

Some such distorted reversal of processes took place when the divinities entered the body of the individual; instead of the mouth projecting the speech and then the Agni, or the Devata coming thereafter, Agni entered into the body as speech and found the mouth as the abode. So Agni is the controller here, and we are dependent. We are the effects. The effect in the universal status becomes the cause in the individual realm. So the jiva is different from Isvara in this manner, though it has come from Isvara only. It is a tremendous difference, notwithstanding the identity of essence, because of the same divinities operating there as well as here.

When this individual experience takes place in the body of the human personality on account of the entry of these divinities in the manner mentioned, something else also happens. There is immediately a grabbing attitude of the individual in respect of the food that is necessary for the satisfaction of the appetite. The food also was created in the form of this objective universe, and it has to be grasped by the senses.

The particular function in the human individual especially by which food is grasped and assimilated is the apana. The food that we throw into the alimentary canal is digested and absorbed by the apana vayu in our system; the organs cannot have this kind of experience. For example, by speaking about food we cannot be satisfied; by seeing food we will not be satisfied; by hearing about food we will not be satisfied; only by absorbing it through the apana through the alimentary system can we be satisfied.

This again is symbolic of every kind of food that the senses require. They have a desire to contact objects merely for the sake of maintaining their original status. It is a very artificial way, no doubt, that they are inventing, but they have no other alternative. The object of the senses is the medium through which the appetite of the individual is satisfied. This is something very strange, if we go very deep into the matter. This appetite is nothing but the hunger of the self to come in union with the Universal, from which it has been isolated. This point cannot be forgotten in the whole process of our studies.

We are not hungry in the ordinary sense. Any amount of food that we eat, whatever may be the diet that we take, cannot satisfy us because our real requirement is not this food. It is not the khichadi, the dal, the chapatti, the puri or the laddu that can satisfy us. But it appears as if this is what we require. It is not any kind of drink that we are actually in need of. Something else is the need; and that need is very deep. It is like the very deep-rooted chronic illness of which we have no knowledge on the superficial surface.

We are not asking for any kind of contact, really speaking. We are thoroughly mistaken, and that mistake itself is lost sight of completely. This complete oblivion of the very reason behind this hunger is called avidya. These terms do not occur in the Upanishad. I am explaining from the terminologies of the later philosophies.