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by Swami Krishnananda
The treasure was inside us and not outside, but this point is always missed by the mind on account of the quickness of the duration of this experience of happiness. If it had lasted for half an hour, or one or two hours, we would have had time enough to think as to what is happening. But it is a miracle indeed, and it does not last for more than a second. All happiness is miraculous, instantaneous, fractional. We cannot be happy for days together. That is not possible. It is not given to us in this mortal world.
The moment the happiness flashes forth, we feel an ecstasy which is beyond description in language, and at that time we are under the misconception that this happiness has come from the object because we think, “When the object was far away from me, I was not happy; it has come near me and, therefore, I am happy.” So naturally we argue logically, as it were, but falsely, that the happiness has come from the object. It has not come from the object. It has come from a condition of perfection that has been aroused in our consciousness by the proximity of the object which has acted merely as an external agent.
So ananda or happiness, which is in the anandamaya kosha, is a limited expression of the universal ananda, which is the essential nature of the Atman. As I mentioned to you, this Atman is also called Brahman, because it is everywhere. The selfhood of Brahman in every particular is defined by the term Atman, and the universality of the same Atman is defined by the term Brahman. So they mean one and the same thing, like the space all-pervading and the space inside a vessel. They do not make any distinction essentially or characteristically. This is the Ananda Mimamsa—the analysis of the nature of happiness and love, etc.
We are happy very rarely in life, on account of there being very few occasions when the mind comes back to its own source with the satisfaction of having possessed the things that we need. Always we are in search of things, but we do not get those things; and so the search continues throughout our life. As long as the search continues, the mind is outside; it is focused elsewhere. Therefore, we are not of ourselves; we have transferred ourselves to objects outside which have not been possessed by us. So perpetually we are unhappy. From morning to night there is only sorrow; there is no joy.
But by chance, by some miracle of nature or wonder, if the object comes into our possession, at that moment we are happy. But, how long can the object be under our possession? Nobody can possess anything permanently, for the law of nature is such. Nothing belongs to us, and we belong to nobody. Everything belongs to one single whole, and so the consideration on the part of any individual that one can grab a thing, possess it and enjoy it eternally is again a false notion. So, there must be bereavement or separation of the object from oneself under the very law of nature.
The coming together of two objects is also a miracle. The coming into contact of the subject with the so-called object of affection is due to the working of some karma. When the wind blows in a particular direction on the surface of the ocean, logs of wood that are floating there come together, and they appear to meet. When the wind blows in another direction, the logs get separated. So the logs may think, if they have consciousness, that they are friends—they are coming together, and talking to each other, and liking each other. We like each other due to the wind that blows; if the wind blows in a different direction, we will be thrown off in some other direction.
The law of nature, the law of universality, or we may call it the law of karma in a particular way, has brought about the union of one thing with another thing under certain given conditions, and that seems to be the source of our happiness. The bereavement that we think of, or the loss of objects that takes place, is due to the contrary action of the very same law under the dispensation of its own constitution. Transfer of things from place to place is done according to the law of the universe, and not according to the law of our personal wish. Personal wish has to be subordinated to the universal will of the Supreme, if we are to be happy. So this is a very unfortunate conclusion that we come to when we actually analyse how we love things, why we love things, how happiness arises in us, etc. We seem to be utterly mistaken in all our attempts at possession of things for the purpose of personal satisfaction.
This anandamaya kosha, or the sheath of bliss, is the subtlest layer, the most initial movement of consciousness outwardly. Then it becomes grosser as intellect, further grosser as mind, and then as the senses, prana, and the physical body, and then as its relationship with the other physical objects. This is called the world of bondage, relationships, externality, contact, separation, sorrow and so on. So here we have in quintessence the meaning of the way in which the five sheaths work in the individual due to the isolation of consciousness from the Total.
This was the subject of the Aitareya Upanishad—how the individual was isolated, segregated, cut off from the Universal Whole, and how it wriggles forth to come in contact with the Universal by means of external contact which is called affection, love, etc. All this is a drama which is inscrutable to the ordinary limited, bound mind. To disentangle from this mire of bondage is the purpose of the analysis of the Upanishad.
The Taittiriya Upanishad goes on further. The Universal Absolute is like a non-existence for us. What exists for us is the world only. If we think that only the world exists, and the Absolute does not exist merely because we cannot see it with our eyes, we are going to be miserable indeed. We will also be negated completely from the selfhood of our experience on account of the wrong impression that we entertain that the Absolute does not exist. “Asanneva sa bhavati, asat brahmeti veda chet. Asti brahmeti chet veda, santamenam tato viduriti.” Whoever denies God denies himself, because our own self is nothing but the replica of God. The denial of the Absolute is the denial of one’s own selfhood of character because, as we have already seen, we are constituted of the very substance of the Absolute. The Absolute, or the Universal, is That outside which there can be nothing, including ourselves. So in denying God or the Absolute, we deny ourselves, which is absurd.
The Absolute appears to be non-existent from the point of view of the senses, not from its own point of view. It is non-existent to the senses because the senses can perceive only what is in space and in time. But the Absolute Brahman is not in space and in time; it is the Self. Again we come to the point that we cannot see the Self, just as we cannot see our own eyes. The Self is the seeing consciousness. That is called the Atman; that is called Brahman or the Absolute. How can we see it? Who can see the Seer?
We cannot see the Seer because the Seer is the seer of things. The Atman cannot be beheld in the way we behold a building outside or people in the world externally, because the beholding outside is done through the senses. But the senses function on account of the light of the Atman. The deepest Self within us cannot be experienced by any activity of the senses. And if we try to contact the Absolute with the help of the senses or through a test tube in a laboratory in a scientific manner, as they call it today, then we will be a failure. The Absolute is the selfhood in things and it can be known only by self-restraint, by self-control, by tapas.
Now we come to the importance of tapas, whereby Varuna is supposed to have taught his son Bhrigu the knowledge of the Atman. Bhrigu approached his father and said to him: “Master, Father, Sir, teach me Brahman.” The father gave the following definition of Brahman and asked him to contemplate on it. “Yato va imani bhutani jayante; yena jatani jivanti; yat prayantyabhisamvisanti; tad vijijnasasva; tat brahma”: That from which everything has come, That in which everything abides, and That to which everything must return one day is Brahman, the Absolute. This is a very difficult definition; we cannot make any sense out of it, and he was asked to meditate on this.
He went on meditating. He could not catch the full import at all. So he realised that the whole material universe is Brahman. “Annam brahmeti vyajanat.” Due to the intensity of concentration, there was a realisation of the togetherness of all the physical things in the world. This is what we will experience in meditation. If we concentrate intensely on any object, we will find the inter-connectedness of the things in this universe in a physical manner at the initial outset. This was what Bhrigu realised. He realised anna, food, matter, the physical universe itself is Brahman. Then he went to the father and submitted, “This is how I realised. Please tell me about Brahman. Is it true?” “Tapasa brahma vijijnasasva, tapo brahmeti”: You contemplate further; you will know what it is. He did not give any answer. The father never initiated him into any further mysteries. He simply said, “Tapas taptva”: Restrain your mind more and more, concentrate more and more, meditate more and more, and you will realise what Brahman is.
The universal material is not the Ultimate Reality. This was what Bhrigu realised by deep meditation. He entered further inside into the substance behind the physical universe and came to experience that subtle vital energy permeating the whole cosmos as Reality. It is called prana. “Prano brahmeti vyajanat.”
Earlier we studied the five sheaths in an individualistic fashion, which are experienced in a cosmical fashion by deep meditation. The individual is a cross section of the universal. Whatever is in the universal we will find in the individual, but in a minute, microscopic manner. The five sheaths are individual as well as cosmic. When we regard ourselves as this physical body alone, then we will have a notion only of the individual five sheaths. These are the annamaya, pranamaya, manomaya, vijnanamaya and anandamaya koshas mentioned.
But in real meditation, we concentrate our mind on the absoluteness of this object. That is the meaning of meditation, incidentally. Meditation is the fixing of the attention of our mind on any object exclusively, as if it is the total reality and nothing else exists outside it. This sort of intense fixing of the attention of the mind on any given object bursts the bubble of individuality, or the limitation of the mind. Then we are made to enter into the ocean, with which this particularity of the object and our own body are all connected.
So likewise, meditation was practised by Bhrigu. From the universal physical he went to the universal vital that is prana, universal prana. And he went to the father and said: “This is what I experienced. Please teach me further.” The father did not give any answer. He said, “Tapasa brahma vijijnasasva”: Meditate further and realise for yourself. He was a very good Guru. He would not tell anything. He simply said, “Meditate further.” Perhaps he was the best Guru. It is no use simply superimposing some ideas on the mind of the disciple by saying something which the mind cannot grasp. So he said, “Concentrate more, practise more, sit more and more for meditation, and see what comes out.”
Then he realised that the cosmic mind is the Supreme Reality. Mano brahmeti vyajanat. This is still subtler. The cosmic mind which vibrates everywhere in the form of prana, or the vital energy in the cosmos, was realised by him in his direct experience. Again he went to the father and said, “This is what I experienced; teach me further.” The father replied, “Tapasa brahma vijijnasasva”: Meditate further and know for yourself. Then he realised the cosmic understanding, the intellect or intelligence—mahat tattva as it is sometimes called—as Brahman: “Vijnanam brahmeti vyajanat”.
Now in all these realisations, there was a little bit of externality. Whatever be the expanse of this experience in its cosmic manifestation, there is still a sort of externality in it. That externality should also go completely into universal subjectivity. That had not taken place yet. So, after the realisation of the cosmic understanding, mahat tattva, again he went to the father and said, “Teach me Brahman.” The father said, “Meditate further and realise for yourself.” Then he realised “anandam brahmeti vyajanat”: Bliss is Brahman. The constitutive essence of Reality is happiness. It is not objectivity; it is not an attribute, and it is not a thing.