The great issues of life, whether personal or social, hinge upon the concept of duty, - what one ought to do in life We know very well that the whole enterprise of mankind is a struggle of duty towards a particular end, and it makes no difference what position a person occupies in life in so far as the broad question of duty is concerned. The division of duty may vary from person to person, or from condition to condition, but that there is a duty of some sort cannot be denied, because duty is another name for the function that one is expected to perform in a given location of one’s life. But what one ought to do cannot be decided easily unless another question is answered; - what is it that one is aiming at? Our aim will decide to a large extent the nature of our expectations, whether in our individual capacity or in our capacity as units in human society. What is it that we seek, finally? If this is clear to the mind, evidently what one ought to do, also, would be clear. But, neither of these questions is easy to answer. And without properly conceiving the background of our efforts in life we seem to be going headlong everyday, right from the morning till the evening, taking for granted that everything is clear to our minds. In fact, if there has been a proper clarity of thought in respect of one’s duty and the aim of one’s life, there would be no such thing as conflict in life. Conflict or disharmony arises among mankind due to the fact of missing the very purpose of life and, consequently, missing the knowledge of the functions that one is supposed to perform in life. Often we hear people saying "This is my duty, this is not my duty." But, on what grounds does one make this statement? How do we know that this is our duty, or this is not our duty? Is it because we have been born in a particular family, our father has been performing this function, and therefore it is ours, or it is not ours; or is there any other logical foundation for this concept of one’s having this to do or not to do. We, generally, do not go deep into these matters. Mankind, unfortunately, is averse to go into the depths of any question. We like to float on the surface in every kind of activity of ours. Whatever be our walk of life, we seem to be content merely by glossing over things without going into the profundity of the issues on hand. But no problem is merely a surface issue; every problem is as wide as life itself. We can imagine how vast and how immense in magnitude human life is and our concept of duty cannot be ‘smaller’ than that. There is something in us which is vitally connected with everyone else. But for this fact there would not be an endeavor to talk in terms of mankind or humanity. It is very strange that we speak of mankind, as if there is some sort of relationship between oneself and another in the group that we call humanity. The desire to form organizations, institutions, bodies, etc., whether in the small unit of a family or the larger ones like the nation, or an international organization, - whatever be the concept of the body thhat we form - the hidden desire seems to be to form a harmonious whole out of the little ingredients we call human individuals. This desire is enough to indicate that there is some purpose we are aiming at in life.
 

       An organization is a general term and it can apply to any kind of people coming together. If two people join and harmoniously work, it is an organization. If it is more than two, it can be a thousand, it is still an organization; and if the whole of humanity is taken as a single body, that too is an organization. Whatever it is, the point is that we seem to be discontented merely by any form of isolated life that we may be compelled to live. An individual is not always happy by being absolutely cut off from human society. There is an instinct inborn in our nature to come together with other people, we call it a social instinct without understanding what it actually means. An instinct is an intelligent seeking on our part for the purpose of the achievement of a goal. An instinct is not a blind and chaotic urge that arises in ourselves; it is a rational, purposive movement which is unintelligibly conducting itself towards a particular aim, and when we cannot understand the rational background of the instinct, we call it irrational. But if we can understand the purposive movement of the instinct, it becomes logical and there would be then no distinction between these two. And why is it that we have an instinct for social life? Why do we wish to come together and form bodies, whether it is a religious body, or a social body, or a political body, whatever be that body? We have some un-understandable and inscrutable feeling within us from a part of ourselves which speaks in its own language. There are depths in our personality which are deeper than our conscious level, as we all know very well. This instinct for social collaboration does not necessarily arise from a conscious deliberative thinking of the human individual. It is automatic. "You feel." Many people say: "I feel." But this feeling arises not from the conscious level. It is not a logically deduced conclusion arrived at by induction or deduction. It is a feeling which has a reason of its own: which transcends ordinary organizational thinking in logical terms. We have an aim behind our coming together. Now, this necessity to come together, work together implies that we seek a common purpose. Otherwise, there would be no point in such a longing. If each individual flies at a tangent and there is absolutely no connection between the aim of myself and yourself, there would be absolutely no meaning in our joining together, coming together, meeting together or performing a work through a body or an organization. It is taken for granted that every organization of human society, of whatever nature, has an implication behind it, - that there is a common purpose behind human individuals. Otherwise, people would not sit together or speak together in the same language. Stretching this argument a little further, we are very fond of speaking in terms of "mankind" these days, - humanity. We would be happy if there were no wars, no battles, would be happy if there no quarrels; if there is a single government for the whole world. This is a great aspiration, no doubt; but how does this aspiration arise, unless the whole mankind has a single purpose or aim before it. If every individual is differentiated from every other, there cannot be such an aspiration at all. That we seek such a possibility, whether it is immediately practicable or not, is itself an indication of what humanity is basically made of. It is substantially one. But for the fact of this substantial unity of the building-blocks of mankind, there would be no such thing as a talk of universal government, etc. Even this idea will not arise in one’s mind. We know that the effect cannot contain what is not in the cause. The idea of universal government, or a single mankind, and human solidarity etc., which arises as a kind of effect, a psychological product, from our minds has a cause behind it. If we are logical thinkers, we would naturally accept that there cannot be an effect without a cause. The very functioning of the human mind in terms of universal collaboration and achievement is an indication that it is based on some cause which is characterized by similar purposes.

       So, our concept of duty in life is naturally dependent on the aim that we have before ourselves, and, as was explained, the final aim of mankind does not seem to be segregated internally, a fact that comes to high relief on account of our basic aspirations. We feel happy if we see our own brothers. There is a feeling between man and man. It is a common feeling, no doubt, arising on account of kinship of character and sympathy of feeling and unity of purpose. If this had not been there, there would be no such thing psychologically as mankind or humanity. If the aim seems to be an organizational unity, a thing that automatically comes out as a consequence of our ways of thinking, our duties also cannot be of a dissimilar character. If there is a purposive collaboration of the aims of life among mankind tending towards an organic perfection in itself, there cannot be different sets of ideals or duties before mankind, because duties or functions are nothing but activities directed towards the achievement of the purpose of humanity. The duties are as much related one to the other as the segments of the different aspirations of individuals are in respect of the total purpose of mankind. As there cannot be an effect without a cause, a cause is implied logically behind the manifestation of an effect. This effect that we are speaking of today seems to be so large that the cause should be at least as large as itself. We have a single humanitarian psychology before us, man’s mind working in its generality. It is not my mind or your mind that is working but the mind of mankind as a whole aiming at human perfection, mankind’s solidarity and a peaceful existence. This is the way in which the total mind of mankind works, as an effect of a cause which is prior, naturally, to this effect of the total thinking of mankind. We may have a doubt in our minds as to whether it is true that we all think alike. Surely, we are not always thinking alike. Each individual has a world under his own hat, as they say, but this is only an apparent diversity that we see. When we are brought deep into the levels of our basic aspirations and likes, we will realize that these differences vanish. I give you a concrete example. You are a patriot and lover of your nation, and there are millions of people inhabiting a nation, forming a nation, each individual having his own or her own ideas, whims and fancies, ideals and ideologies. Suppose a war breaks out and the whole nation is threatened by a disastrous situation, one can imagine how all the individuals join together, gird up their loins and aim at a single purpose, - the isolated whims and fancies disappear at once. This can be very easily proved by a little bit of deep thinking. When a common purpose is before us, the individual idiosyncrasies recede to the background. The individual whims come to the forefront only when the basic security is granted, not otherwise. If our life itself is going to be threatened, if the whole mankind is to be visited by a catastrophe, one can see how mankind joins together to avert this possibility. There would be no man-woman distinction, there would be no distinction of East, West, North, South, black, white, etc. People would, then, all stand up vigilant, wakeful to face this threat that is endangering mankind as a whole. This has been seen through the course of history, and we can see it at any time under similar conditions. We seem to be isolated only when the basic necessities are supplied to us, not otherwise. If the basic roots are shaken, then our different ideologies on the surface vanish altogether. All this is a little bit of thinking along logical lines for the purpose of coming to a conclusion as to the duties of mankind based on the aims or purposes of life.

       Unless there is some kind of a connecting link lying at the background of human thought, the mind would not function in this manner. There cannot be any such thing as international thinking, unless there is a foundation for such a possibility. We know very well that diversities imply a kind of unity. Even two minds cannot communicate with each other unless there is a corresponding medium between the two minds. If one mind is cut off from another mind absolutely by totally dissimilar characters, the one cannot communicate with the other. There would be no congress between one person and another person. But we communicate our thoughts; we speak language which can be transmitted to another; we understand each other. The fact that we are able to know one another implies that we can psychologically come together. This, again, implies secondarily that this understanding or thinking or communication of thought between one and the other is an external indication of a basic unity between the two persons. There would be no such thing as the concept of two unless there is the concept of the one already behind them. One cannot imagine that there are two things unless one is able to synthesize these two things in one’s consciousness. So, carrying this deduction to the larger dimension of humanity, or mankind, as a whole, we seem to be floating on the ocean of a single Mind - the Mind of mankind, the total Mind of humanity, of which the individual minds are, as it were, drops. This total Mind seems to be urging us forward for the realization of a purpose.

       With this introduction, we may now turn to the message of some of the Upanishads, the great legacy not merely of this country but of mankind as a whole, one should say. The Upanishads are the record of the experiences of superhuman thinkers, those who had risen above the level of ordinary mankind, and rose beyond the limitations of sensory knowledge. It is the Upanishads that will guide us in answering these questions which we raised at the beginning. We cannot independently walk with the strength of our own legs in this arduous task of solving universal questions. The Upanishads, among whom we are to take up here one or two for the purpose of the analysis of the subject, are documents left by people who, by the power of their meditations, soared above the ordinary level of human thinking. They could plumb the depths of this total Mind to which we made reference just now. For us, the total Mind of mankind is only a theory, it is a logically deduced abstract something. We are inferring that there should be a total Mind, on the ground that mankind seems to be moving towards the realization of a common purpose. But these masters were not merely theoreticians. They were those who thought in terms of that single Mind only. As I think through my mind, you think through your mind and each one thinks through one’s mind, these masters were able to think through this total Mind, so that their thoughts were not individual thoughts, they were thoughts of all people blended together into an amalgam of completeness. These are the Upanishads. The reason why we feel like taking the aid of these thoughts of the Upanishadic masters in answering our questions is that they have gone to the very roots of the cause of all causes of these effects manifested as this world, this society, mankind, the efforts of mankind, etc. We speak of human life, human duties and human purposes and so on, without properly paying sufficient heed to the conditioning factors that underlie these phenomena behind mankind. Our minds work in a particular fashion, being conditioned by certain factors.

       Now, we gradually move to a philosophical realm from the ordinary social and empirical level of thought on which we have been traversing up to this time. Philosophy is a study of causes, rather ultimate causes, and an explanation of everything in terms of these causes. Sometimes they call it metaphysical thinking. Whatever be the name we give to it, it is the study of ultimate causes and an explanation of everything through these. The ultimate causes should be such that there should not be causes behind these causes; else they would not be the ultimate causes. The meaning of an ultimate cause is that it stands by its own right, and it does not need an explanation or a cause precedent to it or prior to it. If every cause has a cause behind it, naturally there should be a final cause which is an explanation of every other cause. Otherwise, we would land in an infinite regress of causes behind causes without coming to a decision whatsoever. But you know very well that our minds are averse to any kind of infinite regress. We strive for a final conclusion. But, this would not be possible unless there is an ultimate cause of causes, the causeless cause. This causeless cause we call the final cause. The ultimate cause should be capable of containing in itself every effect. And before we try to understand the nature of this cause which is ultimate, we also have to understand the effects which are contained in the cause. The effects are what we are capable of thinking about anything which we confront in our life. The whole objective universe is the effect. Why do we call it an effect? Because the universe has a tendency to move forward through the process of evolution. You would never see one atom in this world lying static without movement. There is a motion of everything towards something of which there is no proper idea at the present moment. Rivers are flowing, the sun and the moon and the stars are active, we are more active, the whole world is busy with doing something. The astronomical universe and the sub-atomic world are active moving vibrantly. All seem to be ever engaged for some purpose which they have not yet fulfilled. If the purpose has been fulfilled, there would be no activity afterwards. The very fact that everything in Nature seems to be busily doing something is an indication that it is aiming at a purpose. This is the characteristic of an effect. An effect is that which is aiming at its own transcendental nature. There is an effort on the part of everyone to transcend oneself, to rise in dimension, to become better quantitatively and qualitatively. This is what they call the urge of evolution, whether it is physical evolution, biological evolution or psychological evolution. So, from this point of view one can very easily conclude that the whole universe is in the position of an effect and is not the ultimate cause. For, if it had been an ultimate cause, there would have been no tendency to move or transcend, there would not be such a thing as an urge to move forward, to outgrow oneself. Everything in the world seems to have a tendency to outgrow itself, to become more and grow larger. That is why it is said that the universe is an effect, and not a cause. It turns towards the cause, and its activities cease on the realization of the final cause, the purpose of existence.

       The universe is moving towards the realization of its purpose. This is cosmic evolution, which takes place through different manifestations. The lowest level of it is physical, the stage of material evolution. The higher is the biological evolution or growth, to become inwardly subtler, a tendency to psychological growth. This is mental evolution, intellectual ascent and so on. The whole world conceived of in any of its levels seems to be restlessly moving forward for the realization of its one purpose. What this purpose is, is the subject of the Upanishads. Two of the important Upanishads are the Aitareya and the Taittiriya which are related to each other in a way, and coextensive in content, the one, emphasizing one aspect of the matter and the other a coordinated theme. The Aitareya and the Taittiriya Upanishads speak of the same theme but from two different points of view.

       They try to answer the question of life by reference to causes. This is a very proper attitude, no doubt. You know very well that every question when it is attempted to be answered brings us to its causative factors. Why is there a disease? Why is a person sick? We ask questions of this kind. In reply we try to find out the present cause of the situation. If one is sick, we must find out the reason behind the sickness. If there is a war, we must find out the cause behind the war. If there is some kind of discrepancy, we have to know the cause behind it. If there is any kind of tension, we argue out why this kind of tension has arisen. Unless we find out the cause of a particular circumstance, we cannot probe into the context of its circumstance, whether it is a physical, social, biological or medical one. This is a philosophical attitude we are adopting towards everything in life. There is no one who is not a philosopher, in the sense that everyone wants to know the cause of particular effects. This is the philosophical trend of thinking. The great masters of the Upanishads moved from the lower causes to the higher ones, until they were able to grasp the final cause of things, and they gave out their conclusions, the final truth for mankind. The ills of mankind are effects in their nature, and they become causes of other illnesses to which we are heir. By the process of deep Yoga and meditation, in which the masters of yore engaged themselves, plumbing the depths of reality, the ultimate cause, the truths of life were unraveled. These experiences are recorded in the Upanishads.

       The way in which we can encounter anything is twofold, inductive and deductive. Students of logical intelligence move from particulars to generals, which is inductive reasoning. If it is a movement from the general to the particular, we call it deduction. Both ways are permissible according to the nature of the case. Everyday the sun rises in the East. We are seeing the sun rising in the East for days, months and years. We collect the particular instances of the sun rising in the East everyday. Then we make a general conclusion, we say the sun rises always in the East. But there is a flaw in inductive reasoning. Our conclusions may not be correct. The sun may be rising in the East from thousands of years, but why should we come to the conclusion that the sun shall rise only in the East in the future also? It need not be a valid conclusion, because the sun is not bound by our conclusions. It can change its position for some reason or the other. Some law may operate differently, and tomorrow the sun may rise in the West. Induction is not valid as an ultimate form of reasoning. Going from the particular to the general may be a practically useful way of thinking, as far as things go, but not ultimately reliable. The deductive reasoning is the other way round, it is argument from the general to the particular. For example, ‘all men are mortal’ is the theory. We know very well that everyone dies. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal by nature. This is the way of argument from the general to the particular. From the general concept of all humanity being mortal, we come to the conclusion that Socrates must also be mortal, since he is also a man. This is to give an idea of inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.

       Philosophy is mostly inductive especially from the point of Western thought. Western philosophers are very much inclined to the inductive way of thinking. They cannot suddenly jump to generals in as much as there are great controversies concerning the nature of the universal. We are not going to enter into this subject now. Our purpose is different. The masters of the Upanishads had a direct experience and from this experience which is of the general, they drew conclusions on particular consequences in a deductive fashion. When we study the Aitareya and the Taittiriya Upanishads, we will find that both of them adopted the deductive process of reasoning. The thought is deductive in the sense that the ultimate conclusion has already been given to us. The nature of the cause need not be investigated by the sweat of one’s brow, through inductive reasoning. We can try that method also, of course, but, for the present moment, it is not necessary. The Upanishads come to the conclusion of an ultimate generality. This declaration pertains to eternal verities; to the ultimate nature of reality, the cause of all causes. The ultimate cause is the determining factor in the effects. The whole of this world, this universe is the effect of the ultimate cause, Brahman. We have already noticed that the ultimate cause cannot have another cause behind it; if that was the case, it cannot be regarded as the ultimate cause; it would then be an effect of another cause altogether. There cannot be two ultimate causes; else there would arise the difficulty of understanding the relationship between the two causes. We cannot come to any conclusion without a definite notion of relation. The concept of relation is the most difficult thing to imagine in the mind. We cannot understand how one thing is related to another thing. The very fact of our ability to communicate our thoughts among ourselves is an indication of there being one Mind behind ourselves. Otherwise, there would not be such thing as communication at all. Likewise, the imagination of two ultimate causes would imply that there is something connecting these two causes, transcendent to these two causes which will become the ultimate cause. So, somehow or other, the ultimate cause cannot be more than one, and there cannot be another cause behind it.

       This final substance is constituted of the essence of everything, and it is our very Self. It is called the Atman. It is the Atman because it is the root-substance of all things which are in the position of an effect. The Atman is the substance of everyone and everything. It is the Total Substance of all created being, and so it is called Brahman. The Total Substance is Brahman, and the same thing conceived as the essence of particular beings is known as the Atman. Even as there cannot be a cause behind the final cause, there cannot be an Atman behind the Atman, for the very basic substance is what is called the Atman. The substance should be ultimate and the Atman is such. The ultimate in us is the Atman. The ultimate in the cosmos is Brahman. There cannot be anything other than this Universal Reality.

       The Aitareya Upanishad proclaims that the Atman, in the beginning, was the all and it has become all this universe. The concept of the universe is also a difficult thing to entertain in the mind unless we analyze the universe into its very components. The universe is manifested out of this Total Substance, Brahman, which is the Atman, or the Self, of the Universe. So the total effect came out of the total cause. From Brahman came the universe. Now, something coming from something else is also a difficult thing to understand. What is the procedure of the world coming out of the ultimate cause? What is the relationship between the effect and the cause here? There cannot, in fact, be a vital distinction between the effect and the cause. Our aspirations would be meaningless, the search of reality would be baseless, and there would be no function of thought as self-transcendence, if we are not vitally connected with the cause. Every activity in the world is the effect moving towards the cause by various degrees of self-transcendence. The very presence of the moral urge to overstep ourselves to a higher cause, or purpose, is a proof of the fact that there is a living contact of the cause with its effect. While the effect has come from the cause, it is not disconnected from the cause. This is one principle laid down at the very beginning itself. The universe seems to have come out descending in such a way that it has not isolated itself from the Absolute, vitality.

       There is not any vital disconnection between the effect and the cause. There is some sort of a relation always. There is an inscrutable relationship, ‘Anirvachaniya Samantha’ between the effect and the cause. There is not an absolute identity, because there is a manifestation. It is not an absolute manifestation, because we can see our relationship with the cause. This relationship is an unintelligible one, between God and man, the Creator and the universe, the Absolute and the relative. This relationship is the beginning of all cosmological questions, the theories of creation and doctrines of every kind. Once creation is admitted as a fact of empirical experience, everything that devolves from it is also accepted. You are only to accept the fact of the creation of the universe, and you are made at once to accept everything else, also, automatically. There as a gradual evolution by an increase in the density of manifestation at lower levels. The Absolute never loses hold of the universe.

       The Atman alone was: "Atma va idam agra asit; na anyat kinchana nishat," says the Aitareya Upanishad at the very commencement. The Atman existed as the unparalleled being and it became the cause of the manifested elements. We have the great division of the elements as Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth, in all their densities or levels of expression. There is a causal condition, a subtle condition and a gross condition. This was manifested. But the Absolute is never disconnected from them at any time; it always maintains a lien over everything that it has created. It enters the great objects of a cosmic nature, and this is what we call the immanence of God. The Creator does not stand as an extra-cosmic substance unrelated to Creation. The Upanishad rules out totally any new coming of a fresh effect from, the cause. The immanence of the cause in the effect is admitted. It is the immanence of the cause in the effect that creates an aspiration in us for higher values. When we ask for God, it is God speaking from within. The cause is speaking to itself from the bottom of the effect, when there is an aspiration on the part of the effect to move towards the cause. This circumstance of the cause being hiddenly present in every effect is called the immanence of the cause in the effect. Then we say, God is present in the world. The Creator is not outside the Cosmos. He is not fashioning the world as a potter makes a pot or a carpenter makes a table. It is not like that. He is one with the substance of things in immanence, as clay is present in the pot out of which the pot is manufactured, or as wood is present in the table out of which it is made. So we cannot be isolated from the substance of the cause. Thus, there was an entry of the cosmic substance into this cosmic effect. This is the first act of God, - the entry of the Absolute into the relative in its universal fashion. He became the cosmic man, to speak in ordinary terms, the Maha Purusha or Purushottama. The Absolute unrelated to the created universe became the cosmic determining factor of the universe. This is the Great Being spoken of in the Purushasukta and the Satarudriya of the Veda, and the various scriptures which speak of the all-pervading or omnipresent character of God. We always speak of the omnipresent nature of God, by which we mean the cause is hidden in the effect, immanently present and is not isolated from the effect.

       Now, this is a very grand concept the Upanishads are placing before us in connection with the process of the creation of the universe, and we are very happy to hear all these truths. But, we are also unhappy today; this also we cannot forget. Why has this sudden unhappiness come out of this great happiness of God’s creation? When we hear all these great statements of cosmic manifestation, we feel elated; but we have little sorrows in our homes and when we get out of the hall we have to scratch our heads with our own problems. What has happened to us? How has this grief come into our hearts, out of this great Cosmic manifestation of God’s entering into this universal effect. This also will be told to us by the Upanishad itself. There was a very dramatic action of God, as it were, - a real drama he enacted before himself, because there was no audience before him. He was the director, he was the dramatis personae and he was the audience. It is very strange! He immediately visualized himself as the all, - Aham idam sarvam asmi, - "I am this all. This universe of manifested effects is myself." Naturally, of course, because the whole effect is constituted of the substance of this ultimate cause. "I am this all." It is as if the clay is telling, "I am all the pots"; the wood is telling, "I am all the tables, I am all the chairs, I am all the furniture." Quite true and it is very interesting indeed. Every effect that has come out of a single cause is that cause only. So the cause is affirming itself in every effect, "I am this all."

       But we are to enter the vale of tears after sometime due to a catastrophic effect that seems to have followed from this dramatic manifestation of God. Nobody can say what has happened. We are completely screened away from this mystery. There is an iron curtain between ourselves and this mystery that has taken place. We are told not to speak about those things. The mind is repelled from the very thought of investigation into the mystery behind this event or happening. We are simply exiled for no fault of our, as it were. We cannot even ask, ‘why?’ We cannot know whether it is because of the will of God that we have been exiled in this manner, or due to a fault of ours. In certain forms of administration the subjects cannot question as to how a thing has happened, because they are subjected to the law of such administration. So, there is a peculiar universal government of God operating in a despotic manner, as it were, which insists upon its own language being spoken by every one and insists also on its law being obeyed in the manner it is expected. There is a sudden dropping of the curtain in this great scene of cosmic drama that is being played before us and we do not see what is behind the screen. The screen has fallen. The many, which the One has become, are there, no doubt; the pots which have come out of clay are there; the effects are there. But one thing is not there, and that is the beginning of our sorrows.

       When we say that the Atman alone was, we assert the One alone to the exclusion of the many; and when we speak of the One becoming the many, we are conscious of the One and the many at the same time. Then comes the level of thinking where we are aware only of the many and not the One. That is the dividing wall between the One and the many. The original drama was an envisagement of the many by the One. That is the grand creation. But when the curtain falls, the One is cut off from the many, or rather, the concept or the consciousness of the One is isolated from the consciousness of the many. Then there is what we call the manifestation of diversity in a literal sense. Then comes the necessity for one individual to cognize or to perceive the presence of another individual. But, before this took place, the original Cause has taken care to see that it does not lose control over this manifestation completely. This is another aspect of the beauty of the drama. It has maintained its multiplicity with the background of the unity of its own Atmanhood or Selfhood, so that there was a peculiar intermediary condition where the multiplicity of the manifestation was the content of the total awareness of a single being, the universal Atman that it was. And the Aitareya Upanishad tells us that the mouth burst open, speech came out, and out of it Agni, the deity, came. The eyes came out, sight manifested itself out of it, Aditya or the sun came, and so on and so forth, in respect of the various functions. The beauty of this manifestation is, a fact which we should never forget when we go further, the deity comes afterwards, the function comes first. There is the mind first, thought afterwards, and the moon subsequently. The eye is first, seeing afterwards, sun still afterwards; so that the guardians or the deities of the various functions in their cosmic set up are subsidiary to the ultimate cause which is the one Atman. They are not the controlling elements, as it is the case with ourselves. The universe was an effect of the Atman. It does not stand in the position of a cause, outside us, stimulating our senses to activity, as it happens to us today. The presence of an object stimulates our senses and the mind, and then we become conscious of the object. Then we establish a relationship with the world outside. The world is first and we come afterwards, here in this individual empirical state. But there it was not like that. The world was subsequent. And here we become the consequents. Now, this is a very crucial point where we have to very carefully draw a distinction between the cosmic level and the individual level; because, the extent of our understanding of this mystery of the distinction between the cosmic and the individual will also be the extent to which we will be able to understand what life is, what duty is and what the aim of mankind is.  

Chapter II

ISVARA AND JIVA

       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 case of 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, the divinities. 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. And 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 non-amendable constitution. It cannot be meddled with, interfered with; it does not stand in need of any kind of change in the process of time. Such an eternal set up of administration of the whole cosmos was contemplated and laid down. Now, 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, 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 were the multiplicity of divinities or 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 takes 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, we can say 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 an 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 exactly perhaps 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. you would not wake up into the integrity of your mind. But there is an experience nevertheless 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 throat asking for water; it is the entire set up of individuality craving for experience in an objective manner. They craved for objective immortality, a thing that they have 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, super-physical essences. These are the deities. They are not physical bodies like ours, and there was no food for them to satisfy their hunger or 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 is 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 Maitrayini for instance, give us hints of there having been a gradual ascent, or you 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. And 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 a 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, - 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 or Agni, the presiding deity over speech, manifested itself. And so on and so forth with every other function. So 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 themselves rising 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 reflected. Or, to give another example, when you look at your 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 you stand on the bank of a river and see your reflection, you will find the head as the lowermost position in the reflection, though it is the topmost in you, the original. Some such distorted reversal of processes took place when the divinities entered the body of the individual, so that 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 Jiva is different from Isvara in this manner, though it has come from Isvara only. It is a tremendous difference not-withstanding 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 you 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, or the dal or the chapatti or 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 are terms not occurring in the Upanishad. I am only explaining to you from the terminologies of the later philosophies. Ignorance precedes every kind of action in the direction of the possession of the requirements of the senses. We run after things on account of an ignorance, which covers our consciousness, of the reason behind the very existence of this hunger. There is only one need that we have, and not more than one, viz., the need to become one with That from which we have been separated and out of which we have been thrown. That is all. The divinities within are hungering. It is not the tongue or the ear or the nose that asks for things; it is the divinities within that are hungry. Indra, Varuna, Surya, etc. are the deities which are superintending over every part of our body. They are the rulers, they are the masters, they are the actual occupants of this habitat called this body. They ask for a reunion and a rehabilitation in the status which they have lost. This hunger for reunion with the Universal manifests itself in a diversified form through the senses as desire to see, desire to hear, desire to taste, desire to touch and what not. So, these are artificially created tentative satisfactions, because no other satisfaction is available. When everything has gone, whatever is available satisfies us. The senses are thus duping us in this way by making us think that our need is something different from what it really is. What the child cries for is something and what we give it is something else. It may be having an acute stomach ache, but we give it a sugar candy. We say, "Take this sugar candy. Don’t weep." But we do not know why the child is weeping. It is having some ailment. It cannot express itself, poor thing ! But anyhow it has some deep-rooted agony which it is not able to speak out in its own language. But we are trying to pacify it, pamper it by things which are actually not what it needs. So is the case with the hunger or the thirst of the soul.

       The word ‘soul’ is a very important thing in this context. Here the soul means the Jiva, or the individualized divinity. It has been satisfied with this body. "Enter this abode," said the great Lord, and the Divas entered this abode of the human being. This abode has become a source of inadequate satisfaction, unfortunately, even though they thought, that the human body is the best of all the productions. They did not want the earlier ones, viz., the horse, the bull; etc. But the human individuality also is found inadequate to the purpose, because of the fact that it is conditioned by the five sense-organs and the mind which works in terms of the activities of the senses. The restless activities of the senses for contact with objects throughout the day, in all the walks of life, are for the appeasement of the hunger of the soul. Whatever work we do in this world, whatever status that we are occupying, is for the satisfaction of the appetite of this soul which is asking for a union with that which it has lost. But we are miserably a failure in this attempt. Because, our activities in life are not a remedy for the trouble in which we are at present. We seem to be satisfied, only because we have not understood what our problems are. We are totally ignorant of our actual situation. The senses are tired of these activities. They get exhausted. How long can we go on grabbing things? We can do it for one day, one month, one year, ten years; but throughout our life we cannot engage ourselves in this activity. It is futile ultimately. It is futile because it does not satisfy us. We eat today, tomorrow also we eat, and everyday we eat; but we cannot be satisfied, and the appeasement of the hunger does not take place. Not only that, any amount of giving will not satisfy a person. Whatever be the possession that we have, it will not satisfy us. It does not satisfy us because it is not what we want. Our need is something else and we are getting something else through the sense-organs. So there is natural fatigue. The wearing out of the senses, the exhaustion of the mind and the tiresomeness of the whole physical system bring about certain conditions. There are what we call the Avasthas, - the Jagrat, Svapna, Sushupti states. We are sunk into the cycle of waking, dreaming and sleeping due to a complex structure of psycho-physical activity taking place on account of our weddedness to the activities of the senses.

       When the divinities entered the body, perhaps, they did not enter the physical body first. It must have been the astral one, though this is not very clearly stated in the Upanishad; because, there is a gradual hardening of the individuality through the causal and the subtle states into the physical one. The physical one is the grossest manifestation and the most exteriorized form of the appetition of the individual. It is here, in this physical condition in which we are, that we are in the worst of conditions. Because, we are completely isolated, cut off from things, as it is clear to everyone of us. In the subtle condition at least there is an apparent feeling of affinity of one with the other. But in the so-called waking condition of physicality, there is a complete isolation; you have nothing to do with me and I have nothing to do with you. This is the present state of affairs. So on account of this situation and the fatigue that comes as a consequence thereof, there is the cycle of Jagrat, Svapna and Sushupti experience. And there is a struggle again. This struggle is the battle of life. We are striving hard by one means or the other to get out of this cycle of transmigratory existence, which comes automatically as a result of the impossibility of satisfying desires in one life of a particular body. The body that is given to us, the human body for instance, is inadequate; because it cannot last eternally. It is made up of physical components. So naturally it will disintegrate when the time for it comes. The disintegration of the bodily individuality takes place when the forces of the appetite of the individual which gave rise to the manifestation of the body cease and withdraw their momentum. Then the body dies. But the momentum of desire does not cease. It seeks satisfaction once again in some other direction, in some other corner of creation. So there is rebirth and the whole process continues once again. There is again dissatisfaction, birth and death, etc; the Samsara-Chakra continues. All this entire drama is beautifully explained in one verse of the Panchadasi by the author sage Vidyaranya, where he says that from the time of the original will of the Universal to become the many up to the entry of the Universal into the individual, it is the work of God; it is Isvara-Srishti, as we call it. But from the time of the assertion of individuality by the Jiva in the waking condition, through the physical system, etc., until there is liberation from this mortal experience, - all this is Jiva-Srishti. The entry into body, consciousness of there being an individuality, the affirmation of it, the desires expressed through the senses, the sufferings coming as a consequence thereof and the ultimate liberation from this so-called bondage, - all these are experiences of the Jiva; they are not connected with Isvara.

      This, in essence, is the story of the creation given in the Aitareya Upanishad. It asserts at the same time that in spite of all this manifestation, this diversity, variety, subtlety, physicality, etc., He is still the same One Absolute Universal. He has not become something else. This is a very great solacing message to us. If we had been really thrown out from the garden of Eden and are exiled for ever as captives thrown into prison, then there would be no hope of liberation or Moksha. What has happened is something else altogether. It is not an actually historical occurrence that has taken place once upon a time. It is not that God was angry with us and drove us out of the garden. What has happened is that there has been a twist of consciousness. There has been a malady of the mind, and we have to be treated as we treat mental cases. The consciousness has to be treated and the illness of the consciousness has to be removed. Then it regains its original condition. To come to the analogy of dream once again, our fall from the garden of Eden or descent into the mortal body from the original condition of Universality is akin to the condition of entry into dream. You have not become a fly, or a moth or a butterfly, as it appears to be, in dream. Though you think that you are a butterfly in dream, you have not become a butterfly. You are only imagining through the mind due to a peculiar kind in consciousness. But, if you had actually become that, there would be no coming back to the waking consciousness of the human body. It is exactly like a disease of the mind. It is nothing but a consciousness-illness, - the consciousness projecting itself externally in an imagined space and time; that is called creation. There is, therefore, a chance of our returning to the original state by untying these knots through which we have been tied to Samsara. There are grades of knots. These are called Granthies in mystical psychology. The Granthies are like rope-knots which are actually psychic-knots, the knots of the mind. You may call them the knots of consciousness, if you like, which have somehow, or other got stifled into a consciousness of these knots so that the knots cannot become aware of there being a long rope behind them. If there is a longish rope with several knots in the middle at various spots on the rope, the knots do not cease to be the rope though they are knots; they are knots of the rope itself. There may be a hundred knots or lumps, as it were, but these lumps are constituted of the very stuff of the rope. But if the structure of the knot becomes conscious of that particular structure only and not the rope-aspect of the structure, that would be bondage or Samsara. Similarly, we are conscious of the name-and-form aspect of our personality and not the essential part of our personality. We are like this rope that is tied into a knot. The knot is the Nama-Rupa. It is the form, it is the shape, it is the configuration. But it is not the essence. The essence is something else. Now, we have to slowly untie these knots of Nama-Rupa and realize the essence, and the way of doing this is the practice of Yoga. The various stages of Yoga, for instance, are mentioned in the system of Patanjali - Yama, Niyama, Asana, Pranayama, Pratyahara, Dhaarana, Dhyana and Samadhi. These are the stages of the untying process of the knots of consciousness, by which we gradually expand the dimension of our being and become conscious of larger and larger vistas of our own personality, getting wider and wider as we go higher and higher until we reach the highest Universal which includes all the particulars.

COSMOLOGY

       Now this is, in a different way, the subject of the Taittiriya Upanishad also, wherein we are given a cosmological treatment of the entire bondage of the soul and the process of the liberation of the soul from this bondage. As the Aitareya told us that the One Atman alone was, nothing else external to the Atman existed, and it became the many as the universal and entered into it, and projected itself as the various divinities, became the Jivas, had these experiences, etc. etc., so does the Taittiriya Upanishad tell us. The original being is Satyam, Jnanam, Anantam or you may say Satyam, Jnanam, Anandam - (Satchidananda), where there is a simultaneous experience of everything; not a successive experience of particulars, as we have today. This is the interpretation given by the commentators of the passage which reads as ‘Saha Brahmana Vipaschita’. In that state of Brahman, there is an instantaneous experience of all things. Even when we use the word instantaneous, the idea of time lingers in our mind. We cannot get rid of the idea of the time factor. We think everything is experienced at the same time. This is how we think in our own temporal way. It is not a simultaneity of temporal events that is called an instantaneous experience there. It is a timeless experience, because it is spaceless Being.

       Now the Taittiriya cosmological treatment is as follows. The universe of five elements (Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth) is a condensation, as it were, of the Atman itself. There was a gradual descent of the Atman into greater and greater particularity and together with it greater and greater externality. There is particularity, externality and grossening of the cause into the effect. ‘Tasmadva etasmad Atmanah akasah sambhutah, akasat vayuh, vayor agnih, agneh apah, adbhyah prithivi’ etc. The individual being comes as a consequence of these universal manifestations of the elements. Here again, even in the Taittiriya, we stand as effects to the Universal which stands in the position of a cause, as in the case of the doctrine of the Aitareya. Though the universe is an effect of God, it is a cause of our experience. We have no control over the elements. We cannot order the earth, water, ether or fire to behave in this way or that way. In this sense they are causes of our experiences. The objects precede our experience.

       There seems to be some great point in the doctrines of realism as well as idealism, which are the dominant schools of philosophy. The realist holds that objects come first, experience comes afterwards. But the idealist thinks that experience comes first and object afterwards. There is a great quarrel among these schools of thought; but there need be no quarrel. Both these standpoints seem to be correct because they speak from different positions and different points of view altogether. There is a metaphysical idealism implied behind even the empirical realism of perception of objects. We perceive the world, no doubt, as something external to us, and we know very well that the world was there even before we were born and therefore realism is right. The world of objects in its physical form precedes the experience thereof by the individual experiencer. But idealism is also right, because there is a consciousness underlying the very manifestation of the things. The whole universe ultimately can be reduced into consciousness, because the objects which are apparently external to us are conditioned by this perceiving consciousness in various degrees.

       The Taittiriya tells us, there was thus the creation down to the earth, and from the earth arise vegetations of various kinds, herbs or ‘Aushadhis’ which become the diet of the individual, the Purusha, Aashadhibhyah Annam, Annat Purushah, the individual grows out of the food that he takes. Here is again an interesting factor that we have to observe. We are constituted of Anna or food. It is not merely the physical body that is constituted out of food but everything that we are is nothing but the food that we take. As cloth is made of threads, as any composite object is made up of the component factors, so is the total individuality of ours, including the psychic individuality, constituted of certain bits of experience and bits of matter. Thought is nothing but the various functions it performs. The various feelings and emotions and the volitions put together constitute what we call the mind, the fabric of psychic personality. The body again is constituted of these elements only, - earth, water, fire air and ether, etc. Everything in the so-called individuality of ours is a composite structure or ‘Sanghatta’ of various factors which can be dismembered and broken into their component parts. These compositions of individuality become the causes of the various experiences we pass through in our life.

       Our experiences are through the layers of our personality. These layers are called, in the language of the Upanishads, as Koshas. A Kosha is a sheath, like a sheath or a scabbard for a sword. These sheaths are something like peels of onion growing one over the other, and while there can be many such layers conceivable, five of them are mentioned as predominantly experienced by us in our day to day life. These are the so-called Annamaya, Pranamaya, Manomaya, Vijnanamaya and Anandamaya Koshas. These Koshas are not actually like peels of an onion though the illustration gives some idea of what these Koshas are. Because one peel of an onion is not connected with another peel. They are independent. But here the Koshas are not so independent. They are various gradations of density, one slowly passing into the other and we cannot know where one begins and where one ends. Thus we can finally say that there is only one Kosha, which appears as fivefold on account of the gradations of density, all of which are ruled over by the central light of the Atman.

       All this is, of course, out of our sight. We have descended as low into the physical externality of our experience that the Atman which is universal in its original status has projected itself out of the senses and come out of the body, as it were, and it is now looking back towards its own self as an object outside. It has completely lost itself in matter. To lose itself in matter is not so bad as to come out of it and then look upon it as an object of its own self. This is what the senses do. So in one sense we are far, far removed from reality, much more than even inorganic matter, because we have come out of the material body and then projected our consciousness backwards, as it were, looking to matter as an object of our own self.

       The universal consciousness has been completely buried in the material content and after getting buried it comes out of it in a reflected form, becomes the Jiva and looks at its own body as an external something. So you can imagine why there is desire for objects. It is the desire of the Atman for its own self. It is not asking for anybody else, it is wanting its own self. It cannot get it. It has become mad completely. It is in the mental hospital now. The whole world is such a crazy house of delirious individuals. What has actually happened to us we cannot explain, and the less we say about it the better. Such a catastrophic event has taken place, which we regard as heaven itself. How happy we are in the world! We are very happy with a cool drink, with a fan or a refrigerator. Everything is giving happiness to us, but we do not know that we are diseased to the core and we are trying to scratch the itch to some extent to see that it does not give us agony in an intensified manner. We are not going to cure the disease. No activity of ours in this world can be a cure of this disease of Samsara, from the point of view of the magnitude of the suffering in which we are involved and the magnitude of the catastrophe that has taken place. It requires a Herculean task to bring the consciousness back. Mere activity born of ignorance is not going to be an aid.

       You have heard people say that Acharya Sankara was against Karma. There is a point in what he says though many people don’t understand what the implication of his statement is. Every action that we do normally is a movement of ignorance in the direction of an object that is there outside, apparently, but not really. How can a movement in the direction of an apparently existent something liberate us from bondage? If our activities are directed to the sublimation of individuality and have as their purpose the universalization of our status, that could be Karma Yoga. That is not what Acharya Sankara condemns. He condemns Karma which is binding in its nature, which is born of the ignorant feeling that body is real and therefore everything that is associated with the body is also real. An activity that is directed to self-satisfaction of the body is bondage. That is not going to liberate us. But all that we do in this world is nothing but that. We are not doing Karma Yoga. We should not be misguided. If we are consciously directing our activity towards the efflorescence of our individuality towards the universal, then it is Karma Yoga. On the other hand, if we merely drift like a fly from place to place, it is not Karma Yoga. Any activity involving sweating and toiling cannot be called Karma Yoga unless the consciousness is there behind it. Otherwise it becomes an ordinary, empty, humdrum activity, which is impulse driven rather than consciousness-motivated. This distinction has to be drawn carefully. Impulse-driven activity is different from consciously directed Yoga practice. And how many of us are conscious of what we are doing? We are driven by impulse only. When we are feeling hot because of the atmosphere outside, we feel like mitigating it by a contrary activity. When we are hungry, we are doing something contrary to it. Everything that we do is a contrary activity in respect of the particular experience through which we are passing. We have no idea of the basic disease behind it, or the ideal that is ahead of us. But if this is clear, well, it cannot be called action, It is a movement of consciousness.

       So these are the five Koshas as I mentioned. The Annamaya Kosha is the physical body. But it is not that the physical body that comes first in the process of creation; the causal body comes first. The causal hardens itself into the subtle, and the subtle becomes the gross. These three bodies are the objects of experience in the sleep, dream and waking conditions, respectively. It is the causal body that we experience in sleep, the subtle body in dream and the physical body in waking. These three bodies are sub-divided into the five Koshas or the sheaths. The innermost one is called the Anandamaya Kosha. The next one is called the Vijnanamaya Kosha. Further to it is the Manomaya Kosha, then we have the Pranamaya Kosha and lastly we have the grossest one, the Annamaya Kosha. The Annamaya Kosha means the physical sheath constituted of the food that we intake. Anna is food; and as I mentioned earlier, the various impressions created by our sensory experiences contribute to the stability of the body, including the physical food that we take. And here we have a marked distinction of the limbs of the body - head, ear, nose, etc. We can feel that the various limbs of our body are completely cut off from the limbs of the bodies of others. In spite of the Upanishad crying out that all this manifestation has come from the One, we are least conscious of this fact, and we cannot even dream at any time in our life that we have any connection with the wall standing out there. Such is the condition of physical experience, where limbs are cut off completely into a little prison-house of this body in which the Atman abides as if it is its own property. Now these activities of the physical body are driven or motivated by impulses from inside, coming from higher realms and these subtler realms which are more pervasive in their nature are the other Koshas mentioned, which are inside the physical body.

       We are not the physical body only, as many people may mistake themselves to be. Inside the physical body there is an energy body, it is called the Pranamaya Sarira. The subtle electric force that energizes the whole physical system, as copper wires are energized by or charged with electric force driven by the power house, is the Prana. The Prana is an invisible Sakti, it is a power; you cannot define it just as you cannot define electricity. It is what you call the life-principle, the breathing process; and the sense of ‘life’ that we feel in us is due to the presence of the activity of the Prana. It is difficult to translate this word into English. It is vital-force, vital-energy, life-principle or whatever you may call it. Just as in a live wire electric energy charges every particle or atom of the wire and you cannot know which is the wire and which is electricity (but if you touch the wire you will get a shock), likewise you cannot know which is the body and which is the Prana. They have become one, so that if you touch any part of the body it looks as if you are being touched. Your life has become one with the vehicle which is the body; the vehicle has become one with the driver. They are identical, you cannot separate one from the other.

       Now, this Prana is the external most manifestation of a still subtler energy which we call mind. The mind is transparent enough to reflect the consciousness of the Atman, whereas the Prana is not so transparent. It is opaque comparatively; it is Rajas-ridden; and it is very active. Wherever there is an excess of activity or Rajas, there cannot be a reflection of the Atman and, therefore, Prana does not reflect consciousness. It requires the help or aid of the mind that is more transparent in its nature. Though the mind too has Rajas and Tamas in it in a certain percentage, it has a greater predominance of Sattva in it. So the thinking faculty or the psychic faculty becomes the interior controlling agent of the other external sheaths, viz. the Pranamaya Sarira and the Annamaya Sarira. The sense-organs are contained in this body. We are generally told that the Karmendriyas or the organs of action (speaking, grasping, locomotion, etc. which are the tendencies to action and the limbs that help such activity) are all motivated and controlled by the Prana. The Prana is the synthesized form of Rajasic force and the Karmendriyas or the organs of action are the discrete or the diversified forms of the same energy. So we may say that all our activities are nothing but Prana working. But these activities have ideas behind them, thoughts behind them. Thoughts precede action.

       The mind together with the senses of knowledge constitute the Manomaya Kosha, or the mental sheath. Here we are in an animal level practically. In the Pranic level we are like vegetables, and in pure physical level we are like inanimate matter. But in the thinking level we are like animals, and only in the intellectual level we are superior to the animals. That is a still higher stage. The Vijnana or the intellect is something like a purified form of the mind. It is purified in the sense that it is capable of determinate thinking while the mind is usually engaged in indeterminate thinking. There is a translucent feeling of the presence of things and an indistinct thought of objects outside when the mind operates. It cannot decide, it cannot judge, it cannot discriminate, it cannot argue, it cannot come to a conclusion. This is the mind, as we see it operating in the animals, for instance. This is what we call the instinct level, when we are not self-conscious to the extent necessary for judging things in terms of pros and cons, etc. The senses of knowledge (seeing, hearing, etc.) are the manifestations of the mind, just as the organs of action are the manifestations of the Prana. While the organs of action are in the Pranamaya Kosha or the energy-body, the senses of knowledge are in the Manomaya Kosha, or the mental sheath. They are internal because they are conscious in some way, whereas the Prana is not conscious, it is simply active. The Manomaya Kosha or the mental sheath acts in collaboration with the Vijnanamaya Kosha or the intellectual sheath, which also works with the aid of the senses of knowledge, so that we may say the intellect, the mind and the senses of knowledge form a single family, they are a single group and they work together. Now this is the highest point of individuality conceivable. We are now in the intellectual level, having risen above the mental level, the Prana level of the vegetable kingdom and the inorganic level. So we are able to think in a logical fashion, understand the causes of effects and effects of causes etc. and link causes with effects, This is a prerogative of the human individual that causative thinking is possible while animals are incapable of doing that. They cannot remember things as we do. We can think of the past and we can think ahead. This is the intellectual level.

       Now, consciousness brilliantly manifests itself in the intellect, no doubt; but we are not satisfied merely with the intellect. Understanding alone does not make us happy. Happiness is a different thing altogether. The great Reality, the Supreme Being, is said to be constituted of three essences, or constitutive essences we may say, viz. Sat, Chit and Ananda - Existence, Consciousness and Bliss. You can see existence even, in a wall or a brick, but not consciousness. You can see existence and consciousness in a human being where the intellect functions, i.e., when you think, or argue and speak. But you need not be happy at that time. So happiness is not necessarily a condition which follows intellectual functions, because even in the intellect there is an element of Rajas. Happiness is possible of experience only when there is freedom from Rajas totally. There should not be an iota of Rajas or Tamas, if you are to be happy. If there is Tamas, you will be asleep like a stone. If there is Rajas, of course, you are awakened from sleep and you are conscious of things but not happy. In that condition of Rajas, you are like muddled water which is shaky, where a reflection of the sun is possible, but not a clear reflection. Only when Sattva predominates there is a clear reflection of Reality and you can experience happiness.

       Happiness is what we seek. You will understand that it is not ordinary knowledge that we are after in this world. We are after knowledge for the sake of a satisfaction that it brings. And, how knowledge brings satisfaction is a very important topic. Happiness is that we are after, it is happiness for which every one works and happiness seems to be the aim and objective behind even the operation of consciousness in this world. Consciousness is incomplete, existence is incomplete if bliss is not there. That bliss is the ultimate content of the Absolute. How it comes and how we are partially experiencing it in our individual lives, we shall see later.

HARI OM TAT SAT