Lessons on the Upanishads : 3. Swami Krishnananda

=========================================================================

Saturday, May 06,  2023. 06:50.

Chapter 1: Introduction to the Upanishads 2.

Post-3.

=========================================================================

This is a very important point at the rock bottom of our thinking that we have to recognise. If everything is changing, who is it that is telling us that everything is changing? Are we also changing with the things that change? If that is the case, how do we come to know that all things are changing? Logical analysis of this peculiar analytical circumstance tells us that there is something in us which does not change; otherwise, we would not know that things are changing.

Now, if oneself—this person or that person—seems to be obliged to recognise something in one's own self that does not seem to be changing because one perceives change in general, we also have to be charitable enough to accept that everyone in the world has this something which does not change. I have something in me which does not change, and you also have something in you that does not change. If this is the case, it seems to be everywhere. It does not mean that this unchanging so-called thing is only in one person, as all persons have an equal prerogative to conclude that something unchanging seems to be there, speaking in a language which is not subject to connection with changeable objects.

The Veda Samhitas to which I have made reference—which are the outpourings of spiritual seekers, sages and masters of advanced religious thought and spiritual perfection—felt the presence everywhere of something that does not change. All things seem to be embedded with something that cannot change. This is due to a logical conclusion to which we are led—namely, that the perception of change would not be possible if everything, including oneself, including even the perceiver of change, also changes. Therefore, transitoriness implies a non-transitory background of things.

The whole universe of perception, the entire creation, may be said to be involved basically, at the root, in something which cannot be said to change. This is an adorable and most praiseworthy conclusion, and anything that is adorable is a worshipful something. These masters of the Vedas Samhitas, therefore, recognised a divinity in all things. There is a god behind every phenomenon, which is another way of saying there is an imperishable background behind every perishable phenomenon. The sun rises in the east, the sun sets in the west; clouds gather, pour rain and then go; seasons change; something comes, something goes; we are born, we become old and we also go. Everything is changing, everywhere, even in the vast universe of astronomical calculation.

But all this is only an indication, a pointer to an unrecognised fact of there being something which is an adorable background of the cosmos itself. And wonderfully, majestically and touchingly, we may say, these sages of the Veda Samhitas began to see a god everywhere. There is no ‘ungod' in this world, because every phenomenon must be conditioned, or determined, by something which is not a phenomenon itself. Even the sun cannot rise and move, as it were, and the earth cannot rotate or revolve unless there is a motive force behind it. That motive force, the impetus for the rotation or revolution of the earth or the stellar system, cannot itself be revolving or rotating. So, there is a god behind the sunrise, behind the moonrise, behind the visibility of the stars, behind the seasons, behind even birth, death, aging and all transitions in human life.

To be continued

========================================================================