Brihadaranyaka
Presented on: Thursday, January 5, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Intro to the Major Works of the Upanishads
Presentation 1 of 13
Brihadaranyaka
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, January 5, 1989
Transcript:
Article. And somebody had edited this and put an introduction to thirteen major works of the Upanishads. It's somebody's idea of academic rhetoric. Is that what it's
**inaudible few words** introduction to **inaudible word**.
Yeah.
This is an advanced sophisticated teaching and it's not an introduction. And if you don't know what I'm talking about this is not for you. But all of you are here because you know what I'm talking about.
**inaudible comment from the room**
That's right.
**inaudible comment from the room**
Well but that's the whole point of the Mulla Nasruddin story. You're here because you don't have to be here. And that's why we're, that's why we, are together.
**inaudible comment from the room**
I don't have to be here. I am here because I don't have to.
I should say, I guess just an introduction. Because most of you have come for a long time. And understand that the philosophic research society has research in its middle name. It's not meant to, to be just little introductions. There are plenty of places you can get little introductions. But this is research. it's inquiry. It is the whole process of trying to step together a little deeper than you might by yourself. And the reason why we come together in this kind of a format. It's unfortunate we have the Victorian stage model of seats. that's unnecessary. But we come together in a very ancient tradition. I suppose the earliest part of the tradition, which is simply gathering around the fire after the day. And language takes its structural rhetorical forms from that kind of concourse.
And over a long series of millennia, the form was taken to be a paradigm for self-inquiry. Taken to be a paradigm for the way in which you get to know yourself. And in fact, the metaphor for the self became that of an interior fire. Or if you like more dramatically, more romantically, an inner star. But an inner fire was the best metaphor. And in ancient India the technique was likened to coming close to the center and sitting down. and that somehow in sitting down one settled into what was going on there. And the whole question of wanting to be elsewhere. or needing to be elsewhere. Or thinking that there is an elsewhere that you would go to. The whole question of a referential movement was let go of. And without the referential movement, it became apparent that if you sat there near the center and opened yourself to that center, that your sensitivity would eventually begin to register the center. That the center was not a static distant object but was dynamic and close. And the very name Upanishad means to sit down near to. To sit down near to. And it's not just the teacher but it's the inner teacher.
And for us to be together in this way we are all sitting down together near our own inner selves. And the medium which opens us up is language. And in its most primordial form language is speech. Rock(?). Speech. And in this mode speech if rotated in just the right way, with just the right technique, rearranges all of the natural categorical barriers into like concentric tubular structures. So that if the language is just right and delivered just right, the right intonation and the right pitch, that kind of language is called chanting. And if one chants over and over again, they reminder that we are sitting near our deep self and to allow for that to register. It registers in the radial way. Just like shining. Just like radiance. And that radiance illuminates progressively the circular, tubular centricities of the rhetorical structure. And eventually what happens is that the mind becomes illuminated. The mind itself becomes illuminated. In the sense that the barriers now are seeing not as distinctions of identity difference but as resonators of that central realization. Which was always called in classical India Akhmad. And that somehow that experience of our own inner self, of the self in that form, conveys to us the instantaneous conviction that the center is also everywhere. And this was Brahma. And so, there was a very peculiar tone.
This technique was developed somewhere around, I suppose 1200 B.C. Somewhere around 1200 B.C. this technique began to be used and experimented with. It was one of those times in world history where there was a, an effervescence everywhere at the same. Time the I-Ching in China. Homer in Greece. And the first two Upanishads in India.
The very first Upanishad is called The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. And it is actually a part of a very long complex written prose presentation called The Brahmana. Sata Pathi Brahmana. and it has 17 sections. It's enormous. It's large. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad is just three of those 17 sections. Theyre the last three.
But the 17-section version of the Sata Pathi Brahmana was in competition to another version which had only 14 sections, but had it arranged in the different way except for the fact that the last three there of the 14 were also The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
It indicates to us that instead of there being a single individual of genius who invented the form, that the form grew out of a culture that at a saturation point matured. And there were many centers of this. And some of them so geographically dispersed that when it came to coalescing the various little local traditions together, braiding them together into large cables of tradition. That even at the earliest date because they were dispersed over such a wide area that there were two spinal columns of the tradition. Two different completely different recensions. But both of them end with the same three chapters, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
And so, for the last 3,000 years in India this Upanishad looked to as like that place where all of the traditions, all of the columns, finally do come together to a single pool. It's like the brain stem. It's like the cerebellum of the ancient tradition. The Brahmanas themselves are prose commentaries on reflections on ritual traditions, which have been cut and recut into different ceremonial patterns since time immemorial. So that there might be 10,000 or 20,000 years of tradition before there was any movement at all to come to The Brahmana stage.
But we know that when The Vedas were first put together, about 1500 B.C. When The Vedas were first put together it was recognized that one could cut The Vedas into at least three and possibly four different shapes. The most primordial one was The Rigveda. But then there was a kind of a ceremonial ritual structure, which The Rigveda had somewhat ignored because it put the emphasis on the personal sages. One listen to the voice of Angiras. One listen to the voice of Yajnavalka in The Rigveda. You listen to the seers, the poet's seers in The Rigveda. You hear now, one over here, one over there. They're like great arias of wisdom.
But it was not the only form. The Vedas could be shaped in a different form they could be shaped in terms of ritual nexies. And so, one came out with a different kind of Veda. The same material rearranged, recut and this became The Yajur-Veda. And then there was another way to look at that. One could look at it in terms of its efficacy. almost like it's magical effect. And because the magical effect was based on a dynamic polarity, codified as she/he, then you have The Samaveda. Sa means she and ma, man, he. Saman. He/she. She and he together. And you leave the N off. The Samaveda was the dynamic efficacy. The effect that this produces.
So, one can look at the effect. One can look at the ceremonies. Or one can listen to the individual voices of genius who made this happen. and there are these three Vedas.
There's also a fourth in The Atharva-Veda but it's much later. And has a, it has a mixed nature. In the Indian tradition this kind of mixed nature is referred to as dark. It doesn't mean evil. It means dark in the sense that you can't pick out the thread. Indian, the Indian mind, loves to see the thing itself. And when it's unencumbered when it's pure when it is only this then it is called white. So that for instance in The Yajur-Veda, there's a black Yajur-Veda and a white Yajur-Veda. The white Yajur-Veda is the pure lineage unmixed. It has never been mixed.
In The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad which appeared about 1000 B.C., they give a lineage of 56 different generations that have received this. And in antiquity at that extent a generation was about 40 years. So, this is about 2,200 years. So that the remembrance of The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad goes back at least 5,000 years from us.
But what is important about this Upanishad is that it sets a new tone. It sets a tone that the real focus for understanding is not the voices of those sages out there. It's not the way that the ceremonies which the culture is based on are arranged out there. It's not even in terms of the esoteric magical resonances out there. But it is a question of your experience in yourself. And The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad sets a whole new tone of literature. And after this come all the other Upanishads. And they as a literature are related to The Vedas but they're like the inside experience which you yourself may have. You yourself may have this experience.
And so, the lineage in The Upanishads is always that the teacher, the sage, whoever it is, sets their tone so that they disappear as you emerge. When you first come you queue up to understand the master, the sage. And as you progress, he retreats. And it's, they use the ancient metaphor of the father and the son. And as the son grows the father begins then to let the son's advance eclipse the father's connection with the world and with the voice and with the teaching. So that by the time the Son, the pupil, has become master the master is gone. And you are left with yourself. You are left with your own experience of yourself. This is a classic tradition.
And so, when The Upanishads would have been taught. And they are still incidentally taught. There were many long centuries where the line was very, very thin. There were many, many centuries in India where The Upanishads were lost. All except for just a few wild card traditions out in the Himalayas.
In the 19th century, in fact, at the end of the 18th century Western scholars began to be interested in these. A man named, Frenchman named, **inaudible** translated The Upanishads into Latin in 1801. And it was the first time that the rest of the world outside India realized. Or at least for a very long time maybe 1,700 years, realized what a treasure trove was here. Not only The Upanishads themselves but the style of literature which they present. They present that style of literature where the teacher disappears into your comprehension. And when you have arrived the teacher is gone as he should be. Not occupying the center. Your own inner self occupies the center.
The first Westerner to consciously realize what was here was Schopenhauer. And Schopenhauer had a translation of The Upanishads that he left open on his desk and he read it every night. And decided that he simply wasn't going to be able to ever build a system like all of the other university professors around him. **inaudible name ** and Hagel and Canct and so forth. He was never going to build a system to outdo The Upanishads. Because The Upanishads are like a system which defeats all other systems. any kind of systematizing of philosophy. Any kind of systematizing of religion depends on the firmness of the categorical structures. Whereas The Upanishads show that is just the way that ignorance maintains itself. That's exactly the form that ignorant maintains itself. Because then consciousness limits itself to identity difference and does not see the incredible dynamic movement, the ballet of paradox. And does not realize that you cannot build from the self that way. You only obscure it.
So, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad has come to be quite significance in human history.
Now in the course of many long centuries there were many Upanishads. One of the later Upanishads refers to the 108 Upanishads. There are some lists that they go up to 200.
But in India there are always generations that come along with an encyclopedic orientation. And all of the meat of The Upanishads has been taken out of their form and put in one volume called The Brahma Sutra. And you can get a copy. This is a translation by Sarvapoli Radha Krishna The Brahma Sutra. and he will give you the philosophy of spiritual life. And give you all sorts of little things in here. And I've marked off things that I'm, I'm not going to read to you and talk to you. At the very beginning, one sentence will do it. It is the self that should be seen. Heard of. Reflected on. And meditated upon. It is the self. So, there is The Brahma Sutra.
But the traditional way is best. The traditional way is to come and sit quietly by your own inner self, in companionship with others who are doing this. And to relax into the receptivity. To let the resonance of a trained voice, carry and establish that kind of a tone where it's like the, it's like playing a film backwards. One doesn't keep going out to objects, but one lets the very origin of objectiveness occur. And this is the process that The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad establishes.
The term, the title, includes Aranyaka. It literally means forest teaching. The root word means someone who is in the forest. Or it can mean a tree. it can mean with this kind of intonation a great multitude of trees. And in a way I think Sri Aurobindos characterization is, is romantic but very accurate. He says that the title of this work is really the great forest teaching. Or to put it in a California mode, the giant forest teaching. that there are, there are so many aspects here it's like a forest. But it's a kind of a forest that one can be at home in. It's not a jungle. And that this forest grows on the very highest heights of consciousness. So that one has to breathe deep. One has to have great breath to be in that particular forest.
Aurobindo never got a chance to finish his projective translation. In fact, his translation is only for a few sections. And his commentary is only for about twelve pages or so. But let me give you a few sentences. this is from Sri Aurobindos The Upanishads, which is available.
The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, at once the most obscure and profoundest of The Upanishads, offers peculiar difficulties to the modern mind. If it's ideas are remote from us its language is still more remote. And then he goes on to say why. The language is profound. It's subtle. It's extraordinarily rich in rare philosophical suggestions and delicate psychology. It is preferred to couch its ideas in a highly figurative and symbolic language. So that if we are used to a language which is simple. simple in the sense that its image base has maybe one or two levels of referent. We miss it entirely. This is a giant forest of language, which is subtle and made to record the slightest whispers in the atmosphere. And it is what one can hear from the slightest width
whispers of wind in the atmosphere of this giant forest. Those are the beginnings of the inner resonances from one's own self. And they always appear just almost so subtly and inconspicuously as to not even be seen. Not even be attended to. And it's only by letting them occur unhampered that they grow. Or your sensitivity increases, and they seem to grow. Until finally one can experience that this is a vast theatrical dimension of mind that is occurring.
And in fact, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad opens with this very experience. And I'll turn now to the beginning of it and give you
one should always begin with ohm.
Ohm the dawn verily is the head of the sacrificial horse. The Sun, the eye. The wind, the breath. The open mouth, the Vispinara fire. The year is the body of the sacrificial horse. The sky is the back. The atmosphere is the belly. The Earth, the hoof, the quarters, the sides. The intermediate quarters, the ribs. The seasons, the limbs. The months and the half months, the joints. Days and night the feet, the Stars, the bones. The clouds, the blood vessels. The liver, the lungs of the mountains. The herbs and the trees are the hair. The rising Sun is the forepart. The setting Sun is the hind part. When he yawns it lightnings. When he shakes himself, it thunders. When he urinates, it rains. Speech indeed is his voice.
That is to say the speech of The Upanishad now being heard is the voice of this cosmic horse.
It dramatically sets one immediately into the scale that one has to operate upon. Only on this kind of a scale where the entire cosmos becomes the body of the sacrifice. Now the ancient term for horse, Ashva. Ashvamedha sacrifice. The horse sacrifice, a very peculiar ancient sacrifice, came down from Central Asia a long time back. When the horse was brought out, the horse was the symbol of power and speed. Speed and power. But it was also because of its name. It indicated the quality of real existence. Real existence has power and has speed. And so, the, the name the Ashvamedha sacrifice became more and more metaphorical until in The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad it is suddenly lifted completely out of any kind of a ritual context. Lifted out of any kind of a mythological context. And lifted to a symbolic context and then blown wide open. So that psychic energy in your meditation. Your neural physical energy that's brought to bear upon this occurrence. What kind of a sacrifice am I involved in here? There is no object other than the cosmos itself, which includes your voice speaking. So that there is only the all, which is the object of the sacrifice. That which will be given to make sacred. One is going to offer all.
Now in the Ashvamedha sacrifice, in the original ceremony of it, the ancient ceremony, there were two vessels. One of gold placed before the horse and one of silver placed behind the horse. In The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad this becomes the Sun and the moon. It becomes the new day. And it becomes the night just passing.
So that when one sees this. And here's how The Upanishad records it. The day verily arose for the horse as the vessel called Muhamman appeared in front of the horse. its sources in the eastern sea. That would be the bay of Bengal. The night verily arose for the horse, as the vessel called Muhamman appeared behind the horse. its source is in the western sea. The Arabian gulf. The Arabian sea. These two vessels verily arose on the two sides of the horse as the two sacrificial vessels. becoming a steed, he carried the Gods. as a stallion he carried the Gandharvas. As a runner the demons. As a horse he carried men. The sea indeed is his relative. The sea is his source.
From this meditative posture the natural correlative would be that one is sitting on top of the Himalayas and is about a thousand miles high. And is able to see the Arabian Sea in the Bay of Bengal. The two waters in all of Jambudvipa, all of India in between. Tapering down to the sea. And that as the night in the day arise out of the sea they also go back into the sea. And from this standpoint it's like the whole rotation of the world occurs from that position where you sit. Now this is an extremely vast, not a metaphorical, but extremely vast meditative stance. One finds echoes of this in some of the original teachings of the Buddha. Where the Buddha will say, carry your mind till you fill your whole body with radiance. And then energize until you fill the whole room where you are with radiance. And then finally that you fill the entire district where you are with radiance. And finally, the in, illimitable worlds within worlds. It's this kind of progressive opening up. this flower of possibility. So that you begin to change and dissolve, report what you consider the arena for your activity. Until one opens up and find that the whole world is the correct context, the correct arena, for this activity which you are now doing.
Now in geographical ancient times, some 5-6,000 years ago, the first experiences of this were on Mount Kailash. And Mount Kailash in the Himalayas is placed so that on the peak of Kailash, which is very difficult to get to. Very high. Twenty some thousand feet. One can look down on a lake, Lake Mansoura. And from this lake at opposite ends of the lake, rivulets waterfall off, which eventually one of them becomes the Ganges River and the other becomes the Brahmaputra. That these two rivers literally embrace the entire Himalayan mountain range. And in fact, all of fertile India. And so, from one sitting space one can see the nourishment symbolically of the entire continent.
From that The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad these sages have doubled, tripled, quadrupled that empaththeatrical effect, saying from where you are actually sitting now the day and the night are like little bookends for the arena that's now in your attention.
What's important in this is that we understand, in order for a sacrifice to be effective one has to observe the ceremonial defining rules. That has to be objectified in the exact right ritual way. The sacrifice here is a cosmos whose defining limitations, whose real defining limitations, are the transformational processes of night into day. Of the Sun rising. Being the horse, whose breath is the wind on the mountain range. So that the sacrifice is a cosmos whose defining limits, whose real nature is transformation.
Upon what altar would such a sacrifice be able to be offered? Only on the anvil of the deep self. It is the only possible place. so that by beginning The Upanishad in this peculiar particular way. The Upanishad expects us to respond in like nature. We have been shown that this is the quality and the true dimensions of what is happening. And we are expected to respond to that. To accept that challenge. And, and open ourselves up to it.
Aurobindo writes in this way,
This passage full of gigantic imagery sets the key to The Upanishad and only by entering into the meaning of its symbolism can we command the gates of this mini-mansion city of the Vedantic thought. There is never anything merely poetic or ornamental in the language of The Upanishads. Even in this passage which would at first sight seem to be sheer imagery. There are, they are all dependent, not on the author's unfettered fancy but on the common ideas of the early Vedantic theosophy. It is fortunate also that the attitude of The Upanishad to the Vedantic sacrifices, Vedic sacrifices, is perfectly plain from this opening. We should, shall not stand in danger of being accused of reading modern subtleties into primitive minds. Or replacing barbarous superstitions by civilized mysticism. The Ashvamedha or horse sacrifice is as we shall see taken as the symbol of a great spiritual advance. An evolutionary movement. Almost out of the dominion of apparently material forces into a higher spiritual freedom. The horse of the Ashvamedha is to the author a physical figure representing like some algebraic symbol, an unknown quantity of force and speed.
The translation should have read from Aurobindo, an unknown quantification of force and speed. And it isn't just an algebraic kind of a symbol. But it's as if the nuclear physics of the actuality of what is occurring, the real time-space that is occurring, becomes for the first time evident in The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. It's like nothing that we knew before was exactly right. The objects that we thought they were did not really belong in the world. They did not really belong in the culture. Or in the mythological horizon. They don't belong in any of those realms, but they belong in the domain of the inner self. But in the domain of the inner self they transform. They change. They become as we take them out of the context in which we thought they occur; they cease to become we thought they were. and more and more we see them in their primordiality. Until finally from the deep self we see them in terms of like force and speed, vector and energy.
So that Aurobindo concludes, From the imagery it is evident that this force, this speed is something worldwide. Something universal. It tells the regions with its being. It occupies time. And it gallops through space. It bears on in it speed men and Gods and Titans. It is the horse of the world.
Well let's take a little break here. And then we'll, we'll have some more.
Are you able to, to follow? Am I speaking in a way that you can follow alright?
**inaudible response from the room**.
Okay. It's some, sometimes this kind of material seems foreboding. But really you must understand that the structures of the mind that we have in the late 20th century are not just happenstance. They've developed and been developed by conditions like this. And so, if we relax into it, we can recognize a lot. it's a question of recognition. But if you try to force it, if you try to cognize it, what happens is, is that you're your associative level keeps throwing up models. And you try to match those models with what's occurring. And modern associative models don't match with this at all. It's like trying to bring the kind of cutouts that a child would play with and try to put them up against the, a garden to try and enjoy the garden. It's an inappropriate activity.
Whereas the recognition mode, the recognizing mode, is the one to observe. But there's one inundation in that recognizing mode. Which is really in the forefront in India but is esoteric in the West. And that is that the center of attention is non referential. The self is non referential. It doesn't represent anything else. It presents itself. So, it's presentational. So, its quality of presence is of thusness.
This kind of non referentiality then means that all of the recognitions focus eventually to the self. That whatever recognition you have, anywhere about anything, if you allow for its antecedents to occur to you eventually all of them will lead back to the center. So, the process is rather sinking into the truth. And that as one sinks into the truth there's a double occurrence that happens.
And The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says, You will know the truth and you are that truth. So, that there is a person in the self. Sometimes they use the term paramarthana in the ancient Upanishadic tradition. Rather than odma. Odma comes into use later. It is it is a self beyond yourself. But that's not a paradoxical statement. It's a self within yourself in the sense that there is a beyond within you and there yourself occurs without referent. The term in The Upanishads for this level of occurrences Ishvara. That brahma in its dynamic actuality, Ishvara actually occurs in you. And so, there is an understanding here in the technique of The Upanishads. and we'll see it again and again in the other Upanishads too.
END OF SIDE ONE
It's like gauging reducing your referential habitual orientation.
Later on, thousands of years later, the Japanese as they always have done will refine it down to one simple phrase. Let go. So, it's a, it's a process of letting go. Of not having anything on the blackboard. Not having anything in mind. And that when that occurs, as one comes back to that, as realization rises, it becomes clearer and clearer that where you were is a realm of death. The way that you were living. The way that you were thinking is a death mode.
And so, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad after the beginning of the horse sacrifice, the rot
the sun rising is the eye of this horse. Immediately jumps into the, the saying,
There was nothing whatsoever here in the beginning. Death indeed covered. Or hunger for hunger is death. He created the mind, thinking let me have a self. Then he moved about worshiping. From him thus worshiping water was produced. verily he thought while I was worshiping water appeared. Therefore, water is called fire.
Arca. Fire. Water surely comes to one who thus knows the reason why water is called fire.
It's esoteric until one slips back into a deep self-mode. Why is water called fire? It's the polarity. It's the opposite of it. In a polarized realm death is the true condition. In a non-polarized realm life is the true condition.
So, that following this The Upanishad records, Water verily is fire. That which was the froth of water became solidified. That became the earth. Once he rested from him thus rested and heated from the practice of austerity, his essence of brightness came forth as fire. We would not be able to hear that unless we kept in mind that the defining shape of this sacrifice is transformation. it's not objects. It's not even subjects. But its transformations. And so, water is fire in a transformational realm.
And that transformational realm is constantly in motion, but its motion has a pattern. And by sinking ourselves into the pattern we because of the truth of ourselves become occupiers of the center of that pattern. It always happens. This is why The Upanishads then say that you are the truth within that truth. Because as you sink into that pattern, as you let that pattern occur. What is that pattern? The ecology of true transformations. As that actually occurs within you, you more and more observe that you are in the center of this. That the pattern is radially reflective of your true condition. not referential to some other condition different from you. Or some other condition identical to you. But in fact, the very occurrence which you are. And the saying Tat Tvam Asi, thou art that.
It reads this way. We're still in the first of six parts of The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. And The First Brahmana was about the horse sacrifice, the Ashvamedha sacrifice. In The Second Brahmana was about death and how in the polarized realm death is that world. Whatever occurs in that realm is food for death. That as long as one is in that realm, one is co-opted into that kind of devouring endlessness. But in The Third Brahmana the breath function comes out. the vital breath function comes out, as a function which cannot be co-opted into the polarized world. Because the vital breath is the quality of the deep self. And when one finally brings into play, into this woven structure of time-space of force man's. When one brings into play into that the vital breath of the deep self, all of the rest of the structure begins to organize itself around that. Because that is a true center. A true fulcrum as we would say. For the whole process. And it is a pinnacle inward out of death.
It reads in this way. This is The Third Brahmana. And I'll just give you the sequence and you can see how The Upanishad delivers it. The great forest teaching. There were two classes of descendants of Prajapati. Notice the polarity. The Gods and the Demons. The Divas and the Asuras. Of these the Gods were the younger and the demons the elder. Another polarity. Its only younger and elder but it's like day and night. The coming of the day is the younger and the night is the elder. What is divine is what is now emerging new. What is demonical is what is worn-out and old. Why? because in this constant transformation anything that occupies a stasis becomes demonical. It wants to stuff you into its categories and keep you there. That's not true. It's all changing. And you're changing. The transformation is what is real. And so, the old is always demonical not because of being nasty or bad but because in the structure of transformation it is now the old. It's no longer there. Its moved to the new.
The Gods and the demons. The Divas and the Asuras. Of these the Gods were the younger and the Demons, the elder ones. They were struggling with each other for the mastery of these worlds. They always struggle which
with each other for the mastery of these worlds.
The viewpoint of balance where this can be seen most poignantly is dawn or dusk. The struggle of day and night reaching an equilibrium. But of dawn and dusk, dawn is the best. In fact, about three-quarters of an hour before dawn because there's always, I don't know how close you are to nature, there's always a false dawn. The sky brightens and then darkens and then brightens again with the real dawn. There's always a false dawn. And about three quarters of an hour before sunrise is the false dawn where it seems like there's a struggle between day and night and the night is winning again. The dawn is going back. And if one is alert at that particular moment, day after day, month after month, year after year. you get a sense that this is the truth of the process of the world. This is how it works. It's like they interlock. And like in the very essence of the one where it begins, there is the last of the other. And in this way, it's almost like the way that male/female procreate. It's almost like, the way that any kind of a transformation actually occurs. In just that way.
And in fact, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad several hundred pages later ends with a procreation between a man and his wife for a child. And talks about all of this process in the same way that every human life that is made is actually and truly made in sync with this transformational ecology. And as one sees it right, that child that comes out will be that, that deep self of a possible world teacher. The parents whisper one in each ear, remember, remember to bring someone out. And it begins. It ends with that way.
But at this stage in The Third Brahmana of the first of the six parts, here's how it reads. They were struggling with each other for a mastery of these worlds. the Gods said, let us overcome the demons at the sacrifice through the Udgitha. Through the, through the chanting of a sacred word. The Udgitha. Gita. Bhagavad-Gita. Gita or githa means song. Ud means that the basic, the basic song. What is the basic song? The basic song is that mellifluous word which symbolically brings all together, Ohm.
So that the way that the Gods overcome the demons is throughout the sacrifice, at the moment of the sacrifice of chanting the Udgitha. And this is how the teaching traditionally runs.
And I'll give it to you without a break. For about, oh take about four or five minutes.
They said to speech chant the Udgitha for us. So be it said speech and chanted for them. Whatever enjoyment there is in speech its secured for the Gods by chanting. That it spoke well was for itself. The demons knew verily by this chanter they will be overcome. They rushed upon it and pierced it with evil. That evil which consists in speaking what is improper. That is that evil. Then they said to the life breath, chant the Udgitha for us. So be it said the life breath and chanted for them. Whatever enjoyment there is in the life breath its secured for the Gods by chanting. That it smelt well was for itself. The demons knew verily by this chanter they will be over, they will overcome us. They rushed upon it and pierced it with evil. That evil which consists in smelling what is improper. That is that evil. Then they said to the eye, chant the Udgitha for us. So be it said the eye and chanted for them. Whatever enjoyment there is in the eye it's secured for the Gods by chanting. That it saw well was for itself. the demons knew verily by this chanter they will overcome us. They rushed upon it and pierced it with evil. That evil which consists in seeing what is improper. That is that evil. then they said to the ear chant the Udgitha for us. So be it said the ear and chanted for them. Whatever enjoyment there is in the ear it secured for the Gods by chanting. That it heard well was for itself. The demons knew verily by this chanter they will overcome us. They rushed upon it and pierced it with evil. That evil which consists in hearing what is improper. That is that evil. then they said to the mind, chant the Udgitha for us. So be it said the mind and chanted for them. Whatever enjoyment
And it goes on in this way.
So, the mind then the vital breath chants. And when the vital breath in the mouth chants the Udgitha,
So be it said this breath and chanted for them. The demons knew verily by this chanter they will overcome us. They rushed upon him and desired to pierce him with evil. but as a clod of Earth will be scattered by striking against a rock, even so they were scattered in all directions and perished. Therefore, the Gods increased, and the demons were crushed. He who knows this becomes his true self. And the enemy who hates him is crushed.
So that there is a whole cycle here. and in this cycle, one goes through this pattern all the time arranging this pattern. Why can you not go to the vital breath right away? You, you cannot. If you did you wouldn't know that you had. It's by the process of not this, not that, neti neti, that it begins to occur to you. Well if it isn't this and if it isn't that. but isn't this and if it isn't that. Eventually you stop looking for a something which it is. And you realize that all you're doing is making definite certain not this, not that.
And when you realize that then your strategic orientation changes. And instead of looking for the right thing, you assume the correct mode. And the correct mode is to go along with the not this, not that. And when you do then that arranges in those concentric furrows, that whole capacity of non-referential experience. And the vital breath is there. It's in the spaces in between. It's in the intervals which do not occur and what you have counted. It was there all the time, but you didn't know it. But now you can know it. now you can become a knower of the self because the vital breath begins to operate, to occur in you in it's true way. And it cannot be corrupted.
That is to say, the demonic was the old. The passing away. They used out referential. But in the deep self, there is no referential. There's no referential realm whatsoever. And the vital breath of the deep self, having no referent has no demonical character whatsoever. Whatsoever. It also has no character of diva projection either.
So, The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad then delivers us to this. And when it does it says that we are now at a threshold. that if we will cross that threshold. If we will live in this new way, death will no longer occur. It reads like this, That divinity verily having struck off the evil, the death of those divinities next carried them beyond death. Verily it carried speech across first. When that speech was freed from death it became fire. This fire when it crosses beyond death shines forth. the term that we would use today is radiance. Pure radiance. How can I say this so that you'll hear it? It's a radiance without light. It is pure radiance. It doesn't have any light content.
Then it carried across the organ of smell. and when that was freed from death it became air. This air when it crosses beyond death blows. The wind. What, what is that wind? The wind of the breath of the horse.
Then it carried across the eye. when that was freed from death it became the Sun. the Sun when it crosses beyond death glows. You see the figure of the Ashvamedha horse sacrifice now occurs in the interior realm of the deep self. It was there in the cosmos out there. It now occurs in the amplitudes, the theatrical amplitudes of the deep self without reference. It doesn't have any reference to nature. That sun is not the sun out there. That sun out there is not even a metaphor for it. All of those considerations are no longer operative because we have crossed through a threshold of death where polarized observation can occur. No longer occurs.
Then it carried across the ear. Not this ear, the ear. He who has ears to hear. When that was freed from death it became the quarters. Why four quarters? The four quarters? The ear is the kinesthetic presence. And when it's patterned there are quarters. There's a quaternity. There isnt, isn't just space but it's a quaternity space. It's like that.
Then it carried across the mind. When that was freed from death it became the moon. That moon when it crosses beyond death shines. Thus, verily that divinity carries beyond death him who knows this. Then it carried the breath. chanted food for itself. For whatever food is eaten is eaten by him alone. In it, breath is established.
And this is Upanishadic talk. Established means established in the sense of that one, one is now sitting in the right way. One is sitting in on the deep self. One is established in this meditation. The establishment is, is the unbroken continuity. The term in India is Darshan. And this is an unending darshan. One it's really established when it doesn't have any beginning or any ending. Then you are established in this way. And it reads then, Now next the repetition only of purificatory hymns. Verily the press order priest recites the chant. While he recites it let the sacrificer recite these three Yaya's verses. And these are the three verses which have been lifted out of The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and have become bankers of wholeness in Asia ever since.
Lead me from light. from the unreal, lead me to the real. from darkness lead me to light. From death lead me to immortality. From the unreal lead me to the real. From the darkness lead me to light. From death lead me to immortality. It's not that the real is an object that one has to get to. It's not that light is a destination that one can arrive at. It's not that immortality is a condition which one can attain or obtain. It's that by seeing that these polarities occur in closed ecologies of pattern. And that you do not have to occur within those patterns. No matter how large they seem. You can occur at their center and thus outside of their reach. And because you can occur at the center of all patterns, outside the reach of all of these polarizing phenomena. Knowing this, you are free. Knowing this you are free.
I don't have time to go into too much of this. But let me just give you two quotations. this is from the end of The Third Brahmana.
The form of this person is like a saffron colored robe. Like white wool. Like the enjuroba(?) insect. Like a flame of fire. Like a white lotus. Like a sudden flash of lightning. He who knows it thus attains splendor. Like a sudden flash of lightning. Now for there is this teaching. Not this. Not this. For there is nothing higher than this that he is not this. Now the designation for him is the truth of truth. Verily the vital breath is truth. And he is the truth of that.
And you can see just from a few sections that I've been able to give you in the time limit, how powerful The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad was. It sets the tone of all the rest of The Upanishads. It creates in its own presentational form the genre which will become The Upanishads. But The Brihadaranyaka because it was so enormous. Because it required a kind of, we would say today almost a superhuman kind of constitution to be able to sit in there and and do this. Would take years to master. Would take decades to really master. It's like a forest of teachings.
So, The Upanishads after The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad tend more and more to be more and more condensed. More and more they tend to present in dramatic, highly stylized, rhetorical, flourished structures the exactness of the teaching. And as this have things more and more the genre of The Upanishads gains more and more distance from the other genres, the other forms. And eventually we'll see as we come along to some of the later Upanishads, they're like a pure whistle. In comparison to this very ponderous, extended chanting of The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, The Isa Upanishad that has only 18 verses. They refine it. It's like the Indian genius comes into refining it.
Let me give you one more quotation then that and this will be the last. This self is like honey for all beings. and all beings are like honey for this self. This shining immortal person who is in this self. And the shining immortal person who is in this individual self. He is just this self. This immortal. This Brahman. This is all.
I hope he can make it next week. Thank you
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