Chandogya

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Intro to the Major Works of the Upanishads
Presentation 2 of 13

Chandogya
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, January 12, 1989

Transcript:

If you managed to find your way here, you're interested in following the material.

Last week's lecture and The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad takes its basic starting imagery from the ancient horse sacrifice. Now the horse sacrifice goes back many thousands of years. and if you wish to look into The Rig-Veda about 3,500 years ago. Some of the verses that will help you are in the 10th book of The Rig-Veda. And I believe if you look at songs 162 and 163 in the 10th book of The Rig-Veda, you'll have a description there at that time 3,500 years ago, of the horse sacrifice. one aspect which may be interesting to you is that the horse in ritual archaic times always had a companion. And the companion was a goat. So that the horse would have been a champion thoroughbred. It would have been for all intents and purposes a champion racehorse. And the goat would have been its life companion. So that when the horse was led to the sacrifice, the goat was sacrificed ahead of the horse to alert the divine powers that a major sacrifice was coming.

Later on, much later on in civilization, it became the scapegoat. And so almost everything that we have in our civilization, in our history, in our psyches, has an actual ritualistic origin somewhere in human nature. So that nothing that we have done escapes registering somewhere in the psyche of man, in the history, in the structure of what still is ongoing.

So that The Upanishads when they began about 1,000 B.C., they began as reflections upon what is it that we are doing? Not just the activities in their ritual designation, but the overall shape of what is this form that we are making? And so about 1,000 B.C. in South Asia, in what today is India. Northern India especially. There came this realization that we do not do anything. We do not say anything. We do not think anything without a form. There's always a form. And that the forms of all we say, and all we do, and all we think we've together and make a fabric. A textured fabric which we would call today the real.

But The Upanishads are careful to caution us that that textured fabric is only an expression of the real and is not the real itself. That one must go into that form as a whole in order to find what is truly real.

So that The Upanishads signal a threshold in human understanding. About 3,500 years ago came The Vedas. And then about 3,000 years ago came The Upanishads. It's a threshold of intuition penetrating into first the perception that all that we do knits together and is a single form. And that inside the single form is a center. And inside the center is a space. And whatever is in that space that is the real. And so later on in tonight's lecture on The Chandogya Upanishad they'll use that image. They'll give us that image. And I'll start the lecture by throwing us back to this and see if we can come up with this image towards the end of the lecture.

Now there is in this city of Brahman an abode, a small lotus flower. Within the small lotus flower is an even smaller space. What is within that should be sought. For that but surely is what one should desire to understand. If they should say to him with regard to this city of Brahman and the abode of the small lotus flower and the small space within that. What is there that should be sought for? Or that assuredly once your desire to understand. He should say is far verily as this world space extends, so far extends the space within the heart.

So that The Chandogya Upanishad will give us a formulation which has become familiar to us through the millennia. The old Hermetic formulation, as above so below. And the above is the above of where we as human beings in our proportion are able to stand and live. Above that. And at the same time below this level where we are able to stand and work and have our being. Below that. That whatever is below where we are and above where we are is a parallel. And they use a strong word here, concomitant space. That as you explore one the inner space, the outer space is also explored. Or vice-versa if you explore on the outer space, the inner space is explored. Constantly and consistently through The Upanishads these two are aligned in such a way that you cannot have one without the other. That they are complementation. There are complementation.

In The Upanishads the emphasis is always maintaining your goal as that space within the flower within the city of your true self. And if you maintain that as the object of your direction. if you maintain your concentration on that space. There will come a time. There will come a threshold that you will cross where the outer space and the inner space meet that interior space. That's the experience to be had.

And so, The Upanishad teachers were always, they were always interested in having just one pupil. Or at the most, later on, after the time of the historical Buddha, it was permissible to have a number of disciples or chiles or students. But generally, it was a one-on-one relationship because the concentration and energy needed was so tremendous so absorptive. What was absorptive? What was the concen…concentration? That the teacher had to maintain his open space for the student. Because the pupil, the chila, the student was not able, was not strong enough, was not insightful enough, to have a space of his own. And the teacher would give his space to the pupil. Would extend it as you would say psychically to the student. So that that person would have a sense, would have a taste for it. Maybe not be able to focus on it exactly. Maybe not be able to realize it precisely. But would have in whatever they did the sense of presence. The kind of awareness that there was a flavor there. And that was the gift of the teacher to the student. To maintain that without break for the student. Because the whole process of training was to acclimate yourself to see that no matter what you did, no matter what you thought, or in what way you thought, or in what form you did actions, that this taste of presence was always the same. It never changed. It never waxed or waned. It had no cycles. And thus, slowly the teeth grew and spread and came to infuse. I guess that's the word we can use. Came to infuse whatever you thought, whatever you did with that particular flavor.

Later on, in Mahayana Buddhism the term that was always used was perfuming. That the spiritual presence of a bodhisattva, of an enlightened helper perfumes the time space in which one is. This perfuming has a kind of a peculiar embulance where time space no longer seemed that important. Where the categories of this world are take it or leave it. Where there's a sense of impending coming over the crest, as it were, to where there is effortless action. And that the student would always begin to have this kind of a sense.

And the number one resistance was always self-doubt. That the student would then think this can't be. What I want is such and so. What I want is I imagine such and so. I want to do this. I want to be able to, to levitate. I want to be able to master my psychic energy in such a way that I could burn paper. all kinds of extraneous purposes had to be let go of progressively. And as they were, this perfumed flavor of pure spatiality would begin to occur more and more in the life.

So, The Chandogya Upanishad, which we have tonight, is one of the really great early Upanishads. Written down somewhere in a sequence in the 7th century B.C. It was completed before the historical Buddha came on the scene.

And right away at the beginning we need to refer to one of the great 20th century Yogi's. Sri Aurobindo, whose writings are sometimes quite exact. His book on The Upanishads is quite excellent as a companion. I wouldn't, I wouldn't form myself on Aurobindo for several reasons. But he's good to consult. Mainly because he was a practiced yogi in himself. I don't know if you know about Sri Aurobindo. He was an intellectual genius. And he was sent to England for an education. And in England he was at Cambridge University when Bertrand Russell was there and all of these people. and he became ace sharp in his mental outlook. And when he went back to India, he became a lawyer and became interested in political movements. And right away to try and embarrass him, to stop him, the British authorities threw him in jail. Not just in jail they threw him in a cell. Five foot by seven-foot cell. And they wouldn't allow him any books. No paper. Nothing. Not to talk to anyone. And they left him there for a year. And the only thing that Aurobindo could do, the only thing that he could do was meditate. And when he walked out of the prison a year later, he was a master yogi. And he never ever went back to Western clothes. He never went back to Western ways. Except later on to try and show how the yogic capacity transforms this modern world into its true form. And not the form that egotistical minds think it has. So Aurobindo is trustworthy because he has a personal history in his own life which utilized the classic yogic techniques.

Now he writes here that the initial sentence in all Upanishads is like the clue. It's like the music teacher who blows the pitch pipe. it's the initial sentences in The Upanishads give you the perspective from which the subject is going to be raised. The subject is always how to get to the deep self. And how getting to the deep self to be there. But there are many ways to do this. And all of the ways involve taking you from where you are, to show you that as you leave from where you are and move to the inner self, every stage along the way transforms your conception of what is happening. So that there's no way to see ahead. There's no way to prophesize as it were. There's no way to set up a plan to go there. There's no way to diagram for oneself. Because as you move every individual is different. And at every stage along the way, your whole conception of what is happening transforms.

So that the only guide is to show you again and again ways in which this has been done. And then to encourage you do it the way that's right for you. Take yourself as you actually occur and find the way that's right for you. How do you find that? Because whatever you're looking for in your deep self is also looking for you. that these two are coming together. And the only meeting point that they can come together is in that universal space. So, the discipline is to keep the universal space as a tone in whatever you do and whatever you think. It doesn't really matter what you do. You can be a gardener. You can be a yogi. You can be a political activist. It doesn't really matter. As long as you keep a center alive and alert. And allow for yourself, your deep self and your worldly person to work together, to come together, in that space.

That space The Chandogya Upanishad says is expressed by a root word, ohm. Ohm. That ohm represents and expresses that space. And that the ohm is, starts from the back of the throat ahhhhhhhhhhh. And it moves to the fullness ohhhhhhhh. And to the closure mmmmmmm. and then with a, an abruptness leaves a silence. So that the ohm syllable takes all of the capacity of speech plus silence and brings it together.

And Upanishad tells us that human nature is divine. And what we do has a real effect on this universe. And when we sound this symbol with knowledge it creates that interior space, where the inner self and the worldly self can meet and come together. So that every Upanishad begins with ohm repeated three times. And usually the last words in The Upanishad are peace. Shanti. Shanti, shanti, shanti. Peace, peace, peace. That they begin with ohm which is like a wake-up call. A wake-up call in the sense that it that syllable generates the meeting space.

So, this is how the beginning of The Chandogya Upanishad occurs.

Ohm. One should meditate on this syllable. The Udgitha. For one sings the loud chant beginning with ohm. Of this here is the explanation. The essence of these beings is the earth. The essence of this earth is water. The essence of water is plants. The essence of plants is man. The essence of man is speech. The essence of speech is the hymn. The essence of the hymn is the chant. The essence of the chant is ohm.

Now in this declension you can see that The Chandogya Upanishad, about 3,000 years ago does not consider a man an animal. Considers man the essence of plants. That is to say the context of man is not really the animal world but is the plant world. so that most of The Upanishads are delivered in forest hermitages. Forrest retreats. Because it was just a graphic way to show you that the real-life level on this planet are the plants. That the animals no matter how many you think they are, are really just a fraction of what the plant world is. And so, when you're tuning yourself to the expressive forms of life, its petty to tune yourself to animal. The animal level.

What you need The Upanishad says again and again, is a vast mind. You need to tune yourself to think in terms of vast real strategies, real context. And that the plant world is where man really exists. It's not as some Victorian writers supposed an indication that they were vegetarians. That's not it at all. It has nothing to do with that.

There are three forms of language in progressive order. speech overall and then the essence of that speech is the hymn. And in ancient Sanskrit it was we would write it RK, with a dot under the R. Rik or rig like Rig-Veda. The Rig Veda is a series of hymns. A long huge series of hymns. The hymn is language brought together in the form of a praise of the divine. But especially in The Upanishads and The Veda, praising the divine in terms of the focused motions of this world. The stars. The growth of the plants. The occurrence of children. The ongoing of the rituals and sacrifices.

So that speech, the essence of that is to bring language together to recognize that this is an occurrence that man does not make by himself. But makes in response to realizing that there is a compliment to him, which is to receive the praise. So that the hymn is the beginning of the meeting of the human and divine worlds. But heaven and earth meet with an interface of language. But not just language, speech, spoken language. And not just that, hymning. And not just that, within the hymn is, and the Sanskrit term for that is Samon. Samon. It's a, it's a powerful. It means chant but it means chant in the way Walt Whitman meant chant. It means a kind of a universally sustained rhythm that may only come in for a short bit of language. But that short bit of language is an indication that this rhythm is a universal rhythm. It's like somebody who looks at the visual rhythm of the DNA molecule. And you can see that this is the rhythm of life. In just that way the Samon, the chant is the essence of the hymn. Because it shows that that language brought together in that way always occurs in that form. It always has that form.

What is that form? That form is a pair that meets and twines. the original Sanskrit samon. Sa refers to a woman. Mon like to a man's. like, it's like man/woman. It's like those two together are able to engender something between them. And so, a Samon, a chant, means that this pace, this rhythm of language in hymn, in speech is a generative force. What does it generate? it generates ultimately ohm. It generates ultimately the space of creation. The space of reality. And that if one can acclimate oneself to living in that space and nowhere else, one becomes a universal self. One becomes Brahma.

So that The Chandogya Upanishad then gives us this saying,
Speech indeed is Rik and breath is Samon. The rhythm of the chant, the rhythm of the Samon, is breath. The breathing in and the breathing out. And The Chandogya says that the real power comes after you have breathed in and before you breathe out. In that pause is the real power. And then it gives examples in here that when you really want to exert yourself if you notice at that moment of exertion you hold your breath. It's a kind of a clumsy way of doing it. The really powerful way is to measure yourself and only act when you have finished breathing in before you've breathe down. In that pause. And there are whole powerful yogas built around that. Of only acting in that pause.

So that they give here that the samon breath is the rhythm. So that breath is going to become the symbol of the space in which ohm occurs in its fullness. Life breath it will become.

The Chandogya records,
The syllable ohm is the Udgitha. Now this is a pair namely speech and breath. And also, the hymn and the chant. this pair is joined together in the syllable ohm. Verily whenever a pair come together, they fulfill each other's desire. Verily he who knows this thus meditates on the syllable and becomes a fulfiller of desires.

Now what desire is one carrying? The desire to maintain that interior space within the Lotus within oneself. To maintain that. to have that occur. And the ohm evokes that, and our discipline keeps that in act, activity. It's like saying ohm in the right way initiates that space to occur but it quickly atrophies. It fades. There's kind of like an entropy. If you only do it ritualistically it only mechanically occurs and then fades away. But the more that you put understanding with it. The more that you put intentionality with it. The more you a couple consciousness with it the longer the effect stays. And you learned that the method is to bring all of your consciousness to bear when you say that. And if you can do that, it maintains it indefinitely. So that there's a natural yoga of language of which ohm is the, the spear point as it were. It's the, it's not just a poetic phrase. And it's not just a ritualistic habit. But it's a technique of allowing you to have an anvil upon which you bring to bear all of your energy.

It records, "This syllable is of assent, for whenever anyone ascents to anything he simply says ohm. What is ascent is fulfillment. He who knowing this thus meditates on the syllable as the Udgitha. And becomes a fulfiller of desires."

So that the whole introduction of The Chandogya Upanishad gives us ohm and gives us an orientation as to how important this is. It generates the space which we need to maintain and that there is a meeting going to occur in this space. A meeting of what is above a cosmological person and what is below, a symbolic person, are going to come together. And they're going to come together just like the two stages of breath come together in a pause. And they'll come together and stay that way.

The second part reads, "When the Gods and the demons, both descendants of Prajapati, contended with each other. The Gods took hold of the Udgitha. Took hold of ohm, thinking with this we shall overcome them." So, there's a basic polarity that occurs in life. Gods and demons. Yin and yang. Wherever there are demons, there are Gods. Wherever there are Gods, there are demons. Man does not live in either world. But he lives in an openness where he is constantly interfacing with both of these realms. If he gets caught up in their struggle, then he's in the world of illusion. Because it's their struggle and not our struggle. One has to transcend. How can one transcend? There is always in that struggle, in that polarity, there is always an interface of balance between them. Which even though it's distorted in the chaos of this world runs like a royal road of openness in that space in the Lotus in the heart.

So, "The Gods thinking to overcome the demons meditated, they themselves meditated on the Udgitha. As the breath in the nose. I thought maybe it's this breath. The demons afflicted that with evil, therefore when one smells both sweet and foul are able to come into smelling."
It isn't the breath in the nose.

"When they meditated on the Udgitha as the eye, the demons afflicted that with evil. Therefore, one sees, both the sightly and the unsightly. It isn't there. It isn't in that way."

And they go to the ear. And they go to the mouth. And when they come to the breath in the mouth, when the demons hit against it, they were destroyed. Just as if you take a ball of Earth and throw it against the solid stone, the ball of earth disperses and is destroyed. The speech in the mouth. The chanting of the syllable over and over and over again reoccurs that space over and over again. And not only did the demons not occur there but the Gods also do not polarize there. But we cannot keep chanting forever. And there must be a way to fix this. Fix it for once and for all.
The key to this is to learn that language is extremely powerful when it's focused. But before we can learn to focus on ohm, we have to learn to focus our chant capacity. And before that we have to focus our hymning capacity. And before that we have to attune ourselves to what speech is. And so, The Chandogya Upanishad begins by giving us identifications of the Udgitha and its syllables. Trying to tell us how to think about, how to open up and think about this. And it reads like this.

Now with reference to divinities him who glows yonder, the Sun. one should meditate on the Sun as the Udgitha. So, when the Sun rises you sing, and you sing aloud for all creatures. And the Sun on rising, dispels the night. Dispels the fear. And he who knows this becomes the dispeller of fear and darkness.
How does he know this? He knows this because he tunes his singing to the Sun as the Udgitha. Now this is a very, very ancient, world-wide wisdom technique, to sing for the rising of the Sun. It occurs in all cultures everywhere in the planet. In their wisdom traditions, there's always that singing to the rising Sun. that if one glorifies all creatures, one's language in this mode becomes sun-like and you acquire that kind of property which the Sun has to illumine everywhere and to dispel fears. So that one's language capacity after a while begins to have that quality and that tone.

So that the breath in the mouth and the breath that the Sun is become alike. they become affine. They've become in sync. in parallel. And one begins to understand that the Sun is a kind of a breath. It's a kind of a breath of life. And the chanting, the singing, the hymning that you have is a breath of life. And just as your breath of life is conscious, has a conscious intent, the Sun also has a conscious intent. Its intent can align with yours. And that one becomes stronger and stronger than in what you do. And what you're able to say begins to work. It not only begins to work out here but begins to have effect within yourself to evoke deeper and deeper unfolding within yourself.

So that it reads,
Therefore, whatever other actions there are that require strength. Such as the kindling of fire by friction. The running of a race. The bending of a strong bow. One performs them without in breathing and without out breathing. Therefore, one should meditate on the pause as the Udgitha.
Heaven is referred to by the syllable UT, Ut. The atmosphere is ghee. And the Earth is tha. Udgitha. The Sun is ut. The air is ghee. The fire is tha. The three Vedas, the Sama-Veda is the Ut. The Yajur-Veda is the ghee. The Rig-Veda the tha.

"Speech yields milk. And the milk is speech. For him, he becomes rich in food, an eater of food, who knows." That is to say your language becomes capable of generating knowledge for you. And it nourishes you. Becomes like a food for you. You begin to understand. And your language not only nourishes you but grows. And you became, you become, capable of meditating on the syllables of the Udgitha.

So that you see that the term ohm when characterized as the Udgitha is like a basic occurrence, which has a movement form and then has a goal. And that the basis and the movement and the goal are all one thing. And the more than one sees this more. It's like primordial recognition of the reflex arc. Stimulus. The action, which we call the response. And the occurrence of a muscular reaction. It's like seeing that all of this occurs all the time. It's like a, it's like a form of understanding that reality always has the structure. On every level. That from some level there's a movement to transfer of energy and another level occurs.

And constantly The Chandogya Upanishad tells us that as we look in this way, we begin to see the design. And that the design is focused most in nature in man. That man is the most heavily concentrated focus of this pattern of activity. And in man's activity, his most focused pattern is speech. And in speech the hymn. And the hymn, the chant. And the chant, ohm. And in this way, we have like a cone that goes in and another cone that goes out. As the inner cone, as one cone goes to the center of the self, another cone goes to the recognition of the exterior. So that there is a cosmic and a symbolic parallel. As the one inquiring cone comes to a point, the other complement to it is the broadest base possible.

END OF SIDE ONE

…to the interior self at the exact specificity of contacting the interior self is the broadest base of cosmic resonance. And above so below, at the highest aspiration of cosmic vision is the broadest base of your own self.

So that there's a double entendre happening all the time. And the only way for the fullness of that experience to occur to one, is to maintain the central space. And while the central space began as a very small space, within a small flower, within your heart. The Anahata chakra is where it, where it is. as one raises in aspiration your cosmic vision and at the same time deepens your symbolical understanding. As those happen together that small space becomes the context of it all. It amplifies. It opens out. And there comes a point when you realize that there never was a time when this did not occur. You never really were ignorant. You never really were lost. That, that was only an apparent illusion. For this space in no way cannot be. And to think that it was only microscopic, atomic within the heart was itself your ignorance.

Now let's take a break and we'll come back.

The form of The Chandogya Upanishad that we have is an eight-part form. And the first five parts are all about meditation. they're all about how to, if I can use this phrase, how to sink into yours and rise to your real dimension. And the important thing is to understand that both these actions happen at the same time. So that if you don't know this. If you're not in a real spiritual learning situation, what occurs to you in the ignorance of false teachers and in the chaos of doing it on your own, is paradox and irony and synchronicities and peculiarities. Deja-Vus. And if you don't have a strategic helper that can be a little disconcerting. To have that start to happen all the time.

So that both these activities are happening. The dynamic of realization comes from both that dimensions occurring at the same time. Instead of the polarities of this world furnishing the energy, it's the dynamics of the individual and the cosmos that furnish the energy. And you're shifting from one kind of energy base to the other. From a worldly energy to an effortless energy. It's like moving from a polarized electricity to a coherent laser. It is very much like that. But the energy comes out, it's expressive form is language. And you have to put a big L on language. the expressive form of that spiritual energy is language. So that one pays attention to what you're saying. And as the phrase goes you learn to say what you mean. And conversely you learn to mean what you say. So increasingly you find that when you do this, when you when you discipline your language in a strategic and a structural way. And couple that with your meditation and your amplifying realization. What you say begins to have effect. and there comes a threshold, there comes a day when you notice that what you say sticks. Begins to happen. It's like the power of the word really occurs to you then. That, that this indeed is big magic as a t Tibetan friend of mine said. **inaudible name** would say that's really big magic. When you realize that now you can say, and it happens. It is. It is that way .

In The Chandogya Upanishad because it's 3,000 years ago. Because they're dealing with largely a kind of a civilization in India. there were only two large cities. Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa. Both of them on the Indus River about 400 miles apart. Like LA and, and San Francisco. They're both about a half million people. And almost all the rest of India was villages. Villages. Just the Indus Valley had these two large metropolitan centers. And most of the Ganges Valley, the Gangetic Plain as they call it, was covered with villages. So that a lot of the teaching metaphors at that time had to be in terms of nature. But the difficulty is that when you start to cross the threshold and your language becomes efficacious, your language becomes magical rather than mythical. On the mythical level you can tell the stories. On the magical level you can tell the formulas. And the formulas make things happen. So that in order to balance the formulaic power of magical language with the storytelling capacity of mythic language one has to have this powerful focus and fulcrum. And ohm is that fulcrum. It keeps the magical language from getting out of hand. It keeps the mythic language from pulling you back into a timeless dull round of the ritual world.

So, the ohm focuses as a balance as it were. Balancing these two huge qualities of language. And the more that you're able to balance it the more that you see that the efficacy is not in the formulas or in the stories but in the realization. That the real power of language is that it opens up realization within. It's just like words or windows. And if you have the right words powerful words, they're windows that look right in on where the space is you want to be. And ohm looks in on the central space. Ohm makes that central space framed in such a way that one can see that's it.

So, here's a little bit of their beautiful way of expressing this. "Now that golden person who is seen within the Sun has a golden beard and golden hair. And is all gold to the tips of the nails." Now that's not a person in any kind of ethnic sense. That's an archetypal image of the human beings like El Dorado. it's like the golden person. The golden human being. Who does not live on earth lives in the Sun. Remember the Sun is like a cosmic breath. Cosmic breath place. There's a person. A golden person who lives there. That person is balanced by another person.

And The Chandogya gives it this way. "Now this person who is seen within the eye is the hymn, the chant, the recitation, the sacrificial formula, the prayer. The form of this one is the same as the form of that person seen in the Sun." So, there are two people. there's an inner person, who is now able to be seen in the eye. It's like in the pupil of the eye. The American sage Black Elk and one memorable phrase says, It's in the dark of men's eyes that they become lost. It's the pupil of the eye that at a certain stage of realization begins to disclose a person. Just like the Sun at a certain stage discloses a person. This person and that person occur together. They occur in a balance together and that the focus of that balance of the space disclosed and presented by ohm. It's very difficult I know sometimes too to follow. But that should be dramatic enough to, to see.

That is to say the interior person and the cosmic person developed together. They're developing together. Those two are going to come together in that sacred space.

The Chandogya goes into many ways then in which meditation can be used. For about the hundred pages it gives different ways that you can turn meditation inside out, upside down. Use different formulations. You can use a five-fold path. You can use a seven-fold path. There are different ways. And The Upanishad is not fragmented but it's showing that there are any number of ways but there is only one way for you. And it's your discovery of what is your way which is important. It's like a decision moment. It's like finding this is for me. This is the way for me. And then to, to go with that.

So, it gives, I'll just give you one example. This is the five-fold chant of the worlds from the second section of The Chandogya Upanishad. "In the worlds one should meditate on the chant as five-fold, sama. The Earth is a syllable hymn. Fire is the Prastava. The atmosphere is the Udgitha. The sun is the pratyahara. And the sky is the N'donna. Thus, among the higher are ascending." You have that imagery. Now if you can, if you can allow me the images of a flame on the Earth and the sun in the sky. And in between them is ohm. The resonance of ohm. But one can see that this is a five-fold movement. The Earth to a flame to the ohm to the Sun to the sky. The earth is a context. The flame is the first light of insight. The ohm is the expressing of the full energy of that insight. The Sun is the cosmic renas…resonance of that flame. And the sky is the new Earth. It's like that.

But The Chandogya always shows us that it isn't just that order. It isn't the order that's important. It's the fact to see that that order in all of its stages is one thing. It isn't five things. It isn't five stages. It's all one tapestry, which has a quality, a spiritual presence.

So, The Chandogya then, characteristically, because ancient teaching was always this way. Instead of taking an example which was an offshoot, a corollary, as we would do today. Most examples today are like little nuances. But in ancient times it was 180 degrees reversed. So, they give the descending order. Now the reverse, the sky is the syllable hymn, the beginning. The Sun as the Prastava. The atmosphere is the Udgitha. The fire is the pratyahara. The Earth is the N'donna. These are Sanskrit words for stages. N'donna means conclusion. It means the end.

But notice here that when one takes the ascending order or the descending order that the center, ohm, maintains itself. So, the realization that is latent there is that ohm is still at the center. And what they mean to say is that in almost any of these relationalities whatever is at the center is ohm. And even though it might seem like it's different, in actual fact it is the fulcrum. Not just of the movement but of the oneness of it all. There's always a double entendre.

So, they give this kind of natural five-fold meditation. "One should meditate on the five-fold Samon in the rain. The preceding wind is the foundation. The formation of cloud is the second phase. What rains is the ohm. The lightning and thunder are the fourth stage. And the stopping of the rain, the cessation of rain, is the conclusion." So that no matter how long it lasts. No matter what intensity it has. the entirety of the rainstorm as a set piece, as a case in natural phenomenon, can be meditated on as this kind of motion. And the purpose is to see it as a unity. One saw the whole storm. one saw its beginning, it's rising, it's coming, it's being there and it's going away and it's ending and not there. And saw that all of this was of one piece. That which you are. Tat Tvam Asi. Thou art that. You are the unity of that whole occurrence. You never were anything other than the unity of the total occurrence of this universe. Tat Tvam Asi. Thou art that.

Out in the parking lot of PRS Mr. Hall years ago had that Egyptian scribe put in leaning and kneeling up to Mount Wilson. and if you read the back of it, pull the shrubbery away, it says look for the face in the Sun and know that you are the presence behind that mask. Tat tvam asi. Thou art that. It's, it's expected that Mr. Hall would have put something like that front and center.

They give all kinds of examples. They give how you can look at the seasons. In India there were five seasons. You can look at the year as a meditation. That you can just imagine to yourself how much discipline it would take to meditate on the five seasons of the year as a set-piece for a single entity. So, you can make it as, as difficult as you want. You can make it as easy as you want. Whatever challenges you. There are meditations on animals. There are meditations on all sorts of things.

Then they give us a whole section of the way in which ohm is used in various chants. Different structures of chants. And there are many of them. And it all leads to the use in this way. "Now the light which shines above this heaven. Above all. Above everything. In the highest world's beyond which there are no higher. Verily that is the same as this light which is here within this person." There is this seeing of it. And now they're giving it to us in, in packages. There is this seeing of it. Here's this phenomenon of the seeing of it.

As when in this body one perceives the warmth by touch. There is this hearing of it, as when one on closing the ears one hears as it were a sound. As it were a noise as of a fire blazing. One should meditate on this. That has been seen and heard. One who knows this becomes one beautiful to see and heard of in renown. Yeh one who knows this.
This particular meditation shows that the form of wholeness that one is looking for are also the faculties that one has for oneself. They can also be put into this form. You can see all of your faculties as one thing. They all come together as one thing.

And as they move in this way, they come here to this. This whole world. This whole world is Brahma. This whole world is a single form. There is a process which encompasses the world as an entity. "This whole world is Brahma. From which he comes forth. Without which he will be dissolved. And in which he breathes. Tranquil. One should meditate on it. Now verily a person consists of purpose." They used to make the shooting of the bow motion, gesture. One there is purpose. there is direction. A person consists of purpose. The whole shape of a person's life is a single movement towards some purpose. And one can meditate on that. And if one meditates on that and superimposes, montages, that meditate on the meditation of the world is one thing, one brings Atman and Brahman into sync.

"According to the purpose, a person has in this world so does he become on departing from it. So, let him frame for himself a purpose." And notice here, it isn't the purpose it's the whole dynamic structural form of having a purpose which is important. Because it allows one to see the life as a whole. You can choose any purpose. Nothing is mundane. Nothing is so low or so high that it won't work. Whatever you want. that's your life purpose. But the meditation is not on the object of it, high or low, but on the singularity of the form in which the life lived moves towards that. Achieves that. And is that in this world as a singularity.

When those two are brought together The Chandogya begins to sound in this way. "He who consists of mind. Whose body is life. Whose form is light. Whose conception is truth. Whose soul is space containing all works. Containing all desires. Containing all odors. All tastes. encompassing this whole world. Being without speech and without concern." Notice now they left speech behind. How have we left speech behind? We have gone into the interior speech. speech. The chant. The hymn. The chant. The Udgitha. And we've dropped into the center of the self where there is no speech, there is silence. The end of ohm is the beginning of a massive silence of the real. And we are there now. And we are encompassing the whole world and our life in its fullness together then we're without speech. Without concern.

This is my self within the heart. Smaller than a grain of rice. Smaller than a mustard seed. This is my self within the heart. Greater than the earth. Greater than the atmosphere. Greater than the sky. Greater than worlds within worlds.

Now I had outlined a bunch of things to give to you, but I think we've gone far enough tonight and we'll come back next week. And I hope if you get a chance that the, The Chandogya Upanishad is worth reading. and the addition that I'm using for these is by Radha Krishna The Principal Upanishads. I think it's a paperback now. Even though it's large.

Well thank you for coming out on this night. Thank you.

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