Kaushitaki
Presented on: Thursday, February 2, 1989
Presented by: Roger Weir
Intro To The Major Works Of The Upanishads
Presentation 5 of 13
Kaushitaki
Presented by Roger Weir
Thursday, February 2, 1989
Transcript:
on such a stormy sort of a night.
There are many people who would come to hear about The Upanishads, but they feel that they know about the Upanishads having studied Vedanta. Or having had some kind of a 20th century guru. But The Upanishads that I'm giving you are, is the ancient tradition as much as possible. I'm giving you the teaching pretty much the way that it would have been given about 2,500 years ago before the Buddha.
You must understand that in India the occurrence of the Buddha changed everything, a personality of that scale and that range of power, restructures the psyche. So that the patterns of integration. the use of symbols. The understanding of consciousness. Everything changes. So, I'm giving you pre-Buddhist Upanishads. so that in your own way, whatever reasons there are that have led you to be interested. And to bring yourself out of the daily life that I know all of you live. To come and hear something like this, you can appreciate what an ancient wisdom was like.
Now with the advent of the Buddha a traditional ancient teaching like The Kowshiaki was turned inside out. But if you did not know the ancient teaching, the tradition. There is no way that you could appreciate the power the Buddha to reach into the archetypal consciousness of India and turn it inside out. So, one of the great virtues of having the ancient tradition like this is to get it before it's changed.
Now the Vedanta is very clearly heavily influenced by the buddha. Not only by the Buddha but by the great Mahayana developments that came about 400 years after the Buddha. And even Vedanta is influenced by the tantras, which began in the 8th century A.D., to color and skew almost all of the religious undertakings in that part of the world. So that just to have a Vedantic understanding of The Upanishads. Or 20th century guru of The Upanishads is really beside the point.
If we take The Upanishads in the 20th century mode, we have the entire banquet of world civilization to choose from today. And there are many, many examples of human spiritual brilliance which could be put on a par with The Upanishads. But when we go back to ancient India, we go back also to a tone which is somehow familiar to all of us on a very, very deep archaic level. India is very much a bridge between the great civilizations of China and the great civilizations of Greece, Hellenistic civilization. And India has always been the bridge between the two. And The Upanishadic material as transformed by the Buddha influenced the civilization of China and influenced the Hellenistic civilization of the later Hellenistic eras.
But with the ancient Upanishads in their pre-Buddhist tone what comes to mind most exquisitely is their affinity with ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, in fact, have a kind of a tone that seems to come out. Some of the wisdom episodes and the Egyptian sequences are there in ancient India. And we're just reminded that the civilization of the Indus River and the civilization of the Euphrates River and the Nile River. These three valley civilizations were all in a way siblings, if you will. They were cognate about 2000 B.C. There were just a few trade routes that were open. Most of them were over land. And the marine trade routes really weren't developed until Roman times. Although Alexandria under the Ptolemies tried to explore and push the marine contacts. the breaking point was around where Yemen is today. Southern Yemen. On the very blunt end of the Arabian Peninsula. It was so inhospitable for foreigners and for traders that there were only sporadic ties. But mainly the three civilizations in ancient times, when there were over land routes. The world of 2000 B.C. was an international world. Much like our own time. International commerce. And there you can find the cognate civilizations.
The Upanishads as I'm delivering them to you would have been recognizable about 26-2,700 years ago even in a place like Egypt. That kind of a quality.
Now The Kaushitaki Upanishad which were taking tonight he is one of the, one of the really difficult ones. There are not many translations. I think that there are four translations that I know of. I've brought two of them here today. I brought the one by Max Muller, which is in The Sacred Books Of The East series. In fact, it's Volume one of The Sacred Books Of The East Series. And Muller was a very famous Indologist and mythographer of the 19th century. And frankly his perspective is the one that Mr. Hall has on a great many of mythological subjects and Indological concerns.
Muller was a, was a cosmopolitan individual. And in the 1870s he's the one who broached the whole subject of having a complete survey of Asian wisdom. And he included Mohammedanism into the oriental survey. And included the Quran. He included Zoroastrian texts, Chinese texts, both the Buddhist and the Hindu from India and so on. He seems to have ignored Japan. Muller's concern was that the insights in Asian wisdom were needed by a faltering Western syncretism. That philosophy in the West had become as we would understand it today in a colloquial phrase, had become broad CinemaScope history of ideas. And the greatest protagonist of this presentation in the West was Hegel. Hegel's philosophy of grand ideas. And people like Muller, who were post romantics, understood that the need for great visions was becoming a destructive habit in the West. That the appreciation of the excellence of the detail of inquiry was vanishing. Was being belittled. And so, the introduction of this material was to them reseeding perennial problems for the human nature back into the West. Problems that the West was likely to let go in view of grant conceptions. Because they had seemingly digested all of the Western seeds to the point of ad nauseam. And by introducing Asian seeds, it reintroduced again all of the basic problems of life and of thought and discussions of consciousness in reality.
And indeed, in fact in the 20th century this has happened. And with that receding of basic issues we have in the late 20th century come to understand that we have not in fact adjusted the seeds of our own tradition but that we had swallowed them whole and spit them out. And that our civilization has actually grown up to be a great Chamara, not rooted either east or west. Which accounts for its a taste for a kind of a neutral technological future rather than any kind of a in depth personality-based civilization.
So, Max Muller, I'm going to use his translation.
And then the one by Radhakrishnan. As you might know Radhakrishnan was president of India when it its independence in the 1940s and 50s. He was a professor at Oxford University for many years in philosophy. Very distinguished man. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
But I'm going to use mainly Muellers translation because he has a feel for the, for the quality which The Kaushitaki Upanishad has. It is an ancient Upanishad. It is one of the original Upanishads. One of the great concluding stories in chapter 4 of The Kaushitaki Upanishad is a variation, a rendition, of the same story which is told in the oldest of The Upanishads and the largest, The Brhadaranaka Upanishad. The great forest teaching.
Now Kaushitaki was a sage but figures as only one among a number of sages in the Upanishad. So, it's kind of a misnomer to think of it as the teaching of the sage Kaushitaki. It's arrangement includes a pointed discussion in chapter two of the efficacy of magical ceremonies. The reason for this is to give the flavor that what is being talked about here, that the experience of the deep self when that is touched in its legitimacy, the whole way of being human is changed. And one no longer lives in a world where the Gods are so much important, but one lives in a world where your powers are important. And therefore, the responsibility for your life centers no longer on a ritual propitiation of others but on an invocation of a standard of judgment for yourself. And thus, consciousness is raised. And thus, the responsibilities of the individual are underscored. that you are now going to be dealing with the powers on your basis. So, you must learn to only perform the ancient sacrifices by rote ritual. For the Gods to do the work is no longer enough. you must do the work. You must make the judgments. You must indeed then be able to be conscious and remember the deep-self experience.
Now in very ancient times, I guess to distinguish him from already ancient times we should call them archaic times. In our archaic times apparently human beings around the world realized that there was an efficacy in sacred action. Sacred actions work. But there was a particular tone of not to ask too many questions. To let the Gods, do their work. To sacrifice to them to invoke quote with words but not to make the words inquiry oriented. Not to explore the issue. Not to become self-conscious.
So that in archaic times man's religiosity was characterized by a dutifulness to the Gods. Whereas in ancient times there had been a threshold that was crossed. And The Kaushitaki Upanishad comes from that threshold about 700 B.C. It's contemporaneous with the prophet Isaiah. That is no longer enough to be dutiful to the Gods. It's no longer enough just to have sacrifices that work. We must now have self-consciousness in ourselves. And when that happens the sacrificial action changes. It goes from the ritual of movement to the structured ritual of language.
And we'll see in The Kaushitaki Upanishad that the throne of Brahman is made by the various verses and hymns and meters of the human voice. And to have understood that that is so. That the throne of the Divine is made by man saying so in a very pointed exacting way. Then gives him a confidence. Gives him a threshold which is a beginning. And that is to say that his deepest wisom, wisdom begins with speaking right.
And so, The Kaushitaki Upanishad says that speech is firm. and what keeps it firm is that behind speech is the eye. The eye which sees form. And so, speech is firm because the eye which sees form behind it is firm. But behind the eye is the ear. The ear hears the sound in the right tones. and the right tones from the ear keep the eye firm. and the eye keeps speech firm. but behind the ear on a fourth level is the mind. And the mind keeps the ear firm. Without concentration The Kaushitaki Upanishad says we hear but we don't hear. we don't know that we hear. It's only by concentrating that we hear. And of course, if you concentrate in a deep-self way you also remember what you have heard.
So, there is speech which is firm because of the eye. And that is firm because of the ear. And that is firm because of the mind. But that the mind is also firmed because behind it is the spirit. And a spirit has a very mysterious quality. The mysterious quality is that there seems to be a unity to the spirit, which has on one hand a Brahmanic tone of the all. Which translates his life, prana. And yet at the very same time it has a knowledge tone called Pragna. And that the, that life and pragna, some translated wisdom in Buddhist times but pragna in ancient times in India was knowledge. It would not be gnosis, but it would be episteme. The Greek term for it would episteme. Like epistemology. That kind of knowledge. A technical knowledge. Not a revelation knowledge but a technical knowledge. The revelation part, the gnosis part, would be for prana. Pranas expression of Brahma. But the exact self-consciousness is the pragna.
And The Kaushitaki Upanishad furnish out is the first place that we find a new word in the Indian language. And the word is that the deep self is pragnaotma. Prognaotma. And where that occurs in The Upanishad, I believe is the first usage of that term.
Now let's go back and see. out of the four chapters in The Upanishad, chapter one has seven sections. And if you're writing this down chapter 2 has fifteen sections. And chapter 3 eight sections. And chapter four twenty sections. Making fifty sections in all. And in a way you have like the first chapter is small. The second chapter about twice. The size the third chapter is small. And the fourth chapter of about two and a half times the size. So that you have the teaching in a one-two kind of a parallelism.
And in the first chapter it's emphasized that there are two roads that occur together. That in the life experience there are two roads. And they're intertwined with, with each other in such a way that they're not easily distinguishable. And they seem to have the same objective.
And in The Kaushitaki Upanishad 2,700 years ago, in order to present the, the goal of the paths of life's the moon is used as the object. That both of these paths, though they are different, both lead to the moon. But that the moon is an intermediate place. Now don't think in terms of a science fiction going to the moon. But that the moon in its phases is both new at one time, that is to say dark. Or full at another time, that is to say light. And all the variations in between our grade graduations, gradations of light and dark. One of the paths leads to the light of the moon. The bright part of the moon. the other leads to the dark part of the moon. The path that leads to the dark part of the Moon, The Kaushitaki Upanishad says this is the path of the fathers. This is the traditional path of the fathers. In the sense that this is the way human life generally ends. And that by going to the dark of the moon, they are sent back to earth and reborn. It leads to rebirth. So, the path, the path of the fathers leads to rebirth.
And incidentally in The Kaushitaki Upanishad we have clearly for the first time in Indian civilization the understanding that there is a gestation period in the male as well as in the Female. That the birth sequence within the woman is matched by a birth sequence within the man. That is to say that the, the sperm, the seed, has a long gestation and maturation in the man. So, that by the time conception occurs that's the first birth. Now this is a wisdom tradition. So that by coming into this world with full knowledge of the whole procedure of how life occurs one is already twice born. One is born from the mother and one is born from the father. So that by going to a teacher for that next birth one is born for the third time. One is thrice born. And those who graduate in that way who come to knowledge of the self are called thrice greatest. This is just, there was a Hermetic emphasis in India just like there was in Egypt or, or in Greece. Or later on in Europe.
The Kaushitaki Upanishad makes it clear that the path of the fathers includes rebirth. And incidentally is ancient enough, old enough, to have the, the doctrine that one could be reborn as an animal, as an insect. Even reborn in a Hell. There are there many perilous adventures that one can have.
The other path is called the Deva pathi and it leads to Brahmaloka. it leads to the experience of Brahman. And this is not to return to the world. So that one leaves the moon and does not return to Earth but is able to enter the other heavens. The moon then is seen as a window threshold to which everyone goes, and the parting of the ways occurs there. The way one is able to not be reborn and leave the moon and to go on to other heavenly abodes is to not accept the moon as your place, as your destination. Those who accept it as their destination are sent back to earth. the moon is part of the ecology of Earth. those who do not go on out. So, The Kaushitaki Upanishad has this very peculiar insight into it.
The movement of the path of the fathers is that one comes to the fulfillment of one's life cycle through smoke and night. Smoke and night. That is to say there isn't very much consciousness. And it's usually under obscure happenings and one is never quite sure of what, what goes on whereas. The deva pathi is through light and days. One understands increasingly to exactness what is happening. And why. And where. But especially who. So that the knowledge that is learned is not a, not a knowledge of gnosis here again. That's a Hellenistic post Buddhist emphasis. In The Kaushitaki Upanishad it's the episteme. In a very exact way this is how it works. This is how it works.
After introducing these two roads The Kaushitaki Upanishad goes into a short discussion of what we would call the journey of the soul. The journey to the Brahma world. and I'll give you a quotation here from Radhakrishnans translation. I think here it may be a little easier. Having entered on this path of the Gods he comes to the world of Agni. Then to the world of Vayu. Then to the world of Varuna. Then to the world of Indra. Then to the world of Prajapati. Then to the world of Brahma.
Now these six figures are all in this sequence Gods. Or as we would say today God images. Mythological God images. They are mythic images of divinity which occur in a mythological horizon. And in this path of no rebirth, one comes and comes to understand what the Gods are. And in particular the God to pay attention to here is Indra. Indra, who is the king of the Gods. But if you recall from The Aitareya Upanishad that to pronounce the name Indra is to pronounce a contraction. That the full name of it is kind of like a secret showing that it's really the deep self. The king of the Gods is the deep self. That is to say there is an image among the images of divinity, which is of a different tone from all the other images. All the other images are mythological and have their fullness and nourishment there on a mythological level. But one of those images has its fullness on a deep level underneath the mythological, in the interior of the person. This is the God within. And in Indra is that God who is really fully within. So that there is a coming an understanding of Indra in an esoteric way within.
This Brahma world, says The Kaushitaki Upanishad,
This Brahma world verily has the lake Ara and the moments yeshiva, and the river Vajura. The tree Ilia. The city Sal Jaya. The abode Aparajita. The two doorkeepers Indra and Prajapati. The Hall of Debu. The throne **inaudible word (name?) or two**. The beloved Manasi and her counterpart Kutsusi. Both of whom taking flowers verily weave the world. The mothers, the nurses, the nymphs and the rivers. To it, to such a world he who knows this comes.
In other words, one doesn't arrive at a geographical strata, but one arrives at a Vidya. A, an interior mode of seeing. A kind of a conscious perception which sees that this is a horizon, which occurs. And that most men call it divine. But that in this self-conscious way one sees that there is a deep aspect of oneself that exists within this level. So that now the realm of the Gods is not out there. it's not up there. but it's in some way that includes your deepest self. And knowing this then one wishes to journey to that part of oneself, which is on that end bit, as it were, of the other Gods. But in doing so at, in coming to that part of yourself which is on the end bit with the other Gods you go into your own interior. And as you do you come to realize a parallelism.
As you go within yourself that image of that God Indra becomes more and more a instead of on the circumference it becomes more and more the hub. Until The Kaushitaki Upanishad later on will use a kind of a very famous simile. that objects are the circumference of the wheel of life. The spokes of the wheel of life are the subject, which correspond to the objects more or less. But that the hub is prana. But at the center of the hug is pragna. And so, there's that kind of an image with which The Kaushitaki will use later on. It's a, it's a classic image.
The first indication that they give that this is so is they say there's a kind of an odd, I guess we would use the term kinesthetic. There's a kinesthetic experience that happens. They use a metaphor appropriate to their times. They say it's like when you're in a chariot and both wheels are spinning but you are not spinning. The chariot is carrying you and both of them are spinning together. The Kaushitaki says you come to a state of mind where you realize that all opposites are like these two wheels of a chariot. They use the term pairs. the ancient term was pairs. Why is that so? Why instead of opposite? Opposites engenders the idea of polarity with its cognate correlate analogy. And in archaic times there was no such thought as that. There was no such thought as polarity analogy. In archaic times there was pairs because the important thing was that these, these pairs a curl
occur in parallelism. And there's not so much attention between them. Its that what occurs in between them is unifying. So, in archaic times the attention of the mind insightfully was towards the unity rather than to the tension. Rather than to the dynamis. Rather than to the power. The idea that there's power in the opposites is a very late post Buddhist idea. I'm sure it must have occurred to some people but it just it was never developed. Never developed very much.
So that the chariot wheels are like pairs. And one has a state of being where one transcends that. You're not caught up in either movement. This is the first sense of going within yourself. That you are no longer identifying yourself with just the movement of life in a, in a naive way. They've come to understand that there's, there's something else happening.
This is when the perception of prana as an occurrence, life-breath I guess some translations of it give it life breath. But it's better to use the term prana. Prana like Dao are perfectly adequate terms and we can it. It's not light breath so much but its life which expresses itself and the ability to breathe. That's really what prana is. We would call it the living spirit I guess in, in religious symbolic talk.
The Kaushitaki Upanishad says that when someone is lying supine, they can open their ears. They can open their eyes. They can speak. they can think with the mind. But that still doesn't get them up but when prana is activated, they are able to get up. It's like somebody who wakes up from a deep sleep and can think about things and can look around can hear but doesn't really get up. What really gets you up that's prana. What is able to get you up. This is also a part of the deep-self but it contains within a secret. It's like the secret within life is the pragnaotma.
And so, The Kaushitaki Upanishad is trying to get us to look towards this way. And they come up here with the five koshas, the five sheaths. speech penetrating through to eye. Deeper to ear. deeper yet to mind. Mind in Sanskrit is Mana. and deeper into spirit. When the spirit is on all then it's Brahma. when it is exacting in you, indelibly you, then it's pragna. So, that pragna is what we would call self-consciousness. The self-consciousness always occurred with Brahman. They always occur together. When they occurred together in their unity undistinguished then you have life. Life energy. Prana.
They then introduce what are called hymns. And they use the old Sanskrit, the ancient Sanskrit term for this the uktha. U-k-t-h-a. This is worshipful language. but in The Kaushitaki Upanishad the reminder is that worship language is no longer just an adjunct to sacrifice but has become the essence of sacrifice itself. So that what one says, that happens. And they don't go into the distinction like we need to for just a moment.
They're saying that when you use language in a mythological sense you're speaking in reference to natural occurrences. You're speaking so that objects are reference to the, the subject. But The Kaushitaki for the very first time in Indian history makes a distinction. And it, it makes this distinction.
Well wait for the machine. Well take a great in a just a few minutes. **inaudible few words**.
There's a major advance in thought.
36:54
Subjects have objects as a reference. But objects have pragna as a reference. It's a very, very strange thing. And it's only once that The Kaushitaki says this. And later on, it passes glibly over the insight. So, if one didn't get it at first, its passed over and not mentioned again. And it's given that subjects and objects are each other's correlates. But The Kaushitaki establishes in a very esoteric way that objective reality is correlate with our self. So, that the largest objective reality, the cosmos, is most exactly correlate with the deepest self that we have.
So that the pragnaotma really is a cosmic function. Is the cosmic function in its allness. It's like a little bit of a twist. That when you put that little bit of a twist in a situation you no longer have the basis of simple identity. A equals A. subject 6 equals object 6. When you put that little bit of twist in it then that subject is related to this object only through the deep self. And that the more that, one is aware of the deep self, the more that is the absolute mediator of all real correlations and correspondences. So that eventually the shift in balance of doing goes to the deep self. Goes to the pragnaotma.
I put it on the board and then we'll take a little break. This is a way of trying to understand it. That subject and object are related together always in a kind of a ratio form. And always related together. The line which does the relating of them together is the line of prana pragna. It is this particular horizon. This line that makes that relation possible. The more one understands that, the more the center of the relationality takes all of one's attention. Because when realizes that's where all of the reality occurs. And as that happens more and more it doesn't matter what the subject or what the object. They all have the same operative center, the deep self.
Now let's take a little break and then we'll, we'll come back to this.
END OF SIDE ONE
Between myth and magic on the fulcrum of the deep self is very, very difficult to appreciate and understand. And I've been teaching a long time, more than twenty years. **inaudible word** educational program that centers on trying to understand this kind of a problem, if you will. Conundrum if you will. And if you get interested you can you can ask some of the people here who come on Saturday mornings, the Saturday class. And we go into that in, in depth. So, it can be understood. So, if some of what I say here seems like rushing it. And a kind of a transcendental analysis. It, it really isn't. It's more of a summation of just patient putting the pieces together.
The word in archaic and in ancient India for truth with Satya. Satya. Gandhi used the term satyagraha meaning to, to grasp truth. And Gandhi said that when one human being grasped truth, he is an unmovable pivot. And that all who come into contact with him, whether as co-operators or as adversaries come to see the truth. That all you need is one person who maintains the truth steadfastly. And if he does it long enough and well enough the entire world would understand the truth. And that the ripples go out for there. That's what he meant by satyagraha.
The Kaushitaki Upanishad is the place where Satya is defined in a very special way. Related to what I was talking about just before. It divides the word into two syllables. Sa and then a hyphen tya. And it reads like this. And I'll give you the passage yet Max Mullers translation because it's extremely important. It has repercussions all through Indian history.
The image is that Brahman in his most characteristic at homeless is on a couch. A very mystical divine couch. And that as you work your way to being able to be with him where he is in his most characteristic way. Just as you lift one foot to come to his couch, he addresses you and engages you in a conversation. And the essence of the conversation is, who are you?
A reverberation of this in another civilization, a little bit later on is like in The Book Of Job it said that there is a day of the Lord when everyone comes to present themselves before God. And when the Satan comes to present himself along with all the others, the first thing God says to him is, where have you come, who are you? Where have you come from? And the Satan because he doesn't understand says, I come from roving to and fro on the earth. And of course, immediately God counters by saying well you must know my servant Job who lives on the Earth. there's none like him.
Here we have in The Kaushitaki Upanishad the presentation of yourself.
Through your efforts you have come to the couch of Brahman. You've come to Brahman on his couch. And just as you about to step out, who art thou? And you shall answer, I am like a season. And a child of seasons sprung from the womb of endless space. From the light luminous Brahman. The light the origin of the year. Which is the past. Which is the present. Which is all living things and all elements. The self. Thou art the self. What thou art that am I.
The Sanskrit phrase that am I, Tat Tvam Asi.
Brahman says to him, Who am I? You shall answer, that which is. The Satya. Brahman asks, what is the Satya? You say to him, what is different from the Gods and from the senses, that is Sat. But the Gods and the senses are Tya. Therefore, by that name Satya is called all this whichever there is. all this thou art.
And to put it into colloquial terms, you are not only the essence, but you are the appearance also. That is to say the appearance is also true. It isn't that the essence alone is true in spite of the appearances, but that the appearances also are true. The fact that there are appearances is an aspect of truth. The appearances are not to deceive and they're not deceptive. It's that that is not the full extent of the range of capacity. Nor is it the focus of capacity.
Let me use an example for you just to highlight this so you can appreciate how profoundly intuitive the Upanishadic thinkers are here. If you take an array of equipment capable of detecting the entire electromagnetic spectrum and you stand a human being before this array of technological equipment. And you record that person on the equipment. In the whole electromagnetic range, there's only one little narrow band where that person records in the shape of a person. And in fact, there's only one precise moment in that narrow wedge of electromagnetic energy where you can focus the person enough to see their face. And within that there is an infinitesimal almost movement less still seizing of an insight to see the nature of that person within that shape, within that spectrum.
And so, The Kaushitaki Upanishad in this dialogue Brahman is asking the seeker again and again to hone-in and refine and refine and refine. Because he must see that Brahman is his deepest self in its grandest spread. There is no difference whatsoever. That is Pragna. That is self-consciousness. That life, prana, can bring itself to the couch of Brahma through its intrepid courage, but it cannot see with the refinement necessary. For that pragna must come into play. Knowledge. One must know that one is seeing. Know that this is so.
So, this is the famous, this is in the first chapter, the sixth and seventh section.
Then Brahman once he, once Brahman has been seen by you. Then Brahman opens out that narrow perception within perception, within perception. Opens it out, amplifies it out, so that you can see that that most precious of all insights carries and amplifies. And, the alchemical term is best here, tinctures everything with the knowledge that that is so.
And in doing this, this is how The Kaushitaki Upanishad uses it. They use language structures to amplify this out. All this thou art. And then The Upanishad councils us, This is also declared by a verse. This great Rishi, whose belly is the yajus. The, the, the activities and so forth which are put into language. The head, the sama, sacred verses. the form, the rik. other kinds of sacred verses is known to be as being imperishable. As being Brahman. Brahman says to him, We come back to the conversation then. after this aside, come back to the conversation. Brahman says to you, how do you obtain my male names? You answer, by prana. Brahman asks, how do you obtain my female names? And he should answer, you should answer, by speech. By vonk. the male names by breath, vital breath. The female names by speech.
Now in our time our consciousness is exactly obverse of this. To us it would be more natural to think of languages yang and silence as Yin. The breath as a as a feminine and the narrow language. But it's exactly the opposite in Ancient India. Exactly the opposite. It is important to know. So that the female names can only be known by speech. The male names only known by prana.
Then Brahman asks, how do you obtain my neuter names? And your answer is, by mind. By manas. By mind. Then Brahman continues to open this out. How by smells? By the nose. How forms? The eye. how sounds? The ear. How flavors of food? The tongue. How actions? The hands. How pleasures and pain? The body. How joy, delight in offspring? By the organ. The sexual organ. How journeyings? By the feet. How thoughts and what it is to be known and desired? By knowledge progeny alone
So that The Kaushitaki Upanishad here has Brahman as the teacher open this out for us. So that we can see that in fact from a true perspective what were originally the five koshas, the five sheaths, are really a, an ecology of ten correlates. And I have to put this in a diagram. It's very, very difficult to, to appreciate this and understand.
The, the old ecology ran that there was a five-part cycle. And that that five-part cycle together was in fact prana. That pranas dynamic comes because this five-part cycle occurs together. And in this five-part cycle you had the speech, the nose, the eye, the ear and the mind. But here Brahman, truth itself, is teaching that this is a double. There's a double activity here. That before one gets to the mind, before one gets to the end, there is another five-part cycle that happens and comes back. I guess it should be, should be from the mind. Just before the mind it starts and just after the mind it comes back. So that you get like an infinity sign. Or you get a mobius strip type of thing.
You get an interchange that that in Tvam, that part of truth, the five-part level of the world holds. Its like the Daoist energy cycle. The forty second chapter of The Tao Te Ching, the Dao begets the one. The one the two. the two of the three. And the three the ten thousand things. And ten thousand things or multiplicity. Infinity for all. We can express factors back into the Dao evenly. And as long as man is a part of that cycle the Dao flows. And no stage in that five- part energy cycle is different from any other stage. Except that the appearance is in a different mode. But the reality, the truth, is the same.
In The Kaushitaki Upanishad here Brahman as the teacher shows us that that really happens twice. That the appearance world has a correlate in the real world. And that our actual body is a part of reality.
And it goes on to say then that the way to understand this is through the symbol of the wheel. that there is a circumference. There are spokes. there is a hub. But the center of the hub is as important as all of the other elements together. The Sat and the tya are equally based so that the eternal aspects and the appearance in temporal aspects are bonded together in such a way that they never occur without each other. That is to say there would be no appearances whatsoever were not all they, were not they real. They simply would not happen. That they happen is not due to accident. Not due to enormous improbability. But they happen because they are part of the, the truth of the universe.
And I'm going to skip over here. The Kaushitaki gives us various kinds of meditation. And the meditations here, they give us three kinds of meditations. And their forms are from Kaushitaki, the stage named Kaushitaki. And his epithet in The Upanishad is sarva, sarvajit, which means all-conquering. Sarva means all. Jit. Various forms like vija is a victory. So, sarvajit it is the all-conquering.
The all-conquering Kaushitaki adores the Sun when rising. And having put on the sacrificial cord. This is the cord that goes over the left shoulder.
Having brought water. having thrice sprinkled the water cup, saying thou art the deliverer. deliver me from sin. In the same manner he adores the Sun when at its zenith. And so, the Rising Sun, thou art the deliverer. The Sun at noon at its zenith, thou art the highest deliverer. And the Sun is setting, thou art the most completest deliverer.
So that in the course of the day morning, noon and evening, there are sacrifices that go in a daily cycle. The night sacrifices have a different sequence. That the night sacrifices are on the new moon and on the full moon.
Now in our understanding that means that there's a 14-day cycle in between. that the sacrifices of the night are 14 days apart. Together making the 28-day cycle. The Upanishads though in the archaic cycle, because they went by a visual counting. Always counted the day itself as one of them. So, it's like 15 and 15. So like a new moon would be also a sacrifice. A new moon night. A full moon night would also be a sacrifice.
So that the day has a triadic sacrifice that happens all the time. But the night only happens in a 14-night sequence. So that there are two different tastings here. The Sun then becomes like a metronome for constancy. And the moon's return is the corelate constancy. That the moon returns always to that newness, to that fullness, is it's constantly.
So, there's the, the different meditations of Kaushitaki. If one gets into the cycle then the prana, the life breath, is easier to, to work with. easier to, to recognize.
I'm going to skip over here to the section that gives Indra giving instruction.
Indra said, I am prana. Meditate on me as the conscious self. The pragnaotma. As life as immortality. Prana is immortality. As long as prana dwells in this body so long surely there is life. by prana he obtains immortality in the other world. By knowledge, true consumption. He who meditates on me as life and immortality gains his full life in this world. And obtains in the other world, this **inaudible word** world, immortality and indestructibility.
Then they give us this sequence.
Man lives even if deprived of speech, for we see dumb people. Man, lives deprived of sight, for we see blind people. Men lives deprived of hearing; we see deaf people. Man lives even deprived of mind, for we see infants. man, lives deprived of his arms or legs, for we see it thus. But prana alone is the conscious self, the pragnaotma. And having laid hold of this body it makes it rise up. Therefore, it is said, let man worship it alone as uk
uktha.
That is to say when you use a hymn form of language, you do not praise in the old way natural objects, but you praise the God within.
What is prana? That is pragna. What is pragna? That is prana. For they together, pragna and prana live in this body. And together they go out of it. together they live in it. Together they go out of it. Of that this is the evidence. This is the understanding. When a man being thus asleep sees no dream whatever he becomes one with that prana alone. Then speech goes to him, when he is absorbed in prana with all names. The eye with all forms. The ear with all sounds. The mind with all thoughts.
That is to say, when he's in, when he is asleep these functions go to him where the prana is. And they're no longer active. But when he wakes, and they're speaking here of yogic attention. Of experiencing yourself waking up in all of its exactness. There are yogic techniques 700 B.C. that you can stop frame an instant of thought. It's like in, in the Buddha about 200 years later the fact that there are sixteen parts to any single thought. And only eight of them are distinct. And the last eight are like a trill, could be distinguished. So, speaking of very sophisticated people.
When waking then as from a burning fire sparks proceed in all directions. Thus, from that self the pranas speech, And etc., Precede each towards its place. And then functions separately again. Now this scattering of the sparks becomes an archetypal image of the creative process later on. That is to say when a human being waves there is a scattering of the, of the sparks of the self into the various functions of capacity.
Later on, much later on several thousand years later the idea is that creation was like God waking up and the sparks are the sparks of divinity going into the creation. Which must then be collected together and restored back to the self of God. A very Kabbalistic idea. And occurs in many of the world's religions in a mystery sense.
In The Kaushitaki Upanishad 2,700 years ago, it was an insight, a yogic insight, into what happens when one actually wakes up. That all of these sparks of capacity were at one time together as one. And then it goes on to say,
We shall now explain how all things become one in that pragna, in that self-consciousness. Speech is one portion taken out of pragna. The word is its object, placed outside. The nose is one portion taken out of it. The odor is its object, placed outside. The eye one portion taken out of it. the form is its object, placed outside. And the ear, sound. The tongue, taste of food. The two hands, action. The body, pleasure and pain. The sexual organ, joy and happiness. The two feet, movements. Mind, thoughts and desires are its object, placed outside. Having by pragna, by self-conscious knowledge, taken possession of speech he obtains by speech all words.
And now the sequence which was putting them out is reversed and they're brought back in. And as they're brought back in, one comes down to this. Having by pragna taken possession of mind, he obtains all thoughts. So, mind is the last, is the tenth. And the, when one obtains all thoughts there's included the thought of the process that's happening. So that one becomes conscious of being self-conscious. Is what The Upanishad is saying. That there is a moment if you go through this in its technical arrangement with enough exactness and bring yourself into play hundred-percent, you notice that in the fullness, in the exactness there's like a pecking order that's always followed. And when it comes back it follows in inverse order. And the principle is actually one holds for all time. The principle is that the way of integration is the exact converse of the way of differentiation. And if you have differentiated with enough attentiveness to detail and integrate with enough attention to detail, you will see that they are complements of each other. They always are exact complements of each other. And when that happens one can see that the last thing that comes in for the mind is to be self-consciously conscious of what one is doing now.
This is called in later in Buddhism is called Bodhicitta, the thought of enlightenment. It's like an incident realization. That this is what I am doing. It would last forever except that one cannot believe it. So that you have to train yourself to believe that indeed that is what has happening. So, you discipline yourself to meditate so that you can confirm to yourself indeed that happens. It happens exactly every time only I didn't realize it. I did not know it. And since it doesn't have any temporality, it can be extended indefinitely.
So, The Kaushitaki Upanishad then says, For without self-consciousness speech could not make known to itself any word. We say my mind was absent. I did not perceive that word. and so on. And it goes through the whole list.
And then comes the admonition, Let no man try to find out what speech is. Let him know the speaker. let no man try to find out what odor is. Let him know who smells. Let no man try to find out what form is. Let him know the seer. Let no man try to find out what sound is. Let him know the hearer.
And this kind of a counseling is mirrored later on in the Bhagavad-Gita, where Krishna is telling Arjuna that all of his beautiful reasonings are irrelevant to the actual issue. And the actual issue is one of an ultimate existential moment, which he is trying to understand metaphorically in various ways. And which all sound very good but are not that moment itself.
And so here in The Upanishad we're being admonished, don't follow these other paths. However interesting they are. The really interesting thing is you at this particular juncture, at this particular moment. Don't bother about what you hear. Who is the hearer? Don't bother about what you see. Who is the seer? And that when all of this is collected together in this way, This is the guardian of the world. This is the king of the world. This is the Lord of the universe. And he is my Indra self. Thus, let it be known. Thus, let it be known.
So, in The Upanishad you have that kind of a sequence. And the last chapter is like a coda to these first three chapters. The last chapter takes a would-be wise sage, a traditional would be wise sage. Somebody who knows a lot and is famous for this kind of teaching. And who has all of the attributes. Looks like a sage. Talks like a sage and so forth. And shows that none of this is relevant. None of it makes any difference whatsoever. Because if you don't know, you don't know you're ignorant. And it takes the sage, the traditional sages name was Gargi Vachaknavi. And the same story happens in a different version in The Brhadaranyaka Upanishad and its meant to like a test case. Don't be fooled by surrogates. somebody who looks like the teacher. somebody who talks like it. **inaudible few words** may not be at all. Because the appearance part of truth extends almost indefinitely. But does not include Sat. And without Sat, the full truth is simply not known. One thinks that the correlations of the appearances are what is wise. And the correlation of the appearances is certainly truthful when one knows the all. But up until that point it's just an avenue of ignorance leading to rebirth after rebirth after rebirth. The one missing piece is that the buck stops at the deep self.
And so, in the teaching finally it runs like this, Valkya falls silent. And **inaudible name** said to him, thus far only do you know Obalaiki. Thus far only, replied Valkya. He's gone through everything. He's gone through the complete diagram. He's enumerated everything that can be enumerated and correlated it. In other words, he'd laid out the diagram perfectly and exactly and made all the correlations and then remained silent.
So, the king then said to him, vainly did you challenge me saying I shall tell you Brahman. All Valkya, he who is the maker of all those persons whom you mentioned. He of whom all this is the work, he alone is to be known. And if you have not met him then you do not know yourself.
And then the teaching goes on to confirm that if he would pay attention to The Kaushitaki Upanishad with attentiveness he might understand. So, the end of The Upanishad throws you back to the beginning in that sense. That if you don't know by now who you are, then go back and, and begin again. Patiently. meticulously. And do it exactly right. And if you get to the end and you realize the ignorance of this would be sage. That is to say there are always at any time and place would be worldly sages. They look good. They talk the right game. They don't know at all. All they are, are good arrangers of dust. Nothing is alive. But beyond the arrangers of dust God looks directly at you. And the whole procedure is to look back. Now that's the figures in the dust.
More next week.
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