Svetasvatara

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Intro To The Major Works Of The Upanishads Presentation 8 of 13 Svetasvatara Presented by Roger Weir Thursday, February 23, 1989 Transcript: ...um is one of the most startling of all The Upanishads. Now none of the Upanishads have very firm dating but this particular Upanishad is very late. And it's called The Svetasvatara. Now means pure and it's said to refer to the sage who delivered the Upanishad. That the sage was called pure senses. But there's a way of pronouncing it in Sanskrit so that the syllables are spaced so that what it means is a pure male mule. And it's a very peculiar kind of an image of someone who has been ascetic so long they're, they're mule like but they're very pure mule. They have that kind of stubborn grittiness. They also have that bachelor ascetic kind of equality. But also, in a pure refined way. And so, the sage of this Svetasvatara Upanishad is a very unusual kind of personage. I think that the dating of this Upanishad is early in the 2nd century B.C. And the reason for it is I've been doing an awful lot of work in the archetypal symbolism of the period from 200 B.C. to 200 A.D. And the archetypal symbolism in this Upanishad fits almost exactly with what one would expect around 175 B.C. There are poignant startling images in this Upanishad that are found for instance in The Book Of Daniel. So that I would think from my experience and background that this Upanishad is an Indian contemporaneous production with The Book Of Daniel, which was written down about 166 B.C. by the Teacher of Righteousness. The Svetasvatara Upanishad is concerned with bringing together the kind of philosophic rigor which is characteristic of a system in India called Samkhya. Samkhya. One of the main tenant, tenets of Samkhya philosophy is the three gunas, issattva, tamas and rajas. Everything can be understood in combinations of this, this earth boundness, this airiness and this kind of fireness. The white, the red and the black. That kind of a philosophy. At the same time that the intellectual analytical genius of Samkhya was being developed, almost like in a balance to it, the rules as it were, the ritual refinement of yoga for the first time was being written down, codified. So that the practice of yoga for the first time was receiving written expression. And in The Svetasvatara Upanishad for the very first time we find both these held in great equilibrium and shown to go together. And shown that what is real is beyond both. At the very end of the Upanishad comes a caution. And I'll give you the caution before we begin. It has six-parts, and this is at the very end of the sixth part. The last three verses. "That all this that you're about to receive, by the power and austerity and the grace of God. The Svetasvatara in proper manner spoke about brahman, the supreme, the pure, to the advanced aesthetics. what is pleasing to the company of seers." So that the audience was not an audience of novices. It wasn't even an audience of a middle level, but they were all advanced aesthetics. It was a graduate course. So, The Svetasvatara Upanishad is one of the highest levels of Upanishadic writing. It's meant to be like a culmination. And I think it's one of the last of the great Upanishads. There are a couple more that were written after this time period. But this comes very close to, to the end of the classical. Now The Bhagavad-Gita is the closest written document to the tone of the, of this Upanishad and The Bhagavad Gita is written somewhere in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Somewhere say about 250 B.C. And The Bhagavad-Gita would be contemporaneous with like The Book Of Job they are wisdom literature. But like The Book Of Daniel, The Svetasvatara Upanishad is concerned with turning one more notch. Of having the intellectual refinement. Having the practical know-how. And then understanding that God is one removed beyond all that. That there is after all you can say about this and that, that neither of these is quite it. And there is yet some other, some third alternative, which has not been considered intellectually or in practice and yet definitely occurs. And in that mysterious third quality what comes through for us as human beings is God as a person. God comes through as a person. The Svetasvatara Upanishad says, comes through as a person who's the color of the sun. And that this supreme person cares for us and occurs to us in a personal way. Because that is the adoration level which we are responding to once we have come to this great synthesis, this hidden third aspect. That what we experience there is an arcane kind of loveliness. And that God in his grace comes to us as a supreme person in that arcane loveliness. Our name for that person the Upanishad says, is he is the Lord of this world. Whatever is here, he is the Lord of this world. What he really is in his own realm we do not know. But for us in this world he is the Lord. And there's that definite kind of certainty. And so, the Upanishad at the very end records, "This highest mystery which has been declared in a former age should not be given to one whose passions are not subdued. Nor again to one who is not a son or a pupil." That is to say the term son here means those who teach this should be able to regard as family those who hear this. That the students and teacher are family in tone. In relationality. If the teacher does not care for the students in a family way. If the students are not comfortable in a family way. If that companion ability is not manifest don't teach this. And then the last of it, "These subjects which have been declared shine forth to the high soul one, who has the highest devotion for God. And for his spiritual teacher as for God. Yea they shine forth to the high soul of one." And this is a direct observation. It's not a speculation but a direct observation of a most peculiar atmosphere that occurs. In that arcane third realm possibility images come to you which are not from your own memory. And they are not representations from this world. Those images that come to you are gifts. They're given to you. And they have a very peculiar quality of shining forth. In their occurrence they're radiantly there. They don't just occur as an image that one would have say in your imagination. Or even an image in your memory. But they have a kind of a living vibrant vitality of their own. They're not reproductions. They're presentations from another realm. And that these images are The Upanishad says, primordial. That they are there before this world is there. Before anything that occurs that's in this worldly realm, these images are there. So, let's come back to the beginning. I won't give you the full invocation. I'm going to use the Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan translation all the way through because it's the most consistently trustworthy. Although I have consulted at least six other translations. In the invocation the statement is very clearly made that this is full, that is full. This fullness is projected from that fullness. But because there is no difference between this projected fullness and that fullness which has projected it, they are able again in a third way to merge again and be one. As if they had never been apart. So that the pairing of them, the making of a dynamic of them, is a temporary appearance which is not eternally true but is only true in this world. And that that appearance, whatever forms are made in that tension is Maya. but that that Maya is not to be despised. Nor is it to be denigrated. But to be understood that it is but a temporary configuration between poles that really, when they merge, eclipse forever any kind of polarity that might have occurred. And it's as if nothing had ever been separate. So that the Upanishad wants us to understand right away we are going to be talking with great care about the value of this world. This world is beautiful. This world is excellent. The Lord of this world is worthy of our respect. But that Lord and this world and all of those things are Maya. And if there's a caution there, don't be too disturbed at showing care for a net of illusions. Don't let that worry you. It's only when you don't know that this is so that that is harmful. That that net entraps you. When you know that this is so, an aspect of yourself is free to go wherever this world is. And that net instead of being like a grid which would trap you becomes distant enough from you so that you can see that it is in fact what is called in this Upanishad, the Sanskrit term is a Brahma Chakram, the wheel of God. The wheel of God. So that when it's up too close and you don't understand it's a net that can trap you. But when you do understand it you can see that it is the holy wheel of God. That this not just this world but the context in which this world and all worlds occur is one great cycle. And the circumference of that, the circumference of that, is the Lord of this world. His true nature is that he is shoreless. He doesn't have any defining shape at all. But gives this world a defining shape by his movement. So that Ishvara, the Lord of this world, is Lord by virtue of the movement of it all. And the movement of it all is the, is the circumference. We would use the term today in English, we would use the term ecology. The ecology of the real in its choreographed unified movement is characteristic of the Lord. In the first of the six sections, chapter one, it reads this way, "Those who discourse on brahman say, what is the cause? Is it brahman? Whence are we born? By what do we live? And on what are we established? O ye who know brahman tell us, presided over by whom do we live our different conditions in pleasures and other than pleasures?" Now very subtly here because we have a master teacher. Very subtly at the end of this opening verse, this opening declaration of the subject of the Upanishad, he has brought in a structural characteristic which will hold throughout the whole Upanishad. If our gestalt of subtle form is not operating properly, we will miss it. In fact, the translator here missed it. Radhakrishnan, who is very excellent. But he missed it. He translated it, by whom do we live our different conditions and pleasures. And other than pleasures and then he put in parentheses pains. The Sanskrit does not have that. The Sanskrit specifically does not say pleasures and pains. But uses the term pleasures and other than pleasures. Now in a logic formation, pains would be the reverse of pleasures. But the phrase other than pleasures is not a reverse. But is what we would call in English an obverse. It's the other side of the same coin. So that what we're being given here is a logical form which is not based for its intelligibility on reversal polarities, but on distinguishing parallels. In understanding that that which gives unity to the distinguished parallels that is what we want to cognize. We don't want to cognize in terms of true and false. We want to understand that there is true and other than true. And that those together, the true and the other then true together, are the field where true intelligence must operate. So, our attention is drawn to that. Then in the second verse the sage has us understand by a very complex declamatory form, that we are not to position our sense of ordination, our intellectual coordination of our minds, on any of the standard gauges of measurement. That in fact what we are to base ourselves on is nothing of these at all. So that it reads like this. And right away you're going to be given a list of symbolic centers upon which coordinated mental viewpoints can be given. "Time. inherent nature. Necessity. Chance. The elements. The womb or the person. Should any of these be considered the cause? And it cannot be a combination of these. Even the soul is powerless in respect of the cause of pleasure and other than pleasure." And what is being given here is a whole sequence running from time through to, to soul, of various possible ultimate qualities of reality. And the sage, Svetasvatara is telling us none of these will do. No combinations of these will do. And probably had they have had are...argumentative refinedness, all of them together will not do. There is something else at play here. There is a perspective at play here which cannot be had by the mind. It cannot be had by our sense of identity distinguishing this from that. In the perspective that we want to inculcate for ourselves the this and the that are together. Being and non-being are together. And we must sensitize ourselves to being alert. To look always for the unifying gestalt. For the flavor of the unifying gestalt. And not to accept any of the ordinary language cues. So, it reads like this in the, the third, "Those who followed after. Those who were devoted to meditation and contemplation, saw the self-power of the divine hidden in its own qualities." So, this is like a report to us. Late in the career, after a thousand years of refinement, the sage is saying those who saw this saw that what we need to pay attention to had its own qualities. It didn't fit any of the categories which we would normally use. It didn't even fit any of the sophisticated composite categories, which our intelligence could make up. But it had its own qualities and one of those qualities is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with this world. It is radically different. And yet, and yet because of its own radically different self-qualities, this world does occur in sync with that realm of the deep self. So that there is a, there's a circulation of awareness here. The circulation of consciousness that says do not make the distinction between self and world. The self is good, the world is bad. Or the self is transcendent, and the world is imminent. Do not make these kinds of distinctions. The basis upon which those kinds of distinctions can be made is not operable in the level that we are going to consider. So, we move beyond that. We move beyond that to a realm where the so-called opposites are seen as obverse and obverses of each other. Not as polarities. Then we move beyond that to see that the unity of the two obverses is a real. But that that real is so potent that this world can be made in accordance with that real. And even though this world is a world of Maya, of appearance, it has a tone of reality to it. And I'm going to say it in a very awkward kind of a way because there's no way in English to get it across. This world is really Maya. it's reality, its trustworthiness, is that it really is Maya. And thus, it can be dealt with in terms of reality because it will, this world responds quite adequately. Quite rationally. It really is illusion. It's reality, it the certainty of dealing with it lies in the fact that it really is illusion. So, if we deal with it as illusion, we are not dealing with lies. We're dealing with the truth. And so, the Upanishad is encouraging us, don't throw the world away. Don't practice in austerity to, to disencumber yourself of this world. Because in this kind of sophistication it's exactly this world of Maya that we want to come back to and master. Why do we want to do this? Because it says, God does this. God really does love this world. Adores it because its illusion really is illusion. Not a play on words here. Not a play on concepts. But there's kind of a twist in it. So that, let me read it again, "Those who followed after were devoted to meditation and contemplation saw the self-power of the divine hidden in its own qualities. He is the one who rules over all these causes from time to the soul." He rules over everything that we could list. Time. Inherent nature. Necessity. Chance. The elements. The person. The soul. All of them. All of them really have God within them. But not in the way which we would naively at first suspect. Then the Upanishad which here has emphasized that the only way to comport to this in a beginning way is through dedication. There's no way to understand it immediately. You can't start with understanding. You can't start with not understanding also. The proper way to comport is to cue in a heart energy, as we would say. Dedication. This dedication um the Indian term darshan covers this. One desires to have a view of God in this aspect. This is what one wants. and it, and it colors everything in one's life. It colors your, your whole being. You would like to just, from the perspective that you can have, you would like to see how, how God operates from this perspective which you can have. This darshan. And the Upanishad here says, do not worry about whether you can make an intellectual case for that or not carry on with your dedication. It's your dedication that will carry you. One can only begin with dedication. We understand him, says the Upanishad. And it's going to go into a whole geometric structure of philosophic standpoints. It's the, the sage is going to say, well we can understand in all these different ways. "You open up the coat of diagrams. We can understand him as a wheel with one circumference. And three tires. And sixteen ins. And fifty spokes. And twenty counter spokes. And six sets of eights, whose one belt is manifold. Which has three different paths. Whose one delusion arises from two causes." So, he's using razzle dazzle language saying, yes there are all these theories. There are all these philosophies. There are all these diagrams that are possible. And they all are true in the sense that they all are illusory. But the common denominator of all of them is that they're all illusory. And they're all true in terms, not of what they are expressing in themselves, but they're all truly illusory. Therefore, our dedication at the beginning gains traction as we learn to accurately understand that whatever plots our mind comes up with however fine, however excellent, that that precisely is a shape of Maya. And we're encouraged. Go ahead learn about these things. Speculate on these things. Have them with the provision that all of this that you come up with is to be understood as yet another accurate expression of Maya. Um, the wheel which is the beginning of this. And then everything else takes off from the wheel. The spokes and in various aspects. The wheel when it moves is the world. Its circumference, if we could understand it in its. The Sanskrit term is tathata. In its suchness. In its tathata. If would see it as tathata we would see the shape of God as the Lord of this world. Later on, that becomes, later on in Indian society a thousand years after that becomes Shiva Nataraja. And you've seen sculptures of the dancing Shiva with the wheel of fire, dancing through the wheel. That Shiva Nataraja is in ancient times in The Upanishads as Ishvara, the Lord of movement. The Upanishad then takes us out of diagramic complexity and takes us into natural speculative complexity. We meditate on him as a river of five streams from five sources, fierce and crooked. Whose waves are the five vital breaths. Whose original source is the fivefold perception. With five whirlpools. An impetuous flood of five pains divided into fifty kinds of suffering with five branches. He's using the razzle dazzle language again. He's saying, oh yes all of this is true. True in that all of it is illusion. accurately illusion. Then stepping back from that the sage says the shape of all of this, in this vast brahma wheel, all of this together. "In this vast Brahman chakra, which enlivens all things. In which all rest. The soul flutters about thinking that the self in him and the mover the Lord are different." You get this vast galactic wheel of celestial fire moving and turning. And in it the deluded ignorant soul like a gibbering blind bat flying around, thinks we've got to find the cause of all this. And that that cause is somehow different from itself. But The Upanishad says that there is a, there is a instantaneous blessing that comes from God. Stops the fluttering. And it says it in this way, "Then when blessed by him one gains eternal life." Suddenly. Like that. What is difficult is to accept the blessing. Because the blessing usually in ignorance that energy, that loving kindness, the experience of that, the ignorant tried to weave that into their, their diagrams. Try to weave that into their speculations. Instead of accepting it and and living it. It's an evidence that well this must be true. This must be the way. And one reduces the actuality to a mental fiction. Whatever mental image there is of it is fictive in terms of the actual experience being lost. So, The Upanishad then tells us that there is a saving knowledge of Brahman. And it reads like this, "This has been sung as the supreme Brahman. And in it is the triad. It is the firm support. The imperishable. The knowers of Brahman by knowing what is therein become merged in brahman. Intent thereon and freed from birth." That is to say that there is a triadic of the individual soul, the world soul, the cosmic Lord. But what is real in that is that none of those appearances really are gone. All of them present Maya like movements which characterize in their own way the best that they can what Brahman is. And so usually with the symbolic diagram one would see a triangle. And there would be a single dot in the center of the triangle. It's not the cosmic Lord and the individual soul and world. It's not even the relationship of those three together. It's the focus within all three of them which is really where one wants to look. And if one looks really close at that that point, the Sanskrit name for that point is Bendu. That point is a vanishing of the illusion of this world. And later on, in The Upanishad it will say that if you took a human hair and you split it a hundred-fold. And you took one hundredth of one of those and made a dot. The hundredth part of that dot would be the size of the seed of the real. And all infinity is there in that. So, The Upanishad brings us then to this verse about the Lord supports all this. Ishvara. "The Lord supports all this which is a combination of the mutable and the immutable. The manifest and the unmanifest. And the soul not being the Lord is bound because of his being and enjoyer. By knowing God, the soul is freed from all fetters." Then The Upanishad gives us a verse which is going to characterize the triad in another way. "There are two unborn ones. The knowing one and the unknowing one. They always occur together. Then there is another unborn one. That one indeed is connected with the enjoyer and the object of enjoyment." And I guess for us it's like the known and the unknown are qualities which occur in the symbolic self. But the enjoyer and the object enjoyed in that relation occur in a personal self. And that the personal self has a connection with the symbolic self. But in the personal self that personal self is not just a projection of the symbolic self but is in its own right a third element. Then there is an infinite self which is behind the known and the unknown, which also occurs in the person, the personal self. But it occurs in such a way in the personal self that it goes straight through. It's difficult to uh to hear this. Let me use simile. I think it's permitted here. The personal self is like a prism. And it can focus light. There's an invisible light in the self, which when it occurs in the person occurs as shining through the person. And that the spirit is somewhat like this. So that there is a quality of the infinite coursing through our persons. But is no static characteristic of the person. What is characteristic of our person is that we let it go through. We let it shine through. We are a frame, a prismatic frame, for it to occur through us. So that our openness is the only gauge by which we can be connected to this shining. Now The Upanishad says it this way, There are two unborn ones. The knowing and the unknowing. The one all-powerful, the other powerless. Indeed, there is another one who is unborn connected with the enjoyer and the objects of enjoyment. And there is the infinite self of universal form, non-active. When one finds out this triad that is Brahman. Now this triad that they're talking about here are three of the four elements that have been laid out. Three of the four elements that have been laid out. let me refer them, to them as A B C and D so you can form a mental image of this. A is the, the knowing one. B is the unknowing one. C is the personal third one. And D is the infinite self. The knowing one, the personal and the infinite self together as a triad are the most stable expressive form in this world of presenting the best view of God. presents the best view of God. The knowing one in the deep self. The openness of our spiritual person. And the invisible great spirit that moves through the self and through the person freely. Those three together, when brought together in juxtaposition, when one is able to make a, a triad, a triangle of that. In that geometry of meaning is the best darshan of God. Then you're getting very close to being able to see directly. Then you have a trustworthy template, as it were, through which to look. By which to look. But notice that it takes a very vast kind of, of capacity to do this. You have to you have to have a yogic like control over your person. You have to have a Samkhya like control over access to your deep self. And you have to have a another kind of devoted adorational heart energy to let God occur through all of this however he may wish to occur. And that all of that together as an ecological shape is our best way of being with God. The Upanishad says this triad is Brahman. that once you get to that triad, once you're able to bring those elements together, one is very close indeed. It reads in translation, "When one finds this triad that is Brahman." The last of the sequence here which uh is going to take up at least half the lecture. This beginning sequence here is very complex. The 10th verse introduces a, a word here. a concept. And I believe it's the first time that it's introduced. It is a concept which was developed by the Buddha. And this is 300 years after the buddha. in esoteric Buddhism there is a analytical capacity called Abhidhamma or Abhidharma. The pali is pronounced dhamma. and the Sanskrit or the Magadha dharma. Abhidharma. END OF SIDE ONE How are they doing? Everything okay? Here's Radhakrishnan note on this term. It's a very important term. Uses in connection with the phrase by meditating on it. When we meditate on God. And later on, The Upanishad will go into the whole yoga position. The, the straightening of the head and the neck. And the spinal column. The letting primordial images occur in the mind. The taking away of the primordial images so that one has an imagelessness mind. And then the reception of images from God. "The way in which the soul is awakened to the divine core of his being is Abhidhamma." Dhamma means meditation or sometimes concentration. Abhi means beyond. It means like an exponential meditation. One does meditation until you get used to it. You get sensitized to it. You, you learn the technique, the flavor. And then one day at some unknown time all of a sudden you realize that there's a whole other dimension. That what you've been calling meditation was just a mask which comes off. And now a whole empathy capacity is there that just dwarfs what you were doing before. And you thought before you were struggling. You're getting so good at this and it was just wonderful. And then all of a sudden that lifts and it's like just an amphitheatrical capacity. It's like wherever one looks to see with one's being, there, there is just enormity that is there. This is the term which refers to that experience, the Abhidhamma. "The soul the way by which that soul is awakened to the divine core of his being is Abhidhamma. An intense contemplation of the Savior God. It leads to contemplative union with the object and identification with his essential reality." Sometimes medieval Christian or medieval Islamic mystics used a term which is extremely accurate here, one understands that your mind is the thought in the mind of God. Your whole mind is a coherent thought in someone else's mind. that you really are, you're an integral part of another mind. But that that mind can't think very, think you, think your mind very clearly, with recognition. And the feeling tone from that is one of beatitude. Thankfulness. Mercy. God's mercy. It's a, it's a merciful. That, that that that is true. So Radhakrishnan is saying here about Abhidhamma. "This contemplation is introspection. An intimate worship." It's almost always spoken of in worldly terms as a relationship of, of love. Almost like lovers, but a divine love. One is loved. one is cared for. This contemplation is introspection. An intimate worship. A silent intimate worship. An intuition of one's own inner being. The embodied life becomes one with God. One understands that one's life is an embodiment of God. One's own very life that one is living is it a legitimate embodiment of God. As legitimate as anything else in this world. It's true that this life is not **inaudible word** but it is as true as anything else in this world. And then there's the obverse of that, one realizes that everything else is legitimately of God's own just like you are. It is it a polarized realization but it's like an obverse. Well this is so ah this is so also. I am as legitimately in my life an embodiment of God as anyone. And anyone as, as legitimate as I am. And so that double realization happens. And there is a, there's a quality of a grace that accompanies that. And I, I think the, the phrase that you will see in the world's great religious literature is that this is an oceanic experience. An all, an allness. That another human being especially becomes almost magically illuminating to oneself. Who they are is as important to you as who you are. They really are important to you. And that they know themselves in their quinta, quintessential thusness becomes something of concern for you. It's like that. This is the whole, I hate to use the term rationale. This is the whole motive for spiritual teaching. Other than that, one would remain silent. One would, would note there is no words that you can say. That match at all except for this motive, that they are as, that others are as precious as you are to God. And therefore, talking with them in whatever way you can, helping them in whatever way you can, is legitimate actually in this world. As long as this world exists that helpingness is also legitimate. It's not a fool's game to try and help others in this world. So, The Upanishad is very careful to use language to allow these ethical precepts to occur along with the high sophisticated consciousness that is being engendered here. The Upanishad is very careful. the sage is, is really pure. In the sense of letting one know that you have a legitimate ethical concern in this world. And that your refined consciousness it's not going to take you out of this world but bring you back into it with wholeness, which you had not understood before. You didn't understand before how really full you're living of life in the highest ethical way you can is legitimate adoration of God. Is very legitimate. Is in fact the way to do it. The way to go. let's take a break. Are the machines ready? You should understand that teaching like this would have occupied quite some time probably a cycle of several years at least. So that the language that's used, the language forms that are used here, are meant to occur to you not at first hearing but later on. All of The Upanishads are done in verse. and something sophisticated like The Svetasvatara Upanishad is extremely full of wordplay, alliteration, symbolism. And you would have memorized the text. For instance, in the, in The Vajrayana the first eight or nine years are spent just memorizing text. You're not expected to know anything or have any insights or anything at all. If you don't have the text in your memory, then you can't even begin. Why would that be? Because the function of the memory is a special function of consciousness. And is distinct and different from the imagination. And until you're able to use your memory with some facility, there's no way that you can get any kind of perspective on modes of consciousness. And the deep self being, focus of all the modes of consciousness, there's no way that you could have any kind of acquaintances whatsoever. It's only by judicious and strategic use of consciousness that you can find ways to let the deep-self occur. One of the ways, for instance, in The Upanishad they talk about how you make fire by using a drilling stick and a base stick. And they, the sage here pure senses says, the mantra ohm is the drilling stick. And if you with powerful yoga and use ohm in the right way, consistently, accurately with energy, that the cosmic Agni, fire, will ignite in you. That it does ignite in you will be like an indication to you that the deep-self most certainly does occur. Whence does this flame come if not from there you see. there's, there's no place in the world that's coming from. There's no place in yourself that you recognize that it's coming from. And yet very distinctly from some hidden capacity which was lost and now recalled, you have this, this cosmic fire capacity. And your intensity and, and your, your capacious grow enormously. Here's how The Upanishad then records the lead-up to the discussion of, of yoga. "In the deep-self there's a quality of being alone." The most famous phrase that this comes from Plotinus in the 3rd century A.D. An Alexandrian sage who taught in Rome. Plotinus characterized the experience as the flight of the alone to the alone. Not the alone in the sense of loneliness at all. But alone as an absolute confidentiality. The secret of secrets. The very essence of the arcane. And in this being alone what is fulfilled to the point of fullness, which is the same as being blown out, is what in Sanskrit is called kama. Desire. Desire. And the basis of desire what is related to the word is in Sanskrit is Tanha. And it's like grasping. It's like wanting to have, to grasp. But if you reach from kama, you're in a karmic form. Whereas if your dedication comes from your deep-self it's not in a kama energy and it's not in a karmic mode. There's no karma. There's no kama. and instead of grasping at something, you grasp what it is. Instead of there being things, there's realization. So that where wherever one looks as it were one realizes. Instead of being lost in ignorance, wherever one looks there are things one wishes one had. So, there's a radical change but the change is like the flame of kama desire is blown out. A term for this moksha. It's the extinction. Like that. Dianna as a technique. It's a perfection later on but it's also a technique. Dianna meditation has to do with the deep self. But jnana, j-n-a-n-a. Jnana wisdom has to do with the spirit being freed. So that meditation has to do with realization, but wisdom has to do with liberation. And they're related in the sense that when one comes to realization all of the motives for grasping are gone. And those quote hands by which you tried to grasp the world are now opened. And it's the opened hands that free the spirit, as it were. Then whatever one does one is free. One is doing liberation. Whatever one does one is doing liberation. It's like that. For certain very sophisticated beings for them to enter into a sacred space the first thing that they do are free birds. In not just a symbolic act but it's something they must do. For instance, one of the Tibetan figures, the Karmapa, who passed down a little while ago. Whenever he would enter into a very special religious space, they would have caged birds, usually white birds, like white doves or something, which he would then free as soon as he entered into the space. Because that is the real function of a, of a, of a being who is not only realized but is actively liberating fellow creatures. So, the realization is like an imploding. an imploding of the of the graspable capacities to blow them out. To extinguish them. No more kama. So that those facilities then by which we move in the world by which we have relationship to the world then are changed. And it's like going from grasping they crisscross they become liberated. So that no matter what you do than naturally it's a liberating motion. It's a wonderful way that it's expressed here. And this is the words of pure senses, Svetasvatara. This is how he expressed it. "That eternal which rests in the self should be known. Truly there is nothing beyond this to be known. By knowing the enjoyer, the object of enjoyment and the mover of all. this is the threefold Brahman." A thousand years later this particular expressive aspect will in China be called The Threefold Lotus Sutra. And you'll, you'll see translations of the Lotus Sutra from time to time. But occasionally I think there are two or three full translations of The Threefold Lotus Sutra. And that's where the origin of it is here in The Svetasvatara Upanishad. This, once what has come to that deep self-realization. Once one knows that that realization, there is nothing beyond that realization. But that realization beyond which there is nothing else is not a static. It doesn't stop. But it immediately radically converts the entire field of activity. Whatever is done then from that realized basis is a liberation. One is liberated. no matter what one does. So that there is a new quality of the enjoyer. What are you enjoying now? Not enjoying having but liberating. What are the objects of enjoyment? Not things but others who are being liberated. And God as the enveloping thusness to this activity. So that the enjoyer and the objects of enjoyment, the liberator and those being liberated, and God form that threefold Brahman. It's this kind of activity. As being given to us here. And then Paraenesis (?) The Svetasvatara Upanishad says, "As the form of fire when latent in its source. And fire is in the wood. And as the form of fire when latent in its source is not seen. And yet it seed is not destroyed. But it may be seized again and again in its source by means of the drill." We can bring the fire out of the wood, you see. So, it is in both cases. The drill with the wood bringing the fire out. The self has to be seized in the body by means of the syllable ohm. It is a very important statement here in The Upanishad the body is important. The body can't be thrown away. Any practice that transcends the body and throws the body away, even though it's highly sophisticated and highly complex, is still illusion. It's a highly complex sophisticated illusion. the self is here. How do we know? Because using ohm as the drill releases the fire of that. It comes out. And one can see that that indeed this tremendous energeia is tapable through various techniques. So that Purcensis tells us, "By making one's body the lower friction stick and the syllable ohm, the upper friction stick, by practicing the drill of meditation one may see the God hidden within", as it were. Now what this whole first part of The Upanishad has prepared us for is for the discussion of the practice of yoga. This is why one practices yoga. Why do you practice yoga? Because this body must be brought into action. What is its action? It's action is to be like that lower stick. The Sanskrit term is yani. the body is to be that. For what? For the obverse action of sacred language. When we bring sacred language into a very pointed juxtaposition with this body in its life, in an envelope of dedication, that activity releases the energy within. The divine fire **inaudible word** will come out. it does in fact come out. Indeed, it does. So, as they come to the yoga section. There is a chapter of 17 verses. The seventeenth verse is a ko...kota, like in an adoration, so there are sixteen verses. The first seven verses are like another preparation. Usually in a wisdom teaching you never go to anything directly. Anybody who's waiting to grasp the point is gonna lose. There's nothing to grasp. And the more impatient you become, the more obtuse the teacher becomes. The more you get ingenious, the more labyrinthian it becomes. And it just they play with you in that way until you get bored and go away. Or you realize, don't do it this way. Don't do it that way. Teachers a teacher because teacher can, can out labyrinthian your capacities. Anytime. The whole purpose is not to be clever on anybody's part, but to come together in a very specific dedicated way. To be companions together in a very specific way. Because it isn't the teacher or the student but it's God that works. We only focus that for our realization. So, there's a series of seven verses which are an invocation to Savitri the inspirer. And it's like a call for inspiration. help us. Help us to appreciate the enormity of this. Help us to have confidence that we can do this. Help us to keep our dedication unbroken in all of this. That's the essential tone of this. And then come the sections on yoga, the yoga asanas, the positions. "Holding the body steady with the three upper parts," the chest the neck and the head, erect. and when you do you have to lower your head just a little bit. Just a slight bit to keep the tension. **inaudible word or two** recoil on the, on the diaphragm near the **inaudible word** chakra. "holding the body steady with the three upper parts erect. Causing the senses and the mind to enter into the heart. The wise man should cross by the boat of Brahman all the streams which was **inaudible word or two**. What, what is fear? Fear are like the inarticulate ripples of misconceptions. "Repressing his breathings here in the body." Repressing as a bad word here. Disciplining is a better word. "Disciplining his breathing's here in your body. Let him who has controlled all movements breathe through his nostrils with diminished breath." And it's like a cumulative penetration. The diminishing occurs almost to the point of sin ambulance. And of course, the, the time-honored thing is not to fall asleep. In an ignorant, habitual way this is just the way in which we go to sleep. Sleep is a natural movement towards enlightenment. why do we sleep? Because it's our natural movement towards enlightenment. Well instead of falling asleep, one wakes up. It's like that. "Breathe through his nostrils with diminished breath. Let the wise man restrain his mind vigilantly as he would a chariot yoked with vicious horses." Why? Because the mind in it flitting is trying to grasp, in the way that the mind does, ideas and images from the world. So, it's a way to corral that is to bring a very powerful image in like a symbol. The mind wants to grasp something here. here's a pacifier. Mind hold on to this symbol. And mind holds onto it and says, oh aren't I great. I can, I can get every color right. I can get it sophisticated so I can see every molecule. And the mind in it's kind of idiotic way just prides itself that it can do all this. And the whole purpose is just that this is to keep it quiet. The whole purpose is not to have Technicolor virtuosity in creative imaging, it's to learn to keep the mind quiet. "In a level clean place free from pebbles. Please from fire and gravel. Favorable to thought. By the sound of water or other features not offensive to the eye. In a hidden retreat protected from the wind. Let him perform his exercises." And then here are some basic natural symbols which you can give to the mind. And in fact, in some ways you can do a whole sequence of these using this. You can use fog. Now the mind that loves to play can play all it want with a symbol of fog. Or smoke. Or Sun, wind, fire. Fireflies. Lightning. Crystal moon. These are preliminary forms which produce the manifestation of Brahman in yoga. They're preliminaries. There are the symbols which allow for the mind to stay on one powerful image, one symbolic image. But that's only a preparation. "When the five-fold quality of yoga is produced as Earth, water, fire, air and ether arise then there is no longer sickness no old-age no death to him who is obtained a body made of the fire of yoga." One is remaking oneself. One is transforming oneself. What are you transforming? You are transforming your body and your life. How so? Because as you concentrate, your body responds and the hidden energy which was busy short-circuiting and frazzling every place becomes coherent. Comes together. There's a, there's a quality of having substance for a while. And there's a quality of having no substance for a while. It's like that. All of this is in response and to be understood that you are responding to the activity. That the technique, the activity, is quite specific here. In the asanas. There's a progression here. One wants to use very powerful images to quiet the mind. Then when the mind is quieted, there are several ways you can go. One is to make the images transparent, so you see through them to what is behind them. And usually what is behind a very powerful symbol like that, it's imageless as one would say. There's no image there at all. Or you can train yourself to just let it not occur. Let it evaporate. There are many different ways to, to do this. So, one goes from the powerful image to imagelessness. Getting used to imagelessness takes a little bit of doing. Takes a little bit of practice. And the symbol that showed that is the Nimbus. You know the consciousness bubble. The halo. It is a symbolic pictorial expression of the imageless state. And one can be imageless walking around. Cooking your meals. Sitting here lecturing. In that imagelessness is a receptivity to whatever is going to actually occur. Not what occurs in the world, but what occurs deep within beyond the inner world. And the term for what occurs there in Sanskrit is Taffeta. Suchness. Later on, in the development of Mahayana Buddhism the meditators will say that suchness is the obverse of, of Shunyata, the void. And the first, the first writer to address this problem was Asvaghosa, whose name means the sound of the horse neighing. Asvaghosa. And says that, "Suchness of the void. Taffeta is the obverse of Shunyata. One can carry Shunyata around with oneself. One can be the void. But the world is not void. The world is taffeta. And so, it occurs in its direct thusness. Someone who is in this kind of a relationship will, there is no motive to grasp anything whatsoever. The whole appreciative tone is to let it be what it is. That rock is wonderfully that rock. There's no reason to pick it up. There's no reason to have it. It's like that kind of a quality that also applies to one's own person. Your person is you, but there's no reason to grasp it. And so, there's no ego. no ego whatsoever. There's no egotism and there's no ego. It's like a storm in a vast space which has blown on and gone out of the way and just clear sky. There's no ego. So, the person that is there is fully open to whatever is happening. And what is happening? God is happening. always happening. So that following the yoga comes the vision of God. And I'm trying to show you how why all of this occurs in just the way. So Svetasvatara writes it this way, "Even as a mirror stained by dust shines brightly when it's been cleaned." What is the mirror that's been cleaned? The person. The personal. Your person. It was a mirror before, reflecting the dirt of the world. It's been cleaned and when it's been cleaned it's like there's a transparency now. It doesn't reflect the world, but it allows the deep-self-images from the divine to occur through. "Even as a mirror stained by dust shines brightly when it has been cleaned shines with inner light." There's no mirror anymore. So, the embodied one when he has seen the real nature of the self becomes integrated. A fulfilled purpose and free from sorrow. When by means of the real nature of his self. He sees as by a lamp here the real nature of Brahman by knowing God. Who is unborn, steadfast, free from all nature's he is released from all fetters. And there's a quality here The Upanishad later on says, that "He who is one without any color distributes many colors from his hidden purpose. And what we pray for is to have clear understanding." That is to say they are understanding be affine to God. And not reflect the many colors that the world has for it. So, it's ultimately a question of focus. One positions oneself not to be reactive to the world, but to be responsive with the divine. And we're running out of time, so I want to bring you here to, to this conclusion. He indeed is the God who pervades all regions. He is the first born and he is within the womb. He has been born and he will be born. He stands opposite all persons. Having his face in all directions. The God who is in fire. Who is in water. Who has entered into the whole world. The God who is in plants. Who is in trees. To that God be adoration. Yeah, be adoration. What is the response? Adoration. Adoration. I'll Xerox for you these sheets. And if you get a chance the section to read for yourself is the third chapter of The Upanishad, The Svetasvatara Upanishad. And read sections 7 through 21. Chapter 3, sections 7 through 21 are a classic statement of the cosmic person. Those have been following some of my work, it's the mysterious person archetype. And it's the expression and high classical Indian wisdom of the mysterious person archetype. And you can read it for yourself. It's quite startling and quite exact. I'll just give you the first verse and then we'll, we'll end with this. "I know the supreme person of sun-like luster beyond the darkness. Only by knowing him does one pass over death. There is no other path for going there." Now you get the tone of it. Thank you very much END OF RECORDING