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Kena Upanishad
FOREWORD
AS THE Isha Upanishad is concerned with the problem of God and the world and consequently with the harmonising of spirituality and ordinary human action, so the Kena is occupied with the problem of God and the Soul, and the harmonising of our personal activity with the movement of infinite energy and the supremacy of the universal Will. We are not here in this universe as independent existences. It is evident that we are limited beings clashing with other limited beings, clashing with the forces of material Nature, clashing too with forces of immaterial Nature of which we are aware not with the senses but by the mind. The Upanishad takes for granted that we are souls, not merely life-inspired bodies —into that question it does not enter. But this soul in us is in relation with the outside world through the senses, through the vitality, through mind. It is entangled in the mesh of its instruments, thinks they alone exist or is absorbed in their action with which it identifies itself — it forgets itself in its activities. To recall it to itself, to lift it above this life of the senses, so that even while living in this world, it shall always refer itself and its actions to the high universal Self and Deity which we all are in the ultimate truth of our being — so that we may be free, may be plastic and joyous, may be immortal, that is the object of the seer in the Kena Upanishad. Briefly to explain the step by which he develops and arrives at his point and the principal philosophical positions underlying his great argument, is, as always, the purpose of this commentary. There is much that might and should be said for the full realisation of this ancient gospel of submission and self-surrender to the Infinite, but it is left to be said in a work of greater amplitude and capacity. Exegesis in faithful subordination to the strict purport and connotation of the text will be here as always my principle. Page – 527 THE FIRST PART THE SELF AND THE SENSES
"By whom controlled, by whom commissioned and sent forth falleth the mind on its object, by whom yoked to its activity goeth abroad this chief of the vital forces ? By whom controlled is the word that men speak, and what God set ear and eye to their workings ? That which is hearing within hearing, mind of the mind, speech behind the word, he too is the life of vitality and the sight within vision; the calm of soul are liberated from these instruments and passing beyond this world become Immortals…. There the eye goes not and speech cannot follow nor the mind; we know it not nor can we decide by reason how to teach of it; for verily it is other than the known and it is beyond the unknown; so have we heard from the men that went before us by whom to us this Brahman was declared. That which is not uttered by speech but by which speech is expressed, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men here pursue. That which thinketh not by the mind but by which mind itself is realised, know thou that to be the Soul of things, not this which men here pursue. That which seeth not by sight, but by which one seeth things visible, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men here pursue. That which heareth not by hearing but by which hearing becomes subject to knowledge through the ear, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men here pursue. That which liveth not by the breathing but by which the breath becometh a mass of vitality, know thou that to be the Soul of things and not this which men here pursue." I
In order to understand the question with which the Upanishad opens its train of thought, it is necessary to remember the ideas of the Vedantic thinkers about the phenomena of sensation, life, mind and ideas which are the elements of all our activity Page – 528 in the body. It is noticeable that the body itself and matter, the principle of which the body is a manifestation, are not even mentioned in this Upanishad. The problem of matter the Seer supposes to have been so far solved for the inquirer that he no longer regards the physical state of consciousness as fundamental and no longer considers it as a reality separate from consciousness. All this world is only conscious Being. Matter to the Vedantist is only one of several states — in reality movements — of this conscious being, — a state in which this universal consciousness having created forms in itself, within and out of that as substance, absorbs and loses itself by concentration in the idea of being a substance of form. It is still conscious but as form, ceases to be self-conscious. The Purusha, in matter, the Knower in the leaf, clod, stone, is involved in form, forgets himself in this movement of his Prakriti or Mode of Action, and loses hold in full self-knowledge of his self of conscious being and delight. He is not in possession of himself; he is not ātmavān. He has to get back what he has lost to become ātmavān, and that simply means that he has to become .gradually aware in matter of that which He has hidden from Himself in matter. He has to evolve what He has involved. This recovery in knowledge of our full and real Self is the sole sense, meaning and purpose of evolution. In reality it is no evolution but a manifestation. We are already what we become. That which is still future in matter is already present in Spirit. For that which we regard as matter cannot be, if the Vedantic view is right, mere matter, mere inert existence, eternally bound by its own inertness. Even in a materialistic view of the world matter cannot be what it seems, but is only a form or movement of Force which the Indians call Prakriti. This Force, according to the Upanishads, is composed in its action, and capable in its potentiality, of several principles of which matter, mind and life are those already manifest, active in this world, and where one of these principles is active, the others must also be there, involved in it; or to put it in another way. Force acting as one of its own principles, one of its movements, is inherently capable even in that movement of all the others. If in the leaf, clod, stone and metal life and mind are not active, it is not because they are not Page – 529 present, but because they are not yet brought forward (prakṛta) and organised for action. They are kept concealed, in the background of the consciousness-being which is the leaf, stone or clod; they are not yet vīḷu, as the Rig-veda would say, but guhā, not vyakta but avyakta. It is a great error to hold that that which is not manifest just now or in this or that place or active, does not there and then exist. Concealment is not annihilation; non-action is not non-being, nor does the combination of secrecy and inaction constitute non-existence. If it is asked how we know that there is the Purusha or Knower in the leaf, clod or stone, the Vedantin answers that, apart from the perceptions of the Seer and the subjective and objective experiences by which the validity of the perceptions is firmly established in the reason, the very fact that the Knower emerges in matter shows that He must have been there all the time. And if He was there in some form of matter He must have been there generally or in all; for Nature is one and knows no essential division but only differences of form, circumstance and manifestation. There are not many substances in this world, but one substance variously concentrated in many forms, not many lives but one life variously active in many bodies, not many minds but one mind variously intelligent in many embodied vitalities. It is, at first sight, a plausible theory that life and mind are only particular movements of matter itself under certain conditions and need not therefore be regarded as independent immaterial movements of consciousness involved in matter but only as latent material activities of which matter is capable. But this view can only be held so long as it appears that mind and life can only exist in this body and cease as soon as the body is broken up, can only know through the bodily instruments and can only operate in obedience to and as the result of certain material movements. The sages of the Upanishads had already proved by their own experience as Yogins that none of these limitations are inherent in the nature of life and mind. The mind and life which are in this body can depart from it, intact, and still organised, and act more freely outside it; mind can know even material things without the help of the physical eye, touch or ear; life itself is not conditioned necessarily, and mind not even conditioned Page – 530 usually, though it is usually affected by the states of the body or its movements. It can always and does frequently in our experience transcend them. It can entirely master and determine the conditions of the body. Therefore mind is capable of freedom from the matter in which it dwells here — freedom in being, freedom in knowledge, freedom in power. It is true that while working in matter, every movement of mind produces some effect and consequently some state or movement in the body, but this does not show that the mind is the material result of matter any more than steam is the mechanical result of the machine. This world in which mind is at present moving, in the system of phenomena to which we are now overtly related, is a world of matter, where to start with, it is true to say, annam vai sarvam: All is matter. Mind and life awaken in it and seek to express themselves in it. Since and when they act in it, every movement they make must have an effect upon it and produce a movement in it, just as the activity of steam must produce an effect in the machine in which its force is acting. Mind and life also use particular parts of the bodily machine for particular functions and when these parts are injured the workings of life and mind are correspondingly hampered, rendered difficult or for a time impossible — and even altogether impossible unless life and mind are given time, impulse and opportunity to readjust themselves to the new circumstances and either re-create or patch up the old means or adopt a new system of function. It is obvious that such a combination of time, impulse and opportunity cannot usually or even often occur, — cannot occur at all unless men have the faith, the niṣ̣ṭhā — unless, that is to say, they know beforehand that it can be done or have accustomed themselves to seek for the means. Bodies, drowned and "lifeless", — nothing is really lifeless in the world, — can now be brought back to life because men believe and know that it can be done and have found a means to do it before the organised mind and life have had time to detach themselves entirely from the unorganised life which is present in all matter. So it is with all powers and operations. They are only impossible so long as we do not believe in their possibility and do not take the trouble or have not the clarity of mind to find their right process. Page – 531 Life and mind are sometimes believed to descend, — as the hypothesis is advanced—into this world from another where they are more at home. If by world is meant not another star or system in this material universe, but some other systematisation of universal consciousness, the Vedantin who follows the Vedas and Upanishads, will not disagree. Life and mind in another star or system of this visible universe might, it is conceivable, be more free and therefore at home; but they would still be active in a world whose basis and true substance was matter. There would therefore be no essential alteration in the circumstances of its action nor could the problem of their origin here be at all better solved. But it is reasonable to suppose that just as here Force organises itself in matter as its fundamental continent and movement, so there should be — the knowledge and experience of the ancient thinkers showed them that there are — other systems of consciousness where Force organises itself in life and in mind as its fundamental continent and movement. —It is not necessary to consider here what would be the relations in Time and Space of such worlds with ours. Life and mind might descend ready organised from such worlds and attach themselves to forms of matter here; but not in the sense of occupying physically these material forms and immediately using them, but in the sense of rousing by the shock of their contact and awakening to activity the latent life and mind in matter. That life and mind in matter would then proceed, under the superior help and impulse, to organise a nervous system for the use of life and a system of life-movements in the nerves for the use of mind fit to express in matter the superior organisations who have descended here. It was indeed the belief of the ancients that — apart from the phenomenon of each living form as a single organised personality — such help from the worlds of life and mind was necessary to maintain and support all functionings of life and mind here below because of the difficulty otherwise of expressing and perfecting them in a world which did not properly belong to them but to quite other movements. This was the basis of the idea of Devas, Daityas, Asuras, Rakshasas, Pisachas, Gandharvas, etc., with which the Vedas, Upanishads, Puranas and Itihasa have familiarised our minds. There is no reason to suppose Page – 532 that all worlds of this material system are the home of living things — on the contrary, the very reverse is likely to be the truth. It is probably with difficulty and in a select place, that life and mind in matter are evolved. If it were otherwise, if life and mind were to enter, organised or in full power (such as they must be in worlds properly belonging to them) into material forms, these forms would immediately begin to function perfectly and without farther trouble. We should not see this long and laborious process of gradual manifestation, so laboured, so difficult, the result of so fierce a struggle, of such a gigantic toil of the secret Will in matter. Everywhere we see the necessity of a gradual organisation of forms. What is it that is being organised? A suitable system for the operations of life, a suitable system for the operations of mind. There are stirrings similar to those that constitute life in inanimate things and in metals, — as Science has recently discovered, — vital response and failure to respond, but no system for the regular movement of vitality has been organised; therefore metals do not live. In, the plant we have a vital system, one might almost say, a nervous system, but although there is what might be called an unconscious mind in plants, although in some there are even vague movements of intelligence, the life system organised is suitable only for the flow of rasa, sap, sufficient for mere life, not for prāṇa, nerve force, necessary for the operations in matter of mind. Āpah is sufficient for life, vāyu is necessary for life capable of mind. In the insect life is better organised on a different plane and a nervous system capable of carrying currents of Pranic force is developed as one rises in the scale of animal creation, until it becomes perfect in man. It is, therefore, life and mind awakening in matter and manifesting with difficulty that is the truth of this material world, not the introduction of a ready-made life entirely foreign to it in its own potentiality. If it be said that the life or mind attaching itself to matter only enters it by degrees as the system becomes more fit, putting more and more of itself into the body which is being made ready for it, that also is possible and conceivable. We are indeed led to see, as we progress in self-knowledge, that there is a great mental Page – 533 activity belonging to us only part of which is imperfectly expressed in our waking thoughts and perceptions — a subconscious or superconscious Self which stores everything, remembers everything, foresees everything, in a way knows everything know-able, has possession of all that is false, and all that is true, but only allows the waking mind into a few of its records. Similarly our life in the body is only a partial expression of the immortal life of which we are the assured possessors. But this only proves that we ourselves are not in our totality or essentiality the life and mind in the body, but are using that principle for our purpose or our play in matter. It does not prove that there is no principle of life and mind in matter. On the contrary, there is reason to believe that matter is similarly involved in mind and life and that wherever there is movement of life and mind, it tends to develop for itself some form of body in which securely to individualise itself. By analogy we must suppose life and mind to be similarly involved and latent (inherent) in matter and therefore evolvable in it and capable of manifestation. We know then the theory of the early Vedantins with regard to the relations of life, mind and matter and we may now turn to the actual statements of the Upanishad with regard to the activities of life and mind and their relation to the Soul of things, the Brahman. II
MIND
If the Upanishads were no more than philosophical speculations, it would be enough in commenting upon them to state the general thought of a passage and develop its implications in modern language and its bearing upon the ideas we now hold, for if they only expressed in their ancient language general conclusions of psychological experience, which are still easily accessible and familiar, nothing would be gained by any minute emphasis on the wording of our Vedantic texts. But these great writings are not the record of ideas; they are a record of experiences; Page – 534 and those experiences, psychological and spiritual, are a& remote from the superficial psychology of ordinary men as are the experiments and conclusions of Science from the ordinary observation of the peasant driving his plough through a soil only superficially known or the sailor of old guiding his bark by the few stars important to his rudimentary navigation. Every word in the Upanishads arises out of a depth of psychological experience and observation we no longer possess and is a key to spiritual truths which we can no longer attain except by discipline of a painful difficulty. Therefore each word, as we proceed, must be given its due importance. We must consider its place in the thought and discover the ideas of which it was the spoken symbol. The opening phrase of the Kena Upanishad, keneṣitam patati preṣitam manaḥ, is an example of this constant necessity. The sage is describing not the mind in its entirety, but that action of it which he has found the most characteristic and important, that which, besides, leads up directly to the question of the secret source of all mental .action, its president and impelling power. The central idea and common experience of this action is expressed by the word patati, falls. Motion forward and settling upon an object are the very nature of mind when it acts. Our modern conception of mind is different; while acknowledging its action of movement and forward attention, we are apt to regard its essential and common action to be rather receptivity of objects than research of objects. The scientific explanation of mental activity helps to confirm this notion. Fixing its eye on the nervous system and the brain, the physical channels of thought, Physiology insists on the double action of the afferent and the efferent nerves as constituting the action of thought. An object falls on the sense-organs, —instead of mind falling on the object, — the afferent nerves carry the impact to the brain cells, their matter undergoes modification, the trans-filaments respond to the shock, a message — the will of the cell-republic — returns through the efferent nerves and that action of perception, — whether of an object or the idea of an object or the idea of an idea, which is the essence of thinking — is accomplished. What else the mind does is merely the internal modification of the Page – 535 grey matter of the brain and the ceaseless activity of its filaments with the store of perceptions and ideas already amassed by these miraculous bits of organised matter. These movements of the bodily machine are all according to Physiology. But it has been necessary to…. The theory of thought-waves or vibrations created by those animalcular.-.in order to account for the results of thought. However widely and submissively (though) this theory has been received by a hypnotised world, the Vedantist is bound to challenge it. His research has fixed not only on the physiological action, the movement of the bodily machine, but on the psychological action, its movement of the force that holds the machine, — not only on what the mind does, but on what it omits to do. His observation supported by that careful analysis and isolation in experiment of the separate mental constituents, has led him to a quite different conclusion. He upholds the wisdom of the sage in the phrase patati manaḥ. An image falls on the eye, — admittedly, the mere falling of an image on the eye will not constitute mental perception, — the mind has to give it attention; for it is not the eye that sees, it is the mind that sees through the eye as an instrument, just as it is not the telescope that sees an otherwise invisible sun, but the astronomer behind the telescope who sees. Therefore, physical reception of images is not sight; physical reception of sounds is not hearing. For how many sights and sounds besiege us, fall on our retina, touch the tympanum of the ear, yet are to our waking thought non-existent! If the body were really a self-sufficient machine, this could not happen. The impact must be admitted, the message must rush through the afferent nerve, the cells must receive the shock, the modification, the response must occur. A self-sufficient machine has no choice of action or non-action; unless it is out of order, it must do its work. But here we see there is a choice, a selection, an ample power of refusal. The practical researches of the Yogins have shown besides that the power of refusal can be (is) absolute, that something in us has a sovereign and many-sided faculty of selection or total prohibition of perception or thought, can even determine how if at all it shall respond, can even see without the eye and hear without the ear. Even European hypnotism points to Page – 536 similar phenomena. The matter cannot be settled by the rough and. ready conclusions of impatient physiology eager to take a short cut to Truth and interpret the world in the light of its first astonished discoveries. Where the image is not seen, the sound is not heard, it is because the mind does not settle on its object — na patati. But we must first go farther and inquire what it is that works in the afferent and efferent nerves and ensures the attention of the nerves. It is not, we have seen, mere physical shock, a simple vibration of the bodily matter in the nerve. For, if it were, attention to every impact would be automatically and inevitably assured. The Vedantins say that the nerve system is an immensely intricate organised apparatus for the action of life in the body; what moves in them is prāṇa, the life principle, materialised, aerial (vāyavya) in its nature and therefore invisible to the eye, but sufficiently capable of self-adaptation both to the life of matter and the life of mind to form the meeting-place or bridge of the two principles. But action of this life-principle is not sufficient in itself to create thought, for if it were mind could be organised in vegetable as readily as in animal life. It is only when prana has developed a sufficient intensity of movement to form a medium for the rapid activities of mind and mind, at last possessed of a physical instrument, has poured itself into the life-movement and taken possession of it, that thought becomes possible. That which moves in the nerve system is the life-current penetrated and provided with the habitual movement of mind. When the movement of mind is involved in the life-movement, as it usually is in all forms, there is no response of mental knowledge to any contact or impression. For just as even in the metal there is life, so even in the metal there is mind; but it is latent, involved, its action secret, — unconscious, as we say, and confined to a passive reception into matter of the mind-forms created by these impacts. This will become clearer as we penetrate deeper into the mysteries of mind; we shall see that even though the clod, stone and tree do not think, they have in them the secret matrix of mind and in that matrix forms are stored which can be translated into mental symbols, into perception, idea and word. But it is only as the life-currents gain in Page – 537 intensity and rapidity and subtlety, making the body of things less durable but more capable of work, that mind-action becomes increasingly possible and once manifested more and more minutely and intricately effective. For body and life here are the pratiṣṭhā, the basis of mind. A point, however, comes at which mind has got in life all that it needs for its higher development, and from that time it goes on enlarging itself and its activities out of all proportions to the farther organisation of its bodily and vital instruments or even without any such farther organisation in the lower man. But even in the highest forms here in this material world, matter being the basis, life an intermediary and mind the third result, the normal rule is that matter and life (where life is expressed) shall always be active, mind only exceptionally active in the body. In other words, the ordinary action of mind is subconscious and receptive, as in the stone, clod and tree. The image that touches the eye, the sound that touches the ear is immediately taken in by the mind-informed life, the mind-informed and life-informed matter and becomes a part of the experience of Brahman in that system. Not only does it create a vibration in body, a stream of movement in life but also an impression in mind. This is inevitable, because mind, life and matter are one. Where one is, the others are, manifest or latent, involved or evolved, supraliminal active or subliminally active. The sword which has struck in the battle, retains in itself the mental impression of the stroke, the striker and the stricken and that ancient event can be read centuries afterwards by the Yogin who has trained himself to translate its mind-forms into the active language of mind. Thus every thing that occurs around us leaves on us its secret stamp and impression. That this is so, the recent discoveries of European psychology have begun to prove and from the ordinary point of view, it is one of the most amazing and stupendous facts of existence; but from the Vedantist’s it is the most simple, natural and inevitable. This survival of all experience in a mighty and lasting record, is not confined to such impressions as are conveyed to the brain through the senses, but extends to all that can in any way come to the mind, — to distant events, to past states of existence and old occurrences in Page – 538 which our present senses had no part, to the experiences garnered in dream and in dreamless sleep, to the activities that take place during the apparent unconsciousness or disturbed consciousness of slumber, delirium, anaesthesia and trance. Unconsciousness is an error: cessation of awareness is a delusion. It is for this reason that the phenomenon on which the sage lays stress as the one thing important and effective in mental action and in the waking state here, is not its receptiveness, but its outgoing force—patati. In sense-activity we can distinguish three kinds of action — first, when the impact is received subconsciously and there is no message by the mind in the life current to the brain, — even if the life current itself carry the message — secondly, when the mind, aware of an impact, that is to say, falls on its object, but merely with the sensory part of itself and not with the understanding part; thirdly, when it falls on the object with both the sensory and understanding parts of itself. In the first case, there is no act of mental knowledge, no attention of eye or mind, as when we pass, absorbed in thought, through a scene of Nature, yet have seen nothing, been aware of nothing. In the second there is an act of sensory knowledge. The mind in the eye attends and observes, however slightly; the thing is perceived but not conceived or only partly conceived, as when the maidservant going about her work, listens to the Hebrew of her master, hearing all, but distinguishing and understanding nothing, not really attending except through the ear alone. In the third there is true mental perception and conception or the attempt at perception and conception, and only the last movement comes within the description given by the sage — iṣitam preṣitam patati manas. But we must observe that in all these cases somebody is attending, something is both aware and understands. The man, unconscious under an anaesthetic drug in an operation, can in hypnosis when his deeper faculties are released, remember and relate accurately everything that occurred to him in his state of supposed unconsciousness. The maidservant, thrown into an abnormal condition, can remember every word of her master’s Hebrew discourse and repeat in perfect order and without a single error sentences in the language she did not understand. And, it may surely be predicted, one day we shall find that the thing our Page – 539 minds strove so hard to attend to and fathom, this passage in a new language, that new and unclassed phenomenon, was perfectly perceived, perfectly understood, automatically, infallibly, by something within us which either could not or did not convey its knowledge to the mind. We were only trying to make operative on the level of mind, a knowledge we already in some recess of our being perfectly possessed. In this fact appears all the significance of the sage’s sentence about the mind.
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