SOURCE: Frawley, David. “Symbolic Language and Analogical Thinking.” In The Creative Vision of the Early Upanisads: Udgitha Adityasya, The Exalted Song of the Sun, pp. 56-104. Madras, India: Rajsri Printers, 1982.

[In the following essay, Frawley describes two different approaches to teaching found in the Upanishads and notes that in order to gain a deeper understanding of the writings, it is necessary to release one's modern world-view.]

Many different kinds of language are possible. There are many different possible levels of discourse within language. There are many different linguistic and perceptual orientations, various world-views according to the many ways of language. The way of language determines the way of perception. It is through language that we enter into the world and the world enters into us. Language is more than just the written language of conditioned society. Prior to that and behind that conventional language are more instinctual and more intuitive forms of language. All things are indeed forms of communication, as everything has a message. Everything thus has its unique meaning or name; and as that name or meaning is not a fixed entity but a process in time, everything has its own language. Thus the key to understanding anything is to discover its own language and learn it. Real language then does not involve defining, classifying or interpreting the things of the world. Real language is not a language imposed upon the world. It is a language that is based on this inherent world language and lets the cosmos speak through it. Real language then involves opening ourselves up to the unique being and language of each thing. It is a way of unifying ourselves with the world, of unifying our perception and experience. Our ordinary human language, driven by socially conditioned needs and desires rather than the urge for real communication and communion, is a closing and isolating process whereby we cut ourselves off from the spirit of the world by turning the entities of the world into mere names and definitions according to our habits and conveniences.

As we speak so we see the world. Thought itself is only a subtle form of speaking. No doubt objects exist before we think about them. No doubt the world exists before we have a name for it. But it does not impinge upon us. It lingers only as an amorphous presence as yet without distinct name and form. This is the primal state of perception which corresponds to the original state of primal matter, the formless objectivity out of which the world is created, in the ancient symbolical cosmologies (also the same the root ignorance, Mūlāvidyā of Advaita Vedānta). Language then creates the world out of chaos. It structures the cosmos out of the formless mass of chaos which is the root material, mula prakrti, that is the substance of the world. In this sense different languages are indeed different worlds. This preliminary state of perception which is primal matter is a kind of unknowing or ignorance before the mind, the faculty of mentation, comes into being. The mind, through language, comes into being to make this unknowing into something known. The mind, the intellect, the lower mind (not the soul or the higher mind or intelligence) thus arises from a basic fear reaction to this state of unknowingness. The unknown first engenders fear, the seed of the mind. This basic fear polarizes as desire and crystallizes as the ego, not the pure I of the conscious Self, but the I-thought, the I-fabrication, ahamkara, of the reactionary ego, the seperate self. This basic fear introverts as the ego and conversely makes the world into the other, the not-self. This is the root of the worldliness of the world. Being other it must be subdued by way of fear and desire. Fear thus, out of this primal unknowing or ignorance, creates the basic introversion or alienation in consciousness which is the ego. In reaction to this negative formless background of ignorance and fear desire arises and creates or constructs the world. That is desire begins to bring forth shapes and patterns out of this amorphous negativity according to our thoughts. Thus this whole process of fear and desire engenders a massive process of fragmentation whereby a world of distinct entities, separate selves, arises. All of this is the logical outcome of the kind of closed thinking and closed language which characterizes the working of the mind, of the lower mind, the intellect, rather than the higher mind or the intelligence. It is perpetuated by social conditioning through this kind of separative language.

The ancient seers had a radically different kind of language. Instead of fleeing from this basic state of knowing (which is the same, incidentally, as the state of deep sleep) they meditated upon it deeply. Instead of falling into the primordial waters of ignorance as we have they brooded upon them, until out of that primordial ocean a light emerged, until the Sun of Knowledge was born and arose to illuminate the dark and formless chaos into a radiant and harmonious cosmos. By the power of their vision the light emerged out of the inherent darkness of the world and began not only to shape the world but to take shape within them as their true Self. The Spirit of the world began to speak through them and the world revealed its true form according to the laws of truth. They did not interpret the world or try to control and manipulate it from the outside. They let the Spirit speak through the world and reveal its real meaning and function. Their language arose not out of this basic state of isolation born of fear but out of a basic state of communion born of understanding. The world thus revealed was not one of darkness and ignorance but of the triumphant light and knowledge. The ancient sages thus really entering into the world became cosmic, really entering into life became immortal, really entering into creation became the Creator. Discovering all things as language they spoke through all things and in every way. They discovered the root language of silence, which is universal communication, and by that came to comprehend all things. Thus to the ancients Speech, Vāk, the Wisdom Goddess, was synonymous with the Divine Consciousness-Force, Cit-dSakti. Only the wise know how to speak. Only the wise have a Voice. They alone utter the Word (and there is no other word in the Veda). Thus what they say becomes truth. That speech is understanding which is real communication. That real communication, which unites all things together in a common intelligence, takes shape as the universal language of mantra. That Word cannot be spoken by the human voice. It can only be heard or seen for it is the universal Voice, the sound vibration which is the very soul and being of all things. That is the language of light. It opens up all things into the One. It is the weapon of the wise by which they destroy the powers of darkness, division and suffering, and bring all things into the presence, joy and clarity of a perpetual day, the immortal life of the Spirit. Thus by speech the ancients meant understanding, by the name of a thing its being, by language communication or communion which ultimately reveals the unity of all.

Language is the root of all human culture. It transmits the social order to the individual as the very basis through which he perceives, out of which he thinks and by which he expresses. Language then is the essence of all conditioning. Unless we first of all free ourselves from the bondage imposed upon us by the language that we use it is useless to seek freedom, for we are still basing all of our actions upon the very foundation of bondage. Every language presupposes its own particular world-view as the basis of its discourse. All language functions out of implicit root preconceptions as to the nature of the world, our language being rational, mechanical and materialistic in its orientation while the ancient language was intuitive, organic and spiritual in its. Our linguistic orientation is the given basis of our thinking, which limits us on a subliminal level. A word by itself has no real meaning. The meaning of a word is determined by the orientation of the linguistic system and its place within it. Language is organic rather than mechanical (or at least should be insofar as it has any real vitality). Meanings are not a matter of the quantity of words but of the quality of their relationship. Thus the meaning of words is mutually determined. This interdependent word-system unfolds out of the background of the basic assumptions about the world which constitute the linguistic orientation. Words have a living quality. Their meanings develop and decline, change and are transformed. Language is the basic living cultural medium. It is the basic human atmosphere which embodies the collective mind. As it is uncritically taken for granted it becomes blinder to a deeper awareness of reality.

Thus between radically different languages and world-views, as between modern western and ancient eastern cultures, there is a difference in language that must be understood before there can be any communication or understanding between the two systems. Merely to translate the words of the ancients has little value, for we are apt to understand them according to our own linguistic system. We are apt to place them within our own system of meanings which has little to do with their meaning in terms of their own system. To understand any statement, if there is a difference of level of discourse or linguistic orientation, requires not a translation of mere words but a recreation of meaning. What is said and what is meant are not at all the same thing, as many different verbal conventions of metaphor, ambiguity, analogy, symbol etc. reveal. The meaning is the composite of the words, the intentionality with which they are said and the linguistic background behind them. Merely translating words or literalism does not translate the intentionality of the statement or give the world-view behind it. A statement is like the wave on the sea of a particular language. The actual form of the wave, the words, are the least significant part of the action. The intentionality, like the power behind the wave, is more significant and determinative, but even this is always prefigured and delimited by the background ocean of preconceptions or root perceptions. A statement is like a painting, having both a foreground and a background. To leave out the unsaid background of the statement is like leaving out the background of the painting. The result is that all depth and perspective is lost.

Our root cultural assumptions are the roots of our language. We take them for granted in our ordinary discourse. Upon them we build our own personal identity and world-view. As long as this linguistic given is not questioned and understood, cooperation and real communication, not just a sharing of prejudices, is not possible. For our very way of thinking and speaking, developing out of this built-in personal and cultural bias, is divisive and seperative. Our language and thought, based upon this personal and social ego, is thus essentially only a monologue within its field of limitation. Our thought itself is of the nature of a monologue whereby we constantly sustain the restless wave of our particular being. No matter how much we support that particular being socially, no matter how extensively we develop it in various forms, it is still only particular, partial, prejudiced, preconceived, for that is its very basis. Only what is open is universal and only through an open mind and language can there be communication. For an open language does not close us off through any seperative assumptions as to self or culture but instead reflects the firmer basis of cosmic law. We can learn another language. We can know a great deal about such quite different cultures as ancient man but as long as we do not look at them beyond the limitations of our personal and social preconceptions there can be no real understanding. We are still much in the position of a child who thinks that people speaking languages he does not understand can only be senseless.

Even within our own language we link the meaning of a statement with the kind of discourse in which it is given. We can distinguish several different levels of discourse in which the same terms take on quite different senses. There is poetic language philosophical discourse, scientific discourse, what is left of religion, business terms and various forms of popular discourses etc. If we were not aware of the level of discourse of a particular statement and took it in the wrong intentionality we could find quite ordinary statement to be quite strange. If we took poetry as science, business as religion, popular expressions as philosophy, what kind of a strange idea of this culture we could build. And yet ancient man, whose level of discourse is essentially religious we insist upon interpreting according to our own economic, technological political, racial and historical bias. We have only measured ancient man by our own standards, which he cannot measure up to well as he really did not share them at all. We have measured him in our own reflection and found him inferior to us and lacking in susbstance. Thus we have only an illusion of understanding of things ancient which prevents real inquiry and is probably worse than total ignorance on the issue. This is nowhere as evident as in our current evaluation of the Vedas, particularly the Rig Veda. To remedy this we have to endeavor to find the background and intentionality of the Vedas in their own right, working our way back starting with the Upaniṣads.

Our concern herein with the Upaniṣads is while not ignoring the meanings of particular terms being more concerned with the intentionality of the teachings and the levels on which they can be taken. For the terminology is frequently changing in the Upaniṣads while the intentionality remains the same, to point out the Self in many different ways. Hence the changing terms of the Vedas and Upaniṣads, however diverse, all revolve around this central pole of the One which is All.

The Vedas cannot be comprehended within the field of our world-view. They are in what is to us the area of the unknown, so unknown they allow us to project our own ideas upon them with little resistance. Taking the Upaniṣads as philosophy, which they do occasionally approximate, we have preserved a foot-hold in the Vedic world but that is hardly enough to open the great horizons of the Vedas. The non-philosophic portions we have taken as old religious ritual which allows us to pass them over as obscure or irrelevant without having to face them as living and potentially greatly significant statements. We can appreciate them as poetry, which may reveal elements of their subtlety to us but which also remains in the distance. Their poetry is not a matter of adornment but is the natural beauty of truth. We must face them as a living presence, as open spaces and let them disclose themselves to us.

In fact modern language is progressively reducing its levels of discourse. Our whole language is being reduced to an informational, journalistic level. Even most of our literature is patterned after realistic journalism replete with popular vulgarisms. Instead of different levels of discourse we have highly specialized fields of information, wherein different levels of discourse, like religion, art or science, are only different kinds of information, wherein understanding is synonymous with facility with a particular field of information. All depth in language is thus eliminated. Whatever does not present itself as mere information we regard as obscure, as an attempt to avoid communication, as having nothing of value, nothing factual to state. Thus our lives are being deprived of all meaning, of all interiority, of all inquiry. And whatever we pursue in this surface realm can take us nowhere. We just gather new information and put on new roles but these have no real inner meaning. All change is purely superficial and quantitative, without the quality of change which is life itself. Even the spiritual becomes for us only a different kind of information to gather or role to assume.

Ancient man's level of discourse was essentially religious, as we have stated. His religious orientation was as culturally all-pervading as our utilitarian bias. The spiritual formed the background against which even material actions proceeded. Thus everything had an inner meaning. All objects, whatever their practical value and usage, had a transcendent value as objects of worship, as symbols of the real. This was not mere superstition but a real feeling for the presence of the Spirit in all things. Ancient man had what could be called a ‘reverential attitude’ in life. His attitude and intentionality in living was one of worship and adoration. Even the sacrifices, in which animals were often slain as offerings to the gods, was born out of a feeling for the sacred nature of life, wherein all things existed primarily only as offerings to the Divine. Modern man's fundamental project in life is the manipulation of the outer world for personal fulfilment, not an inward surrender to fulfil the soul as was ancient man's. This is basically a commercial mentality in which all things, including ourselves, are only commodities to be possessed and used. Even communism is commercial in orientation for it is based on a single economic standard of fulfilment for man. This is also basically a political mentality whose purpose it is to gain personal power not only over things but also over other people. The world and other people are thus only manipulatable objects without any real transcendent value. This whole materialistic world-view in which all beings are reduced to mere objects cannot go beyond this manipulative attitude and its destructive consequences. There is no real value or fulfilment in the material. All value and fulfilment is based on the transcendent and spiritual, that in all things which cannot be measured.

Religion is always the fundamental project of man. Whatever is a man's fundamental project in life is really his religion. Our possessions, beyond those we can use in a practical sense, really only have a kind of social or personal cult value. Similarly we have our gods and goddesses. They are the great personalities we worship in the world, the personality cults we create around our movie stars, singers, politicians, etc. endowing them with an aura of power and surrounding them with an atmosphere of adulation. We have not escaped the religious dimension of life. We have just projected it on a purely secular plane. For mankind never really changes. It is just his levels of expression that change. Ancient and modern man are just inversions of each other. We are still seeking transcendence but only in the outer world where it cannot be found. We have more intricate paraphernalia for the search but we have only compounded the frustration.

Similarly ancient man was not as primitive as we think. He lived in awe of nature, not because he was ignorant of science and so reacted to simple natural processes with fear, but because with his more intuitive mind he could sense the power of the Spirit behind all things. Modern man aims at clarity and directness of expression for that is the way to pass information along. Ancient man developed more an hieratic language to stimulate deep contemplation. Ancient languages are thus contemplative as are modern languages informational.

In a mystical language like that of the Vedas statements are never meant literally. They are not meant to give information about things or opinions and speculations concerning them. The Vedas are only concerned with what might be called, in condescension to our present language, spiritual facts. But spiritual facts are very subtle. They exist on many levels and take many forms. They have the factuality of the formless, the concreteness of essence. What they are communicating is consciousness and vision. Consciousness does not have the facticity of matter, the facticity of the seen, it has the facticity of vision, the facticity of seeing, upon which even the vividness of the materiality of the seen rests. It is revealed not by fixed form but by creativity. We may fix the meaning of words but the ways to induce consciousness proceed only through openness. Spiritual awareness does not apprehend the world as a fact but consciousness as a fact and the world as a metaphor for it. Vedic statements are designed not to communicate facts or ideas but the way of understanding in which all things are perceived only as symbols for the Divine. Such statements are meant like sparks to set a fire. They have no independent value.

The modern word is the purely human word. Modern words are mere conveniences to facilitate our actions in the outer world. They are mere artificial conventionlities. They are not expressive of any real relationship between ourselves and the object they indicate. In fact they are meant to close us off from the true reality of the objects of our world, which reality we experience only in childhood. For in reality all things are alive and full of a presence (the Spirit) and we have no particular importance or superiority relative to them. In order to manipulate things we have to ignore their life and spirit and make them into mere commodities. We do this not only with people, whom we are constantly reducing to commodities, images or statistics in our commercial and political games—we do this with the whole world, for the life and spirit of the Person is everywhere. Man is all things and all things are man. The spirit of man is the spirit of the whole universe. Thus in denying the spirit in the world we also deny our greater selves and condemn ourselves to the limitations of our given roles. Hence our language is essentially a defence mechanism to maintain our personality in a world which is essentially unknown and overflowing with the Spirit. Its purpose is not communication, that is communing with the real world which is not our ordinary world-idea at all. Our language based on definition, which creates the illusion of fixed materiality, is defensive in order to define ourselves against the world and above it. The hidden purpose of our language is to create distance and separation, and it is only in that space of separation that we have the room to define ourselves and the world as divided and contrary. Our words do not reveal the being of objects, which is their presence in consciousness. They veil the being of the object in the artificial name, which serves as the peg on which we can hang all our memories, judgments and definitions of the object which prevent the direct perception of it. We do not live in the world of reality, which is the world of direct perception and is perpetual creation. We live in our conditioned mind and language which ever imposes its seperative veil over the world, a world which is really of the Spirit.

The ancient seer's concern was the Divine Word, called Akṣara, the Imperishable Syllable or Udgītha, the Exalted Song, or just Om. He was not concerned in a practical way with naming things for informative comprehension. As his being was simple his physical needs were no dilemma and took care of themselves. Living by cosmic law the universe took care of him as it would itself. For knowing the real names of things, their soul and nature, he became one with them. Each thing has a Divine Name, which is the vibration of the Divine Word-Sound that is its guiding power. Such words were mantra, whose sound and meaning corresponded. Such mantras were the result of deep contemplation on the being of things in the state of pure perception free of fear and desire. They were the very voice of things themselves, not a name imposed upon things but the very speaking of things themselves. The ancients did not impose their language upon the world but discovered the language of the world itself and gave it form in human utterance. They did not impose their human beingness upon the world but let the cosmos fill them with the cosmic being. They spoke the language of the cosmos and attemped to create in human language the universal speech.

In short Vedic language is only in a limited sense culturally conditioned. It maintains its roots in the cosmic, in the transcendent. It stands above all particular languages, perceptual orientations, levels of discourse and world-views in the one all-inclusive Divine language, awareness, perception, communion and world-being which is the Self. Vedic language is not a kind of conditioning but has a deconditioning effect. As our language conditions the mind so does mantric language, creatively understood, decondition the mind. Vedic language is the language of the transcendent. It looks at us from the other side of the world. Thus we must step backwards and look within in order to hear it.

SYMBOLIC LANGUAGE

Ancient languages in general and Vedic language in particular was what could be called ‘symbolic language.’ The ancients saw all the things of the world as symbolic, as indicators in an entire system of signification wherein each thing is a particular revelation about the world as a whole, not a seperate entity revealing its particular nature. Thus their terms did not refer to the things of the world as facts, that is as things-in-themselves, but as symbols, as manifestations of the universal. By the term Man, Puruṣa, was not meant a particular man living in a particular time and place. Nor did it mean a particular culture or kind of human mentality, nor even man as a particular being as such. It did not refer to actual man at all. It meant the whole way of being which is man and which is reflected in all things, Man as the prototype (pratimāna) for all things. Thus Man was essentially a symbol to be meditated upon to reveal the truth of the Cosmic Spirit. From this symbolic view all things are prototypes, all particulars are universal images. Thus all things are particular revelations of the universal. In the Upaniṣads we find the whole cosmos or the cosmic being described in the form of a man, a bird, the sun, the sacrificial fire, a song. In the earlier Vedas we have the cosmic cow, the cosmic bull, the cosmic horse, the cosmic goat, the cosmic sun-bird, the cosmic tree, etc. In fact everything that is presented in the Veda is by way of its cosmic being, insofar as it serves as a prototype for the All, so that none of these things need be explicitly called ‘cosmic’ that being implied not only by their characteristics but by the very cosmic nature of the Vedic language. Ancient man's reverence for nature was born of this deeply intuitive symbolic awareness in which all things could be used as an imagistic base for the universal.

A symbolic language deals with neither concrete fact nor abstract idea. It merges both the abstract and the concrete into the symbol, wherein they reveal each other simultaneously in the spiritual apprehension of the world. In a symbolic language it is wrong to take any term with a concrete connotation, like dhenu, which can be taken in the sense of a milch-cow, as just indicating the simple object. Dhenu, for example, means nourisher (in the feminine sense) and can be used in many senses. Everything has its cow, its motherly nourishing power. Dhenu is in the ultimate sense the Divine Mother, the Cosmic Milch-Cow. In terms of faculties it is speech (vāk) which nourishes the mind. In terms of worlds it is the Earth who nourishes all creatures with food. All these senses will be mixed together variously in the Veda to facilitate a totalistic comprehension of the being of the Divine Mother. Similarly there is the Bull, Vrṣabha, the symbol of the Cosmic Male. Vrṣabha means invigorator. In the cosmos it is Heaven, the source of rain. In the individual it is breath. Thus Vedic terms should not be given a concreteness they do not have. Symbols are not substantive nouns which indicate particular objects. They are more only adjectives, the only substantive noun being the generally not directly mentioned but implicit, by the very nature of such a indefinate language, One Self. In the Veda the abstract and the concrete are one in the mantra which is like philosophy and painting at the same time. The concrete image is presented integrally with the abstract idea to facilitate a more totalistic intuitive comprehension. It was not because the ancients mixed the material and the spiritual but because they found the spiritual even in the material uniting them both in the unknown Self.

The ancient seers would have been guilty of idolatry if they took their symbols for real things but taking all things as only symbols is the end of idolatry, which is regarding something as having a separate reality. Taking all concrete things as symbols eliminates their concreteness, their materiality, their separate reality. Thus the Vedic symbols with their inner and abstract meaning are nothing like idols which is why we find nothing like idol worship mentioned in the early Vedas, not even like that common in later India. The gods being archetypal principles could not be regarded as any particular kind of object. Conversely philosophical truths are presented in the Veda as symbols to indicate their experiential reality. To one who knows of the power of Consciousness abstractly it is only an exalted idea, but to one who has experienced it it is Fire. We are reminded of the great philosopher Pascal who in his mystical experience found not the god of the philosophers but that of the prophets, not the impartial abstract but the great mystery, awe and terror. Similarly the ancients used animal symbols for their gods to reveal this mysterious and numinous dimension of spiritual realization which went far beyond the purely human to the primeval and the cosmic. Hence when the Upaniṣads use such Vedic symbols, as they do often in the earlier texts, we cannot disregard their inner and more abstract meaning and take them only in a ritualistic sense. The Upaniṣads themselves mix together both philosophical and symbolical languages. They can only be divided by an artificial judgement which destroys the continuity and wholeness of the Upanisadic teaching.

There are many kinds of symbolic languages used by the ancients interwoven variously. There is the language of light using fire, the sun, lightning, the dawn etc. all as indicating the power of consciousness and knowledge as opposed to the powers of darkness indicating ignorance. There is the language of color, white indicating purity, red indicating power and passion, black ignorance and enmity, gold understanding and illumination. There is the language of time in which the various divisions of the year, the month and the day are significators of the various aspects of reality. There is the language of space wherein the various directions are so significant of. There is the language of pure sound wherein vowels and consonants have certain archetypal values. We will explore some of these different aspects of symbolism in this book as they enter into the Upaniṣdas. The Upaniṣads give us a good summary of the various forms of symbolism used in the Vedas.

ANALOGICAL THINKING

The Upaniṣads contain many correspondences, often presented in a numerical order. There are the threefold correspondences, the threefold knowledge consisting of the three Vedas (scriptures), the three worlds (Earth, Atmosphere and Heaven), the three world powers (Fire, Wind and the Sun), the three states of consciousness (waking, dream and deep sleep) etc. There are equally significant twofold, fourfold, fivefold and sevenfold correspondences, as well as other numbers fifteen, thirty-three and so on. This language of correspondence, particularly of numerical correspondence, is inherent in the very nature of the Vedic language which is based upon a strict metrical system. The Vedic metres according to their numerical structure of syllables and stanzas become the basis for such extensive systems of correspondence. The prime Gāyatrī meter consisting of three stanzas of eight syllables each becomes the basis for eightfold and twenty-fourfold correspondences. The meters are often referred to and combined according to an inner meaning of numerical correspondence as representing cosmic laws and harmonic systems. These systems of correspondence will be examined in more detail elsewhere in this book. The point here is to set forth this principle of correspondence, which is essentially numerical, as one of the chief aspects of Vedic thinking, of the thinking of ancient man and that of intuitive thinking in general.

Numbers are apprehended by the intuitive mind as mystic keys to the universe, as a kind of universal analogue, through which all phenomenon can be integrated into an hiearchical system of laws culminating in the unity of a transcendent supreme principle. To the ancients numbers did not have primarily informational value for organizing quantities, they had a spiritual value for integrating the qualitative being of things through the common basis of cosmic law towards an original and fundamental unity. It is a kind of synthetic thinking quite different than our ordinary divisive mentation. Instead of fragmenting the world into seperate selves it unites all things by a common law into a single Being.

All correspondences are arranged around a root analogy. It need not be only numerical. It can be organic like the bodily structure of an animal, dawn as the head of the cosmic horse, the sun as the eye etc. Being based on this root analogy this symbolic thinking in terms of correspondences can be called ‘analogical thinking’. It can also be called ana-logical thinking because it is logical, that is it has a rationale and a sense to it. It is a way of organizing our world-experience in an orderly way. Yet it is not the logic of the rational intellect which moves in one plane or dimension only. It is a multi-logic that results in a comprehensive and integral unity of all. The rational intellect sees only the surface appearance of things. It cannot perceive depth. It sees the whole world in terms of planes only. Thus it can only present the various phenomena of the world as information. It cannot organize them into an integral understanding. It cannot bring objects into a parallel perspective. Its basic principle is that of exclusion, that things are what they seperately appear to be and are only related to what they are in proximity with. Thus it fragments the world into very intricate specialized fields of knowledge, which are compartmentalized so that all sense of totality is lost. Contrary to this the intuitive mind apprehends an inner dimension to things in which phenomena of even diverse levels can be integrated according to a common perspective. The rational intellect brings out the details of surface appearances. The intuitive mind brings out the unity of a common law, in which the same laws comprehend phenomena of all levels. This intuitive understanding is the result of a cosmic rather than a socially conditioned orientation to the mind. For the laws of right thinking, according to the ancient view, should parallel the laws of the cosmos, by which day and night, the seasons, life and death, joy and sorrow all come in their respective time according to a comprehensive yet immutable law. It is this cosmic law, Vedic Rtam, which is at the root of analogical thinking. Hence analogical thinking is also cosmological and brings man into the cosmic mind wherein is his true soul, his true cosmic being.

Perhaps the most central kind of correspondence, the ultimate root of analogical thinking, is the analogy between man and the cosmos. This is the basic microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondence of the inner or individual and the outer or cosmic, what the Upaniṣads call adhyātman, referring to the self (as the individual being, and adhidaivatām, referring to the gods (as the laws and powers of the cosmic being). This teaching of the cosmic man is the central correspondence whereby man becomes all. Man is indeed the measure of all things. This does not refer to the lower sense in which man as the intellectual creature reduces all the living world to his arbitrary and superficial standards of measurement. It is man as the causal being, the divine soul, the being of intelligence who is the prototype for the whole universe and can therefore find the whole world within himself.

Analogical thinking, then, does have its sophistication. It is not philosophical in a purely abstract sense. It is not logical in a linear intellectual sense. It follows a meta-logic wherein each thing can be used as a comprehensive analogy for the central structure of the universe. It develops a cosmic approach wherein everything is exalted into a cosmic principle and each thing is integrated into a cosmic view. The most basic vital processes of life become the most cosmic for in this view the whole cosmos is an organism comprehended by organic law. Thus eating and excreting, inhalation and exhalation are all part of a cosmic rhythm which comprehends the whole universe. Thus food, anna, and breath, prana, are synonymous with the substance and energy of the cosmic being.

This organic law, the law of nature, is the real law of the ancient sages. It is quite different from our social laws based as they are upon artificial conventions and imposed from the outside. These laws of life, of ebb and flow, of advancing and yielding, were also used as the basis for the ancient social orders, which enabled them to endure for great lengths of time. The ancient organic differentiation of society (which later degenerated into caste) was nothing but society organized by cosmic law, which is the only real and firm basis for human society. Our artificial concepts of social equality replace this organic stratification of human society into the spiritual with a common and mediocre materialism, which is why our current society is in such chaos. This organic intelligence, this cosmic intelligence, this consciousness of life and its great laws and rhythms, its essential correspondences was called in the Upaniṣads Prājñā, also meaning the Wisdom-Goddess, and was identical with Prāna, meaning the Spirit of Life, the Divine-Spirit or the Spirit-God, both being identical with the Ātman, the Supreme Self.

The equation that Ātman equals Brahman, the Self is God, that the individual self, jīvātman, equals the Supreme Self, Paramātman, is really the ultimate exercise in analogical thinking. It is the basic, ultimate and complete correspondence, out of which the basic microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondences arise and towards which they aim. All the correspondences and analogical formulations in the Upaniṣads are designed to culminate in this ultimate analogical insight of pure unity. The very term ‘Brahman’, particularly in the Brāhmanas itself means the mystic correspondence. The very term ‘upaniṣad’ similarly means the mystic meaning, the secret correspondence. Hence the great formless insights of the Upaniṣads like ‘I am Brahman (aham Brahmāsmi)’ did not develop out of our kind of logical philosophical thinking but out of this ancient analogical-cosmological thinking. This is their organic Vedic roots. They are not a new intrusion into Vedic discourse but the ultimate rationality of the Vedas which are permeated by these sense of correspondence, which can only ultimately resolve itself into pure unity. Whether the correspondences are worked out in terms of 33, 12, 5 or 3, in whatever way numerical or not, all of this is only by way of an intermediate step to resolve an organic multiplicity into a common unity. All these analogical systems culminate in unity and are meant as various ways or degrees of approach to that basic cosmic unity in the Spirit which is the central teaching of the Upaniṣads.

It should be noted that the Upaniṣads and the Vedas do not as rigidly differentiate between the creative and uncreative aspects of the Divine, as do some later teachings. In them the world, the cosmos, is to be comprehended as a whole by an inner creative vision to reveal the Self, as much as it is to be simply negated to reveal it. The Upaniṣadic path to the Self is often through the cosmos, through merging the individual being into the Universal Being by these microcosmic-macrocosmic correspondences. It sees the world as a creative blossoming of the Spirit, which mirrored within becomes the very manifestation and revelation of truth itself. It is through such intuitive cosmological thinking that the Upaniṣads bring us to the Self, rather than a simple logic of world-negation; that being integrated with a more intuitive and creative vision and language. By this different kind of symbolic thinking these cosmological statements can be seen to have as their real import Self-knowledge, not worldly knowledge.

Analogical thinking is also what could be called ‘experiential.’ It is essentially an inner experience of the unification of these various phenomena within the mind of the student that is being aimed at through these presentations. It is a meditative thinking which synthesizes our perception through cosmic insight. It is thinking with things, discovering the laws inherent within them, by communing with that basic cosmic intelligence inherent in them all. It is participation in the cosmic thinking process which is the whole universe. It is quite different from our ordinary thought based on memory, which abstracts us from things rather than unites us to them within us. It is the kind of integrating understanding which ensues when the mortal mind and its personal strivings is set aside. It brings about the intuitive integration of the mind, and when its process is completed it culminates in the silence of pure unitary awareness. It is that thinking, which as its effect is integrating, culminates in the silencing of the mind naturally and is not disturbing to that natural silence. It is not possible to silence the mind directly. Its forces have to be integrated first. That was the purpose of these various analogical insights and why they culminated in the revelation of the Self.

The Upaniṣads developed out of the analogical thinking and symbolic language of the Vedas. They are the natural consequence of the Vedic way of symbol and correspondence. In the hymn portion of the Rig Veda these correspondences are poetic and unsystematic. In the hymn portion of the Yajur Veda, which stands about half-way between the Rig Veda and the Upaniṣads, they are systematic but not yet philosophical. In the Upaniṣads they are systematic and have a strong philosophical element. In later Vedānta the correspondences and the cosmic symbolic language disappear for a more direct, world-negating transcendent philosophy. Yet the transcendent realizations of the Upaniṣads are based on these symbolical approaches. Transcendency is not stated as a direct and first principle in the Upaniṣads as in later Vedānta which states that Brahman alone is real and the world is unreal. In the Upaniṣadic way it is the cosmic and the symbolic, the organic that takes us naturally to the transcendent. The two orders of reality, the cosmic and the supracosmic are not radically split in the Vedas and each leads to the other in the comprehension of inner law.

Symbolic language does also, and quite naturally, culminate in the transcendent which goes beyond all symbols. For in a comprehensive symbolic language, as that of the Veda, the whole universe is a mere symbol. If the whole universe is a mere symbol then it is a symbol of the transcendent, not the symbol for any particular thing or quality but for that which transcends all the things in the universe, all qualities and relationships. All things by their symbolic nature negate themselves quite naturally into the transcendent. This is the basis of the Upaniṣadic negation (neti neti) which is the affirmation of the symbolic truth of everything and which is presented side by side with symbolic expressions as part of a unitary statement. The Vedas see all things as only symbols for the Divine. Thus the particularities of phenomena are only apparent. There is only one reality, one transcendent to which this whole symbolical universe points. Symbolic language does not culminate in any ultimate symbol, does not end with a symbol that is the real. Symbolic language culminates in the realization of all things as only symbols, masks and metaphors of the same Divine Reality within and beyond them all. It is the comprehension of all things as symbol, of all things as language, that is the real goal of the Vedas, not to set up Indra, Agni or any of the other Vedic gods as ultimate, not to set forth any principle or element such as space or the sun as ultimate. Symbolic language is not an indication of idolatry. To take anything in the material world as real in itself is idolatry. Symbolic language has as its goal to give us the insight whereby we take nothing as real in itself but real all things only as a message. Symbolic understanding sees the whole universe as the creative play of the Transcendent Spirit beyond. Yet as all things are only symbols of the transcendent there is no real dichotomy of the creation and the transcendent, of matter and spirit. Just as the creation negates itself by its very symbolic nature into the transcendent so does the transcendent reveal its freedom as creation. Creation itself becomes the action of transcendence whereby the Transcendent Spirit reveals its nature of pure freedom.

The ultimate symbol, the ultimate analogy, is the Self. The Self is the principle of universal correspondence wherein all is one and one is all, where the each and the everything, the unique and the universal are identical. All symbolic language and analogical thinking culminates in the Self, wherein everything being interchangeable with everything else interpenetrates everything else. For all things when seen as symbols melt into the symbolless, the imageless. All things when realized as mere analogies melt into the indefinable and the incomparable. All things when seen as language melt into silence. That is the same as the Divine Speech which is universal communion, the universal communication, which understands everything as its own creative delight. All things by their very nature as symbols negate themselves into the imageless. For indeed if all things are only symbols, what thing is there? All things surrender to the Divine by their very nature. All things as symbols are a sacrificial offering to the Divine, as pure in their own nature as the smoke of incense. The Divine offers himself to himself in the form of the universe. As man he receives this offering, that is if that man knows his true nature as the cosmic man, who is both the sacrificer and the sacrificed, who is himself the inviolable sacrifice.

UNITY

The central and comprehensive teaching of the Upaniṣads is that of the unity of all things. The various powers or principles set forth in them as the supreme principle or Brahman are merely various ways of demonstrating the unity of all. Space, Ākāśa, which is often equated with Ātman or Brahman, means just unity as the space in all things is the same. All things are one in the all-pervasive space of the Supreme Self. Thus space in the Upaniṣads is not a crude material first-principle from a sort of subliminal scientific thinking. It is a sophisticated analogical tool for comprehending the unity of all things in the Self. The same is true of the other of the five elements in the Upaniṣads. Air, Vāyu, is similarly an analogue for the one power which is the Divine, for the air fills all things and moves all things without itself becoming differentiated. Like the Spirit its movement is felt but its form is never seen. The whole world can be understood as the blowing of the wind of the One Spirit. Hence air can be seen also as the supreme and all-inclusive principle. Fire, Agni, is also indicative of unity as the fire hidden potentially in all material things is symbolic for the Divine Consciousness hidden latent within them. The Vedic fire is the Divine Fire which arising out of its latent state in the ignorant mind ignites and consumes everything into the pure power of Consciousness of the Self. Water, Āpas, is also an analogical principle for unity as all things are like waves on the ocean of Consciousness. The Vedic waters are often the causal waters of primordial life out of which creation emerges. Even the Earth, Prthivī, the grossest element, is sometimes identified with Aditi, the Infinite Mother, who is normally identified with Brahman, the supreme principle, for the Earth demonstrates the unitary being of the Spirit in its all-supporting, all-nourishing nature. All the five great elements demonstrate how a unitary principle can comprehend an extensive diversity. They are not used in any philosophical sense as material first principles. They are sophisticated symbolical revelations of the One Self, which in the vastness of true vision can be discerned through any one of them as the all-inclusive first principle.

The unity of all things can be ascertained by reducing all phenomena to five, three or one element. Once we learn how all objects are mere combinations of these basic elements then we realize in the unity of composition, in the unity of law, the unity of truth, provided that is we take the elements in a symbolic spiritual sense as the ancients did and not in a materialistic scientific sense, as we would tend to do if we did not consider the background and intentionality of Vedic discourse. All the powers and principles designated in the Upaniṣads from the senses to the gods are all there for their great analogical significance in pointing out the truth of unity. The basic elements of existence are shown to help lead our mind by degrees, through various angles of approach, under different names to experience the unity of all. Whether this ultimate unity is called space or water, Ātman or Brahman, the eye or the sun, food or bliss, makes little difference, only the difference of a name in the Vedic language where all things are taken in the inner sense. For if we know all to be water then indeed it is the water of the Spirit and if we know all to be food it is the self-generating, self-consuming reality of the Spirit that is meant. It is true that these principles can have lesser meanings but when they are set forth in some sense as the ultimate it is not in terms of their lesser meaning. What is important is to universalize these principles. Whatever is universalized is truth. Whatever of the powers and faculties of the individual or the cosmos is taken out all the way will reveal the Self. That the eye is Brahman means that the Seer is all. That speech is Brahman means that the Divine Word is all. That life, prana, is Brahman does not mean that reality is reduced to the vital force but that the Self is the life and energy of all. The statements are not scientific or philosophical. They do not follow the strict meaning of the terms involved but employ them metaphorically, symbolically and analogically.

It may be insisted for philosophical purity that only those passages which directly identify the Self and Brahman reveal the highest truth and that those which identify Brahman with space or breath or any principle which has a more common lesser meaning must be only secondary and preliminary teachings. Such a view fails to consider the real nature of Vedic language which is intuitive not rational, as poetic as it is philosophical. Even the term for Self, Ātmans, often means lesser things like the mind or the body, as well as the Supreme Self. Why cannot other terms have such a spectrum of meaning for they are used in a similar spectrum of contexts from the lowest to the highest? We must never forget the basic principle of the Upaniṣads that the Self is the essence of each thing. “They who know the life of life, the eye of the eye, the ear of the ear and the mind of the mind, they have discerned the primordial supreme Brahman.” Is it not also the Self of the self? As such all these terms can be made identical and we can see that the Upaniṣads can talk of the Self in many other terms than just the Self. The Vedic language does not follow the rules of philosophical discourse. From the view of a more poetic discourse we could equally rightly call the Self the sun, as it is metaphorically the light of all. Neither set of terminology is superior necessarily to the other. To understand them we must judge them according to the way the language is used as a whole and not superimpose the rules of a particular kind of discourse where they are not entirely appropriate.

The sages were not concerned with cosmological speculation as to which element or principle was really the first, for all of them were symbolic ultimately of the Self and could in that sense represent as well as the others. Their concern was purely practical in the spiritual sense, to help stimulate us in a comprehensive manner to the perception and experience of the unity of all. The exaltation of many different principles reflects the different methods of a wide teaching capacity not the divergent opinions of uncertain speculation. The sages had no doubt or confusion as to the truth but they realized that many ways were needed to give a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the truth, accessible to every sort of mentality. If one principle is now extolled as the ultimate and now another, with that previous ultimate principle now only secondary, it is just a shifting of methods. The basic equation that all is one remains the same. The terms which designate the equation are shifted but not its real meaning. The term Self, Ātman, may be the most clear and direct to reveal the highest truth, but other terms can also be used. If we reduce them all to the term Self we may have gained something by way of simple clarity but we have lost something of the wideness and diversity of the Upaniṣadic approach and certainly cannot understand the earlier Vedas insisting upon that kind of linguistic usage. If the Supreme is the Self or the Self is the Supreme why not Fire and all the rest, as the fire of fire etc? If all are to be revealed as One, is not also the One to be revealed as All? Later Vedantic terminology, for necessary clarity of expression in a very rational age, was fixed almost exclusively on the term Self or Ātman. The Upaniṣads, though centered on the term the Self or Ātman, use many terms of quite different nature in the same sense as the Supreme and generally refer them back to the Self at some point or other as equivalent to it. The earlier Vedas however have no such central term as the Self or Ātman but a diffuse, open and creative language in which anything and everything from the cows, gavah, to the fire, agni, can mean the Self. We must, therefore, to move back towards a real understanding of the Vedas, learn to diffuse or spread out the language of the revelation of the highest truth from a highly concentrated, precise and rational to a widely diffuse, fluidic and intuitive.

The Taittirīya Upaniṣad sets forth the five basic principles of individual and cosmic being; food, anna, breath, prāna, mind, manas, intelligence, Vijñāna and bliss, ānanda. These five principles are set forth on several levels. In one sense, the main traditionally accepted one, they represent the five root principles of existence from the lowest to the highest beyond which is the Self; food is matter, breath is the life-force, mind is the intellectual, intelligence the intuitional, bliss is the spiritual root of the world. They form five sheaths or coverings over the Self which must be removed for the true apprehension of the reality of the Self. In our initial understanding we come to grasp all things as matter. As we progress spiritually we move up the scale grasping reality as breath, then mind, then intelligence, then bliss and then finally reaching the transcendent Self beyond these five sheaths. This is what we would call a ‘vertical or hiearchical’ comprehension of Vedic terms, which always finds the Self only at the summit and any term other than the Self standing for a lesser principle by way of approach to it. Yet all of these terms are used in many other Upaniṣadic statements, including some in this same Taittirīya Upaniṣad, as being equivalent with Brahman. Bliss, ānanda, is commonly identical with the Self which is generally regarded as threefold in essence, Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Sacchidānanda. Vijñāna, intelligence or knowledge, or its equivalents Jñāna (also in the Taittirīya) and Prājñā, are often used as identical with the Self. Mind, manas, is occasionally made equivalent to Brahman. Breath, prāna, particularly in the sense of breath as Spirit is very commonly made equivalent with the Self or Brahman. Food, anna, is also commonly said to be Brahman. Though we may insist that some of these passages are lesser teachings even traditional Advaitic commentators take ānanda, vijñāna and prāna to be at times identical with the Self. Why then not the other two principles also?

Besides then the accepted what we have called ‘vertical interpretation’ of terms in the Veda which point to the Self at the summit there is another equally valid way to interpret them which we will call conversely the ‘horizontal interpretation’ of Vedic terms. In this horizontal sense everything is ultimately equivalent directly to Brahman even food as Brahman is the food of food, When food is made a lesser principle relative to breath or anything else it is being taken in a vertical sense and indeed means only food. When it is made directly equivalent to Brahman we must, however take it in a horizontal sense as another name for Brahman as the nourishing substance of all. The Upaniṣads give teachings in both senses and even mix them together. Applying both to the Upaniṣads we can reclaim not only their spiritual heights but also their spiritual vastnesses. Then these passages which equate Brahman with such a lesser principle as food can also be understood in a higher light as revealing the Self, thus allowing us to view nearly the whole of the Upaniṣads as a revelation of the Self—and thus preparing us for the earlier Vedas whose usage of language is almost entirely in this horizontal sense wherein everything can be the Self.

These five principles are also analogical demonstrations of the truth of unity. Food means only in one sense gross matter. Food also demonstrates the unity of reality. The universe is ruled by a sacrificial order in which each being partakes of other beings in order to live and is in turn partaken of by other beings for their life. All creatures are one in food, which demonstrates symbolically the self-generating, self-consuming oneness of the Spirit. This insight into all as the food of the Spirit strikes at the heart of the seperative, self-important ego. Similarly that breath or life, prāna, is Brahman can mean much more than the literal meaning that the vital force is the supreme principle. Breathing, with the rhythms of inhalation and exhalation, demonstrates a oneness of life manifesting through and transcending birth and death, creation and destruction. In breathing we also partake of the world and are partaken of by it again revealing the mystic order of sacrifice, the perpetual communion which is life. Thus to really know the true implications of food or breath would be to realize the One Self. The extent of these potential implications is quite vast. That food is Brahman can also mean that all is nourishment for the Spirit. He who knows the truth of unity finds nourishment, finds food, in all things. That food is Brahman means that all things nourish him who knows the truth. For all things have a message, a meaning, a spirit which they transmit, which is the sole import of their particular being, that is Brahman and is the same in all and nourishes that Brahman in us. To see the truth behind things is thus to eat, digest and assimilate them. We may prefer to hear these truths in a more refined and systematic philosophical language but the Upaniṣads are concerned more directly with these primal facts of the Spirit, which is exactly why they are the Upaniṣads and contain within these primal raw truths innumerable philosophies. Thus the knower of truth eats or consumes the whole universe as food, from the sheath of bliss all the way down to the sheath of food. Thus the Taittirīya Upaniṣad after giving forth the doctrine of the five sheaths ends with a glorification of the lowest principle, food, anna, as Brahman.

THE SONG OF WORLD-CONSUMMATION

THE CONCLUSION OF THE TAITTIRIYA UPANISAD, CHAPTER 3 SECTION 10

5.

He who knows this truth, departing from this world of vision, attaining that Self made of food, attaining that Self made of breath, attaining that Self made of mind, attaining that Self made of intelligence, attaining that Self made of bliss, traversing these worlds of vision eating the food he wishes (kāmānnī), assuming the forms he wishes (kāmarūpī), sits singing this Song (Sāman): Oh Wonderful! Oh Wonderful! Oh Wonderful! (Hā vū, hā vū, hā vū, i.e. hallelujah).

I am Food. I am Food. I am Food. I am the Eater of food. I am the Eater of food. I am the Eater of food. I am the maker of glory. I am the maker of glory. I am the maker of glory. I am the first-born of Truth, more ancient than the gods, in the central point of Immortality. Who gives me, he indeed becomes equal to me. I am Food. I, Food, eat the eater of food. I have overcome the whole universe. My light is like the World of the Sun (Suvar).

Such is the mystic teaching (upaniṣat) for him who really knows.

Obviously, in this passage, food, anna, is equated directly with the Supreme Brahman, the all-inclusive ultimate principle, for whom the whole world is food, with the Supreme Self who as both the eater and the eaten is the food which consumes all things. That primordial Brahman which is the food of all and is the eater of all is the Self which is the first born of Truth (prathamajā Rtasya). Knowing that Supreme Self which is the ultimate food of all the seer states that he has overcome, abhyabhavām, transcended the entire universe, viśvam bhuvanam. As food undoubtedly here means directly the Self or Brahman it can be further deduced that any of these five principles can directly mean Brahman also and need not always mean lesser principles. In this sense we can give these five terms the same sense as Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Sacchidānanda, which are commonly regarded as identical with the Self. Here then we would have the food, life, mind, intelligence bliss-Self with these five principles being merely other synonyms for the Self. This Self is fivefold in the sense that its essence is revealed comprehensively by these five principles of its being. Just as Being is Consciousness is Bliss, so also Bliss is Intelligence is Mind is Life is Food, and all are the Self as all mean Oneness. Attaining any one or five of these seven principles in their ultimate truth is the same as attaining all.

Realizing this fivefold nature of the Self one indeed becomes all. All the worlds become his movement. He finds the most desirable nourishment everywhere. In his creative being as the Cosmic Self he assumes all forms, while in his transcendent being as the Uncreate, the Unborn Self he sits singing the immutable song of Bliss (incidentally this whole passage is based upon and centered around a song or chant from the Sāma Veda, the Veda of Song, which gives some idea as to the heights of exaltation of the Vedic chants). Through moving everywhere and in every form he is really just sitting in the bliss of his own being. Such is the wonder of the Self. It is the mystic eating which is total consummation and an ever-growing exaltation. It is constant Self-consummation, wherein eating and being eaten, dying and being born, merge into the unity of Immortality. Whoever gives this oneness, realizing that nothing can be lost, receives only this oneness. This transforms this universe of the ignorance into the World of the Sun, Svar or Suvar, which is the vision of all things merged into the pure light of Consciousness and Knowledge, the supreme world of the Vedas which integrates all the worlds into Brahman. Thus food which is the lowest principle of reality is also the highest. For when the lowest becomes the highest and the highest becomes the lowest that indeed is the true realization. If we must ascend from food to breath to mind etc. to Brahman we must also descend from this highest principle back down to the lowest merging them all in the oneness of the Self. If we begin by mistaking matter (food) for Brahman we must also end by realizing Brahman as matter (food).

The Upaniṣads and the Vedas thus work with the primal Spirit of Life, revealed not through sophisticated speculation but through primal actions like eating and breathing, that our whole being down to our most natural and subconscious actions may be merged into that supreme Brahman that is both the highest and the lowest. Breath, prāna, our second principle of Brahman, is just eating on a more subtle level. Inhalation and exhalation are eating and excreting and demonstrate the same complementary rhythm of life which itself indicates an underlying unity. Through breathing we partake of the universe and the universe partakes of us. In breathing we become the world and the world becomes us. Breath demonstrates the unity between creature and cosmos (which is Brahman), which is the very basis of life. Thus eating and breathing are a secret teaching, an Upaniṣad, the real living Upaniṣad of which the known texts are only an indication and intimation. Thus life itself is the basic the basic teaching, the Upaniṣad. It is a secret teaching not because it is inherently hidden but because it is so obvious it is not considered, just as we often fail to note the sky in our perception of our surroundings. And only when we can realize the truth in these primal actions of living can liberation-in-life, Jīvānmukta, arise, which is the true goal of all teachings. Eating and breathing demonstrate the basic sacrificial order, yajñasya rtam, the order of the sacrifice, which is both God, Deva, and the universe. These primal actions of eating and breathing are the eternal actions, nitya karma, understanding which brings true knowledge, jñāna. They are the very manifest nature of the primordial unitary Brahman, the sacrificial prayer of all in all.

The same twofold law of Oneness governs the mind, manas. The mind has its inbreath, its consummation of food, in the form of the impressions it gathers. It has its outbreath, its being consumed as food, in the forms of the expressions it gives. It takes in impressions through the sense organs, Jñānendriyas, and gives out expressions through the organs of action, karmendriyas, the chief of which is speech, which serves to help nourish the minds of others. Our mind has a twofold orientation as an instrument of reception and transmission whereby it partakes of the whole cosmos and the whole cosmos partakes of it. All minds are only reception and transmission stations in the One Consciousness. How indeed can we say where our mind ends and where the minds of others begin? For there to be interchange there must be a common atmosphere or medium of interchange. How can we say where our breath ends and the outside air begins? So too there is a common mental atmosphere in which our minds partake and in which our minds are partaken of. These primal actions of life prove that nothing exists separately, that all is a common sacrifice, that all is part of a common nature. The ego does not control these basic life processes. We are immersed in the cosmic rhythm of sacrifice. What the ego does is make arbitrary lines of division, separating us off from the primal Spirit of Life, Brahman, which naturally pervades the action of the Sacrifice. The sorrow caused by the separative attitude of the ego does not indicate anything wrong with the natural actions of living which are only the manifest nature of the primordial Brahman and indicate only That. Giving up the thought of separation we can follow any of these universal actions in which we partake, into the Universal itself. In this ultimate sense through our impressions and expressions, through breathing and eating, we become the whole world, we consume the whole world.

Just as we are receptors and transmitters of food, breath and mind, so are we receptors and transmitters of intelligence and bliss, vijñāna and ānanda. All objects in the universe emanate food, breath, impressions (mind), intuitions (intelligence) and happiness (bliss). These are nothing but the way all things vibrate in the presence of the Self. These fives transmissions are just the manifestations of the fivefold essential being of the Self as food, breath, mind, intelligence, bliss (with consciousness and being understood as inherent in bliss).

These seven major Upaniṣadic principles then can be understood in two ways, as a series of hierarchical principles of progressively greater truth and reality culminating in the supreme principle of Brahman, or as various names for or ways of looking at Brahman which are all essentially equal. The former way applies to the way of negation, the philosophical path, direct discourse. From this philosophical path, which demands rationality and clarity of expression, only the Self is the Self, only Brahman is Brahman. If life, prana, or any other principle is given the characteristics of Brahman or identified with it, it is only the case of a lesser principle glorified as the higher to lead us by degrees to the real truth. Those who cannot understand the Self as Brahman are thus given lesser and more understandable principles like food, breath or mind, like fire, air or space, that it might steady their minds and give them the proper concentration to approach the Self in its own form later on. These are then what could be called ‘leading statements’, for though they do not present the whole truth they do present it partially and thus help lead us gradually to truth; as living beings cannot understand the highest truth directly and easily and must therefore have such intermediate principles to take them step by step. Those who cannot understand the formlessness of Brahman are thus told that Brahman is life or light or something else they know. This ‘vertical’ comprehension of the Upaniṣads thus organizes the texts in stages or degrees with naturally only a few passages giving the truth at the top. Vedāntic philosophy, especially Advaita Vedānta, explicates the Upaniṣads almost exclusively in this sense. It can produce a very rational and cogent view, particularly of the later Upaniṣads, and is always part of any intelligent approach to them.

It should be noted that later Vedānta abandons, for the most part, these indirect and what are from its view lesser teachings. Its purpose of explicating them as lesser teachings is not so much to use them as preliminary teachings as it is to dismiss them altogether. This is why we say that though later Vedānta accepts the central truth of the Upaniṣads it rejects much of their method. Later Vedānta proceeds mainly through reasoning that Brahman alone is real and the world is unreal. The Upaniṣads proceed more by the intuitive correlation of the individual and the cosmic which culminates in the identity of the individual self and the Cosmic Spirit. How much do such significant and frequently repeated Upaniṣadic intuitive individual-cosmic correspondences like that between speech and fire or the eye and the sun enter into later Vedānta? Very little, and the same can be said of the explications of the Self as the Sun, Āditya, or the Wind, Vāyu. This does not mean that such teachings did not have as their real import the Self, as some have thought, but because their language and kind of thinking was somewhat different. Such changes in teaching are necessary in the course of time but to uncover the early Upaniṣads in their own right we must go into their whole methodology as well as their central truth.

This direct, rational and philosophical approach to the Upaniṣads is only half their truth, for the Upaniṣads are purely intuitive texts whose rationalization came many centuries later. They proceed by lightning intuitions not by systematic reason. They also present an indirect, intuitive and poetic approach and language. It should be considered that the Self can be revealed in many ways and its real revelation is something quite other than a simple rational account of its being. One may know the philosophical system of Vedānta quite well and yet have no true Self-realization for it is more a matter of inner feeling than mental knowing. The advantage of direct revelations of the Self is that they do give the mind the idea as to what is to be realized. Yet this can also be a disadvantage in that the mind's ideas obstruct the direct perception of this truth which can only happen when the mind and its reasoning comes to an end. Such direct revelations may serve for ideas which are taken as substitutes for the true realization. It is like giving a person an answer to a mathematical problem before they try to solve it. It can be the basis for them not learning how to solve the problem but merely accepting the answer. Indirect statements of truth, like the Sun is Brahman, on the other hand, demand that we fill in the truth of the statement with our own creative understanding and thus stimulate more insight and inquiry. They do not afford themselves so easily to be formed into philosophical dogma or mental speculation but demand more intuition. Such indirect statements are not set forth literally and are not meant to be apprehended literally like the direct statements. When the Upaniṣads say ‘this Self is Brahman, ayam Ātmā Brahman,’ the statement is direct, but when they say the sun is Brahman, they are not referring to the gaseous globe of radiant matter which is the central star of our solar system. They are just using the sun, with all of its inner and outer correspondences like intelligence, vijñāna, the eye, cakṣus, life, prāna, the state of deep sleep, etc. to reveal the Self.

Thus we must not forget the background symbolic nature of the Vedic language and take any of its symbols at face value from our view apart from their very complex and subtle associations in the Vedic language. From the standpoint of philosophy Vedic symbols are only indirect statements of truth but it must be remembered that such statements were not made against the background of a purely philosophical discourse. Symbolic statements are direct statements of truth in the context of a symbolic language. If one has facility with the understanding of symbols as the ancient Brahmans did such statements are quite clear and direct in their meaning. Indeed if one had a background in symbolic language and not in rational philosophy one would regard the Rig Veda a very clear and direct teaching and the philosophy of Advaita Vedānta to be confusing and indirect. We must learn to see beyond any particular language or discourse as to truth and take each on its own basis. The problem in interpretation arises when we fail to consider the background of the teaching and take it according to coordinates which are inappropriate.

It is the very beauty and greatness of the Upaniṣads that they contain both forms of discourse thus indicating their essential unity and the key as to their correlation. Through the integral comprehension of both these approaches we can understand and use the Upaniṣads and their method in their own right, for the grand synthesis of all the ancient symbolic and medieval rational spiritual teachings. This is the way of the future, which must not only use reason and intellect, but reawaken intuition and creative understanding. It is in this direction that our inquiry is directed. Specific Concentration and Integral Comprehension.

Sometimes in the Upaniṣads one principle will be extolled exclusively as Brahman, as the ultimate reality, and all other things will be reduced to it. Many different principles are treated in this way. Among these are space, air, fire, water, the sun, food, life, mind, intelligence and bliss. This is what we would call ‘the way of specific concentration’. What is really being taught in these sections is not the unique superiority of the particular term in which this centering occurs. In a lower sense such statements can be regarded as leading statements toward the revelation of the Self in its own right. What is really being taught is concentration itself, that Brahman is the essential element of all things, that total concentration reveals the Self which is the basic natural concentration of pure consciousness. The given principle on which this concentration is made is just symbolic of the all-encompassing unity of Brahman. All these terms are essentially identical in real meaning and mean the Self which is the essence of all.

It must always be remembered that the Vedic symbolic language is a priori analogical. It is impossible to stress this point often enough. Thus when the Upaniṣads says the sun is Brahman, owing to the very analogical basis of the Vedic language, it also means that Brahman is like the sun. The analogy, the ‘like’, need not be made explicit for it is part of the background of the language itself. That air, vāyu, is Brahman means that Brahman like the air is formless power. For Brahman is primarily the being of all things, their essence. It is the airness of air, the sunness of the sun, the livingness of life. All things in their bare being, their pure presence in consciousness as objects of perception, their natural beauty and delightfulness are only That, That Being, Brahman. All things in their very nature as forms of being, manifestations of consciousness, symbols of the real, only serve to establish That. All objects by their very symbolic nature negate themselves into the supreme Brahman. All that they serve to indicate or establish by their being is the Being of That. Any object can be used to reveal the Thatness, which is all any object really serves to reveal. Brahman is not limited to the form of the air but as the being of air it is quite correct to say that the air is Brahman, which means really more like that Brahman is the air. Concentration on the being of any object as the all reveals ultimately the being of all, Brahman. The Vedic language is purely a mantric language of the thatness and in it ultimately everything means Brahman and is used only to reveal Brahman.

The Upaniṣads are not limited to a single approach or to a formula. Complementary to this way of concentration is what could be called ‘the way of integral comprehension’. Here an integral understanding of several principles is being taught. The different cosmic principles are taught as parts of the Self or the Cosmic Man. The taking of any one of these as the supreme principle itself is considered an error. Here the different principles like space, air, fire, water and earth, fire, moon and sun, speech, mind and breath are just regarded as integral portions of an all-comprehensive supreme principle which contains them all in their proper places.

In the way of concentration the object used must be understood in the inner sense. If the Veda says that all is water it means the water of the blissful Self. If it says that all is fire it means the fire of the Self as wakeful awareness. If, however, these terms are taken in an outward sense then they are only secondary principles and represent only an incomplete understanding. When the teaching via the way of concentration fails to lead the student to the true realization, when the terms are held to in their outer sense obstructing the truth of the Self rather than used in their inner sense as doors to the Self, the way of concentration has to be replaced by the way of integral comprehension. Then fire, the sun, the moon and lightning represent only one foot of Brahman. It is not that the Upaniṣad is contradicting itself in all this but that merely different methods and approaches are being used. The error arises when we try to take such passages rigidly, in a too literal and rational sense, rather than according to their real practical spiritual intentionality. The way of specific concentration enters truth by the gate of the one. The way of integral comprehension enters by the gate of the all. Both methods are necessary to complement each other and correct our mind's tendency from becoming too scattered, the result of misunderstanding the way of integral comprehension, or from becoming too narrow and rigid, the result of misunderstanding the way of specific concentration. The way of concentration teaches the one which is all. The way of comprehension teaches the all which is one. In the final analysis both are one and each contains aspects of the other. Understanding thus the fluidic nature of the meaning of terms in the Upaniṣads according to different teaching intentionalities, we see that sometimes a principle which is extolled along the way of concentration as the ultimate is rejected along the way of integral comprehension as only a partial principle. Brahman in the Upaniṣads is not revealed so much by any particular term as by how all terms are understood in their inner truth. The particularities extolled along either way are not rigid. Many different particularities are given according to the different mental make-ups of living beings. Let us give some examples of these two ways of teaching in the Upaniṣads:

SPACE AS THE SUPREME BRAHMAN, CHāNDOGYA UPANIṣAD I. 8 & 9

A discussion occurs between three learned Brahmans as to what is the Udgītha or the Sāman. Udgītha, which means literally the exalted song or the loud singing, is a poetic-musical term for the supreme principle, for the essence or the central or the most exalted portion of anything. Sāman, which means song, as in the Sāma Veda, the Veda of Song, also has philosophical connotations (inner formless connotations as do all apparently only concrete or liturgical Vedic terms) as that which is best, most laudable or worth singing of, again ultimately meaning the supreme principle. The question is what is the goal or origin, gati, of the Song, Sāman, that is what is the ultimate truth and resort of that which is most laudable. Yet behind such more of an inner meaning is the background of the Sāma Veda and what the highest truth of the mystic song is.

SECTION 8

4.

(The first Brahman, Cikitāna, is now questioned by the second, Silika, while the third Pravāhana listens) “What is the goal of the mystic song (sāman)? ‘Sound (svara)’, he said. What is the goal of sound? ‘Breath (prāna)’, he said. What is the goal of breath? ‘Food (anna)’, he said. What is the goal of food? ‘Water (āpa)’, he said.”

5.

“What is the goal of water? ‘The world beyond (asau loka)’, he said. What is the goal of that world beyond? ‘One should not lead beyond the Sun-World (Svarga Loka)’, he said. ‘We have most firmly established the mystic song (sāman) in the Sun-World, for the mystic song is the singing of the World of the Sun.’”

6.

“Then Silika said to Cikitāna, ‘Truly your mystic song is without support (apratiṣṭham). If now someone would say that your head would fall off, indeed your head would fall off.’”

These are not just mere strange ancient liturgical or ritualistic speculations but an inquiry into Brahman in the language and action of the mystic song. The true goal and origin of the mystic song can only be the ultimate reality and that is what is being sought in these questionings. The first Brahman questioned traces the mystic song first to sound, svara, which means the tone or the resonance. The idea is that the essence of the song is its tone or essential sound. That in turn is traced to breath, prāna, life or vitality, for it is the power of breath that makes for song and the vitality in the breath that gives tone, svara, to the song. Breath in turn is traced to food, anna, which is the shared substance of the mystic communion which is life. It is the nourishment gained through that sharing of substance which gives vitality to the mystic song. Food in turn is traced to water, āpas, which is the pure liquid of this shared joy and understanding, the common basis of the song of life in the waters of the Spirit. It is the liquidity, the flowingness, the purity, that imparts the basic clarity and free creative motion of song. This water is finally traced to the world beyond, asau loka, which is the Sun-World, Svarga loka. This Sun-World can stand for either the supreme or the highest heaven of the ignorance, depending upon whether it is seen by the inner or the outer vision. It is often the causal realm that is the link term between the Absolute and the phenomenal worlds and is sometimes placed on either side. The Brāhman Cikitāna has some understanding of this realm but he does not understand its truth in the Self.

Apart from any cosmological sense here I think his is the rather typical error of those who regard the Divine as what is high and who are thereby limited by the conception of its grandeur. He identifies that Being of Song with the highest world, and it is true that it has its connection there, but he is ignorant of it as his own Self or as inclusive of the low as well as the high. He is clinging to the idea of its greatness instead of seeing the truth of it. The world beyond may also mean the state of deep sleep, as it frequently does in the Upaniṣads. As such he may have some contact with the truth of the Self in deep sleep but has yet to extend this knowledge to all states of the mind.

7.

“Cikitāna said to Silika, ‘Indeed I wish to know this support of the mystic song from you, revered sir.’ ‘Know it,’ said he. He asked him, ‘What is the goal of the world beyond?’ He replied, ‘One should not lead beyond this support world. We have most firmly established the mystic song in this support world (pratiṣṭhām lokam), for the mystic song is the singing of support.’”

In contrast to the world beyond, asau loka, is this world, ayam loka, the physical world and the waking state of consciousness. Whatever is gained by way of the beyond to be of real significance must become established in this world, on the earth, in our practical life and daily consciousness. We may know the secrets of the beyond but we must return with them into the here and now and realize them in this life and in the waking consciousness. For the physical world is the basis, pratiṣṭhām, the support of all the worlds, this being the world of work whereby inner growth is accomplished. Everything must be brought back here for the final crystallization. This is the implication of Silika's criticism of the view of Cikitana.

8.

“Then Pravāhana (the third Brahman) said to him (Silika), ‘Truly your mystic song has an end (antavat). If now someone would say that your head would fall off, indeed your head would fall off.’ He (Silika) said (to him Pravāhana), ‘Indeed I wish to know this (the endless, ananta) from you, revered sir.’ ‘Know it,’ said he (Pravāhana”).

The first Brahman praised the mystic song as what is high, heaven. The second brought it back to what is low, the earth, to balance off that extreme view. The third criticizes that view as also limited, antavat, having an end, still being the fixation on a particular view, still the attachment of the mind to a particular idea and not yet the all-encompassing, all-surpassing supreme truth.

SECTION 9

1.

“‘What is the goal of this world?’ He (Pravāhana) replied, ‘Space (Ākāśa), for all beings arise forth from Space and go back home into Space. For Space is greater than these. Space is the final goal (parāyana).’”

Here Brahman is taught by the name and analogy of space, akasa. It is not the material element that is meant but space-like Brahman. The Brahma Sūtras, the standard Vedāntic treatise on the meaning of the Upaniṣads, says here by space is really meant Brahman (B.S.I.i. 22), for space is here designated by the mark of Brahman, that being the source and goal of all. The Brahma Sūtra says that the Upaniṣads teach the One Self under many names and approaches and do not really contradict each other with their different terms, but form an integral harmony (samanvaya) of diverse explications of it. That can only be so if such passages as this are intended not in a direct philosophical way but as indirect symbolic or analogical revelation. Here spare is used as the supreme principle by the way of concentration to reveal the Self. Yet this is just the basic truth of this statement, which is very subtle and can be seen in a number of ways.

In terms of the worlds this passage sets forth three worlds. We have the world beyond, heaven or the sun-world, svarga. Then we have this world, the earth or the support world, pratiṣṭhām. These are the states of deep sleep and waking. Finally we have as the third world space, ākāśa, which stands for the supracosmic Brahman, the mysterious third beyond all dualities, the everwaking, ever-sleeping state of the Self. We have the physical world of material being, the link causal world of origination and the world of spiritual being, space.

Space here then stands for that which is beyond all duality, represented by this world and the world beyond, that which is beyond all thoughts, all dualistic views. The first Brahman takes the that side of duality as being truth. The second opposes to it the this side. The third Brahman and the real sage says it is neither this nor that but space, that is openness rather than fixidity of mind, the formless and unformulatable. Note that space is used not in the sense of the material element but in a more psychological or mental sense. Formless truths need not be given purely through abstract ideas. They can be given through symbols. Space indicates an all-pervasive formless presence. Air indicates formless power. Thus both are frequently used in the sense of the Spirit, not the mere material element. Again there is no question of material elements here or in similar passages. It is not an attempt to arrive at a final element to explain the world. The concern here is not speculative. It is a practical demonstration of the highest truth in a language wherein symbols and elements are used as vehicles to communicate ideas and intuitions, where they are taken in the inner mystical sense. Space in a symbolic language is just as accurate a designation for Brahman as such terms as formless, all-pervasive and immutable in a more rational language. The confusion arises when we take the term space according to the background and intentionality of our materialistic language rather than the Vedic spiritual language. This passage, in its real sense, serves not to give the speculative intellect the idea of space as the explanation of the world but to indicate the supreme Brahman beyond all the views of the mind. We should not interpret the Upaniṣads in terms of Greek rationalism and materialism or what we have come to regard as such (the Greek speculations on these elemental matters may also be much less speculative and more intuitive and analogical also).

2.

“This is the supreme most-excellent exalted song (parovarīyān udgītha). This is the endless (ananta). He becomes supreme and most excellent and wins supreme and most excellent worlds who knowing this thus meditates upon the exalted song.”

Space itself is the supreme song of the Divine Word. It is the ultimate resort and basis of the mystic song, the Sāma Veda. Knowing that Self which is the song of space we become it. We win through it all the worlds including the supreme supracosmic realm of the transcendent infinite. This is the ultimate truth and goal of the Sāma Veda as revealed in its Upaniṣad, the Chāndogya, the secret teaching of the mystic singers. From the standpoint of medieval philosophy it would be confusing to designate the Self as song or to approach it through singing. Yet is not all inspired thinking a kind of singing? That indeed is the Sāma Veda, the wisdom song. For the intelligence beyond the mind is a matter of inspiration and intuition beyond the limitations of rationality. It can therefore be well revealed by the ancient religious language of worship, prayer and song, not in the outer sense as pious ritualism but in the inner sense as inspired knowledge. That is why all the Vedic religious terms like song, sāma, hymn, uktha, or sacrifice, yajña etc. have what we would regard as philosophical connotations and which we would not notice in their usage at all.

3.

“Having stated this teaching to Sanḍilya, Saunaka said, ‘As long as those of your projeny shall know this Exalted Song, so long their life in this world will be supreme and most excellent.’”

4.

“‘Thus also shall it be in the world beyond. He who knows this thus and meditates, his life in this world becomes supreme and most excellent; thus also his state in the world beyond, indeed in the world beyond.’”

At the end we now return to the two rejected views that of this world, the physical, and of the world beyond, the causal. The Self as space is the essence of all the worlds, both encompassing and surpassing them. While it is not to be limited to any particular realm it is at the same time inclusive of them all as manifestations of itself. Knowing the Self, in the Vedic sense, we also gain freedom of action in all the worlds. Liberation in the Veda can also involve a continued cosmic existence from the causal world, as part of helping to fulfill the will of God towards creation. That is why the sage is said here to have a state in the world beyond also, but only as grounded in the realization of the Self of space, which is the true mystic song of the infinite word.

We have gone somewhat afield of the central point we wished to make; that space can mean Brahman or anything else as a symbol for the one reality in which all is to be merged through concentration. Yet we do not wish to reduce the very subtle and intricate teaching of the Upaniṣads in a simplistic way, only to set forth general guidelines to open us up to the vastness of the teaching, which always overflows any interpretational guidelines.

In contrast to this teaching which sets up a particular cosmic principle like space as Brahman we will now present one which shows the Self as the integral harmony of all cosmic principles with none of them as such allowed to stand for the Self as such. Though the use of terms differs in this next teaching, space for example being the body, samdeha, of the Universal Self, Vaiśvānara Ātman, the purpose is the same, to point out the one only, all-in-one, supreme Self.

Six sages come to visit the great king-seer, rajarṣi, Asvapati, in their investigation into the Self and Brahman. Aśvapati questions each of them as to what they consider to be the Self. Each gives a particular great cosmic principle (god) as the Self. The principles mentioned are Heaven, Divam, the Sun, Ādityam, Air, Vāyum-Space, Ākāśa, Water, Āpas and Earth, Prṭhivī. Asvapati replies to each that though their particular principle constitutes an organic portion of the Universal Self it is only a partial knowledge of this all-encompassing deity which cannot grant real immortality. This is because his particular knowledge, vidyā, consists of pointing out the Self as Universal, Vaiśvānara, along the way of comprehensive insight. Similarly the mistake of the other sages was in taking these principles not as symbols for the Self but literally as if the Self was just a particular cosmic principle among many. It is not merely a simplistic matter that the Self can only be revealed under the name and term Self and not through any other name or principle.

CHāNDOGYA UPANIṣAD V. 18. THE UNIVERSAL SELF, VAIśVāNARA ATMAN

1.

“To them he (Aśvapati) said, ‘Verily you partake of nourishment knowing this Universal Self as if it were many. He who, however, meditates upon the Universal Self as the indicative measure (prādeśamātra), as the full measure of all things (abhivimāna), partakes of nourishment in all worlds, in all beings, in all selves.’”

Each of these sages had mistaken the Universal Self for a particular cosmic principle, mistaking the parts for the whole, not realizing that all things only really serve to indicate the Self and that the Self is the real full measure of all things. ‘Prādeśamātra’, indicative measure, is a very key term for understanding the language of the Upaniṣads. Its central term, ādeśa, has three meanings. It means not only indication, in the sense that the Self as the life of life, the mind of mind, etc. is the true and essential import of all things, it also means ‘instruction’ in the sense that all the teaching principles of the Upaniṣads are only given to instruct us as to the nature of the Self which is equal to all. Finally it means ‘substitute’ in the sense that all these principles are presented by way of substitution for the Self, which is the substitute or counterform for all things. The second term used here to show the essence of the Self has a similar complex meaning. Abhivimāna means literally abhi, over, vi, wide or diverse, māna, measure or standard, hence ‘the full measure of all things’. These terms bring us back to the Rig Veda, where the Self as Indra is the ultimate prototype or counter part, pratimāna, for all things which itself has no counterpart or equal, is aprati, asama. These are not logical philosophical principles for the Self but poetic-symbolic ones pointing out the Self as the ultimate symbol, the root analogy, the end correspondence which is the final result of the whole process of symbolic language and analogical thinking. It follows a way not of logical negation of all into the Supreme but of organic synthesis of all into the all-comprehensive One.

2.

“Of this Universal Self, the head indeed is the good radiance (Heaven), the eye is the universal form (the Sun), breath is that of varied courses (the Wind), the body is the full (Space), the bladder is wealth (Water), the feet are the Earth, the chest is the altar, the hair is the sacred grass, the heart is the householder's fire, the mind is the ancestral fire and the mouth is the fire of the gods.”

This is the primal symbolical thinking of pure intuition. It represents the human mind merging into the Supreme Self via the interrelated principles of the cosmic mind and being. It is the cosmic thinking of direct realization which stands far above any purely intellectual philosophical thinking.

The term Universal, Vaiśvānara, is used in the Rig Veda as a name for Fire, Agni. It means the universal god, viśva-nara, nara meaning man or god and essentially synonymous with puruṣa, or it means the cosmic man. This verse takes us back to the Vedic Fire which is the earthly indication or symbol of the all-consuming, unknown and nameless god, the Self.

Thus the Upaniṣads will sometimes present a single cosmic principle or power, like space, by way of exaltation to mean Brahman. Other times they will give these particular principles their respective place within the cosmic order, as specific partial principles. This is true not only of ultimate principles like space but also of intermediate principles like the air, vayu, and atmosphere, antariksa. When these principles are used to mean Brahman they are used in a poetic way. When they are used to indicate their respective powers only they are used in a philosophical sense. Space as Brahman is a poetic statement, a metaphor or analogy. Space as mere material space is a literal and philosophical statement. The terms in the Upaniṣads do not always mean the same thing, not even, sometimes, in the same section of an Upaniṣad. The meaning depends upon the context and intentionality. The Upaniṣads present many things as Brahman or as the Ultimate Reality to deal with the subject comprehensively so that many different mentalities can find their appropriate line of approach. The Vedas do not have a language of fixed meaning. The meanings of Vedic statements are open and multiple. Words only had a general meaning and were never meant to be taken at face value according to their most obvious and superficial meaning only; for that kind of language destroys creative understanding. If our words have fixed, narrow and literal meanings we cease to think. We take the meaning of statements at face value. If words have fixed and literal meanings then thinking and understanding means only learning the fixed meaning of words. Such a language of fixed meanings, instead of being a tool to open us up to the creative being of the world, becomes our prison. A language of literal meanings becomes wholly dead and artificial. It produces nothing beyond information and journalism. The triumph of this kind of language is the heavy materialism which stifles not only spirituality but even art, as the current state of human culture amply indicates. For ambiguity is the essence of meaning. A true statement is one that can be seen from many sides and never be exhausted. What can be seen only one way is not truth but only information, mathematics but not life. Thus to apply the rules of our fixed and literal language to the Vedas is entirely misleading. Vedic statements were designed not to give us various conclusions about the world but to open us up to the creative truth. It is a way of understanding rather than a particular formula that is being taught. Hence the elements of the formulas, wherein the unity and ultimacy of the Self or Brahman is established, are freely and creatively shifted. The meaning is not contained in the particular terms, which must eventually be anything and everything, but in the way in which they are used. The sages delighted in new meanings, in statements with many levels of understanding, in subtle plays on the sounds of words. They tried to make each statement overflow with meaning, that we might fill up the meaning in our own lives. This very rich and overflowing language is quite different than our impoverished discourse where only a single dimension of meaning is allowed. Our language, with its fixidity of terms, may give the illusion of understanding but it really stifles all creative awareness, which is the real goal of the Upaniṣads or any spiritual teaching. The spiritual is in the spirit of the teaching. Literalism of any kind is materialism, even in spiritual teachings. We conclude here with a passage which clearly demonstrates the creative and fluidic nature of Upaniṣadic statements.

THE AIR AND ATMOSPHERE AS THE SUPREME BRAHMAN, BRAHADāRANYAKA UPANIṣAD, II.3.

1.

“Two indeed, are the natures of Brahman, formed and formless, mortal and immortal, static and dynamic, the actual and the true.”

2.

“Whatever is different from the air and the atmosphere, that is this formed Brahman. This is mortal. This is static. This is the actual. The essence of this formed Brahman, this mortal, static, actual is he who burns (the sun) for he is the essence of the actual.”

3.

“Now the formless Brahman is the air and the atmosphere. This is immortal. This is dynamic. This is the true. The essence of this formless Brahman, this immortal, dynamic, true is the person who is in this solar disc, for he is the essence of the true. Thus with reference to the gods.”

Here we have Brahman, the Self, revealed symbolically through the air, vāyu, and the atmosphere, antarikṣa. Obviously, from the rest of the Vedas and Upaniṣads, the sages knew that space was subtler than the air and heaven the atmosphere. Air is used here as Brahman not in the literal or philosophical sense but for its metaphoric and analogical value. It is not the material element of air that is being mistaken for Brahman but air as a poetic principle to reveal Brahman. Here air, vāyu, means Spirit, which is often compared to the air or breath and is derived etymologically from such a meaning. Air is often preferred over space as the element representing the Self for it represents not only formlessness but power, the dynamic presence of the Spirit. It represents the Self as the formless principle of animation, the invisible power of life and creation. Sometimes these two principles of space and air are combined as a grand metaphor for the Self, as the first Brāhmana of the fifth chapter of this same Brhadāranyaka which speaks of the primordial airy ether, purānam vāyuram kham, as Brahman. Similarly the term atmosphere, antarikṣa, is used metaphorically much in the same sense that we so use it. When we speak of the atmosphere of a place we mean its spirit, its mood, its background, its total effect upon us. We do not just mean specifically its density of oxygen or some other actual atmospheric quality. Brahman is the universal atmosphere in this metaphoric sense. In all things is the air, the atmosphere, the aura and the fragrance of the Self. This is not rational philosophy but the primeval poetry of life. Actually many Vedic usages of words survive on this common metaphoric level as when we speak of the atmosphere of a thing or the beauty of the day.

The atmosphere as the Spirit or the supreme world is a common ancient teaching given frequently in the Vedas. The atmosphere is the supreme world not as the highest world but as the most central and most active. This indicates not only the significance of the intermediate world but its analogical value for revealing the supracosmic reality. Heaven and Earth represent the static poles of world-being. The atmosphere represents the living power of the transcendent Spirit which manifests between them. The atmosphere is the activity, the presence of the Spirit in the world. As such all the gods dwell in and act through the atmosphere. As such all the worlds are atmospheric. All is the atmosphere whose two extremeties are Heaven and Earth. Heaven and Earth are no more than the summit and the base of the all-comprehensive atmosphere. So too, the manifestation and realization of the Spirit involves seperating Heaven and Earth to create space for the atmosphere which is the life and Spirit of all. It is the work of the gods to seperate Heaven and Earth, to build up the atmosphere, to make wide the midworld, that all may live and flourish. The spiritual work, further, is to clear the demons, the powers of death, destruction and negation out of the atmosphere, whose full unfoldment they obstruct. Thus there are many metaphoric and symbolic reasons why the atmosphere is greater than heaven, why air is greater than space, which transcend the normal philosophical, rational and scientific world order. That is one reason why the main god of the ancients was the god of the atmosphere, as in the Indian Indra, the Greek Zeus or the Sumerian Enlil, which all are based upon this common atmospheric symbolism. The atmosphere is Brahman as the all-comprehensive world, as the all-comprehensive world-Spirit.

There are two elements of the cosmic being, Brahman. There is the objective material element and the subjective spiritual element. The material element is the symbol and the spiritual element the meaning of the symbol. When the Upaniṣad speaks of the sun as Brahman it means the being, the person, the spirit, puruṣa, in the sun, not the sun in the literal sense. Similarly when this same section identifies Brahman with the air and the atmosphere it is implied that the Spirit in the atmosphere and not just the literal atmospheric world is meant. It is not necessary to make such a distinction in the earlier Veda for in it all things are meant in terms of the Spirit, the Puruṣa, that being the given, a priori, subject of discourse of all such hieratic languages which therefore does not have to be constantly distinguished as such. In short in the Veda the material element of being has not yet been seperated off from the spiritual element and is always presented only in terms of it. The ancients saw even the material in terms of the spiritual. Later times, the beginnings of which we see in the Upaniṣads, had to make a radical distinction between them to preserve the spiritual from a growing materialism. Today we see even the spiritual in terms of the material making religion into a commodity or ideology for trade or battle.

4.

“Now with reference to the Self. This indeed is the formed Brahman; that which is different from the breath and the space within the self. This is mortal. This is static. This is the actual. The essence of this formed Brahman, this mortal, static, actual is the eye, for the eye indeed is the essence of the actual.”

5.

“Now the formless Brahman is the breath and space within the self. This is immortal. This is dynamic. This is the true. The essence of this formless Brahman, this immortal, dynamic, true is the person who is in the right eye, for the person is indeed the essence of the true.”

Vedic analogies are always presented twofold, in reference to the gods or the cosmic powers, adhidaivatam, and in reference to the individual self, adhyātman, as in the Veda the microcosmic and the macrocosmic are one, the unity of which two principles is perhaps the central teaching of the Upaniṣads. Breath, prāna, here does not mean just the vital force. It is equated with the formless Brahman and the space within the self (antarātman ākāśa). As such it stands for the Spirit, the Self as the ultimate principle of life and will. The Self is this being or person, purusa, who is the essence of Life, prāna, and Vision, cakṣus, who is the all-pervasive formless spiritual air and atmosphere both within and without. He is not literally just the air or the atmospheric world, just the breath or the eye or the sun. These are all just various symbolic revelations of him to be taken by way of intimation.

6.

“The form of this person is like a great-colored covering, like the whiteness of the imperishable, like the guardianship of Indra, like the flame of the sacred fire, like a white lotus, like perpetual lightning. For him who knows it thus his splendor becomes like perpetual lightning. Now therefore is the teaching; he is not this, not that. There is nothing other higher than this (that whatever there is) he is not that. Now his designated name is the Truth of truth. Verily the life-spirits are truth and he is their Truth.

This is the first verse wherein the neti-neti doctrine occurs clearly, the teaching that the Supreme is the negation of everything. It should be noticed that this teaching of negation does not arise originally rationally out of a philosophical background but as the ultimate conclusion of a very subtle and plastic symbolic-poetic exposition of truth. This is the original truth and background of the great Upaniṣadic negation. Negation, in a sense, is the ultimate symbol for all symbols are indirect intimations and as such negate the direct and apparent being of things. To make space, for example, a symbol of the Self is also to negate the materiality and the seperate reality of space as a thing-in-itself. Thus we see that the Upaniṣads do not have a dichotomy of symbolic form and formless reality. On the contrary, form as symbol reveals the formless. To apprehend form as symbol is to see the formless basis of form. Where all things are symbols there are no ‘things’, for the thingness of a thing is in its independent reality, with no symbols. To reduce all things to symbols, metaphors, images, analogies and correspondences is to negate them into the transcendent. A symbol is not what it is but what it reveals, which meaning itself is not limited by the formal being of the symbol. A painting, for example, reveals a feeling that goes far beyond the limitations of the canvas or the particular formal arrangement of the painting.

Normally commentators go to great length to reveal the full ramifications of this neti-neti teaching and say little about the rest of this whole section and its symbols and statements, treating them like preliminary and secondary metaphors. We shall therefore attempt to give them their due significance also. The Upaniṣad can reveal the formless truth through the symbol of air as well as it can through the idea of formlessness. We may prefer the latter designation for its greater philosophical sophistication but the former has its poetic sophistication which is equal or perhaps even greater than that. In any case, we see here the Upaniṣads giving both versions together.

‘A great-colored covering, māhārajanam vāsah’ is often taken in the outward sense as ‘a saffron-colored robe’, to compare the Self to which is not a particular profound statement. The meaning goes deeper. ‘Rajanam’, which means coloring, is related to the term rajas, which also means atmosphere. Māhārajanam is thus the great coloring or great atmosphere, the all-pervasive presence of the Self. The Self is the aura, the color, the atmosphere of all things. ‘Vāsah’, which means robe, cloth or covering, means also what encompasses and pervades. ‘The whiteness of the imperishable’ means literally ‘what is white from sheep, i.e. wool’. However sheep, avi or avikam, means also imperishable, avyaya, just as it is well known that goat, aja, means also unborn. Hence goat-sheep, ajāvi, means also unborn-imperishable. It must be remembered again that ancient ideas are both abstract and concrete, one kind of meaning not excluding the other. Sheep and wool as the imperishable are a major part of the symbolism of Soma, the Ānanda or Bliss aspect of the Self, gone into great detail in the ninth manḍala of the Rig Veda. ‘The guardianship of Indra, Indragopa’, is said to be the Indragopa insect, which to agree with this metaphor of light must be like a firefly. That again is only the outer image. The guardianship of Indra is the guardianship of the supreme principle, sat, the ultimate truth. ‘The flame of the sacred fire, Agnyarci’ is the piercing glow of the fire of consciousness. The white lotus is the lotus of the Self which includes all the worlds. ‘Perpetual lightning, sakrd-vidyut’ is the perpetual illumination as to the Self. Sakrd also means once only. The lightning of the Self is the lightning of the one only and only one. For one who knows this truth his splendor, śrī, another name for Lakṣmi, the goddess of prosperity (i. e. Prakrti, matter) becomes lightning, vidyut, another name for the goddess, Sakti, the power of Consciousness. The entire world is transmuted for him, by his power of Self-vision, from Srī-Lakṣmi, material substance, to Vidyut-Sakti, lightning spiritual power. Sakti is the power of Consciousness which is pure negation, the transcendent non-being correlative to Siva, transcendent being. It is the action of the Goddess to reveal the God, pure negation negates itself into absolute affirmation, Brahman. We see therefore that the other statements in this section are not just incidental metaphors but deep revelations of truth in their own right. However great this direct teaching of pure negation is in its own right we must not forget its symbolic Vedic background if we are to understand the ancient teachings in their own language.

This Upaniṣadic verse also looks back to an earlier Vedic teaching. The Rig Veda VI. 48.22. states: “Once and forever (sakrd) Heaven was born; once and forever the Earth was born. Once and forever the Dappled Mother (Prṣni) shed her milk. No other after that was born.” Here once and forever, perpetually, sakrd, is a designation for the Self, the Self being the one only reality, the being, the thatness of all things, in which and through which all things take birth. The Self as the one only is also the uniqueness of all things. The transcendent is the being of creation. Creation itself, though comprehending all multiplicity, is the one only movement of the one only Self. Prṣni, the Dappled Mother, is the famous spotted cow of the ancient Indian and Egyptian symbolisms. She is the Divine Multiplicity, the infinite uniqueness of the one only, that manifests itself as creation. Her spots are the individual souls who create the world. Another name for her in the Veda is Vidyut, Lightning. The once and forever reality is the perpetual lightning which is the real power, Sakti, behind creation, the eternal flashing forth of the ever-new in the here and now. When the veil of Isis (Prakrti) is removed she shows her real nature as lightning (Sakti). Thus the deer Dirghatamas also says (R.V.I. 164.29.), ‘She (the mystic cow or the Divine Mother) with her perceptions (cittibhir) has humbled the mortal. She has stripped off her garment, becoming lightning (vidyut).’ The Goddess Lightning therefore is equated with perception or consciousness, citti, and is thus Cit-Sakti, Consciousness-Force. All creation is the unique flashing forth of Cit-Sakti. Apart from this movement of the Self, this perpetual and eternal birth of the One Self, no other (anyo), the One Self being all, is born. The movement of Sakti is in the Self, not in otherness, the not-Self. This is the Vedic version of the doctrine of negation. This negation is not just a simple negation of the world but the revelation of the being of the world as negation, as non-being, not in the negative sense of ignorance, avidyā, but in the positive sense as the non-being, the voidness, śūnyātā, of Consciousness-Force. All things, in their being as symbols, by their very nature negate themselves into the transcendent. It is the very symbolic nature of things to reveal the transcendent. It is only through this negative being of things that they can serve to manifest the transcendent. All creation is the Goddess negating herself, offering herself to the God, revealing the God in creation through her receptivity to him. This very self-negation into the One (Pure Being, Sat) is creation and is the very being of Consciousness (the Goddess). Vedic negation does not negate the world but in revealing the negative (female) nature of the world as Consciousness-Force shows the transcendent, the Self as the very heart of the world. This is the Vedic world of pure creation, the world merged into the Absolute. The Vedic negation includes the world in its natural non-being as pure creation (Consciousness-Force) which is the very display of transcendence. Thus its language can reveal the Self through many symbols and in a very fluidic way, with each syllable pregnant with deep meanings and nothing dismissable as mere ornamentation.

Who is this Person whose being is pure negation? He is the truth of the life-spirits or vital-breaths, prānā. As such he is Life per se, the Spirit of Life, Prāna, which the Upaniṣads frequently identify with the Self. This Vedic Person who is the great god of negation, who is the truth, satya, which is life, prāna, whose consort is lightning, is none other than Indra, the foremost of the Vedic gods, as we are told in the Kauṣītaki Upaniṣad (III. 1-2). Hence this Upaniṣadic doctrine of the double negation is not a new teaching that the earlier Veda does not have. In fact it is the essence of the inner teaching of the foremost of the Vedic gods. Indra as the great god of the destruction of the demons of ignorance and sometimes even of the gods insofar as they represent powers outside the Self, is the negation of negation. His is the myth of the great negation. But this great negation which is Indra not only in the Vedas but also in the Upaniṣads is also that of the Spirit of Life itself. The being of this negation here is Prāna, Life, which by its nature of endless transformation ever seeks to surpass and transcend itself. It is the negation of ever-new Life and Creation, as much as that of any eternal transcendence of the Uncreate. Yet these two are not seperate, each implies and contains the other. Both are Indra. Both are the Self, which is not only the pure transcendency of the Absolute but also the pure transcendency of pure creation. For creation itself is a movement in the transcendent (in the Self) and a movement of transcendence; a movement ever-reaching beyond itself, whose ever-reaching beyond itself is its very Self. This is the creative Self of the Vedas that is ever being fashioned anew, according to the Divine Will.

Hence the great Vedic transcendence is as much at the heart of creation as it is beyond it. It is not just the end of the false life and creation it is also the beginning of true life and creation, as the guiding energy of Life-itself. This Vedic Self is not only the Unborn, Aja, but also the First-born, Prathamaja, the central and leading element in creation. This is the Divine Son that is one with the Divine Father (the Absolute). It is that Divine Son that is the Divine creative Sun that is very prominent in the earlier Vedas, being the very realm of the Seers themselves, as will be pointed out later.