Understanding Hinduism : Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna

Ganga Dashami,

Ganga Dashami, also referred as Ganga-Dashahara, celebrates the birthday of River Ganga – her descent on earth. The festival begins on the Amavasi day in the Hindu month of Jyestha and ends on the Dashami tithi. The festival lasts for 10 days. In 2008, Ganga Dashahara begins on June 3 and Ganga Dashami date is June 13.

Goddess Ganga Devi is an important deity in Hinduism and bathing in the divine river is the believed to cleanse the sins committed. The ritual of bathing in Ganga is also a way to achieve moksha – the escape from the endless cycles of birth and death.

The festival of great importance in those places through which the Ganges flows especially at Haridwar and Prayag (Allahabad). Ganga is worshipped in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Bengal during this period.

Apart from bathing in the river on the day, people meditate on the banks and recite the prayer dedicated to Ganga:

Devi suresvari bhagavati gange

Tribhuvana tarini tarala tarange

Sankara mauli viharini vimale

Mama matirastam tava pada kamala

Bhagirathi sukhadayini matas

Tava jala mahima nigame khyatah

Naham jane tava mahimanam

Pahi krpamayi mama ajnanam

The global warming phenomenon has started affecting Ganga and the glaciers that provide water to this perennial river is fast depleting. Environmentalists have been warning about the serious consequences that are in store, if we humans are not ready to change and live in harmony with nature.

Ganga Dashami is an ideal opportunity to contemplate and usher in change and save Mother Ganga.

The Upanishad teaches the reconciliation, by the perception of essential Unity, of the apparently incompatible opposites, God and the World, Renunciation and Enjoyment, Action and internal Freedom, the One and the Many, Being and its Becomings, the passive divine Impersonality and the active divine Personality, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, the Becoming and the Not-Becoming, life on earth and beyond and the supreme immortality. The world is a dwelling-place for the informing and governing Spirit.

Verse 1: World as habitation of the Lord

īşhāvāasyam idam sarvam yat kincha jagatyām jagat;

tena tyaktena bhunjīthā ma grdhaĥ kasya sviddhanam.

All this is for habitation by the Lord, whatsoever is individual universe of movement in the universal motion.

By that renounced thou shouldst enjoy, lust not after any man's possession.

The universe is a movement of the Spirit. It is a continuous unrolling of the Spirit in myriad forms which are so many currents of the Great Movement. Each form is a front, a shaping of the general stream in an individualized unit. Each one has the Whole behind, sustaining it, and thus constitutes a universe in itself. Wherefore this movement? It is meant, says the Upanishad, for the dwelling of the Spirit who has originated and cast out this extension. All is to provide a fitting abode for the Lord of All. This world is a manifestation of God for his enjoyment. He has created it out of himself in joy and takes up his dwelling in it for a yet fuller joy. And this enjoyment implies, necessarily, enjoyment by all by the many who constitute His manifestation. Yet, joy and happiness are not the normal feature of the world. In fact, the opposite seems to be the rule. Why? It is because the many, the individuals move and act in complete ignorance of their true nature, their identity with the One Spirit informing and basing them, and through It with all the rest. Each looks upon himself as distinct and different from the other and his outlook is governed by this sense of separativity, the ego which gives birth to Desire to affirm himself against others, snatch enjoyment for himself at the cost of others. This effort leads to friction, conflict and suffering. Man is lost in activity in this vain pursuit of happiness. True enjoyment comes naturally with the renunciation of this vitiating desire, the desire for separate self-affirmation and self-aggrandizement. This is followed by an inner recognition and realization of the truth of the identity of oneself with the soul within who is always the Lord and its unity with the Soul of All who is same in each.

Thus, we learn that the world is a movement of God; it has a purpose which is to provide a habitation for God for His enjoyment. The individual is a living term and front of this manifestation and should share in this enjoyment; but his ignorance of his true nature shuts him from this happiness and gives rise to the ego-sense of a separate self-living and its consequent struggle and strife. This principle of Desire should be, put behind if one is to participate in the Lord's enjoyment. The individual must become aware of his soul, the true source of enjoyment and identity himself with this Lord of his individualised universe.

But to realize this identity with the soul within does not mean that he should withdraw from the life without, the activity of the body and mind. On the contrary he must work.

Vāsyam is here rendered in the sense of 'to be inhabited', 'dwelt in'-root vas to dwell. Acharya Shankara explains it to mean 'to be clothed', 'to be enveloped'. “Look not at this unreal world but at the reality of the pure Brahman by which it shall be covered; our sense of the world must disappear into the perception of the enveloping Reality.” While this may suit an adwaitic standpoint, Sri Aurobindo points out, it goes counter to the general spirit of the Upanishad which at every step reconciles the apparent Opposites in manifestation.

Verse 2: Doing work

kurvanneveha karmāņi jijīvishet shatam samāĥ;

evam tvayi na anyatheto asti na karma lipyate nare.

Doing verily, works in this world one should wish to live a hundred years.

Thus it is in thee and not otherwise than this; action cleaves not to a man.

He must, indeed, eva, do works. [The stress of the word eva in kurvanneva gives the force, "doing works, indeed, and not refraining from them."]

No man can desist from activity; even what is called inactivity is a kind of action and has its own results. Even as the Lord has projected this world as the means of a certain fulfillment, the individual too has a self-fulfillment to achieve and he is to participate in this activity to that end. One should live the full span of life, says the text, doing one's part; the previous verse has laid down the right mode of action and life, viz., to renounce desire and participate in this Manifestation which is meant for the enjoyment of the one Lord of All, in All. Thus done, no action can bind the doer with the motivating desire, the executing energies or with the ensuing chain of consequences. That is the true law of living. For those who follow this Law there is joy and felicity.

But for those who in their ignorance and egoism choose to ignore the truth and persist in their own false and ego centred way of life the future is different.

Sri Aurobindo notes how unnatural is the interpretation by Acharya Shankara of the word karmāņi in two different ways in the same verse. In the first line karmāņi is taken to mean sacrifices and other religious acts which are expected to be performed by the ignorant for reaping fruits from good actions and averting the results of the evil; in the second line the word is taken as the opposite, evil deeds. The Acharya says that for those who do not aim at the realisation of ātman and are content with the normal human life, naramātrābhimāni, doing the rituals is the only way of escaping the taint of evil deeds.

Verse 3: Sunless worlds

asūryā nāma te lokā andhena tamasāvŗtāĥ;

tāmste pretyābhigachchhanti ye ke cha ātmahano janāĥ.

Sunless are those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom whereto all they in their passing hence resort who are slayers of their souls.

There are other worlds besides this material one in which we live. And when the physical body dies, the being of man goes to and through these other worlds of varying substances, of different kinds, obscure and illumined. The kind of world to which one is drawn depends upon the tendencies formed and the equipment wrought during life in body on the earth. They who have risen above the life of the senses, of preoccupation with bodily wants and pleasures, and have strived and achieved a progressive synthesis in themselves of higher knowledge, purity and luminous dynamism and peace - in a word, developed a soul-life - are naturally gravitated to like worlds of light and joy. But those who have refused to listen to the call of the soul and have forced it to slog in the quagmires of inertia and falsehood or hover round and round in the blind circle of desire and passion, pleasure and pain - these, says the Upanishad, have to pass to worlds which are sunless, [Of the two readings asooryā, sunless and asuryā, titanic, undivine, Sri Aurobindo chooses the former in the light of the last four verses of the text. The prayer to the sun in those verses "refers back in thought to the sunless worlds and their blind gloom, which are recalled in the ninth and twelfth verses. The sun and his rays are intimately connected in other Upanishads also with the worlds of Light and their natural opposite is the dark and sunless, not the Titanic worlds." In Rig Veda 5.32.6 Vritra, the enemy of the devās is referred to as thriving in "sunless darkness."] bereft of the light of the Sun of spiritual truth, worlds of Darkness.

If so, is movement, Eternal movement, the sole truth? Is it not rather that the Truth in the final sense lies in Stability, in Immutability? The Upanishad affirms both as truths of the Brahman, the Supreme Reality; both are poises, of IT; each is relative to the other.

Verses 4 and 5: Brahman, Oneness of God and the world

anejad ekam manaso javīyo nainad deva āpnuvan pūrvam arşhat;

tad dhāvato anyānatyeti tişhţhat tasminn apo mātarishvā dadhāti.

One un moving that is swifter than Mind, That the Gods reach not, for it progresses ever in front.

That, standing, passes beyond others as they run. In That the Master of Life establishes the Waters.

tat ejati tannaijati tad dūre tadvantike,

tadantarasya sarvasya tadu sarvasyāsya bāhyataĥ.

That moves and That moves not; That is far and the same is near;

That is within all this and That also is outside all this.

Brahman is beyond space, Time and Causality. Movement and quiescence, duration and eternity, action and inaction, are not terms in which It can be described or contained. In itself it is indescribable. But turned towards manifestation, it is poised in the two statuses, the stable and the motional; Space, Time, Causality are terms of its manifestation, its own self-extension. It contains all these as their continent and yet transcends them. Moveless, it contains and holds beyond all movement. The Gods, the Powers it puts forth to work out its self-expression cannot, naturally, surpass it; it is always vaster than its own emanations.

The Brahman extends itself variously, not singly in one form. Its consciousness expresses and forms itself in several gradations, organizes itself around several principles, each active in the forefront on its level. These extensions, Sri Aurobindo points out, are in the ancient system septuple, known by the vyahrtis Bhuh, Bhuvah, Suvah, Mahas, Jana, Tapas and Satya which in modern language are the principles, and planes based on them, of Matter, Life, Mind, Idea, Bliss, Consciousness and Force, and Existence. Thus does the text say that in His own extension as the Mother of things, - Earth, the physical matter, [see note on the meaning of apas below] He, the Brahman as the Life-Force wakes and spreads Himself, i.e. enlivening all that He enters into and sets aflow the Waters which, in the Vedic system, represent currents of conscious being. "The Waters, otherwise called the seven streams or the seven fostering Cows, are the Vedic symbol for the seven cosmic principles and their activities, three inferior, the physical, vital and mental, four superior, the divine Truth, the divine Bliss, and divine Will and Consciousness, and the divine Being. On this conception also is founded the ancient idea of the seven worlds in each of which the seven principles are separately active by their various harmonies.

Thus it is He that is the origin, the end and the container of the things; creating. He indwells the forms of his manifestation, enjoys variously His thousand abodes. He is the One, the same everywhere. And if each individual formation behaves and acts as if it is a separate entity, different from others, it is because it is clouded in its outer consciousness, it has temporarily lost touch with the unifying knowledge and consciousness at its back—that which sustains it as well as it does all the rest in a common extension. The moment one realises this truth effectively and gets aware of the one Self in all and as the All, gets the right perspective of the union of all in the One Self, the sense of separativity loses its validity and with it goes the need to affirm oneself at the cost of others, the sense of opposition from other forms.

Note on apas in the verse 4:

"Apas, as it is accentuated in the version of the White Yajurveda, can mean only ‘waters’. If this accentuation is disregarded, we may take it as the singular apas, work, action. Shankara however, renders it by the plural, works. The difficulty only arises because the true Vedic sense of the word had been forgotten and it came to be taken as referring to the fourth of the five elemental states of Matter, the liquid. Such a reference would be entirely irrelevant in the context."

Verses 6 and 7: Self realization

yastu sarvāņi bhūtāni ātmani evānupashyati,

sarvabhūteşhu chātmānam tato na vijugupsate.

But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught.

yasmin sarvāņi bhūtāni ātmaivabhūt vijānataĥ,

tatra ko mohaĥ kaĥ shoka ekatvam anupashyataĥ.

He in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings, for he has the perfect knowledge, how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere oneness?

For Such a one [who sees everywhere the self] there is no Conflict and Sorrow for "all grief is born of the shrinking of the ego from the contacts of existence, its sense of fear, weakness, dislike, etc., and this is born from the delusion of separate existence, the sense of being my separate ego exposed to all these contacts of so much that is not myself; Get rid of this, see oneness everywhere, be the One manifesting Himself in all creatures; ego will disappear; desire born of the sense of not being this, not having that, will disappear; the free inalienable delight of the One in His own existence will take the place of desire and its satisfactions and dissatisfactions." (Sri Aurobindo)

That is not all. The truth of Brahman in manifestation is not confined to the subjective projection as the Self of all things. It is not merely an impersonal Being in which the becoming takes place. Brahman is also He, the Person who originates, inhabits and governs the Universe.

Verse 8: The Lord

sa paryagāch chhukram akāyam avraņam asnāviram shuddham apāpaviddham,

kavir manīşhī paribhūĥ swayambhūĥ yāthātathyato arthān vyadadhāch chhashvatībhyaĥ samābhyaĥ.

It is He that has gone abroad—That which is bright, bodiless, without scar of imperfection, without sinews, pure, unpierced by evil.

The Seer, the Thinker, the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existence has ordered objects perfectly according to their nature from years sempiternal.

In his going abroad, i.e. in his self-extension there are, it should be noted, two aspects: one, I an Infinite Immutability and the other, Mutation, a working out of possibilities in Time, Space and Causality. The Upanishad speaks of the former—the Pure Immutable as the bright, self-luminous without a shadow, bodiless, unlimited by form and division, without scar of imperfection and sinews, flawless, unaffected by the play of clashing circumstances and not subject to the currents and cross currents of diminution and increase, Pure and unpierced by evil, i.e. not contaminated by Ignorance and its issue, the wrong, the crooked as opposed to what is normally right and straight. The same Absolute is spoken of in the other aspect successively, as the Kavi, the Seer, who before he proceeds to manifest sees in his luminous vision the Truth the Principles of things that are to manifest, then, as the Manishi, Thinker, who Conceives and thinks out the processes in the evolution of the possibilities, the Paribhu, He who eventuates becomes everywhere, in Space and Time as impelled by the Manishi. It is all, it must be noted, a one becoming of the Self-existent Purusha who moves into these, three poises, seeing, conceiving and fixing things in accord with the Truth which is being expressed, the eternal Truth which forms and. governs the nature of earth formation as its innate Law.

Thus the Movement has its truth as much as the Stability; multiplicity is as real as unity. Both are twin ends of the one pole of Reality in manifestation and should be comprehended as such. To ignore or deny one and accept and pursue only the other is to shut oneself from the full reality of things. To accept the truth of both in a large vision and seek to realize it in one's own life is the path of wisdom.

Verses 9, 10 and 11: Knowledge and Ignorance (avidya)

andham tamaĥ pravishanti ye avidyām upāsate,

tato bhūya iva te tamo ya u vidyāyān ratāĥ.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if into a greater darkness enter who devote themselves to the Knowledge alone.

anyadevāhur vidyayā anyadāhur avidyaya,

iti shushruma dhīrāņām ye nastadvimchachakşhire.

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Knowledge, other that which comes by the Ignorance; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

vidyām cha avidyām yastad vedobhayan saha,

avidyayā mŗthyum tīrtvā vidyayāmŗtamashnute.

He who knows That as both in one, the Knowledge and the Ignorance, by the Ignorance crosses beyond death and by the Knowledge enjoys Immortality.

Knowledge, vidyā Sri Aurobindo explains, is the consciousness, the effective awareness of the Unity of things the Oneness of all. Ignorance, avidyā is the consciousness of multiplicity. Those who are aware of only the multiplicity of forms and not their reconciling oneness and live in line with that understanding are closed to the light of true knowledge and sink into obscurity. But those who look only at the Unity of' things, the sheer oneness alone, denying the fact of the Many, withdraw themselves gradually from the scene of life-activity and merge into a state of non-being, a state of consciousness where everything is, as if, iva, a, blank of still greater darkness. [This sense of iva in verse 9 seems to be left out in the commentary of Shankara; there it is explained as eva, verily. The point is that this state attained by the pursuit of sheer unity alone is so void, that its emptiness resembles—though, be it noted, it is not the same—in its benumbing blankness, the darkness of Ignorance raised to a degree]

"Those who are devoted entirely to the principle of indiscriminate Unity and seek to put away from them the integrality of the Brahman, also put away from them knowledge and completeness and enter as if into a greater darkness. They enter into some special state and accept it for the whole, mistaking exclusion in consciousness for transcendence in consciousness. They ignore by choice of knowledge, as the others are ignorant by compulsion of error. Knowing all to transcend all is the right path of Vidya. Although a higher state than the other, this supreme Night is termed a greater darkness, because the lower is one of chaos from which reconstitution is always possible, the higher is a conception of Void or Asat, an attachment to non-existence of Self from which it is more difficult to return to fulfillment of Self".

But rightly pursued and realized, the results of Knowledge and Ignorance, says the Upanishad, are different. They are both related to each other. Multiplicity is supported and sustained by the underlying Unity and Unity is realized in its full potential, only vis-a-vis the multiplicity. The Many, the manifestation in diversity provides the field for the soul to live and row in the experience of a multitudinous becoming—in all its richness—and arrive progressively at a point where the impact of multiplicity begins to be informed and regulated by the consciousness of the governing Unity—Vidya. When one realizes this Knowledge, not only in the mind but in other parts of the being, specially related to life-activity, the knot of Ignorance, the sense of separativity is lost and the range of one's conscious-ness begins to transcend the barriers of the normal human existence—physical and other,—in a word, it partakes of immortality. This is the truth seen by the ancients, the dhiras who saw 'steadfast in the gaze of their thought' and revealed widely, comprehensively, to the seers of the Upanishad, vichachakşhire.

So also, birth and non-birth, acceptance of manifestation and withdrawal from manifestation, are truths which yield their full value only when taken together and lead to disastrous results if followed exclusively.

Verses 12, 13 and 14: Birth and Non Birth

andham tamaĥ pravishanti ye asambhuutim upāsate,

tato bhūya eva te tamo ya u sambhūtyām ratāĥ.

Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Non-Birth, they as if into a greater darkness who devote themselves to the Birth alone.

anya devāhuĥ sambhavād anyadāhur asambhavāt,

iti shushruma dhīrāņām ye nastad vimchachakşhire.

Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the birth, other that which comes by the Non-Birth; this is the lore we have received from the wise who revealed That to our understanding.

sambhūtim cha vināsham cha yastad vedobhayan saha,

vināshena mŗthyum tīrtvā sambhūtyā amŗtam ashnute.

He who knows That as both in one, the Birth and the dissolution of Birth, by the dissolution crosses beyond death and by the Birth enjoys Immortality.

Sambhūti and Asambhūti, Birth and Non-Birth, Sri Aurobindo clarifies, are not so much conditions of the body as states of the soul. One who chooses the state of Non-Birth rejects Birth and the line of manifestation and prepares himself to withdraw into a non-being, goes to a Nihil, a Void where all is blank. But he who is content to remain in the Birth alone, in the field of multiplicity and movement, without realizing the saving truth of freedom and transcendence from Birth, goes under in an abysm of darkness. Both Birth and Non-Birth are facts of Existence, and both are to be integrated in oneself.

The lynch-pin that holds together the continually changing movements and experiences in the normal life of the individual is the ego-sense. When that is dissolved the main prop of the life in ignorance is destroyed, vināsha.

It does not mean the, end of the body; the physical frame can very well continue after the death of the ego. The seeker breaks the bonds imposed by the self-limiting ego, the subjection to incapacity, limitation and desire which are the agents of death. And once he realizes this freedom, the seeker after the integral truth of manifestation accepts the Birth: the soul chooses to participate in the general manifestation in order to more fully enjoy its freedom. As Sri Aurobindo says, "it is enjoyed by a free and divine becoming in the universe and not outside the universe; for there it is always possessed, but here in the material it is to be worked out and enjoyed by the divine Inhabitant under circumstances that are in appearance the most opposite to its terms, in the of life the individual and in the multiple life of the universe."

Thus "Through Avidya. the Multiplicity, lies our path out of the transitional egoistic self-expression in which death and suffering predominate; through Vidya consenting with Avidya by the perfect sense of oneness even in that multiplicity, we enjoy integrally the immortality and the beatitude. By attaining to the Unborn beyond all becoming we are liberated from this lower birth and death; by accepting the Becoming freely as the Divine, we invade mortality with the immortal beatitude and become luminous centres of its conscious self-expression in humanity." [Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine, Vol. 1, ch. V].

This is the thought-movement in the Upanishad so far. The opening lines lay it down that this universe of movement is governed by the One inhabiting Spirit. The object of this manifestation is enjoyment and right living consisting in one's full participation in this enjoyment which is truly possible only when there is an inner renunciation of Desire. This done, activity ceases to bind the doer who is one in soul with the Lord of All. Those who do not follow this rightful course of life not only miss enjoyment here on earth, but go to worlds of darkness after death. The multiple Movement and the One Stability, are the same Brahman in different poises. Brahman the Reality is both and beyond both. Man realizes his unity with the rest of his fellow-beings only in proportion as he gains his identity with this cosmic and transcendental Self who is extended as and in all. In this unity are true harmony and happiness achieved displacing the elements of friction, grief, and illusion which are the results of a false sense of separativity born of ego. Life is a manifestation of God. The universe is really an unfoldment of the Spirit; it is the Supreme who has gone abroad and "has unrolled the universe in His three modes as All-Seer of the Truth of things, Thinker-out of their possibilities, Realiser of their actualities. He has determined all things sovereignly in their own nature, development and goal from years sempiternal." Vidya and Avidya, consciousness of the inherent unity and the consciousness of the phenomenal multiplicity, are twin powers of this Manifestation, each complementary—and not contradictory to the other and when a right use is made of both, they carry the individual on their wings towards a supreme fulfillment. So also are Birth and Non-Birth; they are not opposite and irreconcilable; they are two states of the being, each necessary to the completeness of the other and a realization of both the states is indispensable, if the object of Manifestation, Immortality, is to be achieved.

To fulfill this aim, to arrive at this Goal of Beatitude with all the opulence of Knowledge, Power and Joy that go with it, the Upanishad invokes the aid of the Gods, the famed guardians of Immortality. It proceeds to call Surya, the God of Illumination and Agni, the Lord of divine Will and Action.

Verses 15 and 16: The worlds - Surya

hiraņmayena pātreņa satyasyāpihitam mukham,

tat tvam pūşhann apāvŗņu satyadharmāya dŗşhţaye.

The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove, O Fosterer, for the law of the Truth, for sight.

pūşhannekarşhe yama sūrya prājāpatya vhyūha rashmīn samūha tejo,

yat te rūpam kalyāņatamam tat te pashyāmi yo asāvasau puruşhaĥ so aham asmi.

O Fosterer, O sole Seer, O Ordainer, O illumining Sun, O power of the Father of creatures, marshal thy rays, draw together thy light; the Lustre which is thy most blessed form of all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I 

 “In the inner sense of the Veda, Surya, the Sun-God, represents the divine Illumination of the Kavi which exceeds mind and forms the pure self-luminous Truth of things. His principal power is self-revelatory knowledge, termed in the Veda ‘Sight’. His realm is described as the Truth, the Law, the Vast. He is the Fosterer or Increaser, for he enlarges and opens man’s dark and limited being into a luminous and infinite consciousness. He is the sole Seer, Seer of Oneness and Knower of the Self, and leads him to the highest Sight. He is Yama, Controller or Ordainer, for he governs man’s action and manifested being by the direct Law of the Truth, satyadharma, and therefore by the right principle of our nature, yathatathyatah, a luminous power proceeding from the Father of all existence, he reveals in himself the divine Purusha of whom all beings are the manifestations. His rays are the thoughts that proceed luminously from the Truth, the Vast, but become deflected and distorted, broken up and disordered in the reflecting and dividing principle, Mind. They form there the golden lid which covers the face of the Truth. The Seer prays to Surya to cast them into right order and relation and then draw them together into the unity of relation and draw them together into the unity of revealed truth. The result of this inner process is the perception of the oneness of all beings in the divine Soul of this Universe”. “This is Surya’s goodliest form of all. For it is the supreme Light, the supreme Will, the supreme Delight of existence. This is the Lord, the Purusha, the self-conscient Being. When we have this vision, there is the integral self-knowledge, the Upanishad, so’ham. The Purusha there and there He am I .”

[Sri Aurobindo: Īşha Upanishad, Verse 15 and Section VII. This verse is one of the most typical in the Upanishadic literature bringing out the close relation that exists between the Upanishads and the Veda. As noted earlier, the sages of the Upanishads always quote from the more ancient scripture in support, justification or in clinching a line of thought they develop. The present verse is not only an instance to the point but much more valuable for the transparency with which it enables one to see how the thought development has taken place, how the Upanishads make explicit what was implicit in the Veda. The original Rik reads:

“There is a Truth covered by a Truth where they unyoke the horses of the Sun; the ten hundreds stood together, there was That One; I saw the greatest (best, most glorious) of the embodied gods.”

Compare this with the two verses of the Isha, under discussion. Drawing attention to this, Sir Aurobindo writes: “….mark how the seer of the Upanishad translates this thought or this mystic experience into his own later style, keeping the central symbol of the Sun but without any secrecy in the sense.. The golden lid (of the Upanishad) is meant to be the same as the inferior covering truth, ŗtam, spoken of in the Vedic verse; the ‘best of the bodies of the Gods’ is equivalent to the ‘fairest form of the Sun’, it is the supreme Light which is other and greater than all outer light; the great formula of the Upanishad, ‘He am I’ corresponds to that One, tad ekam, of the Rig Vedic verse; the 'standing together of the ten hundreds’ (the rays of the Sun, says Sayana, and that is evidently the meaning) is reproduced in the prayer to the Sun ‘to marshal and mass his rays’ so that the supreme from may be seen. The Sun in both the passages as constantly in the Veda and frequently in the Upanishad, is the Godhead of the supreme Truth and Knowledge and his rays are the light emanating from that supreme Truth and Knowledge. It is clear from this instance—and there are others—that the seer of the Upanishad had a truer sense of the meaning of the ancient Veda than the mediaeval ritualistic commentator with his gigantic learning, much truer than the modern and very different mind of the European scholars.” (Hymns to the Mystic Fire, Pp. XVIII-XIX)

In his Commentary on the Rig Veda, Sir Kapāli Sāstriar has gone into this interesting parallel in greater detail and has shown how close is the thought of the Upanishad to the spirit of the Vedic mantra. He also points out other instances, e.g., R.V. I.25.3 in the Samhita which contain the seeds of the perception that found its full unveiled expression in this verse of the Īşha Upanishad.

Verses 17 and 18: Action and the Divine Will (Agni)

vāyuranilam amŗtam athedam bhasmāntam sharīram,

om krato smara kŗtam smara krato smara kŗtam smara.

The Breath of things is an immortal Life, but of this body ashes are the end.

OM! O Will, remember, that which was done, remember! O Will, remember, that which was done, remember.

agne naya supathā rāye asmān vishvāni deva vayunāni vidvān,

yuyodhyasmaj juhurāņameno bhūyişhţhām te namauktim vidhema.

O God Agni, knowing all things that are manifested, lead us by the good path to the felicity; remove from us the devious attraction of sin. To thee completest speech of sub-mission we would dispose.

Through the grace and the intervention of Sūrya the mind of man grows into illumination. But Knowledge is not all. There has to be a corresponding upliftment and enlargement of the faculties of action. They too should be liberated from the limitations under which they labour. But the body, the physical frame of man is circumscribed on all sides and subject to the conditions of birth and death over which, he has little control. However, there is, says the seer, a power active in the body, the dynamism of life-energy which is the effective source and executor of all action and that in its true nature—which is revealed in the light of the Surya, the Lord of illumination,—is immortal. To manifest this Life-principle more and more and enable it to speed into its own untrammelled course of conquest and progress, the God of Life, Vāyu (Mātarishwan in an earlier verse) is remembered in prayer.

Normal human activity, however, proceeds under the drive and impulsion of Prakriti, Nature, which is shot through and through with Ignorance and revolves round the fulcrum of the ego. Man is a slave of this activity, he is rushed into it and becomes the creature instead of its master he is meant to be. It is only in proportion as he awakens to the liberating knowledge and releases himself from the hold of the lower ignorant nature that he is in a position to disengage himself from this thralldom and assume his rightful place. He begins to see that behind all action there is a secret Will leading things to a destined goal. Whatever may be the apparent motives and circumstances which govern activities there is at their base a secret Will and Power whose origin is deeper than the surface nature. This is the kratu, the Divine Will which is called Agni in the Veda—the Will which motivates and executes, with its dynamic power, in the universe as well as in the individual. "He is the divine force which manifests first in matter as heat and light and material energy and then, taking different forms in the other principles of man's consciousness, leads him by a progressive manifestation upwards to the Truth and Bliss." One has to realise this truth in one's own being; gain oneness with this secret spring of Movement if one hopes to acquire control and direction over all one's activities. The seer calls upon, this God Agni to come into his own, retain the thread of continuity in the actions put forth in this life-time and before, and relate them in the walking consciousness also in the right sequence, so that the control ensuing from a conscious coordination of doings may perfect itself. This the Agni can do, because being at the fount of manifestation on earth, he knows; he knows the truth of all that is born, jaatavedas, the Intention governing all activities; and knowing, he also sees the direct way in which things lead to their fulfillment.

Amidst the maze of ways and byways with which course of man's life is strewn, he knows which is the straight Path. Caught up in the web of ignorance and false-hood, impelled by the goad of conflicting desires and passions, man turns and deflects, loses sight of the good and the obvious direction. This is pull of sin which man suffers and which keeps him away from the natural, the straight course.

As Sri Aurobindo states: "Sin, in the conception of the Veda, from which this verse is taken bodily, is that which excites and hurries the faculties into deviation from the good path. There is a straight road or road of naturally increasing light and truth, rjuh pantha, rtasya pantha, leading over infinite levels and towards infinite vistas, vitāni, pŗşţhāni, by which the law of our nature should normally take us towards our fulfillment. Sin compels it instead to travel with stumblings amid uneven and limited tracts and along crooked windings duritāni, vŗjināni.

The seer invokes the aid of Agni to pass beyond the range of this sin and to that end offers “completest submission and the self-surrender of all the faculties of the lower egoistic human nature to the divine Will-force, Agni, so that, free from internal opposition, it may lead the soul of man through the truth towards a felicity full of the spiritual riches, rāye." ( Sir Aurobindo)

It hardly needs to be pointed out that these four crowning verses are not the last prayer of a dying man* as taken by some, but powerful invocations from the seeker who has by dint of lifelong effort arrived at a crucial stage when the intervention from the very Gods alone can enable him to surmount the last barriers, uplift him and open still higher vistas of Light and Power leading to the final goal of Immortality while living on earth for a full span of life, for a hundred years, Satam samāĥ.

*Who is preparing, to shed the body to dissolve into the material elements, and to merge the breath in the primary Prāņa, summoning up the accumulated puNya of rituals performed during his life, and with speech-which is all that is left to him at that moment as means of worship—pleads to God Agni to lead him by the bright path—the devayāna—to his destination in the Brahmaloka.