1.
All this is for habitation1 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.
k v___v_h kmA_EZ EjjFEvq_QCt_ smA__ ev_ _vEy nA_yT_to_E_t n km_
El_yt_ nr_ _
2.
Doing verily2 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.3
1 There are three possible senses
of v.asyam, “to be clothed”, “to be worn as
a garment” and “to be inhabited”. The first is the ordinarily accepted meaning.
Shankara explains it in this significance, that we must lose the sense of this
unreal objective universe in the sole perception of the pure Brahman. So
explained the first line becomes a contradiction of the whole thought of the
Upanishad which 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 image is
of the world either as a garment or as a dwelling-place for the informing and
governing Spirit. The latter significance agrees better with the thought of the
Upanishad.
2 Kurvanneva. The
stress of the word eva gives the force, “doing works
indeed, and not refraining from them”.
3 Shankara reads the line, “Thus in
thee—it is not otherwise than thus—action cleaves not, a man.” He interprets karm.an. i in the first line in the sense of Vedic sacrifices which
are permitted to the ignorant as a means of escaping from evil actions and
their results and attaining to heaven, but the second karma in exactly the opposite sense, “evil action”. The
verse, he tells us, represents a concession to the ignorant; the enlightened soul
abandons works and the world and goes to the forest. The whole expression and construction
in this rendering become forced and unnatural. The rendering I give seems to me
the simple and straightforward sense of the Upanishad.
3.
Sunless4 are
those worlds and enveloped in blind gloom whereto all they in their passing
hence resortwho are slayers of their souls.
4.
One unmoving 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 Life5 establishes the Waters.6
4 We have two readings, asu. rya, sunless, and asurya, Titanic or undivine. The third verse is, in the
thought structure of the Upanishad, the starting-point for the final movement
in the last four verses. Its suggestions are there taken up and worked out. The
prayer to the Sun 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.
5 M. atari´svan seems
to mean “he who extends himself in the Mother or the container” whether that be
the containing mother element, Ether, or the material energy called Earth in
the Veda and spoken of there as the Mother. It is a Vedic epithet of the God Vayu,
who, representing the divine principle in the Life-energy, Prana, extends
himself in Matter and vivifies its forms. Here, it signifies the divine
Life-power that presides in all forms of cosmic activity.
6 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 to the context. But 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, the 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. This is, obviously, the right significance
of the word in the Upanishad.
5.
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.
6.
But he who sees everywhere the Self in all existences and all existences in the
Self, shrinks not thereafter from aught.
7. He
in whom it is the Self-Being that has become all existences that are Becomings,7 for he has the perfect knowledge,
how shall he be deluded, whence shall he have grief who sees everywhere
oneness?
8. 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,8 the One who becomes everywhere, the Self-existent has ordered
objects
perfectly
according to their nature from years sempiternal.
7 The words sarva.n. i bhu.
ta.ni, literally, “all things that
have become”, are opposed to Atman, self-existent and immutable being. The
phrase means ordinarily “all creatures”, but its literal sense is evidently
insisted on in the expression bhu. ta.ni abhu. t “became the Becomings”. The idea is the acquisition in
man of the supreme consciousness by which the one Self in him extends itself to
embrace all creatures and realises the eternal act by which that One manifests
itself in the multiple forms of the universal motion.
8 There is a clear distinction in
Vedic thought between kavi, the seer, and man.ıs..ı, the thinker. The former indicates the divine
supra-intellectual Knowledge which by direct vision and illumination sees the
reality, the principles and the forms of things in their true relations, the
latter the labouring mentality which works from the divided consciousness through
the possibilities of things downward to the actual manifestation in form and upward
to their reality in the self-existent Brahman.
9.
Into a blind darkness they enter who follow after the Ignorance, they as if
into a greater darkness who devote
themselves
to the Knowledge alone.
10. Other,
verily,9 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.
11.
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.
12.
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.
13.
Other, verily, it is said, is that which comes by the Birth,
9 Anyadeva—eva here
gives to anyad the force, “Quite other than the
result described in the preceding verse is that to which lead the Knowledge and
the Ignorance.”We have the explanation of anyad in the verse that follows. The ordinary rendering,
“Knowledge has one result, Ignorance another”, would be an obvious commonplace
announced with an exaggerated pompousness, adding nothing to the thought and
without any place in the sequence of the ideas.
other
that which comes by the Non-Birth; this is the lore we have received from the
wise who revealed That to our
understanding.
14.
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.
15.
The face of Truth is covered with a brilliant golden lid; that do thou remove,
O Fosterer,10 for
the law of the Truth, for sight.
16. 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
10 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, y.ath.atathyatah. . A luminous power proceeding from the Father of all
existence, he reveals in himself the divine Purusha of whom all beings are the anifestations. 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 revealed truth. The result of this inner process is
the perception of the oneness of all beings in the divine Soul of the Universe.
of
all, that in Thee I behold. The Purusha there and there, He am I.
17.
The Breath of things11 is an
immortal Life, but of this body ashes are the end. OM! OWill,12 remember, that which was done
remember! O Will, remember, that which was done remember.
18. 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.13 To thee completest speech of
submission we would dispose.14
11 Vayu, called elsewhere
Matarishwan, the Life-Energy in the universe. In the light of Surya he reveals
himself as an immortal principle of existence of which birth and death and life
in the body are only particular and external processes.
12 The Vedic term kratu means sometimes the action itself, sometimes the
effective power behind action represented in mental consciousness by the will.
Agni is this power. He is 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 the Bliss.
13 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, r. juh. panth.ah. , r. tasya panth.ah. , leading over infinite levels and towards infinite vistas, v.ıt . ani pr. s. t.
h. ani, by which the law of our nature
should normally take us towards our fulfilment. Sin compels it instead to
travel with stumblings amid uneven and limited tracts and along crooked
windings (durit . ani, vr.jin . ani).
14 The word vidhema is used of the ordering of the sacrifice, the disposal
of the offeringsto the God and, generally, of the sacrifice or worship itself.
The Vedic namas, internal and external
obeisance, is the symbol of submission to the divine Being in ourselves and in
the world. Here the offering is that of 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, r .aye. That state of beatitude is intended, self-content in
the principle of pure Love and Joy, which the Vedic initiates regarded as the
source of the divine existence in the universe and the foundation of the divine
life in the human being. It is the deformation of this principle by egoism
which appears as desire and the lust of possession in the lower worlds.
