The Upanishads (Easwaran's Classics of Indian Spirituality Book 2)

by Eknath Easwaran

Around 2000 B.C., scholars believe, groups of Indo-European-speaking peoples calling themselves arya, or noble, began to enter the Indian subcontinent through the Hindu Kush. There, in the Indus river valley, they found a civilization already a thousand years old, thriving and advanced in technology and trade. From the fusion of these two cultures, the Aryan and the Indus Valley, Indian civilization was born.

This fervent desire to know is the motivation behind all science, so we should not be surprised to find in Vedic India the beginnings of a potent scientific tradition. By the Christian era it would be in full flower: Indian mathematicians would have developed modern numerals, the decimal place system, zero, and basic algebra and trigonometry; surgeons would be performing operations as sophisticated as cataract surgery and caesarian section. But the roots of this scientific spirit are in the Vedas.

From this conviction follows a highly sophisticated notion: a law of nature must apply uniformly and universally. In renaissance Europe, this realization led to the birth of classical physics. In ancient India it had equally profound consequences. While the rest of Vedic India was studying the natural world, more or less in line with other scientifically precocious civilizations such as Greece and China, the forest civilization of the Upanishads took a turn unparalleled in the history of science. It focused on the medium of knowing: the mind.

The sages of the Upanishads show a unique preoccupation with states of consciousness. They observed dreams and the state of dreamless sleep and asked what is “known” in each, and what faculty could be said to be the knower. What exactly is the difference between a dream and waking experience? What happens to the sense of “I” in dreamless sleep? And they sought invariants: in the constantly changing flow of human experience, is there anything that remains the same? In the constantly changing flow of thought, is there an observer who remains the same? Is there any thread of continuity, some level of reality higher than waking, in which these states of mind cohere?

They became absorbed in the discovery that as concentration deepens, the mind actually passes through the states of consciousness being inquired about. And in concentrating on consciousness itself – “Who is the knower?” – they found they could separate strata of the mind and observe its workings as objectively as a botanist observes a flower.

The word meditation is used in so many different ways that I want to be clear before going further. Meditation here is not reflection or any other kind of discursive thinking. It is pure concentration: training the mind to dwell on an interior focus without wandering, until it becomes absorbed in the object of its contemplation. But absorption does not mean unconsciousness. The outside world may be forgotten, but meditation is a state of intense inner wakefulness.

Similarly, although meditation is not discursive thinking, it is not the same as intuition or imagination. We read about the concentration of great artists, writers, and poets who, by focusing on the impressions the world presents, or on a block of formless stone, seize what fits a unifying vision in their mind and fashion some way to share it. Brahmavidya has affinities with this way of knowing also, which is not so different from the intuition of a great scientist. But brahmavidya is not concerned with the insights that come from concentrating on a particular part of life; it is concerned with how concentration yields insight at all.

Dream and waking are made of the same stuff, and as far as the nervous system is concerned, both kinds of experience are real.

The sages found a clue: in dreamless sleep, the observing self detaches itself not only from the body but from the mind. “As a tethered bird grows tired of flying about in vain to find a place of rest and settles down at last on its own perch, so the mind,” like the body, “settles down to rest” in dreamless sleep – an observation in harmony with current research, which suggests that in this state the autonomic nervous system is repaired.

This still world is always present in the depths of the mind. It is the deepest, most universal layer of the unconscious. Wake up in this state, the Upanishads say, and you will be who you truly are, free from the conditioning of body and mind in a world unbounded by the limitations of time, space, and causality. Wake up in the very depths of the unconscious, when thought itself has ceased? The language makes no more sense than a map of some other dimension.

Human beings cannot live without challenge. We cannot live without meaning. Everything ever achieved we owe to this inexplicable urge to reach beyond our grasp, do the impossible, know the unknown. The Upanishads would say this urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for the ultimate adventure: to discover for certain who we are, what the universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama of life and death we play out against the backdrop of eternity.

In the end, all achievement is powered by desire. Each of us has millions of desires, from big to trivial, packed with a certain measure of will to get that desire fulfilled. Imagine how much power is latent in the human personality! With just a fraction of that potential, young Alexander conquered continents, Rutan and Yaeger flew Voyager around the world, Einstein penetrated the heart of the universe. If a person could fuse all human desires, direct them like a laser, what would be beyond reach?

Sex, of course, is the most powerful desire most people have, and therefore the richest source of personal energy. Brahmacharya, self-control in thought and action, was a prerequisite in these forest academies. But this was not suppression or repression. Sexual desire, like everything else in the Upanishads, is only partly physical. Essentially it is a spiritual force – pure, high-octane creative energy – and brahmacharya means its transformation. Tapas, the sages say, becomes tejas: the radiant splendor of personality that shows itself in love, compassion, creative action, and a melting tenderness which draws all hearts. Nothing is lost in this transformation. It is clear in the Upanishads that sex is sacred, and ashram graduates often went back into the world to take up the responsibilities of family life. But they did so in freedom. Free from conditioning, they had a choice in everything they did, even in what they thought. Their ideal was not to retire from the world but to live in it selflessly, with senses and passions completely under control. This freedom is the hallmark of the Upanishads, and nothing better suits the life-affirming spirit of the Vedas.

In meditation, as the mind settles down to dwell on a single focus, attention begins to flow in a smooth, unbroken stream, like oil poured from one container to another. As this happens, attention naturally retreats from other channels. The ears, for example, still function, but you do not hear; attention is no longer connected with the organs of hearing. When concentration is profound, there are moments when you forget the body entirely. This experience quietly dissolves physical identification. The body becomes like a comfortable jacket: you wear it easily, and in meditation you can unbutton and loosen it until it scarcely weighs on you at all.

When awareness has been consolidated even beyond the mind, little remains except the awareness of “I.” Concentration is so profound that the mind-process has almost come to a standstill. Space is gone, and time so attenuated that it scarcely seems real. This is a taste of shanti, “the peace that passeth understanding,” invoked at the end of every Upanishad as a reminder of this sublime state. You rest in meditation in what the Taittiriya Upanishad calls the “body of joy,” a silent, ethereal inner realm at the threshold of pure being. For a long while it may seem that there is nothing stirring in this still world, so deep in consciousness that the phenomena of the surface seem as remote as a childhood dream. But gradually you become aware of the presence of something vast, intimately your own but not at all the finite, limited self you had been calling “I.”

This tremendous equation – “the Self is Brahman” – is the central discovery of the Upanishads. Its most famous formulation is one of the mahavakyas or “great formulae”: Tat tvam asi, “You are That.” “That” is the characteristic way the Upanishads point to a Reality that cannot be described; and “you,” of course, is not the petty, finite personality, but that pure consciousness “which makes the eye see and the mind think”: the Self.

In this absorption there is no time, no space, no causality. These are forms imposed by the mind, and the mind is still. Nor is there awareness of any object; even the thought of “I” has dissolved. Yet awareness remains: chit, pure, undifferentiated consciousness, beyond the division of observer and observed.

Astrophysicists use similar language when they talk about creation. All the matter in the universe must have been present in that “primeval atom,” supercondensed to an unbelievable degree. In such a state, matter would no longer be possible as matter. It would be stripped down to pure energy, and energy itself would be raw and undifferentiated; variations like gravity and light would not have emerged. Time would not yet be real, for there can be no time before zero; neither would space make sense in the context of a question like, “What was there before the Big Bang?” Physicists reply, with Gertrude Stein, “There’s no ‘there’ there. There’s no ‘then’ then.” Space and time, matter and energy, sprung into existence at the moment of creation; “before” that moment the concepts do not apply. The sages would find all this a perfect metaphor for the unitive state. In samadhi, reality is condensed into pure potential, without dimensions, without time, without any differentiation. Physicists do not say there was nothing before the Big Bang; they say everything came from that, and nothing more can be said. Similarly, samadhi is not emptiness but purnata: plenitude, complete fullness. The whole of reality is there, inner as well as outer: not only matter and energy but all time, space, causality, and states of consciousness.

What can be said of a state of being in which even the separate observer disappears? “Words turn back frightened,” the Upanishads say: every attempt to explain produces contradictions and inconsistencies. But the sages of the Upanishads must have longed so ardently to communicate that they had to try, even if the picture was doomed to be inadequate.

Thus Self-realization is immortality in an entirely new sense: not “everlasting life” but beyond death and life alike. In this state, when death comes, one sheds the body with no more rupture in consciousness than we feel in taking off a jacket at the end of the day.

All this is full. All that is full. From fullness, fullness comes. When fullness is taken from fullness, Fullness still remains. OM shanti shanti shanti

4 The Self is one. Ever still, the Self is Swifter than thought, swifter than the senses. Though motionless, he outruns all pursuit. Without the Self, never could life exist. 5 The Self seems to move, but is ever still. He seems far away, but is ever near. He is within all, and he transcends all.

How can the multiplicity of life Delude the one who sees its unity?

Nothing places the question “Who am I?” in such stark relief as the fact of death. What dies? What is left? Are we here merely to be torn away from everyone, and everyone from us? And what, if anything, can we do about death – now, while we are still alive?

As Julian of Norwich, a fourteenth-century English anchoress and mystic, wrote, “We wot that our parents do but bear us into death. A strange thing, that.” Birth is but the beginning of a trajectory to death; for all their love, parents cannot halt it and in a sense have “given us to death” merely by giving us birth.

8 The truth of the Self cannot come through one Who has not realized that he is the Self. The intellect cannot reveal the Self, Beyond its duality of subject And object. Those who see themselves in all And all in them help others through spiritual Osmosis to realize the Self themselves.

12 The wise, realizing through meditation The timeless Self, beyond all perception, Hidden in the cave of the heart, Leave pain and pleasure far behind. 13 Those who know they are neither body nor mind But the immemorial Self, the divine Principle of existence, find the source Of all joy and live in joy abiding.

16 It is OM. This symbol of the Godhead Is the highest. Realizing it one finds Complete fulfillment of all one’s longings. 17 It is of the greatest support to all seekers. When OM reverberates unceasingly Within the heart, that one is indeed blessed And deeply loved as one who is the Self.

18 The all-knowing Self was never born, Nor will it die. Beyond cause and effect, This Self is eternal and immutable. When the body dies, the Self does not die.

22 When the wise realize the Self, Formless in the midst of forms, changeless In the midst of change, omnipresent And supreme, they go beyond sorrow.

Ruler of time, past and future, The same on this day as on tomorrow, Is the Self indeed. For this Self is supreme!

2 The Self is the sun shining in the sky, The wind blowing in space; he is the fire At the altar and in the home the guest; He dwells in human beings, in gods, in truth, And in the vast firmament; he is the fish Born in water, the plant growing in the earth, The river flowing down from the mountain. For this Self is supreme!

All this is full. All that is full. From fullness, fullness comes. When fullness is taken from fullness, Fullness still remains. OM shanti shanti shanti

The Self, pure awareness, shines as the light within the heart, surrounded by the senses. Only seeming to think, seeming to move, the Self neither sleeps nor wakes nor dreams.

11–13 It is said of these states of consciousness that in the dreaming state, when one is sleeping, the shining Self, who never dreams, who is ever awake, watches by his own light the dreams woven out of past deeds and present desires. In the dreaming state, when one is sleeping, the shining Self keeps the body alive with the vital force of prana, and wanders wherever he wills. In the dreaming state, when one is sleeping, the shining Self assumes many forms, eats with friends, indulges in sex, sees fearsome spectacles. 16–17 But he is not affected by anything because he is detached and free; and after wandering here and there in the state of dreaming, enjoying pleasures and seeing good and evil, he returns to the state from which he began. 18 As a great fish swims between the banks of a river as it likes, so does the shining Self move between the states of dreaming and waking.

19 As an eagle, weary after soaring in the sky, folds its wings and flies down to rest in its nest, so does the shining Self enter the state of dreamless sleep, where one is freed from all desires. 21 The Self is free from desire, free from evil, free from fear. As a man in the arms of his beloved is not aware of what is without and what is within, so a person in union with the Self is not aware of what is without and what is within, for in that unitive state all desires find their perfect fulfillment. There is no other desire that needs to be fulfilled, and one goes beyond sorrow.

23–30 In that unitive state one sees without seeing, for there is nothing separate from him; smells without smelling, for there is nothing separate from him; tastes without tasting, for there is nothing separate from him; speaks without speaking, for there is nothing separate from him; hears without hearing, for there is nothing separate from him; touches without touching, for there is nothing separate from him; thinks without thinking, for there is nothing separate from him; knows without knowing, for there is nothing separate from him.

As a person acts, so he becomes in life. Those who do good become good; those who do harm become bad. Good deeds make one pure; bad deeds make one impure. You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny.

When one is absorbed in dreamless sleep, He is one with the Self, though he knows it not. We say he sleeps, but he sleeps in the Self. 8.2 As a tethered bird grows tired of flying About in vain to find a place of rest And settles down at last on its own perch, So the mind, tired of wandering about Hither and thither, settles down at last In the Self, dear one, to which it is bound. 8.4 All creatures, dear one, have their source in him. He is their home; he is their strength.”

“Control the senses and purify the mind. In a pure mind there is constant awareness of the Self. Where there is constant awareness of the Self, freedom ends bondage and joy ends sorrow.”

1.3 As great as the infinite space beyond is the space within the lotus of the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained in that inner space, both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars. Whether we know it in this world or know it not, everything is contained in that inner space.

The objective world is neither real nor unreal; it is appearance – specifically, the appearance of separateness, the illusion that happiness comes from the world outside rather than from within us.

All this is full. All that is full. From fullness, fullness comes. When fullness is taken from fullness, Fullness still remains. OM shanti shanti shanti

1 To know the unity of all life leads To deathlessness; to know not leads to death. Both are hidden in the infinity Of Brahman, who is beyond both.

1 Bright but hidden, the Self dwells in the heart.

2 The shining Self dwells hidden in the heart. Everything in the cosmos, great and small, Lives in the Self. He is the source of life, Truth beyond the transience of this world. He is the goal of life. Attain this goal!

3 When you realize that you are the Self, Supreme source of light, supreme source of love, You transcend the duality of life And enter into the unitive state.

7 The effulgent Self, who is beyond thought, Shines in the greatest, shines in the smallest, Shines in the farthest, shines in the nearest, Shines in the secret chamber of the heart.

1 AUM stands for the supreme Reality. It is a symbol for what was, what is, And what shall be. AUM represents also What lies beyond past, present, and future.

12 The mantram AUM stands for the supreme state Of turiya, without parts, beyond birth And death, symbol of everlasting joy. Those who know AUM as the Self become the Self; Truly they become the Self. OM shanti shanti shanti