The Mandukya Upanishad 2.10 : Swami Krishnananda

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26/12/2019.
Section 2 : The Individual and the Absolute 10.
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We have attained to a unity by bringing together all particulars into the universal. Now we transcend even the universal physical for the sake of the attainment of the universal psychic or the astral; transcend that also, later, and then reach the universal causal; and transcend that, too, further, and reach the universal Spiritual, the Spiritual which we cannot designate even as the universal. We have only to call it the Absolute.

So, we have the physical, the subtle, the causal and the Spiritual. These are the four feet of the Atman, or rather, four aspects of the study of the nature of the Atman, four stages of self-transcendence described in the Upanishad. These four stages are called Jagrat, Svapna, Sushupti and Turiya – the waking state, the dreaming state, the sleeping state, and the transcendent spiritual state. There are the four states of Consciousness, and a study of Consciousness is the same as the study of the Absolute or Brahman, because Brahman is Consciousness. Prajnanam brahma: Brahman is Prajnana or Consciousness.

A study of consciousness is the subject of the Mandukya Upanishad; – the four states of consciousness; – the states in which the consciousness appears to be connected to certain temporary, accidental circumstances in waking, dreaming and sleep, and its pristine, purified state of Absoluteness. So, we have to take, one by one, the stages of waking, dream, sleep and the pure Spirit, or the Absolute, for the sake of attaining this self-transcendence.

In this progress of transcendence of the lower by the higher, the higher does not negate the lower, reject the lower or abandon the lower, but includes the lower within itself by sublimation, just as the eighth standard is included in the matriculation standard, the matriculation standard in the graduate standard, the graduate standard in the master of arts, and so on. When you advance in the educational career, you do not reject the lower standards, but sublimate them into a higher condition. So is this process of self-transcendence.

When you go to a higher state, you do not reject or abandon the lower, but the lower is contained in the higher in a transfigured form. The lower is there in its real value. When you wake up from dream, you do not negate the value or the substantiality of dream, but you sublimate it into a higher value in what you call the waking consciousness, so much that you are happier when you wake up from dream. You do not feel grieved that some dream objects are lost, just because you have woken up. 'O, why did I wake up! I have lost my treasure of the dream world'; you do not feel grieved like that. You only feel happy that the phantasmal worry has gone. You feel better, then. So is the grand process of self-transcendence and God-realisation in the end.

The highest process of self-transcendence is that by which we attain God Himself, and the last thing which we attain is God-Being, wherein the world is not negated or abandoned, but absorbed into Its vitality, taken entirely into the supra-essential essence of God; and in God we wake up into a consciousness of Reality, just as we wake up from dream into this so-called waking world. God-realisation is an integrated consciousness where we gain everything and lose nothing. That is why it is said that God-realisation is the Goal of life, because when we attain God, we have attained everything.

By knowing That, we have known all things. By acquiring That, we have possessed everything. And it is not a distant aim of certain people alone in the world, like Monks, the Brothers or Fathers or Sannyasins; it is for humanity, for creation as a whole. It is creation that longs for God; not merely you or I. The whole universe surges towards God, which longing is expressed in the process of evolution. Why does the universe evolve? Because it is restless until it reaches that state.

So, we are driven to that state of perfection, and this urge is the urge for cosmic evolution. God-realisation, therefore, is the Goal of life. Brahma-sakshatkara is the aim for which we are here, and this is the finale of the process of self-transcendence described in the Mandukya Upanishad.

THE END

NEXT -3. The Universal Vaisvanara
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  To be continued ... 

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