Meditation According to the Upanishads-8. ( upanishad Ends) : Swami Krishnananda.

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Friday, February 17,  2023. 11:30.

(Spoken on January 14th, 1973)

Post-8.

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Thus, taking a bird's-eye view of the techniques of meditation in the Upanishads, we finally get from them not only a philosophical analysis and exposition of the structure of the cosmos and individuals, but also a way the individual can approach the Supreme Being. Hence, the Upanishads are both a philosophy and a method of approach. They are full of philosophical reasoning, psychological analysis, and practical suggestions.

These methods of meditation according to the Upanishads are not suited to common minds because they require of the student a high standard of discriminative power and dispassion. The condition, the prerequisite of such a meditation, is also laid down in the Upanishads themselves—though not in the Mandukya, but in certain other Upanishads. We have to be possessed of a Nachiketas element. The story of Nachiketas given in the Kathopanishad is a prelude, as it were, to the requirements of a student of the Upanishads. Such intensity of the spirit of renunciation as can be gathered from the story of Nachiketas is demanded of every student of the Upanishads. The Upanishads do not ask us to do anything else than to merely analyse, understand, and fix our attention on the goal, but with such fervour and ardour of approach as could be seen in Nachiketas. Rejecting the joys, the pleasures and the freedoms of the world that were offered in abundance, the seeker Nachiketas asked for the Atman alone. To seek the Atman is to seek the truth of the Upanishads, though the method expounded in the Kathopanishad cannot be regarded as an example of the Upanishadic technique because it is more akin to the Bhagavadgita and the Yoga Sutras than to the main current of thought in the Upanishads, which distinguishes them from other approaches to Reality.

In Kali Yuga, these meditations are difficult because the minds and the wills of people are very weak. We cannot meditate like this, however much we may try. We cannot meditate like this even for a minute because the mind will slip down, fatigued and exhausted by the very attempt. But by a very beautiful combination of the essentials mentioned here with other techniques, such as those given to us in the raja yoga methods of Patanjali and the methods of bhakti yoga, we can achieve some success. Tīvra saṁvegānām āsannaḥ (Y.S. 1.21): This truth comes to those whose vairagya is one hundred percent perfect, who want nothing else.

The vairagya that is described by Sankaracharya in one of his works is pertinent. What is vairagya? What is the kind of vairagya that we require in order to study the Upanishads and meditate according to them? Sankaracharya says that we must be as indifferent even to the bliss of Brahmaloka as we are indifferent to a clod of dirt. But what is the bliss of Brahmaloka? We do not know what it is. We will become unconscious and swoon if we know what it is, such is the joy of it. We will swoon by the joy itself. We know the characterisation and the calculus given in the Taittiriya Upanishad, how the joys go on increasing in intensity as we go higher and higher. If our bliss is one, multiply it by a hundred, and then multiply it by a hundred eleven more times—a hundred into a hundred into a hundred, eleven times. That is the bliss of Brahmaloka, and this bliss we must reject, Sankaracharya says, as if it is dirt. Is it humanly possible? We will not reject the bliss of even a cup of tea, so Brahmaloka is out of the question. We are unfit for the study of the Upanishads; that is the conclusion. We cannot study the Upanishads, and we cannot meditate like this, but we can keep it as an ideal that it may come to us at least in the next birth, if not in this birth.

This is the glory of the Upanishads: meditation on Vaishvanara, meditation on Hiranyagarbha, meditation on Ishvara, meditation on Pranava or Omkara as a cosmic vibration in its connection with Reality, all for the single purpose of Brahma sakshatkara, or the realisation of the Supreme Being.

We have gathered for a discussion of the nature of meditation, the various ways that we can employ in order to concentrate and harmonise the mind for the purpose of purifying it so that it may become more and more free in its operation. The practice of meditation is, therefore, a very vast and elaborate technique of dealing with aspects of our consciousness in various ways and freeing consciousness from its relationship with objects, because the thought of objects is bondage. One of the minor Upanishads tells us that poison is not poison; thinking of objects is poison because if we drink poison, only one life is destroyed, but if we think of objects, we may destroy several lives. That means to say, we may have to pass through various series of births.

Thus, the meditation process is a gradual method of freeing consciousness from its entanglement in objects, and later on it is an acquisition of control over objects. We first get freed from its clutches, and then acquire mastery over them. In the beginning there is a withdrawal, and then there is a return to the very same object from which we withdrew ourselves so that we may possess it in reality, not possess it artificially as we tried earlier through mere sensory perception. Possession of a thing is artificial in sensory perception, whereas it is real in Realisation.

Thus, we conclude a survey of various methods of meditation. From these, the essentials have to be culled and brought into operation according to the convenience and temperament of each person's mind. It is not that everyone can think in the same fashion. This is a wide dish that is served before you, from which you can take whatever you like, but put each item properly in harmony so that they may become fit instruments for the mental operation in your meditation.

End.

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