सर्वे वेदा यत् पदम् अमानंति, तपांसि सर्वाणि च यद्वदन्ति ।
यद् इच्चन्तो ब्रह्मचर्यं चरन्ति, तत् ते पदं संग्रहेण ब्रवीमि--
औम् इति एतत् ॥
sarve vedA yat padam amAnaMti, tapAMsi sarvANi cha yadvadanti |
yad ichchanto brahmacharyaM charanti, tat te padaM saMgraheNa bravImi--
aum iti etat ||
YAMA, Lord of Death, Ruler of the next Vorld into which souls are 'born' after 'dying' out of this; than whom, as Nachiketa said, there could be no better giver of assurance against mortality, no truer teacher of the truth of life and death; gives this last answer:
"That which all the scriptures ponder and repeat; that which all the shining, glowing, burning, lights (ascetic holy souls) declare; that for which the pure ones follow Brahmacharya, life of virtue, study, sacri-fice to Brahman; that do I declare to thee in brief--it is AUM."
All-Including AumThe above quote is from the Katha-Upanishad, I.ii.15. Besides the special significance of AUM, (pronounced as OM) expounded here, one of its ordinary meanings, as of its Arabic and English transformations, AMIN and AMEN, respectively, is 'yes', 'be it so'.
In Gita (8.11), the first line of the verse is replaced by,
यद् अक्षरं वेदविदो चदन्ति, विशन्ति यद् यत्यो बीतरागाः ।
yad akSharaM vedavido chadanti, vishanti yad yatyo bItarAgAH |
"the Imperishable One Whom the knowers of the Veda declare, Whom the passionless sinless self-controllers merge themselves into."
What is the meaning of this mysterious statement, repeated over and over again in a hundred ways, in all Samskrt literature, sacred and secular? Thus:
The Prashna-Upanishad says: "This, O Satyakama, desirer of truth, is the higher and the lower Brahman--this that is known as the AUM. Therefore, strong-based in this as his home and central refuge, the knower may reach out to anything that he deems fit to follow after, and he shall surely obtain it."
एतद्वै, सत्यकाम! परं चापरं च ब्रह्म यदोण्*कारः ।
तस्माद्विद्वानेतेनैवायतनेनैकतरमन्वेति ॥
etadvai, satyakaama! paraM chaaparaM cha brahma yadoN^kaaraH |
tasmaadvidvaanetenaivaayatanenaikataramanveti || (5.2)
The Chhandogya says: "The AUM is all this; the AUM is all this."
औंकार् एवेदं सर्वमोंकार् एवेदं सर्वं ।
auMkAr evedaM sarvamoMkAr evedaM sarvaM | (II.xxiii.3)
The Taittirya says: "AUM is Brahma(n); AUM is all this."
औमिति ब्रह्म, औमितीदं सर्वं ।
aumiti brahma, aumitIdaM sarvaM | (I.viii)
The Mandukya says: "This, the imperishable AUM, is all this; the unfolding thereof is the past, the present, and the future; all is AUM."
औमित्येदक्षरमिदं सर्वं, तस्योपव्याख्यानं,
भूतं भवद्.ह् भविश्ह्यदिति सर्वमोंकार एव;
aumityedakSharamidaM sarvaM, tasyopavyAkhyAnaM,
bhuutaM bhavad.h bhavishhyaditi sarvamoMkAra eva; (i)
The Taara-saara repeats these words of the Mandukya, and says again: "The AUM this is the imperishable, the supreme, Brahma(n); it alone should be worshipped."
औमित्येदक्षरं परं ब्रह्म तदेवोपासितव्यम् ।
aumityedakSharaM paraM brahma tadevopAsitavyam | (ii.1)
Patanjali says: "The declarer of It is the Pranava; japa-litany of it is (not mere mechanical repetition of the sound, but) exploring, discovering, realising, its full significance."
तस्य वाचक्ः प्रणवः; तज्जपः तदार्थभावनम् ।
tasya vAchakH praNavaH; tajjapaH tadArthabhAvanam |
The Mysterious Word-Sound, Its IntepretationThe word pra-Nava is a name for the sound AUM; it means. etymologicaliy, 'that which makes new, rejuvenates' everything including mind's outlook. It is the life-breath of the universe. It has many names in Samskrt: tAraka or tAra, udgitha, sarva-vin-mati, sarva-jna, prAtibha, etc. Many of these have been collected, and the special etymological significance of each indicated, in my Samskrt compilation, Manava-Dharma-Sara.
Such quotations may be multiplied a hundredfold. What is the meaning of these very fanciful-sounding utterances? Many profound and occult interpretations of this triune sound have been given expressly in the Upanishads themselves, also in Gopatha Brahmana, and in the books on Tantra; but the deepest and most luminous of all remains implicit only.
For if the above seemingly exaggerated statements are to be justified in all their fullness, then, in view of all that has gone before, AUM must include within itself, the Self, the Not-Self, and the mysterious Relation between them which has not yet been discovered in any of the preceding answers--that mysterious Relation, which, being discovered, the whole darkness will be lighted up as by the Sun; the Relation wherein will be combined Changelessness and Change.The reader may feel inconsistency between the decrial of 'mystery-mongering' at p.104 supra (where the author refers to Hegel's "shallow, supercilious, self-conceited criticism of the Vedanta of Bhagavad-Gita, and of Sufism"), and the reverence shown for riddle-like scripture-texts here.
The differentiating test is in the motive. Where there is wish to swindle, to gain money, or 'kudos' and blind worship, or both, from gullible followers, there we have the 'charlatan'. (It arouses mixed feelings to remember that the 'great philosopher' Schopenhauer calls the 'great philosopher' Hegel a 'charlatan'.
Where there is affectionate wish to arouse only deeper, more earnest, genuine curiosity and search for the highest and most consoling Truth, as in the case of loving parents and teachers, there the temporary mysteriousness is justified, nay, desirable, or even necessary; for the too easily gained is often not appreciated, is even equally easily thrown away; 'easy come, easy go'.
In the case of the Logion, here endeavoured to be expounded, this risk is really serious. Some will think, 'Mere tautology, truism, trash!'; others 'Only an ingenious juggle with words'. Few will ponder sufficiently deeply to realise its very great significance.
Therefore Yama wished to avoid the subject, when questioned by Nachikita (p.1. supra), and told him, 'Earnest seeker is even rarer than wise teacher; very subtle and evasive, difficult to seize, because so very simple, is the Truth; marvellous is it, therefore the speaker of it wouders, and the listener wonders more'.
But times and circumstances change; as explained in The Mahatma Letters and H.P. Blavatsky's writings, Spiritual Wisdom has itself to go out, at special junctures in human history, which recur periodically and cyclically, seeking worthy 'vessels', receptacles for itself, facing ridicule and rebuffs.
If it does this, then truly is the Indian tradition justified that all knowledge, all science, is summed up in the Vedas, all the Vedas in the Gayatri, and the Gayatri in the AUM; then truly are all the Vedas and all possible knowledge there, for all the World-Process is there.
The Self, the Not-Self, and their mutual Relation--these three, the Primal Trinity, the root-base of all possible trinities, exhaust the whole of thought, the whole of knowledge, the whole of the World-Process.
There is nothing left that is beyond and outside of this Primal Trinity, which, in its Unity, its tri-une-ness, constitutes the Absolute which is, and wherein is, the Totality of the World-Process--the World-Process, which is nothing else than the Self or Pratyag-Atma, the Not-Self or Mula-prakrti, and their lIlA or Interplay; the Three-in-One constituting Param-Atma.
Anagogy
But how can these three be said to be expressed by a single word? The immemorial custom of summing up a series, or of expressing a fact, in a single letter, and then of joining letters, thus significant, into a single word of which many examples are to be found in the Upanishads gives the clue here. Each letter of this word must be the expression of a fact, and the juxtaposition of the letters must signify the relation between the facts.
The first letter of the sacred word, A, signifies the Self; the second letter, U, signifies the Not-Self; and the third letter, M, signifies the everlasting Relation, the unbreakable nexus--of Negation, by the Self, of the Not-Self--between them.This ancient method of expressing a profound truth by assigning to each of its factors a letter, and then writing down the letters as a word, meaningless, a mere sound, except for the meanings thus indicated, is perhaps not familiar to, and therefore may not commend itself to, modern thought.
These 'mystic words', of which so many are found in ancient writings, and, later, in Gnostic and Kabbalistic works, are regarded as jargon by the modern mind. Yet in these same words, ancient wisdom has imbedded its profoundest conceptions, and AUM is just such a word.
The method is known as akshara-mushti or akshara-mudra, 'handful' or 'diagram-seal' of letters. (World-War II began in Sept. 1939 in Europe, and closed there in May 1945. with the surrender of Germany; it began in Asia in Dec. 1941, and closed in Aug.-Sep. 1945, with the surrender of Japan; it has created scores of such code-words, temporarily; thus, USOWI means United States Office of War information).
But OM as pure humming sound also, has deep significance; it is the primal sound-continuum of Nature, the first garment of God, the first sensuous manifestation of the Self; it is probably what is meant by 'the Word', in the Christian Bible, where it says that "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God".
According to this interpretation of the AUM, the full meaning of it, would be the proposition, Ego--Non-Ego--Non (est), or I--Not-I--Not (am), which sums up all the three factors of the World-Process into a single proposition and a Single Act of Consciousness.
The False Encircled by the True
A plain example of this method occurs in the Chhandogya: "The name of Brahman is Truth, or the True, satyam, which consists of three letters, sa, ti, and yam. Sa is the Unperishing; Ti is the Perishing; Yam holds, binds, Relates the two together."
एतस्य ब्रह्मणो नाम सत्यमिति ।
तानि ह वा एतानि त्रीणि अक्षराणि, स, ति, यं, इति ।
तद्यत्स तदमृतम्, अथ यत्ति तन्मर्त्यम्, अथ यद्यं तेन उभे यच्च्हति ।
etasya brahmaNo naama satyamiti |
taani ha vaa etaani trINi akSharaaNi, sa, ti, yaM, iti |
tadyatsa tadamRutam, atha yatti tanmartyam, atha yadyaM tena ubhe yachchhati | (VIII.iii.4-5)
• The 'unperishing' here means nothing else than the unlimited universal Self, Pratyag-Atma;
• the 'perishing' is the endlessly perishing, ever-renewed and ever-dying, everlimited Not-Self or Mula-prakrti;
• the nexus, that which holds and binds the two together, is the unending relation of Negation by the One of the Many-Other, in which Relation, the two are constantly and inseparably tied to each other, in such a way that the two together make only the 'number-less' Absolute, in which the three, two, and even one, all disappear in the number-transcending and all-number-containing circle of the cipher.
A similar statement, again using almost the same words, is made in the Brhad-Aranyaka (V.v.1): "Truth, satyam, verily is Brahman. ... The gods contemplate and worship the truth, satyam, only. Three-lettered is this satyam; sa is one letter, ti is one letter, and yam is one letter. The first and the last letters, imperishables, are true; in the middle is the false and fleeting. The False is encompassed round on both sides by the True. The True is the more, the greater, the prevailing. He that knoweth this he may not be overpowered by the False."
सत्यं ब्रह्मोति सत्यं ह्येव ब्रह्म ।
ते देवाः सत्यमेवोपासते ।
तदेतत् त्र्यक्शरं सत्यमिति ।
स इत्येकमक्शरं, ति इत्येकमक्शरम्, यमित्येकमक्शरं ।
प्रथमोत्तमे अक्शरे सत्यं, मध्यतो अनृतं तद 'एतद' अनृतं उभयतः
सत्येन परिगृहीतं सत्यभूयमेव भवति ।
नैनं विद्वांसमनृतं हिनस्ति ॥
satyaM brahmoti satyaM hyeva brahma |
te devAH satyamevopAsate |
tadetat tryaksharaM satyamiti |
sa ityekamaksharaM, ti ityekamaksharam, yamityekamaksharaM |
prathamottame akshare satyaM, madhyato anRutaM tada 'etada' anRutaM ubhayataH
satyena parigRuhItaM satyabhUyameva bhavati |
nainaM vidvAMsamanRutaM hinasti ||
Here sa, the first truth, is Being; and yam, the second truth, is Nothing, for both are imperishable; the middle is Becoming, the ever-fleeting and ever-false. In other words, the Self is reality; the Negation, of the Not-Self by the Self, is also reality; the Not-Self is not reality, it is only appearance, illusion.
How Know All at Once?
The Devl-Bhagavata (I.xv.51-52) says: "Why, by what means, from what substance, has all this world arisen? How may I know all at once, by a single act of knowledge?--Thus Mukunda-Vishnu pondered within himself, in the beginning. Unto him that sovereign Deity, Bhagavati, uttered that which giveth all explanations in a single half-verse, viz.: 'I, Not Another, is (i.e., am) alone verily this eternal all.'"
This, it seems, is the plainest statement available in the Purana literature, after the Veda, in which an endeavour is expressly made to sum up the World-Process in a single sentence.
And again (VII.xxxii.2), "'I (alone was, in the beginning)-Not-Another (i.e., no-thing-else,, O Lord of Mountains!)'--such is the form or nature of the Self, which is called Consciousness or Para-Brahma."
The Vishnu-Bhagavata (II.ix.32) (commonly known as Shrimad Bhagavata, or simply as Bhagavata) also has some verses in almost the same words:
The orthodox commentator, it is true, explains this as meaning: "I alone was in the prime of time, and nothing else, neither the existent, nor the non-existent, nor even Prakrit which is beyond both; I was afterwards also, and I am all this, and what remains behind, that also am I."
But the preceding and succeeding verses, saying: "This is the deepest and the highest secret, guhya and rahasya; knowing it you will not fail in spirit throughout the ages," seem to permit of a more 'secret' meaning and unusual interpretation, thus: 'I-(alone was in the beginning)-not-another (which might be existent or non-existent or other than both); in the end also I; i.e., after that which is known as This has been negated, that which remains, that am 1."
Elsewhere, the work repeats: ahamevAsmevAgre nAnyat kiMchAMtaraM bahiH | (VI.iv.47). The same Purana repeatedly describes the Supreme in phrases or by epithets which find their full significance only in the Logion expounded here, thus:
AtmA&anAnA-matyupalakShaNaH, "the Self whose character is 'the not-many consciousness', (III.v.23); or
tad brahmA tad hetuH ananyada ekam |, "It is Brahma(n), It is the Supreme Cause, the One, the Not-Another', (VI.iv.30); or
puruShaM yad rUpamanidaM tathA, "the Supreme whose form is not-This", (X.ii.42) or
tvaM brahma pUrNaM ... avikAram ananyad ananyat, "Thou art the ever wantless, changeless Brahma(n), Not-Another, Other-than-all-This", (VIII.xii.7).
The Yoga Vasishtha says: "I, pure consciousness, subtler than space, am not anything limited--such is the eternal buddhi (idea) that freeth from the bonds of samsara, the World-Process."
akiMchinmAtra-chinmAtra-rUpo&sim gaganAd aNuH--
iti yA shAshvati buddhiH sA na saMsAraMbadhani |
-- Nirvana-prakarana. Purvardha, cxviii.9.
The Antibhuti-prakasha-sar-oddhara has also a shloka (157) which describes Brahman as an-idam, Not-This:
ityevam anuidam rUpaM brahmaNaH pratipAditam |
nirnAmanastasya nAm etat satyam satyamiti shrutam |
'An-Idam', Not- This, has been declared to be the form, the nature, of Brahman. Such is the name of that which is Nameless. Such is verily the truth. So have we heard."
Its Living Comprehensiveness
The Yoga and Sankhya systems describe the supreme consciousness of kevala-tA, kaivalyam, Soleness, One-ness, L-one-(li)-ness, On(e)li-ness, (their word for moksha), as being of the nature of the awareness that Purusha (the Self) is other-than-sattva (i.e., Prakrti, sattva being the finest representative thereof).
vivekakhyAtiH or satvapuruShaAnyatAkhyAtiH |
The 'great hymn' addresses the Supreme thus:
"Thou whom the dazzled scripture doth describe
As being Negation of what Thou art Not."
अतद्व्यावृत्त्या यं चकितमभिधत्ते श्रुतिरपि ।
atadvyaavRuttyaa yaM chakitamabhidhatte shrutirapi |
-- Shiva Mahimnah Stotram, verse 2
Glta also has a verse which may be literally translated: "Than the I anything Other is Not; in the I is all This woven, as gems are strung on a thread.'
मत्तः परतरं नान्यत् किंचिदस्ति, धनंजय ।
मयि सर्वमिदं प्रोतं, सूत्रे मणिगणा इव ॥
mattaH parataraM naanyat kiMchidasti, dhanaMjaya |
mayi sarvamidaM protaM, sUtre maNigaNA iva || (7.7)
Put into one sentence, such descriptions can take no other form than that of the logion, Ego-Non-Ego-Non (sum). (More texts are gathered together in a Note at the end of this chapter.)
Such are a few of the utterances of sacred literature that at once become lighted up when the light of this summation is brought to bear on them.
• Thus does the Pranava, the AUM, the sacred word, embody in itself the universe;
• thus does it include all previous tentative summations;
• thus is it the very heart and essence of the scriptures;
• so only is the tradition justified that all the universe is in the Pranava.
• Herein we find that what before were the parts of a machine, apart and dead, are now assembled, powerful, and active as an organism.
• Herein we find the two great scripture-texts combined into one statement, that gives a new and all-satisfying significance to them.
• Herein we see all Hegel, and far more; and the three propositions of Fichte compressed into one, which is a re-arrangement of his second.
Pantheon of PhilosophiesSee p.85, supra.
ahaM brahma asmi
"This (self) was indeed Brahman in the beginning. It knew only Itself as, 'I am Brahman'. Therefore It became all." -- Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad (1.4.10);
[i]na iha nAnA asti kiMchana[/u]
"Through the mind alone (It) is to be realised. There is no difference whatsoever in It. He goes from death to death, who sees difference, as it were, in It." -- Brhad-Aranyaka Upanishad (4.4.19);
Katha. 4.11. See also p. 47 supra.
"It is difficult to find a single speculation in western metaphysics which has not been anticipated by archaic eastern philosophy. From Kant to Herbert Spencer, it is all a more or less distorted echo of the Dvaita, Advaita, and Veantic." -- H.P.Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, I.49.
And it is not only a rearrangement of it, though that is important enough, but more. If the statement that "Being is Nothing" is not only external to us but unintelligible and self-contradictory, the statement that "Ego is not Non-Ego" is not yet quite internal, though certainly consistent and intelligible.
It does not yet quite come home to us. The verb 'is', and the order of the words in the sentence, make us feel that the statement embodies a cut-and-dried fact in which there is no movement, and which is there, before us, but away from us, not in us.
The negative 'not' entirely overpowers the affirmative 'is' and appropriates all the possibility of significance to itself, so that the rhythmic swing between the Ego and the Non-Ego, between us and our surroundings, which would be gained by emphasising and bringing out the force of the affirmative 'is' also, is entirely hidden out of sight, and only a bare, dead, negation is left.
'Is' Means 'Am'
But now we change the order of the words; and the spirit of the old languages, the natural law underlying their construction, comes to our help.
We place the Ego and the Non-Ego in juxtaposition, and an affirmative Relation appears between them first, to be followed afterwards by the development of the negative Relation, in consequence of the negative particle.
And, more than this, we replace the 'is' by 'am', the 'est' by 'sum', as we have every right to do; for, in connection with the Self, with I, Aham, 'is' has no other sense than 'am'; and in place of Non-Ego, An-aham, we substitute 'This', Etat, for we have seen their equivalence before (Ch.IV. p.38, supra) and will do so again later, in the section on Mula-Prakrti.
Our logion therefore now runs as "Aham Etat Na", "I This Not (am)". In the Samskrt form the word corresponding to 'am', viz., asmi, is not needed at all, for it is thoroughly implied and understood.
But as soon as we have the logion in this new form, "Aham Etat Na", we see that there is a whole world more of significance in it than the dry statement of the logical law of contradiction, "A is not not-A", "Ego is not Non-Ego".
It is no longer a mere formal logical law of thought; it is Transcendental Log-ic, Supreme all-comprehending Law of all Being; Thought which is identical with All Reality. The one law of all laws, the pulse of the World-Process, the very heart-beat of all life is here, now. The rhythm between the Self and the Not-Self, their coming together and going apart, the essence of all Change, is expressed by it, when we take it in two parts; and yet, when we take the three constituents of it at once, it expresses Changelessness also.
Joy of Finding
As a man seeking for the vale of happiness, may toil for days and nights through a maze of mountain-ranges, and come at last to a dead wall of rock, and find himself despairing, and a sudden casual push of the arm may move aside a bush, or a slab of stone, and disclose a passage through which he may rush eagerly to the top of the highest peak, wondering how he had failed to see it all this while it looks so unmistakable now and may behold, spread clear and still before him, the panorama of the scenes, of his toilsome journey, on the one side, completed and finished by the scenes of that happy vale of smiling flowers and fruits and crystal waters, on the other such is the finding of this great summation. All the problems that bewildered him before, now receive easy solution, and many statements that puzzled him formerly, in the scriptural literature of the nations, begin to become intelligible.
After finding the truth of this great logion for himself, the enquirer will find confirmation of it everywhere in the old books, as well as in the world around him.
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