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IPK, part 2
II Adhidaiva Epistemological Framework in the light of Sri Aurobindo
Sri Aurobindo writes in his essay on the Kena Upanishad:
“And when we have gone on thus eliminating, thus analysing all forms into the fundamental entities of the cosmos, we shall find that these fundamental entities are really only two, ourselves and the gods.”[1]
“Well, but what then of the Brahman is myself? and what of the Brahman is in the Gods?[2] The answer is evident. I am a representation in the cosmos, but for all purposes of the cosmos a real representation of the Self; and the gods are a representation in the cosmos—a real representation since without them the cosmos could not continue—of the Lord. The one supreme Self is the essentiality of all these individual existences; the one supreme Lord is the Godhead in the gods.”[3]
Thus we have two fundamental entities: the Self and the Lord, Being and Consciousness perceiving it, or Atman and Purusha. The faculties of Consciousness of Purusha were sacrificed and cast down into the lower hemisphere of the fallen Being, the lower self, as it were, in order to precipitate it with the higher consciousness and thus to start the process of its Redemption, which we call ‘evolution’, and which was known in the Veda as the Sacrifice.
“The gods of the Upanishad, – says Sri Aurobiindo, – have been supposed to be a figure for the senses, but although they act in the senses, they are yet much more than that. They represent the divine power in its great and fundamental cosmic functionings whether in man or in mind and life and matter in general; they are not the functionings themselves but something of the Divine which is essential to their operation and its immediate possessor and cause.”
The gods, says Sri Aurobindo are “… positive self-representations of the Brahman leading to good, joy, light, love, immortality as against all that is a dark negation of these things. And it is necessarily in the mind, life, senses, and speech of man that the battle here reaches its height and approaches to its full meaning. The gods seek to lead these to good and light; the Titans, sons of darkness, seek to pierce them with ignorance and evil. Behind the gods is the Master-Consciousness [Purusha] of which they are the positive cosmic self-representations.”[4]
Thus the Vedic Psychology makes a clear proposition how to proceed and what to do in order to come out of this situation of being trapped in the midst of ignorance, suffering and death. One has to train ones own faculties of consciousness: senses, mind, vital and even body to become perceptive and open to their own higher realms, to become simply a channel of light descending from their own greater source.
“The cosmic functionings through which the gods act, mind, life, speech, senses, body, must become aware of something beyond them which governs them, by which they are and move, by whose force they evolve, enlarge themselves and arrive at power and joy and capacity; to that they must turn from their ordinary operations; leaving these, leaving the false idea of independent action and self-ordering which is an egoism of mind and life and sense they must become consciously passive to the power, light and joy of something which is beyond themselves. What happens then is that this divine Unnameable reflects Himself openly in the gods. His light takes possession of the thinking mind, His power and joy of the life, His light and rapture of the emotional mind and the senses. Something of the supreme image of Brahman falls upon the world-nature and changes it into divine nature.”[5]
So, “they must become consciously passive to the power, light and joy of something which is beyond themselves.”
“All this is not done by a sudden miracle, – says Sri Aurobindo. – It comes by flashes, revelations, sudden touches and glimpses;[6] there is as if a leap of the lightning of revelation flaming out from those heavens for a moment and then returning into its secret source; as if the lifting of the eyelid of an inner vision and its falling again because the eye cannot look long and steadily on the utter light. The repetition of these touches and visitings from the Beyond fixes the gods in their upward gaze and expectation, constant repetition fixes them in a constant passivity; not moving out any longer to grasp at the forms of the universe mind, life and senses will more and more be fixed in the memory, in the understanding, in the joy of the touch and vision of that transcendent glory which they have now resolved to make their sole object; to that only they will learn to respond and not to the touches of outward things. The silence which has fallen on them and which is now their foundation and status will become their knowledge of the eternal silence which is Brahman; the response of their functioning to a supernal light, power, joy will become their knowledge of the eternal activity which is Brahman. Other status, other response and activity they will not know. The mind will know nothing but the Brahman, think of nothing but the Brahman, the Life will move to, embrace, enjoy nothing but the Brahman, the eye will see, the ear hear, the other senses sense nothing but the Brahman.”[7]
“For the limit of ego, the wall of individuality will break; the individual Mind will cease to know itself as individual, it will be conscious only of universal Mind one everywhere in which individuals are only knots of the one mentality; so the individual life will lose its sense of separateness and live only in and as the one life in which all individuals are simply whirls of the indivisible flood of Pranic activity; the very body and senses will be no longer conscious of a separated existence, but the real body which the man will feel himself to be physically will be the whole Earth and the whole universe and the whole indivisible form of things wheresoever existent, and the senses also will be converted to this principle of sensation so that even in what we call the external, the eye will see Brahman only in every sight, the ear will hear Brahman only in every sound, the inner and outer body will feel Brahman only in every touch and the touch itself as if internal in the greater body. The soul whose gods are thus converted to this supreme law and religion, will realise in the cosmos itself and in all its multiplicity the truth of the One besides whom there is no other or second.
Moreover, becoming one with the formless and infinite, it will exceed the universe itself and see all the worlds not as external, not even as commensurate with itself, but as if within it.”[8]
III The Faculties of Consciousness as they are seen in
the old Vedanta.The concept of Brahma is defined in terms of the faculties of consciousness by Rishi Bhrigu as annam prāṇam cakṣuḥ śrotram mano vācam iti. (TaitUp 3.1.2)
If we try to examine these faculties, we will find that they correspond to the higher cognitive capacities of Consciousness as well to our ordinary level.
Seeing and Hearing
cakṣuḥ śrotraṃ ka u devo yunakti: “Who is the God who unites Seeing and Hearing?” [9]
Seeing, Dṛṣṭi, Cakṣus, was perceived as a faculty of consciousness which puts a seer into a direct contact with the image of things, which can be translated in terms of a “direct evidence of the truth”. Dṛṣṭi in the Vedas is the ultimate faculty of Consciousness, as a direct revelation of the Truth. It is of direct and self-evident nature, direct contact with the Self.
Hearing, Śruti, Śrotram is of indirect nature (as inspiration), without this faculty we may not know the relation of the object we see with the objects we don’t see. So everything which is intended or wanted but not yet manifest is falling into the domain of Hearing, or “indirect evidence of the Truth”. It is of nature of the all-pervading Space, connecting all in its meaningful oneness.
Manas and Vak.
Manas and Vāk, is another constant dvandva in the Vedānta.
As it is declared in Aitareya Upanishad these two are the foundations of the Veda.[10] Manas, Mind, is perceived by the Vedic and Vedantic seers as one of the faculties of consciousness, equal to Seeing and Hearing and not as their synthesiser or the sixth sense, as it is seen later in the Post-Vedic period in Sāṃkhya and Yoga. In the Veda it is considered to be equal to the Word-faculty, which later, in the mental structure of consciousness, is completely submitted to the mind, becoming fully dependent on it. In the Upanishads Manas is seen as the active and creative counterpart of the perceptive Chakṣus, Seeing faculty of the self-existent being, Self, creative of form.Vāk, Speech, was considered to be an independent faculty of Consciousness, having its own power and character. It was an active part of the All-pervading Spirit: Hearing. Brahman was referred to as mantra in RV, and only later it came to denote spirit.
Thus on all the levels of Consciousness we have the manifestation of Manas and Vāk. In the later tradition known as Parā, Paśyantī, Madhyamā and Vaikharī Vāk. Similarly Manas can be viewed from the levels of the Supermind to Mental Mind, Vital Mind and Physical Mind (and even further down as Subconscious Mind etc). So the faculties of Consciousness can be seen as pervading the whole hierarchy of all the planes of Being, from the Superconscient to the Inconscient. [11]
Brahma Chatushpad
Thus, these four cakṣus and śrotram, manas and vāk, according to the Upanishads, constitute brahma catuṣpād, Spirit on four legs or pillars,[12] through which Brahman is manifested in the world. Prāṇa very often symbolised the embodiment of Brahman itself, especially in the older Upanishads.[13]
It was also understood as the offspring of Manas, its father, and Vāk, its mother. [14] In this way the process of manifestation of the Spirit in matter was conceived, which made matter animated, annam (“eatable”). Thus it gives us one more dvandva: Prāṇa-Apāna, Breathing in and Breathing out, or Prāṇa-Anna, Life and Matter.[15]There are three constant dvandvas in the Upanishads:
Manas-Vāk
Cakṣuḥ-Śrotra,
Prāṇa-Apāna, or Prāṇa-Anna
There are also three major streams of cognition, according to Sri Aurobindo: Seeing, Hearing and Touch as three basic cognitive accesses to Reality. In Vedic terminology “…for the truth-consciousness there are corresponding faculties,—dṛṣṭi, śruti, viveka, the direct vision of the truth, the direct hearing of its word, the direct discrimination of the right.”[16]
Seeing and Hearing are perceptive faculties, whereas Mind and Word are their active counterparts. These four are neutralised or, better to say, realised in the Manifestation of Life and Matter. In other words, Mind and Seeing (manas and cakṣus) are related to Rūpa, Form, as the expression of the aspect of Power, whereas Word and Hearing (śrotra and vāc) to Nāma, Name, as the expression of the aspect of Knowledge. These Knowledge and Power symbolised by Nāma and Rūpa, constitute the phenomenon of Consciousness in the Manifestation. It is by these Nāma and Rūpa that Brahman could enter into this creation.
[1] The Upanishads, p. 167
[2] Kena Upanishad 4.4 yad asya tvam yad asya deveṣv atha nu mimāṃsyām eva te manye viditam
[3] The Upanishads, p. 168
[4] The Upanishads, p. 167
[5] The Upanishads, p. 17
[6] Kena Upanishad 4.5 tasyaiṣa ādeśah yad etad vidyuto vyadyutad ā itīn nyamīmiṣad ā ity adhidaivata
[7] The Upanishads, pp 177-178
[8] ibid. 178
[9] Kena Up 1.1.1, the answer is implied: it is Brahman.
[10] AitUp 1.1.1: vāṅ me manasi pratiṣṭhitā mano me vāci pratiṣṭhitam, “My Speech is established in my Mind, and my Mind is established in my Speech.”
[11] The more elaborate hierarchy of the levels of consciousness is given in Appendix
[12] ChUp 3.18; KauUp 2.1-2
[13] KauUp 2.1 prāno brahmeti ha smāha kauṣitakiḥ
[14] BrhUp 1.5.7
[15] PrUp 1.4; TaitUp 3.7.1 prāṇe śarīram pratiṣṭhitam śarīre prāṇaḥ pratiṣṭhitaḥ
[16] The Secret of the Veda, p. 65
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2 Replies
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Very good!
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