Lights on the Upanishads

SHANDILYA VIDYA

“He should make the resolve "¹³⁷

The Chhandogya Upanishad devotes a short section (III.14) to a famous Sadhana of the early Vedantic seers, known as the śāndilya vidyā. Shandilya is a teacher, cited several times as an authority in the Shatapatha Brahmana: there his "Agni” is called śāndila as in the parallel instance of the kathaka brāhmaṇa naming the “ Celestial Fire", svargya agni, after Nachiketas. He is one of the great teachers of agnirahasya — what on the surface appears to be a fire ritual, but is clearly “ The Secret of the Mystic Fire” as the title itself suggests. It is here in the agnirahasya that we find the spiritual discipline associated with the name of Shandilya. It is briefly noted in the Brhadaranyaka (V.6) with slight variation. But the Chhandogya, quite in line with the usual brevity and compactness of these texts, yet quite adequately and thoroughly, gives us an idea of the Vidya, quoting Shandilya by name at the close of the instruction.

The opening sentence of the section contains the great affirmation of the Vedanta that All this is Brahman and that the All begins and ends and lives in the Brahman. The famous dictum is followed by an advice calling upon the aspirant to fix himself upon a definite idea of what he is and what he shall be. The Upanishad which has set out to give the Sadhana directs the Vedantic Sadhaka to make the choice with a firm will and form a purpose for himself and live the life conducive to its fruition. “He should make the resolve”, “sa kratum kurvita” is the exhortation.

What is the character of the resolve that one is called upon to make? How can one’s resolve affect the truth or change the order of things? How is it necessary? How is it to be made? What precisely is the idea that is to govern the approach for carrying out the resolve ? Besides, the exhortation that one should make the resolve is preceded by the statement that All is Brahman, etc.; if so how to make it a living truth is the question. The Upanishad proceeds to give the answer in the Sadhana it advocates as we shall see in this brief exposition.

First, let us take up the question of the resolve that is to be made. Kratu is the word used in the text; it means generally sacrifice in later Sanskrit. But this ancient term connotes will with wisdom as in the Riks, or later in such passages of the Upanishads, as krato smara. Resolve is indeed an inadequate English equivalent empty of the suggestions associated with the thought-content of the Sanskrit word. Here it is used in the sense of adhyavasāya, as Sanskrit commentators have explained, a firm will with a fixed idea and sense of certainty that “ This is so, not otherwise ”, evam etat na anyatha iti avicalaḥ pratyayaḥ.¹³⁸ A resolute will with a firm faith in one’s future is indispensable for the Sadhana to start with; for, the text says, it is the will, the resolve that is mostly the man, kratu-mayaḥ puruṣaḥ. Man’s present life in the world is the expression of a resolve, the working out of a will to be and to live as he does. It is again the resolve made now that works out the will and shapes the future. Therefore he must make sure of what he is to be in order that he may find the means of realising it now in this earthly existence. For one can retain and enjoy the fruits of achievement and maintain the stature one has grown to, after disappearance from the earth scene, yathā-kratur asmin loke puruṣo bhavati tathā itaḥ pretya bhavati. It is not to be supposed that the Upanishad teaches how best man can prepare for departure from this world. On the contrary, it states that the spiritual status attained by man on earth survives the close of his earthly life and continues to be his in the after-life and that it is the achievement here that matters most and determines the condition of his future. Elsewhere the Upanishads emphasise that if one has known It here, then there is Truth for him (for he has truly lived), otherwise great is the spiritual perdition. Therefore the wise discern THAT in all beings and become immortals on departure from here (Kena Up. II. 5). With a slight variation the same statement is made in the Brhadaranyaka (IV. 4. 14), the same emphasis is laid on knowing it, while here, ihaiva santo vayam. The question of an after-life, life in the other world is taken up to stress the continuance of the human soul (with all the essentials of the gains acquired in the life lived on earth) in other conditions of being, in other worlds of the Spirit to which it has journeyed. The Scriptures recognise the fact of death, the disintegration of the material body composed of the gross elements even in the case of those who have, while living in this world, realised the Immortal in the mortal, unaffected by or transcending all that is mortal. They also recognise the possibility that the physical body can become immune to death and disease and aging in the instance of one who gets endowed with a body re-formed by the Fire of Yoga—yogāgnimayam sariram (Sveta. Up. 11.12). But the question the Upanishad is occupied with here is not how to sustain and prolong the integration of the component elements of the gross body nor is it the control and the conquest of the forces that bring about the mortality of the living matter used as a vehicle and instrument of the ensouled mind and embodied life of the Person, the Purusha. The Upanishad does not apply itself to the problem of the physical mechanism meant and used for working out the potentialities of the Spirit housed in and yet presiding over the gross and organised substance of what we call the material body. It concerns itself with the subject of man’s realisation of his true Being, and its relation to the ultimate Truth, Brahman, while living on earth. Indeed, it is understood that the physical life is not the sole life and that the human soul does not end with its end, but continues its existence in another state of consciousness, in another plane of being corresponding to the condition and level of being it has risen to in the terrestrial existence. If man is to survive the physical death with a spiritual status, he has to establish in himself in the period of his bodily life on earth, points of contact with the higher powers of the Spirit, must have awakened and opened in him the subtle psychic and spiritual centres of knowledge and will communicating with the higher planes of being in other fields of Consciousness, in the supraphysical and still subtler and higher worlds that are the constituents of this Cosmos. For, thus and not otherwise, when the hour comes for the material body to fall or when the physical life has no further use for the Spirit, he can switch on to the light of his highest level, betake himself to the escalator of the Yoga Force that gives him the lift to those regions of the Spirit with which he has already familiarised himself in a way under conditions obtaining in embodied life on earth. This is a general law that holds good even in the case of one who has chosen rather who is chosen for the way of dissolution or absorption, laya, in the Being or a return to the Beyond that is absolved from all relations and conditions of being anywhere in the created existence. For the question of the states of the soul and survival does not arise at all in the case of one to whom realisation of Brahman is the absorption where he is, in the Absolute, and the very thought of this world or the next is out of question. But the man in whom the fire is not kindled for a life of the Spirit, gropes in the dark after death, revelling in things he ran after in embodied life; but only he who is able to know before the fall of the body is competent for a subtle and spiritual embodiment in other worlds (Katha VI.4.).

It is precisely to draw the aspirant’s attention to the necessity of discovering his connection with the deeper truths of his own being, of contacting himself with the innermost Truth, the Spirit, of forging and fashioning the link between himself, the outer man, and the deeper and larger powers of Consciousness and Force of the true Self, that the Upanishad formulates in a few words the substance and frame of connected ideas that have to mould and govern his attitude in the application of his will for the purpose in question.

In any attempt to seize the spirit of the language of these texts it is necessary to bear in mind certain features that are characteristic of these early Upanishads. The words and phrases used in these passages are surcharged with an irresistible force of implicit reasoning and power of direct appeal to the aspiring soul of man. It is an astounding fact—and this can hardly escape the notice of the student of the Upanishads — that they often neglect the etymological sense of well-known names and terms, such as indra, satya, sāman, and give their own interpretation in order to drive home the truth they have set themselves to deliver to those for whom they are intended. Or, they make a symbolic use even of the component sounds of a single syllable, as in the case of AUM, or construct new phrases, to suggest meanings packed with serious and profound thoughts and present to the perceiving mind vivid images of the Truth. The sentence declaring the celebrated Vedantic dictum with which begins the section we are considering affords a sovereign illustration of the liberty that the Upanishad takes in minting a phrase for making the Indefinable Brahman definite in idea to our intelligence. “ Taj-ja-lan" is the new coinage used to describe Brahman as That (tad) from which All is born (ja, part of the root jan), in which All is absorbed (la, for laya of root li), and in which All breathes (an, to breathe, live). We may note in passing the strange remark of some reputed translators that these are mystic syllables. While these scholars give the right interpretation of the word following the ancient Sanskrit commentators, their own remark does not improve but mystifies it; there is nothing mystical about the expression “ tajjalān” as has been shown above. There is, indeed, an archaic freedom quite manifest in the formation of the phrasing, but the etymology is correct. The economy evident in the structure of the word lends a symbolic colour, almost a symbolic value to the condensed expression which wears a mystical appearance. That is so, because the Upanishad here suggests to the mind with a revealing power of Truth an idea that drives to the core and shapes the thought vision encompassing the All and each in Brahman and as Brahman,—or an idea that fills the mind with a definiteness that All is born, breathes and is dissolved in that — Brahman.

sarvam khalvidam brahma;
tajjalān iti śānta upāsita.

To return to the text: it is true that All and each of the All, things, forces, forms and beings in this world or elsewhere are Brahman. If one realises this truth, certainly one can be tranquil in one’s worship of Brahman as such, since there is nothing to disturb the tranquillity. For, when one sees that everything is Brahman, the question of attraction or repulsion, desire or disgust does not arise to unsettle the calm of the being, the peace of the soul. But how to know, to realise It, to make It a truth of life, a fact of living experience is the problem. If Brahman is the One that forms and presents itself as the Many and is present in the Many, surely man can realise it by realising the whole truth of any part of the One, any one of the Many. While it is always possible for Brahman to reveal its truth to man from anywhere in the outer world as everything is Itself, the direct and comparatively easier line open to him is to go inside and discover the truth of himself, the truth of what he is as an embodied being here and what he could become as related to the Power of the Spirit that has shaped his present and to the One Brahman and the Self in the Many of which he is one.

Brahman does not present itself as the All, as if by chance or magic without order; the sole Supreme Reality does not become the Many without a method. Because It is the supreme Existence, the One Consciousness and Force, the Self which is the illimitable reservoir of all Knowledge and all Power, all processes proceed from that Intelligence, all methods are worked out by that Power, all the worlds are built and graded levels of Creation and layers of our being formed in and of the Substance and Force of that Conscious Being—Brahman. This Truth is summarily hinted and kept in the background; for the Upanishad has an eye on the practical value of the Truth, on that aspect of the Truth, that shows man as he finds himself to be in this world of Matter. He is an embodied being centered in between the innermost part, the core of his being, and the most outward expression; he is a mental person with a living body for instrumentation on the surface of this world existence. For the purpose of the Sadhana, our text starts with the utmost state and principle of development that man has arrived at and treats him first as an individualised Spirit leading him on to realise his right relations with the outward parts of his embodied being on the one hand, and on the other his true nature and relation with the All Being, the All Power, the Sole Self that penetrates into and embraces and transcends the All.

manomayaḥ puruṣaḥ

The Sadhana, then, begins straight with man, the mental being, whose position lies midway between the two extremes, the pure self-existent conscious Being and the inert inconscient Matter of which the gross body is made. The physical body is an obvious fact of life overwhelming the gross intelligence so much that it appears to be the sovereign basis and substance with life and mind included in it as its own product or by-product having no other ground or right of being independent of the material stuff. This coarser view holds good and is valid for the animal life and sensational mind; but to the deeper, finer and elevated side of man, the Upanishad presents a larger and higher view, correcting the lower standpoint that no longer applies to the mental man closely allied to, reflecting and acting for the Spirit. Man, teaches the scripture, is Purusha, Spirit, an individual, encased in the mind, as it were, mostly mentalised, manomaya. Whatever else he may be, in the inner existence or in the outward movements, his centre of being as he finds himself now is characteristically mental. For mind, the instrument of thought, is the highest and the most developed part of Nature he is endowed with. Thus, he is first mental in nature, enclosed in life by which the material body is animated and functions in the outer existence. If mind is closer to the Purusha, and a finer principle in Nature, what is its true function, its true character? The manas of the Manomaya Purusha in the Upanishads does not connote the same thing as it does in the later works. It is not a jumble of feelings and passions, desires and sensations, or even a sheer repertory of thoughts. It is, certainly, an instrument of thought and expression: but in its true part it is a calm, transparent, reflecting apparatus receiving and trans-mitting truths and true ideas shaping them into thought — forms, translating them into its own terms. When it reflects the desires, passions and other activities of the lower life, they are mentalised, and are reflex actions which do not really form part of the true character and function of the mind. That is why some later Upanishads speak of mind being twofold: the one is higher, param, and pure, śuddham, naturally calm; the other is the lower, aparam, and impure, aśuddham, soiling the mirror of mind with desires etc., screening its natural purity and quietude from being effective. When we consider the question of mind which is essentially calm in its pure nature, we can well appreciate the yogic disciplines that lay stress on the necessity of stilling the mind which would be an impossibility but for the presence of a natural calm in some essential parts of mind itself. Incidentally we may remark that this truth of yogic psychology is a standing challenge to some of the popular theories of modern Science that hold that an uninterrupted flow of thought is an essential characteristic of mind, which is the very opposite of quietude. Needless to say that this is not valid in the light of yogic experience. Such is the mind that encases the puruṣa.

prāņa-śariraḥ

But the mental person, manomaya puruṣa, is embodied in life, prāna-sariraḥ (lit. one whose body is life, prāņa). It is necessary to note the significance of this statement, especially in view of the fact that the physical body i: left out of consideration; for the latter is just a framework of praņa acting on matter, and the durable subtle body which can live independent of the physical is the prāņic body of the manomoya puruṣa. Though the prāņa-sarira can move and act without the material body, it uses the latter for its expression in the physical world. What we call the activity of the body is only a part of the prāṇic force. It is the prāņa that embodies the manomaya puruṣa, while the physical body is just an outer instrument dependent on, and in fact, built and shaped by the prāṇa which is the true vehicle for the mental Spirit; or, in the words of another text (Mundaka II 2-7), the mental person is the leader of the prāņic body, prāņa-śarira-netā. It must be noted that prāņa is not merely a force of life, but a body formed of the substance of the Life-world; for there is Substance variously constituting the worlds of Matter, Life, Mind and still other higher and subtler principles of creation. What is the character of the prāņa, of which the subtle body is formed and led by the mental purușa? The prāņa, like the mind, in the Upanishads has a larger connotation; it is not life-force alone as in later religious philosophies. In its origin, as well as in its pure form embodying the puruṣa, it is Consciousness-Force as is taught in some texts. Here it is a body, an instrument and vehicle in which is condensed a double force, the twin-power of knowledge and action, vijñāna-kriyāśakti-dvaya-sammurchitaḥ, as the ancient commentaries explain. If the mental puruşa is endowed with such a life-body a concentrated subtle mass of Consciousness and Force, what is it that degrades it in its actual functioning as we understand it? Just as the mind has a higher level, an inner layer, which is pure and calm and transparent enclosing the puruṣa, the prāņa also has a higher and purer part that embodies the mentalised Spirit, while the lower and impure is riddled with desires, thirst and hunger of different kinds and their consequential activities that disfigure the true and splendid expression of the higher prāņa in its pristine purity. Prāņa is essentially the dynamis of the Spirit. If mind is an instrument of thought, expressive of knowledge, jñāna, prāņa is an instrument of action, more truly, an instrument for the expression of the Spirit’s will in action. In the embodied being it is active, placed between the material body and mind, links and helps them in their functionings. As has been already stated, the prāņa is not a mere life-force that moulds and carries out the functions of the body as a whole and its organs, but is a subtle body, lingátmā of the puruşa who is mostly mentalised while retaining in a way his self irrespective of the life-body or mental case which he uses for working out the Truth-Will, satya-sankalpa, of the Self to which our text presently refers.

bhārūpaḥ satya-sankalpaḥ

We have so far spoken of the puruṣa in the human being as mental in nature and embodied in life. What is the form and character of that puruşa himself? Light is his form, bhā-rūpaḥ, says the Upanishad. In other words, this Purusha is a soul, having a form which is Light. Or, as another text of this Vidya has it, “Light is his Truth”, bhäs-satyaḥ. The scripture sets at rest any doubt that may arise in regard to the meaning of the word, bhā-rūpaḥ by making it clear that Light is not a fanciful figure, though it is often used as a symbol of knowledge, as also a figure of Truth. A figure and symbol it is, but a living symbol so figuring the Spirit, Purusha, that it is visible to an inner vision; for Light-form is visible as all forms are, though the visibility is confined to the range of the inner vision.

This Purusha as Light, as a form of the Spirit, should not be mistaken for the formless Self. An individualised Spirit, he is a soul-formation for embodied existence, willed and effected by the Self of all selves. To say that the Spirit, this Purusha is bhā-rūpah, has a form of Light and is visible to the inner sight may at first scandalise the dialectic intelligence of the Vedantin; but it must be borne in mind that it is the soul-form that is light which is visible and not the Self, not the Atman that sees, and makes others seen. The Purusha is luminous, his Will is the Truth-Will, i.e., the Truth in its aspect of Will; he has no desires apart from the desires of the Truth Being that manifest themselves through the True Will of the Ishvara, his Lord and Self. What we call the human desires are not those of this luminous Soul, the Purusha, but are part of the lower workings and coverings of the Prana, smokes over the flaming force of Will of the Purusha, and they dim and distort the true Will, running in a vicious circle until they learn the futility of straying away from the unfaltering lines of the Truth-Will and the Truth-Idea in the active gaze and disposition of the supreme Self. Whatever Desire there is in him, in this Soul, is a true Will that knows no failure, satya-sankalpa; for it is the true Will transmitted to the manomaya purușa from the Self who is spoken of as Akasha-Atman, in order to denote the all-pervasive and immanent nature of the Divine Being, the Self of the individual. The true Desire, sātya-kāma or true Will, satya-sankalpa in the puruşa is covered by the outer impurities and falsehood, anytāpidhānāḥ, and without understanding the true Desire which is resplendent with the glorious power and light of the true Self within, men are ordinarily carried away by false desires, anſtena pratyūdhaḥ (Chhandogya VIII. 3).

ākāśātmā

Then we come to the question of Atman, what our text calls “ Akashatma ”. He is the original Eternal Being of whom the mental purusha is an emanation, a soul-formation of the Spirit, or a ray of the Truth-Sun, a spark of the Divine Fire, agner visphu-linga, as some texts have it. He is the creator of All, sa hi sarvasya karta; all work, the work of the whole creation is His, sarvakarmā; all true desires are His, sarvakāmā, because His is the sole unfaltering Will by which they are fulfilled. The universe as a whole, every part of it and each detail in it, all beings, all souls, all bodies and their organs are in him and for him, sarva-gandhaḥ, sarva-rasaḥ. With the utmost care and interest expressed in this stupendous work of the World-creation, he encompasses the all, sarvam idam abhyattaḥ; notwithstanding all this, he remains in Himself, Silent, avāki (literally speechless), and stays unconcerned, anādarah.

This Atman who is too subtle for comprehension like the Akasha is everywhere present, the universal Being, the Creator who constitutes the worlds and beings and directs them and their forces. He is at the same time awake in the heart of things seated within in the deepest depths, in the heart of man antar hrdaye. Silent and unconcerned, yet he is the Divine Being within transmitting this Truth-Will to the luminous soul of the mental person, manomaya purușa, embodied in the prāņa, for its realisation and expression in the outer existence. He is smaller, aạiayān, than the smallest we can perceive or conceive of. He is the Divine in the heart of every creature, the Divine as the Individual but not a finite Being although he founds Himself in the limited and the conditioned existence, and supports the individuality as the Individual. For this self-differentiation, the self-limiting itself is an expression of the all-seeing Power of His Infinite Being. He is greater, jyāyān, than the Earth, the sky, the High Heaven and all other worlds, greater and vaster than the greatest and vastest of our comprehension. Both as subtle or small, anuḥ and great or large, mahān, he transcends our understanding. He is therefore the Beyond, the Transcendent, the Atman, who is also the Universal Self and Godhead of all existence and in all creatures, and is yet the same Self, the Self of my being, eșa me ātmā. The Divine Master of my individuality whose Truth-Will constitutes the poise and attitude of the Purusha encased in the mind with prāņic body for action and expression in the vast field of this created Existence.

In calling upon us to worship Brahman as the All, the source and substance and support of the All, the Upanishad at the very start, as we have seen, rightly stresses the need for a sublime calm to be maintained in the worship, śānta upāsita. But this calm, which forms an essential limb of the worship is not the supreme Peace, parā śānti, which itself is a realisation, an achievement in the Sadhana. A settled quiet of the mind, a certain poise and peaceful disposition of the being, aloof from the common distractions of life and its interests is all that the Upanishad means by śānti as a condition of the upāsanā. This is so, because the worship which implies concentration on what is worshipped would not be possible in the face of other objects of interest overpowering the mind with their claim to be enshrined in the quietude and disturbing the poise of the being. When one’s interest is ardent, intense and sufficient, no effort is needed for concentration; there is an effortless focussing of the attentive seeings and thinkings on the object of adoration, a free concentration, a spontaneous gathering of all feelings and thoughts opening to the realisation of the Truth, of the subject meditated upon or the object worshipped. Therefore to be possessed of an ardour and keen interest is indispensable for any sadhana. But even sufficient interest may prove futile in the absence of right conception and correct attitude to justify and reinforce the strength of the interest. It is for that purpose that the Upanishad places before man his true position in relation to his embodied existence here as well as to his origins in the Brahman, who is the Self higher and larger than all the worlds, yet Immanent, the Self of the Universal, and who is also the Self in man, the True Individual. If man chooses to realise his true nature and get restored to the exalted place he is entitled to as his spiritual and divine heritage, Brahman, the Ishvara in the heart as his own Self is watchful and waits for the hour.

But is there choice for man? Is he free to make up his mind one way or the other? Whatever may be the ultimate character of a free choice or free will, it is an undeniable fact—this is a truth of practical importance in life — that man has a sense of freedom, feels free to make his choice in certain spheres of thought and action, though his freedom may not be unchecked and absolute or his choice always right or fruitful. Therefore as a practical step, it is a prerequisite of the Sadhana that man must make up his mind to have a clear conception of the Truth and choose his line. For he can choose the common run and be bound to the routine of ordinary life and think that he is dust and to dust he returns. Really, there need be no choice at all in the case of one who has not ernerged sufficiently from the murk of animal life and lower mind with their ignorant, impure and false workings – desires and passions, crude impulses and instinctive grabbings at things small and low and brutish that effectively cover the higher thought-mind and cloud the light of Truth in the human Spirit. The choice, then, is possible and necessary for the man in whom the inner and finer parts close to the Spirit, the purușa, are developed enough to be dominant factors, arisen to the heights befitting him, the mental being.

Even so, the aspiring man can choose any line, for there are many lines of spiritual life leading to the goal as envisaged and chosen by the aspirant. One can envisage the Truth, as Pure Existence, sat, and discover the road to reach it; one can conceive of it as Non-being, asat, and find the appropriate path; one could start with the faith that all creation is myth, mithyā, and nothing but Name and Form, and by emptying the mind of all ideas and names and forms, making it a sort of sūnya, could arrive at the acme of perfection in what is called the path of “neti, neti” (not thus, not thus). These negative methods of approach by reducing or renouncing the activities of life and rejection of thoughts are powerful in their own way and hit the aim, when successful. But most of the Sadhanas especially the Vidyas of the Chhandogya advocate the positive method, choosing one aspect or other of the Truth to start with, culminating in the attainment of Brahman, sāmpad, as it is termed in the Brahmasutras (IV.4.1); the latter’s conclusions are based on the Chhandogya text which conceives of the goal in terms of a positive attainment in, sampatti. “I shall become, I shall attain ” (abhisāmbhavitāsmi, sampatsye, sampadye), are the terms often used in the text. This affirmative statement in regard to the crowning stage of the Sadhana, is the positive counterpart of the negative term, mukti, release from sorrow and suffering, or liberation from the bonds of the world of Ignorance. What we have to bear in mind in this context is that though mukti, liberation, is the sine qua non for a solid spiritual attainment, it is a negative conception of which the purpose is achieved in the achievement of sampat—a positive state and goal, arrived at by positive methods on which stress is laid in the Chhandogya Upanishad guiding the author of the Vedanta Sutras to conclude with the goal of iśvara, saguna brahman of the later Vedantins.

The Vidya we have been considering in this short discourse is one of the renowned Sadhanas that employ positive methods of approach to the ultimate Reality in its relation to the human being. The feature that distinguishes it from other Sadhanas lies in the fact that it is comprehensive in its survey and presents a synthetic view of man as a whole. Man is called upon first to recognise that he is Spirit, puruşa, really superior to mind and life, not to speak of the body, and live in that truth, look and act on that basis. He is not to renounce the mind that is nearer to the purușa and encases him, but to maintain it in its pristine purity that it may reflect the Truth and receive the Truth-Knowledge; nor is the life that embodies the mental person to be rejected, but to be kept free from the impurities that clog, for the true expression of the Will in action. The puruṣa is neither mental nor vital in his essential nature, but a luminous soul, with a true Will: even as this soul is an emanation or formation in Nature of the Divine, the Lord and Self in the core of the being and as such one with that Consciousness, this will also is one with the Will of the Lord aglow in the Heart. Man has to renounce nothing, as he has nothing to renounce, for the mind and life and body are in their own kinds parts of the Universal; the soul itself is a ray and form of the Supreme Being. The only thing he has to renounce is the notion and sense and feeling that he is somebody independent and apart from others, and has the right to possess things which in reality are forms and substances and qualities of the Supreme Being, Brahman, as the Lord of the Universe.

When man realises that it is the misuse of an innate capacity by which he identifies himself with what he is not or what is not his that leads him to the wrong end and proves false to his true being, when he discovers the necessity of learning and learns the right use of his native power of identifying himself with the Spirit superior to Matter and Mind and Life and discerns the true Will, allows nothing to intervene between himself and the Truth-Will, when he makes way and the passage is clear for the Soul to radiate and manifest the Truth-Consciousness of the Self, then there dawns the realisation — “Verily, All this is Brahman”; even what he calls his mind, his life, his soul, his will are not his in the ego-bound personal sense, but are individual receptacles, channels, centres, power-houses of the All Mind, All Life, All Soul, All Will of the One Supreme; it is no longer the human soul, jiva, that is endowed with mind and life and the rest, but it is He who is the adorable and adored, the True Individual, the Soul, the Light of Truth, encasing Himself in the Mind and sheathed in Life for His own purpose in this Cosmic manifestation.

This is the famous Shandilya Vidya of the Upanishads; this is the prime necessity it urges upon the upåsaka that once he recognises this Truth, then he should proceed with certitude and faith —“He should make the resolve, sa kratum kurvita”.