A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s5: Effects of realisation on the Mystic
A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s5
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Effects of realisation on the Mystic
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harassed his mind, and the actions from whose result he used to suffer, break away immediately; while one may know the perfected Mystic by this one principal mark, that he has left no doubts to solve. If he is once for all in sure possession of reality—what doubts can he any further have? Then, thirdly, in the Muṇḍakopanishad, we have the great contrast between the want of power in the Mystic before Self-realisation, and the obtainment of power after it. “Though the individual Soul was lying so long with the universal Soul on the same tree, he was yet infatuated and was grieving on account of his complete impotence, but when he has once become atoned with the Highest, who is the source of all power, his grief vanishes immediately, and he begins to participate in the other’s infinite power” (S. 24. c). Fourthly, we have in the Taittirīya Upanishad a classic description of the illimitable bliss that a perfected Mystic experiences after his communion with the Highest—a description which we have had occasion to notice in our account of the beatific calculus in a previous chapter. But the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad, in the vein of an almost erotic mysticism, tells us further that the only earthly analogue which we can have for the bliss of God-realisation,—indeed a very imperfect and partial analogue after all,—is the bliss arising from union with a dear wife. “Just as when a man is embraced by his dear wife, he knows nothing outside nor anything inside;
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similarly when the individual Self is embraced by the universal Self, he knows nothing outside nor anything inside; for he has attained an end which involves the fulfilment of all other ends, being verily the attainment of Ātman which leaves no other ends to be fulfilled” (S. 24. d). We do not know how far to justify this analogy. But it seems after all that there might be a difference of kind between the two blisses which the Bṛhadāraṇyakopanishad is comparing, instead of merely a difference of degree ; or, at least, that the one kind of bliss is so insignificant as contrasted with the other that there is as much analogy between them as there is between the light of a candle and the light of the sun. Further, all such erotic analogues have this defect in them, that those who betake themselves to sexual enjoyment may be thereby vainly made to imagine that they are after all experiencing an iota at least of the great divine bliss. In our opinion, it is foolish to regard the relation between the Self and God as in any way analogous to the relation between the bride and the bridegroom, and still more foolish to regard it as analogous to the inverted relation between the bridegroom and the bride as in certain pseudo-mystic teachings. In fact, there ought to be and can be no analogue for the unique relation between the Self and God in the state of ecstasy.
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To return to our argument, however, fifthly, we are told in the Taittirīya Upanishad that the direct result of the enjoyment of divine bliss is that the Mystic is divested once for all of all feeling of fear. The one kind of emotion kills the other, and the feeling of bliss kills once for all the emotion of fear. Whom and what may such a perfected Mystic fear, when he finds infinite joy in all directions and at all times ? “ He becomes fearless,” says the Taittirīya Upanishad, “ because he has obtained a lodgment in that invisible, incorporate, indefinable, fearless, supportless support of all ” (S. 24. e). Finally, we are told in the Chhāndogya Upanishad that “ if such a Mystic should ever want to have any end fulfilled at all, he should wait upon the Ātman, and pray to him, without the slightest touch of egoism, for the fulfilment of his desire : immediately is the end fulfilled for him for which he had prayed to God" (S. 25. a). "The Ātman," says the Chhāndogya Upanishad, "is sinless, without age, without death, without fear, without any hunger or thirst, and has all his desires or ends fulfilled. This Ātman should be sought after; this Ātman should be known. He who realises the Ātman in this way after having sought after him, for him all the worlds are gained, and all desires fulfilled" (S. 25. b).
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The Muṇḍakopanishad tells us also that "a man can have all his desires fulfilled, and obtain any world he may seek, even if he only waits upon and worships a Mystic who has realised the Self" (S. 25. c). We thus see, on the whole, that the immediate effects of God-realisation upon the Mystic are the entire abatement of bodily excitement, the resolution of all doubts, the obtainment of infinite power, the enjoyment of illimitable joy, the destruction of all fear, and the fulfilment of any end that may be contemplated by the Mystic.
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17. The Upanishads have preserved for us a few mystic monologues which contain the essence of the raptures of spiritual experience. The Sage of the Muṇḍakopanishad, when he came to realise the immortal Brahman, fell into mystic raptures when he saw that "the Brahman was before him and behind him, to his right and to his left, above and below," and broke forth into the Leibnitzian exclamation that "this was the best of all possible worlds" (S. 26). He considered himself fortunate that he was ever born into this world at all, for, was it not his appearance on the terrestrial globe that led him, by proper means and through adequate stages, to the vision of the Godhead wherever his eye was cast? The Sage Vāmadeva of the Bṛihadāraṇyakopanishad came to know that “ just as, at the origin of things, Brahman came to self-consciousness and then understood that it was verily the All, similarly, whoever among the gods, or the mortals, or the sages comes to self-consciousness becomes verily the All ”; and thus the Sage, to whom the infinite past was like an eternal now, broke forth into the exclamation that “ he it was who had lived in Manu, and that he it was who had given light to the Sun ” (S. 27),—even like the Maratha saint Tukaram, who, at a later date, exclaimed that, in bygone ages, when Śuka had gone to the mountains to reach Self-realisation, he was himself present to watch that Great Act in spirit, if not in body.
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The Mystic of the Chhāndogya Upanishad declares that even as a horse might shake its mane, similarly had he himself shaken off all his sin, that even as the Moon might come out entire after having suffered an eclipse from Rāhu, even so, having been freed from the mortal coil, had he obtained the eternal life in the Ātman (S. 28). Then, again, the utterances of Triśaṅku in the Taittirīya Upanishad are remarkable for the grandeur of the ideas involved in them. After Triśaṅku had reached Self-realisation, he tells us he felt as if he was the “ Mover of the Tree.” What is the Tree to which Triśaṅku is referring? It may be the Tree of the Body, or it may even be the Tree of the World. It is not uncustomary for Upanishadic and post-Upanishadic writers to speak of the Body or the World as verily a Tree. In fact, Triśaṅku tells us that, like the true Soul that he was, he could move the Tree of the bodily or worldly coil. He tells us, furthermore, that his glory was “ like the top of a mountain,” which is as much as to say that when he had come to realise the Self, he felt that everything else looked so mean and insignificant to him from the high pedestal of Ātmanic experience that he felt as if he was on the top of all things whatsoever. Triśaṅku tells us furthermore that "the source from which he had come was Purity itself." May this not refer to the Purity of the Divine Life from which all existence springs?
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Then, again, Triśaṅku tells us that he was as it were "the Immortal Being in the Sun,"—an identification Īśāvāsya-wise of the Individual and Universal Spirit. Furthermore, Triśaṅku says that he regarded himself as "a treasure of unsurpassable value," referring probably to the infinite wealth of Ātmanic experience that he had obtained. Finally, he tells us that he was verily "the intelligent, the immortal and the imperishable One," thus identifying himself with Absolute Spirit (S. 29). Finally, that greatest of the Mystics whose post-ecstatic monologue is preserved for us in the Taittirīya Upanishad, tells us in a passage of unsurpassed grandeur throughout both Upanishadic as well as post-Upanishadic literature that when he had transcended the limitations of his earthly, etheric, mental, intellective, and beatific sheaths, he sat in the utter silence of solipsistic solitude, singing the song of universal unity: "How wonderful, how wonderful, how wonderful; I am the food, I am the food, I am the food; I am the food-eater, I am the food-eater, I am the food-eater;
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I am the maker of their unity, I am the maker of their unity, I am the maker of their unity," which utterances only mean, metaphysically, that he was himself all matter and all spirit as well as the connecting link between them both, and epistemologically, that he was himself the subject-world and the object-world as well as the entire subject-object relation—a stage of spiritual experience which has been well characterised by a modern idealistic thinker as a stage where the difference between the field, the fighter, and the strife vanishes altogether—the culmination of the unitive song being couched in terms which are only too reminiscent of like mystic utterances from other lands, "I am the first-born of the Law; I am older than the gods; I am the navel of Immortality; he that gives me, keeps me; him, who eats all food, I eat as food; I envelop the whole universe with splendour as of the Sun" (S. 30.)