A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c9.s5.2

Language: English

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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.)