There are eleven major upanishads, most commonly read, included in a total of 188 published ones. Some of the passages even in the minor ones are so wonderfully beautiful that when one reads them alone one wants to share them with someone, with friends like our readers. Many of these texts have been memorized for thousands of years; for ever since their inception they have been committed to memory in an unbroken lineage. Now in a population of 850 million in India there are 2350 pundits who against all odds of continuous poverty and lack of support still commit to memory the four Vedas and many of the Upanishads comprising perhaps 10,000, perhaps 20,000 perhaps 25,000 verses. They take their children on their knee when the children are two or three years old and teach. Not a single intonation has been changed. These people are known as reciters. This author is not a reciter but only a commentator. You are fortunate sometimes if you can hear the authentic intonation which is hypnotic; its sound waves alone uplift you, leave alone the meaning when understood. Here are some passages I must share with you. The Subala Upanishad, the Upanishad of the Good Child, is very appropriate reading for us since we all are trying to be good children to our Great Father. The selections Here are some random selections from that Upanishad. Here is the seventh section of this Upanishad.
Inside your body
placed in a secret cave is
the unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the earth,
who moves within the earth,
whom the earth does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body are the waters,
who moves within the waters,
whom the waters do not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the lights and the fires,
who moves within the lights and the fires,
whom the lights and the fires do not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the winds and the airs,
who moves within the winds and the airs,
whom the wind and the airs do not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the space,
who moves within the space
whom the space does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the mind,
who moves within the mind,
whom the mind does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is buddhi, the faculty of intelligence,
who moves within the faculty of intelligence,
whom the faculty of intelligence does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is ahamkara, the ego-maker,
who moves within ahamkara the ego-makers,
whom ahamkara the ego-maker does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is chitta, the mind-field,
who moves within the mind-field
whom the mind-field does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is avyakta, the unmanifest Nature,
who moves within avyakta, the unmanifest Nature,
whom the unmanifest does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is the imperishable, akshara, the sound within us,
who moves within akshara, the imperishable sound
whom the akshara does not know.
The unborn, the One, the eternal
whose body is death and the principle of mortality
who moves within death
whom death does not know.
He is the innermost atman,
the self of all beings;
Free of all blemish, devoid of all stain, sinless, celestial, divine;
brilliant, shining one, single one
--Narayana--the Spirit who flows and contemplates upon the waters.
The same One who is unborn, the one, the eternal.
the great Narayana, the supreme Spirit
who contemplates upon the waters of all individual spirits gave this
wisdom to Apantara-tamas.
Apantara-tamas gave it to Brahma.
Brahma gave it to Ghora Angirasa
Ghora Angirasa gave it to Raikva
Raikva gave it to Rama.
Rama gave it to all the living beings.
This, thus, is the discipline and teaching of nirvana.
This is the discipline and teaching of Veda - the wisdom.
Here is a reading from the eighth section of Subala-Upanishad, the Upanishad of the Good Child.
Within your body is hidden,
well within a secret cave
this everpure One,
this atman, the spiritual self.
Within this body
which is composed of fat and flesh and fluids
ever thrown about, ever flung about
the body whose reality is no more than that of a painted mural.
To seek pleasure from this body is to look for light from the candle flame that is painted in a mural.
Its reality is like the illusory vision of a city in the clouds.
It is as though you open up the various layers of a banana tree trunk, one inside the other, the other inside the next one; and then in the interiormost, find nothing.
In this senseless body, fickle, impermanent, like a bubble on the surface of the water, yeah, within this body, dwells atman the spiritual self whose form is beyond contemplation, beyond imagination; a celestial shining light untouched, everpure; His is only a body of light.
This spiritual self has no other form; he is the lord of all, beyond thought; bodiless.
Those who know see this hidden in the secret cave: the immortal one shining brilliantly; nothing but a being of bliss.
There are four Upanishads which have in their title the word bindu. The word bindu means a drop, a dot, a point. One of these is Brahma-bindu Upanishad. The Upanishad of the drop, the dot, the point of Brahman. Then comes Nada-bindu Upanishad. The drop, the dot, the point of Nada, Supreme sound. Tejo-bindu Upanishad is the third. The word tejo or tejas means splendour, light, luminosity, glory, brilliance. A Drop-of-Brilliance-Upanishad. The last of these four is Dhyana-bindu Upanishad: the drop, the dot; the point of meditation Upanishad.
The following reading is from Tejo-bindu Upanishad, chapter 5, verse 89 onwards.
All the Upanishads teach that all things that you experience in this world are like horns of a hare, especially the resolve you have made that you are the body.
I am the body: This resolve constitutes the inner instrument, the mind.
I am the body: this resolve constitutes this great vast universe of all the cycles of coming and going.
I am the body: this resolve is the bondage of your personality.
I am the body: this resolve is the sorrow, the pain, the suffering.
I am the body: this appearance alone is hell.
I am the body: this resolve is all this universe.
I am the body: this resolve is the knot of the heart.
I am the body: this knowledge is ignorance.
I am the body: this knowledge is not; it is as a nothing.
I am the body: this approach of intelligence is nescience, opposed to knowledge.
I am the body: this knowledge is duality.
I am the body: this resolve gives the false appearance of what truly is your life force.
I am the body: this knowledge alone is your limitation.
I am the body: this resolve is the only sin, the great sin.
I am the body: this approach of intelligence is filled with flaw and illness.
Whatever resolve is centered on this body constitutes the three tapas, the three burnings; the passion; the anger; the bondage; the network of intentions; all sorrow; all calculation: all this is of the mind.
Mind is this whole universe.
Mind is your greatest enemy.
Mind is this world made of the cycles of coming and going.
Mind is the three worlds.
Mind alone is all sorrows.
Mind is the age and decay, birth and death.
Mind is time.
Mind is stain.
Mind is the intent and the resolve.
Mind carries on the continuity of a limited life force in the body.
Mind becomes the chitta, manas, and ahamkara.
Mind is the great bondage, the inner instrument.
Mind is the earth; Mind is the waters; Mind is fires; Mind is these great winds; Mind is all this vast space.
Mind alone is the sound; the touch; the form and visibility: the taste and the odour; the five sheaths are all products of mind.
Wakefulness, dream, sleep and whatever else is all constituted of mind.
All the deities and protectors of the various quarters, all that is visible, all that is insentient; all pairs of opposites and duality; All this is mind's ignorance.
All this that you have created through the intention of your mind, now know it to be a determined fact that this is nasti: is not; it is not; this whole world, not even the relationships of teacher and student, all this is Not at all.
So says the Upanishad.
And now a selection from the sixth chapter of same Upanishad:
Ever blissful Brahman, the Only One, the solitudiness one.
At all times by itself, eternal, immutable, ever tranquil;
never changing its form, free of flaw, free of illness.
I am that.
Everything else, if it is other than me, is a myth.
Anything other than this I is a myth, like a mirage in the desert;
like claiming that one is afraid of what the son of a barren woman
said;
that an elephant was killed with the horn of a rabbit;
that I quenched my thirst by drinking the waters of a mirage;
that someone was wounded with the horn of a human being;
that one has become a citizen of the city in the sky in the clouds;
that the sky is really blue;
that the glinting shell on the sea beach is actually silver;
that I'm wearing the ornaments made of that silver:
If these statements were true the world is real.
If someone got bitten by a rope that looked like a snake then there is a world that is real.
If one can state that with a silver arrow one extinguished the flames of a conflagration then there is a world.
That there is a feast going in the wilderness of an uninhabited forest, perhaps then this world too has been created.
If one can cook by burning the trunk of a banana tree then perhaps there is a world.
That a newborn baby girl cooked an entire meal;
that the darkness was expelled by the lamps painted in a picture:
if these statements were true the world is real.
That a person who died a month ago was seen walking;
that sour buttermilk can taste like sweet milk;
that the milk that has been milked from the cow's udder has been put
back into the udder;
that the ocean is constituted of dust flying about from the ground;
if these statements are true the world is real.
That an elephant was tied up with a single hair from the shell of a
turtle;
that from a fibre taken from the interior of a lily stalk a whole mountain
was moved;
that a number of horses were used to stop the movement of the ocean;
that the fire was burning downwards;
if these statements could be true the world perchance is real.
If the flames of a fire were cool;
that on the flames of the fire a lily was growing;
that the highest mountain of the world was placed in the interior of a
lotus flower;
that this mountain was then swallowed by a buzzing bee;
that a mosquito could kill a lion;
if these statements are true the world is real.
That all the three worlds could be condensed into the interior of a speck;
That the fire of a heap of straw is an eternal entity;
if you can prove that these statements are true we shall accept that the
world is real.
That what you have seen in the dream is as real as what you see in the
wakeful state;
that the torrent of a river was frozen;
that a hungry man was filled by eating fire;
that someone congenitally blind examined the quality of gems;
if these statements can be proved true the world can be proved as real.
That someone congenitally impotent could enjoy marital bliss;
that a whole chariot was made from the horns of rabbits;
or that a newborn girl was marriageable;
that a crow had the qualities of a swan;
that a donkey fought against a lion;
that an ass learned to walk with the graceful gait of an elephant;
that the full moon was giving out heat like the sun;
that the nodes of the shadow of the moon were real, took a form and
became a planet;
that a seed was completely roasted, then was planted, and a tree grew
from it;
that a poor man enjoyed everything that the rich man enjoys;
that a dog chased a lion away and then drank an ocean;
that the sky fell upon the heads of human beings;
that a flower growing in the sky spread its fragrance;
that a forest grew in empty space;
that there was no one present but his reflection was in the mirror;
that the heart of a wise man was known to the ignorant:
if these statements were true, the world is real.
Understand all this differentiation of dualities that we assume as real is
in truth a production of maya, the creative power of the great Brahman.
When you begin to take it seriously you forget that "I am Brahman" and you say: I am the body. Then the knot of the heart is formed.
Whenever such doubts begin to arise in your mind, resort to the contemplation of the nature of Brahman as yourself;
and guard this jewel of the knowledge of the spiritual self from the thief that is the non-self.
Having determined that "I am Brahman" drop even the "I" from that;
and all the assumed realities of the false world will disappear like a
jasmine that a woman fell asleep holding in her palm;
it withered, wilted, fell away, vanished.
Even if you practice thus once, you become Brahman.
Reading this one may be incredulous. One wants to challenge these statements; wants to say: If someone pinches me do I not feel a real hurt? In answer, let us understand what we mean by real and unreal. What is meant by reality? I have explained this a little in my oral commentaries on the Bhagavad-gita in chapter 2 referring to the verse where the great Shankaracharya defines the word Sat - Real. He states that when we look at something, and after a while we have to change our mind about it, we know our first impression was wrong. "Unreal" means that about which one has to change one's mind--so says Shankara on Bhagavad-gita II. In the night you are walking in a deserted area and you see a ghost waving all over the place, it is a white indeterminate shape . You are scared. If you are brave and if you know the principle that you should always go towards what you're afraid of, and examine the source of your fear, you will approach it. You will find it was nothing but a shirt or a cloak hanging. Someone had left it there hanging on a branch. So the ghost was not real. When you saw it more closely, you dismissed the earlier idea of a ghost. Or let us take the stock example in the Vedanta philosophy, of a rope and a snake. A rope that appeared like a snake never bit. As a rope it was real. As a snake it was not real. But first you saw it as a snake. You were afraid, and that sense of reality of a snake caused you to run, to run for a stick, and a light; but then you came back and saw in the light that it was no snake. The philosophers say that actually it is the same with all the things we experience. We keep changing our minds about them: so how can they be real? Or look at your body. A child's body that was your body is no longer a child's body. You changed your view of it. Or, a dead body, a body that has been cremated, that's ashes. So also are all concepts of physical reality. You look at an object, it looks solid but it is only made up of cells, and molecules. Look at them closely. They are subatomic particles. They are simply charges of energy. How can charges of energy occupy space and become solids? As you look closely and deeper and deeper, and look at the subtlety of things, you find that your previous view is untenable.
Same also is true of our relationships. In my series on women saints done in San Francisco area in 1990 I told the story of the great mystic lady of Kashmir by the name of Lalla whose songs are sung even today by both the Muslim Sufis and Hindu Yogis of Kashmir. We need not repeat her entire story here but only what is relevant to our argument.
Once there was a woman in a certain village in Kashmir who gave birth to a son. The midwife congratulated the mother, the priest came to bless the child and the mother inquired: why are you all congratulating me! What is my relationship with this child? They were confused. They thought the shock and the pain of giving birth must have shaken her mind somewhat! Soon after, the lady died. But before she died, she said to the puzzled priest: you do not understand my question? A year from now in such and such village a colt will be born. And that colt will answer the question what it is that you are puzzled about and why I'm asking as to my relationship with this child. The priest went to the village at the right time and indeed a colt was born there. The question was put to the colt. But the colt said: I cannot answer this question right now. I'm born, but I am leaving the body right away. However after such and such time in such and such village, such and such animal will be born. He will answer the question. In this way it went on; five births one after the other. And, then the last animal said: a girl will be born somewhere such and such place. Indeed, a girl was born in a village and she was given the name Lalla, the mystic, the one who had realized that she was no other than the great mother of the universe. Lalla. When she was born people did not recognize who she really was. When they saw her mystic tendencies people began to worry about her and got her married to a suitable young man! Who was the suitable young man? It was that young man to whom the first woman had given birth five births ago. She was the same one born as Lalla. In the meantime he had grown into a young man. It is thus we can understand the question that the dying mother asked, "What is my relationship with this child?"
Let us take the story of the great saint in the area known as Maharastra, the lady named Bahina Bai. She was a married woman of high realization who was granted the inspiration of poetry in a moment of enlightenment and thereafter sang the songs of praise to the divine being. Before her death she told her last ten incarnations to her son, because the son was feeling sad about the impending death of his mother. The mother told him about the so-called "reality" that is impermanence. Reality in our philosophy however means eternity. That which remains eternally the same,--that is the reality we are after. It is in this sense that the chapter from the Upanishad paraphrased above speaks of the unreality of this universe. If it is not eternal, if it does not remain eternally the same--then it is unreal. It is impermanent. We change our minds about it. We keep changing our minds, one way or the other regarding its appearance, regarding its beauty, regarding our emotional association with it. Today I own a house. That is reality. Tomorrow I sell it. It's no more my house. Where is the reality of my ownership? So in this way you need to understand the levels of reality.
Elsewhere in the Upanishads we are told of skies and spaces. 1) There is a universal space. 2) There is space within the waters in a lake. 3) There is space that appears as blue sky. 4) There is appearance of the reflection of that space that appears as a blue sky: That reflection is in the water. So, when you speak of skies and spaces which one of these skies and spaces do you refer to? When I was a child, I recall, during the monsoon seasons we went out for a walk. We often went to an area where nowadays we are helping a leper colony. My father, sisters and I would go for a walk. There was a dry riverbed--there are lots of dry riverbeds in this area that flow only during the monsoons. The rest of the year businessmen get a contract from the government because lots of pebbles and sand come down from the mountains during the rainy season. The contractors collect this from the riverbed and fill their trucks carrying the stuff during the dry season, selling it as building materials. When the rains would come the river would flow like anything. Because it's carried from the mountains, it's steep. When the rain stopped it left puddles, and I vividly recall a thought that the puddle was as deep as the sky is high. But later it was explained to me: no, no, no, that is only a reflection of the sky. The puddle is not that deep. Then I changed my mind about its depth. So it is with each one of our experiences in life, and with each one of the objects we look at and view. You will see its impermanence and how often you have had a change of mind concerning it. Even your physical body--very real! I will ask you about it 150 years from now. You don't want to face it. And the Romans did not want to face that their empire would disintegrate. Nor do the modern empires want to face it. Nor do the emperors of that city want to face it, of which we read in the Book of Revelation as to when it is deserted. When the swan, the soul that has made its nest here has flown away, what is the reality of this empire called your own physical body?
Thus do the Upanishads tell us that all these that you attribute to yourselves, the name, the handsomeness, the attractiveness, the charm, the beauty, your racial superiority or inferiority, your national prejudices and identifications, all of these belong to this physical body of yours, this gross body. Today that is like an empire, and tomorrow it vanishes. The hunger and thirst, the blindness, the deafness, the fires of passion, the blazes of anger, these too arise only from the subtle body that is ever fluctuating, ever changing. Where is that eternal reality, however, that we talk about? An owl might as well ask: Where is the sunlight that you talk about, for, I can see nothing! So those of us who have deficient eyes like those of an owl cannot see the joy, the bliss, of the eternal reality.
Here are some passages paraphrased from Atma-prabodha Upanishad, The Upanishad of Self-Discovery; Upanishad of the Discovery of the Self.
If someone were born at a place clouded at all times he would not believe that such a thing as a sun exists. So also the owner of this body, this body-owner covered with the clouds of darkness that is the ignorance of his self-nature, believes that there is no Brahman; that there is no eternal reality. But, truly the elixir of immortality is absolutely, totally, completely different from its antonym--the poison. No poison can ever touch it, so you atman, the spiritual self, are the immortal one and nothing insentient, jada, can touch you or cast its shadow upon you.
If you pay attention to this, even the tiny flickering flame of a candle, the flame the size of a rice grain, eliminates, discards, an area of darkness that is a 1,000 times, 10,000 times greater than an area of its own size. So a little knowledge, a little wisdom, a little realization eliminates and discards a great deal of darkness of ignorance.
The possibility of snakehood in that rope that you had mistaken as a snake never existed, does not exist now, shall not exist in the future; so also from the subtlest ego to the grossest physical body, it is not possible that any of these constituents of your identity, your so called personality, have anything to do with you, atman, the self, the nondual which is beyond this world of impermanence.
If you continue to impose upon yourself the view that "I am this body," this is a status of becoming a son of the force of time. When you identify yourself as this body, "I am this body," know that you are declaring that you are a son, a child of time. This view is a very tight reign, holding you back, pulling you back. One of the hells described is a forest where each leaf is a sword. Those who have committed themselves only to the sensual pleasures of the body without any moral or spiritual principles are dragged through this forest for what to them would be an eternity! Such a forest exists nowhere else but in your view that you are the body.
The next passage is similar to the description of hell given in Dante's Inferno. If is from the Upanishad of Narada the Wanderer. Narada the Wandering Mendicant says:
One has to become dumb, tongueless;
One has to become a eunuch.
One has to become lame
One has to become blind
One has to become deaf
One has to become comatose;
these are the six conditions for liberation. Tongueless, a eunuch, lame, blind, deaf and comatose.
What do you mean by tongueless?
This is savory and flavourful, that is tasteless. One who has no sense of such discrimination while eating has risen above the desire for taste.
One who speaks what is beneficial, measured and true, is the one we speak of as having lost his tongue.
One has conquered all sense of sensuality that if a male sees a newborn girl or a sweet 16 or a 100 year old woman as the same; or if one is a female she sees a newborn boy, a handsome youth or a 100 year old man as the same. One who, seeing all three situations of the body, remains identically unagitated is a spiritual eunuch.
One who loves his solitude so that he leaves his cave or meditation cell only for receiving his alms and for very basic necessities of the body, only for that he leaves his meditation seat and cannot go very far: He's lame.
Whether one is sitting or walking, one whose eye does not wander around except for watching the four-square space in front of him so that he would not crush an ant under his foot and only for that reason he wishes to look where he is walking: he has attained the highest status of being a blind man.
Whether someone praises or censors, whether someone speaks sweet words or bitter ones, they go into his one ear and pass through the other: he is deaf.
In the presence of all excitants, he whose senses no longer respond, whose mind is no longer interested, as though he were asleep, he has reached--the sixth qualification for liberation and that is of being comatose.
So says the Upanishad.
The above seems a little extremist, a little far-fetched. We love our sensual sensations. Life is beautiful! This teaching is not for those who at present are seeing the rope as a snake. For now you have to deal with your realities as they appear to be. Seeing that rope in the dark you seem to have no alternative but to run away. It might be a snake: it does look like a snake! You will behave accordingly. But, just, do keep in mind that there is a place where these six qualifications are fulfilled.
Unlike the utmost pessimism of the way Schopenhaurer explained the philosophy of the Upanishads, the Upanishads speak joy. There is a joy which at present cannot be described but to reach that joy one passes through these six qualifications. When one has reached that level of joy and enlightenment, the wiser he is, the more childlike he becomes: Brahman, say the Upanishads. The wiser he becomes the more childlike he plays. The more expert he becomes, the more dumb he makes himself appear to be. The more learned he becomes the more he makes himself look like someone suffering from insanity.
The Upanishad called Nada-bindu, the Upanishad of a Drop of Sound, (the transcendental supreme sound) says: When that joy touches your mind, penetrates through your chitta, the mindfield, the way light passes through glass and makes it lit, so when one becomes absorbed in the joy of supreme nada, when one's mind is even touched by this nada it is like the honeybee drinking the sap and not sitting there analyzing the various fragrances.
Through the fragrance of this nada, the flighty, fickle snake of the mind is bound, is charmed and made to sit in one place.
By the power of this nada, the drunken king of elephants, called the mind, which used to go around smashing everything with its protruding trunk and feet in the garden of objects of senses, is brought under control.
This nada, the sound of eternal, internal joy becomes as a goad to control the mind-elephant.
It becomes the strongest possible reins to bring under control the wildest of the steeds.
When this joy of supreme transcendental sound touches the mind it becomes as the dykes that holds the mind's floods in place, and instead, the mind is then flooded with light.
To the outside world such a yogi in meditation looks like a dead man.
He hears not the external sounds of conches being blown and drums
being beaten.
Then his body becomes absolutely still as though he has lost his mind
(not in the sense of becoming psychotic but in having lost the mind itself)
that is, he is beyond the mind, having left the mind behind.
Then he knows neither heat nor cold nor pain nor pleasure.
His glance is steady without looking at an object.
His winds, the prana, are stabilized without effort. They no longer waft
about, blow about.
His mind is steady without an object of concentration; needing no
external object his mind becomes stable.
Without needing an object of concentration be becomes one with this
internal sound which is no other but the name of Brahman. Om, Om,
Om.
The Dhyana-bindu, the Upanishad of the Drop of Meditation says: The size and shape of this interior self cannot be determined. If you can speculate on the last part of a hair somehow, where the hair ends, however minute an end you can ascribe to it, and if you can cut that end into one hundred parts and cut one of those parts into a thousand parts, so minute, so subtle, is that within you which is your reality, which is your identity.
That which cannot be touched,
that which cannot be smeared,
as a fragrance is concealed in a flower as its subtlest force,
as butter is concealed in milk,
as oil is concealed in the tiny sesame seed;
Like that fragrance in the flowers
like butter in milk
like oil in the sesame seed
like gold hidden underneath within the rocks
so within your being is your Supreme Self.
This Self binds, joins other, all living beings as a thread passing through so many gems of a necklace.
The one who knows Brahman knows this one.
All this knowledge, these Upanishads, these texts of philosophy, these discussions, these debates, the knowledge of these, the concepts, are only useful until the actual true knowledge comes to you. You may hold all the possible discussions in darkness concerning the probability of a rope being a rope, a stream being a stream of water, or a snake or a cord or what have you, but only a person having a torchlight in hand finds out the truth and then puts the torchlight aside. So, when one has found the true knowledge let him put all this lower knowledge of discussions, debates and concepts aside, but contemplate on truth, meditate on truth, experience truth personally, and never have to change his mind about it for an entire eternity--which eternity is your true entity.
Swami Veda Bharati was trained from childhood in meditation and yoga philosophy and has taught yoga to thousands of people from an early age. He is an expert in raja yoga which is the source of all branches of yoga. A faculty member of the Himalayan Institute, he has written many books and articles on yoga and meditation. In addition to his writing and meditation, Swami Veda Bharati has lectured and taught meditation throughout the world.
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