The Chandogya Upanishad : 12. Swami Krishnananda

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08/03/2020.
Chapter One: Vaishvanara-Vidya

The Self as the Universal Whole (Continued)

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1.

#Now, having described the cosmic aspect of the Vaishvanara-Atman as the Supreme Object of meditation, the Upanishad introduces us to an immediate consequence that follows from such meditation. The meditator cannot stand outside this Great Object of meditation. 

##This is very clear. Because of the comprehensiveness of the Object, the Universality of the Vaishvanara-Atman, the meditator has already undergone a transmutation of personality, entered into the bosom of Reality. And whatever one does, then, becomes an action of the Vaishvanara-Atman. 

###This is a very serious consequence that follows from an intense meditation in this manner. Whatever I think becomes the Thought of the Vaishvanara-Atman. Whatever I speak becomes an expression of the Vaishvanara-Atman, and whatever I do becomes Its action. And, then, my actions become a Cosmic Sacrifice, just as the gods thought creation a Universal Sacrifice, as we have it in the Purusha-Sukta. 

####One cannot make a distinction between God's thought and a human being's thought when one meditates in this way. What God thinks and man thinks will then be identical. Thus, the daily activity proceeding from the personality of an individual, in the case of a meditator in the manner mentioned, would be a Cosmic Sacrifice. 

*This is called Prana-agnihotra, the sacred oblation at the Universal Altar of the Fire of the Absolute.

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2.

#The fact of the organic connection of the individual with the Vaishvanara implies that there are cosmical aspects operating even in the individual, just as everything that is in the ocean is also in the wave, notwithstanding the difference between the crest called the wave and the body which is the ocean.

##The essential harmony between the individual and the Universal becomes patent when a spiritual investigation is conducted into the essence of the structure of both the individual and the cosmic. So, the meditation by the individual on the cosmic, or the Vaishvanara, means the establishment of an inner coordination and the effectuation of the qualitative non-difference between the meditating principle and the object that is meditated upon. 

###If every function that is going on in the individual is ultimately inseparable from the nature and operation of the Universal, meditation is just the awareness of this fact. There is nothing more to be done in meditation than to raise the consciousness to the fact of this inseparability between cosmic functions and individual functions. 

####Such simple acts as eating, drinking, breathing and working become universally significant. They are not private deeds or individual affairs as they are taken to be. The Upanishad, here, takes us above the ordinary concept of human action and the nature of the individual and abolishes the absurd notion that we entertain usually, namely, that there are such things as individuals, ultimately. 

*The meditation that is prescribed here is of various kinds. One of the specific methods mentioned is that there should be an invocation of universal significance, even during the performance of individual actions.

To be continued ...

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