The Chandogya Upanishad : CH-2, SEC-1. PRELIMINARY-3, POST-4. Swami Krishnananda

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Saturday, August 22, 2020. 6 : 30.AM.
Chapter Two : Uddalaka's Teaching Concerning the Oneness of the Self
SECTION 1: PRELIMINARY-3
Post-4
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1.
"If you take a pair of scissors, for instance, made of iron, you know what it is made of. It is made of iron. Then you would also know what anything else made of iron is. It may be a hammer; it may be a nail; it may be an axe; it does not matter what it is, all these things are the shapes taken by the same iron which is in the pair of scissors.

2.
"Now, this earthen pot is a very strange thing, altogether. The earthen pot is a name that you have given to a shape taken by the earth. There is no such thing as a pot, really speaking. You touch a pot and tell me whether you are touching a pot or are touching clay.

What are you touching?

You cannot say what you are touching. You will say, 'Well; it is difficult for me to say if I am touching the pot or have touched the clay.' You are touching the clay and you say you are touching the pot. The pot is in your head; it is not outside. What is there is really the clay. Your conception, your thought is that the substance is clay only.

The interference of space and time in the substance called earth is responsible for this peculiar shape that it has taken. So, the pot made of earth is only a name, a sound merely. You are only uttering some words indicating a shape taken by the earth which is its substance.

So, what do you mean by the shape taken by the earth?

What is shape?

You cannot understand what shape also is. The shape also is earth itself. You are interfering with the substance called the earth by your notional interpretation of its connection with space and time. So, the earthen pot is nothing but a conceptual interpretation that you are introducing into the substance that is called clay. There is no such thing as pot; it does not exist. Yet, you have coined two words. On one side there is the word called clay, on the other side there is the word called pot.

Now, you have got two names indicating one and the same thing. Now, why should you have two names if the substance is only one?

Yatha, saumya, ekena mrt-pindena sarvam mrnmayam vijnatam syat vacarambhanam vikaro namadheyam, mrttikety eva satyam:

You are under an illusion of perception. You are confounded in your notion of the substance. There is a mistake that you commit in your interpretation of reality when you say, 'There is a pot.' The pot does not exist; what exists there is only the clay. And what you call the pot is only a concept in your mind. So is the case with everything else in this world," says Uddalaka Aruneya to his son Svetaketu.

3.
The illustrations provided by the sage Uddalaka make out that object forms are inseparable from concepts in the mind. If they had not been organically involved in the mind of the perceiver, they would be objectively existent and could be physically sensed by the organs of perception.

To be continued ...

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