The Chandogya Upanishad : CH-2, SEC-2. THE PRIMACY OF BEING-2., POST-7. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday, September  09, 2020. 9:58.AM.

Chapter Two : Uddalaka's Teaching Concerning the Oneness of the Self

SECTION 2: THE PRIMACY OF BEING-2.

Post-7

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1.

Ekam evadvitiyam : 

So I repeat what I have told you already. Being alone was. Now, it is non-dual Being. It is not like my 'being' or your 'being' or 'being' of this or that. It is not an individual 'being'. It is not a particularised 'being'. It is not something connected with any object. It is Being as such, inconceivable, because it is not an object. The mind can think what is outside it. It cannot think anything else. But Being cannot be something outside the mind, because the mind also is rooted in Being. 

Therefore, it is not a subject for comprehension by the senses or conception by the mind. It is not an object of any kind, either physical or conceptual; that means to say, it cannot be investigated scientifically nor argued about philosophically. What sort of thing is it, then? Well, if it could be understood so easily, then you would be blessed. But it cannot be understood like that, because, who can understand 

That which is the preconception of even the very act of understanding itself. Even the mind cannot move unless Being is there at its background. So it is a presupposition of even the faculties of understanding and thinking. Thus, there is no such thing as understanding it, thinking it, sensing it, conceiving it, describing it, explaining it or arguing about it."

2.

Now This is, to put it plainly, the origin of everything. The commentators on this Upanishad go into vast details of the method of the effect coming from the cause and how creation was originally effected by this Supreme Being. According to the various schools of thought to which people belong or commentators belong, there are various types of vadas or philosophical arguments explaining the relationship between the cause and the effect. The crux of philosophical argument is the cause and effect relationship. It is the difference in the conception of cause and effect relationship that makes the difference in the schools of philosophy. 

How the cause is related to the effect, and vice versa, is very difficult to understand. Has the effect come from the cause, is it something different from the cause, or is it not different from the cause? You cannot easily answer these questions, because if the effect is different from the cause, it is not an effect of that cause. You have already assumed that it is different. Then why do you say that it is an effect of that cause? Naturally it is the same as the cause. 

So either way you are caught. You cannot say that it is different from the cause; you cannot say that it is the same as the cause. If there is no distinction between the cause and the effect, why should there be two languages or two words used for designating these two items? Where are the two items at all? Or if there is a continuity, a process as people make out sometimes, connecting the cause with the effect, we have to explain what this process is. 

The process must be either a movement of the cause into its own self or it must be the movement of something else. If it is something else, then again it is not the cause. The same difficulty arises. If it is the same as the cause, there is no such thing as the effect. So you are caught up in a great quandary. You have to say that there is no such thing as an effect. But if there is no such thing as an effect, how comes the creation? If creation has to be explained, the nature of an effect has to be explained; but you cannot understand what an effect is. And therefore you cannot understand what creation is.

To be continued ...

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