The Chandogya Upanishad : CH-2, SEC-4. THE PRIMACY OF BEING-4.3., POST-3. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Wednesday, November 11, 2020. 12:34.PM.

Chapter Two : Uddalaka's Teaching Concerning the Oneness of the Self -4.3

Section-4. Threefold Development - 3.

Post-3

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It is unfortunate that the connectedness of the subject with the object is not perceivable to the eye. There is a very important intrinsic connection between the perceiving individual and the object perceived. It is more than what appears on the surface. The subject plays a very important role in the perception of an object. It is not that something is located outside the earth or far off in space, undetermined by everybody else from its own point of view, under its own setup. Everything is determined by everything else so that there is no such thing as an absolutely independent object, whether it be organic or inorganic. The independence of an object is an illusion. 

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That illusion of the perception of an independence in the object arises on account of a false abstraction of the circumstances of an object from the other factors in which the same object is involved. Whenever we perceive an object, we take into consideration only those aspects of the presentation of the object which the eyes can grasp or which the senses can cognise. There are other factors in the object which the senses cannot contact. It does not mean that our five senses are everything. Suppose we have one thousand senses; we would have seen many other things in the world. Unfortunately, or fortunately, we have only five senses. So we can see only five aspects of an object. But we mistake these five aspects for everything. There are other rudimentary elements in the location of an object which are unrecognisable by the senses. That which exists between me and you is not an object of perception. 

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Therefore, it is not possible for the senses to report towards the existence of that which is between me and you and, so, because we are wedded to the reports of the senses, we completely ignore the aspect of that which is invisible and intangible. If the relationship of the perceiving subject with the object and vice versa could be recognised and also the relationship of the object with other objects be evaluated properly, then there would be an immediate merger of objects into an ocean of Being and that will be a single eye seeing a single object and not the many eyes or many senses seeing a multitude of things. So this is the philosophical background to which our mind is driven by the analysis of the Upanishad when it says that every object is constituted of three elements-the fire, the water and the earth elements.

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Etadd ha sma vai tad vidvamsa ahuh purve mahasala mahasrotriyah na no'dya kascana asrutam, amatam, avijnatam, udaharisytiti hy ebhyo vidamcakruh.

The great men of the past, the realised souls of ancient times, immediately awoke to the reality of this situation—"Oh, this is the truth. The redness is fire, the whiteness is water and the blackness is the earth element." These are the only three things that exist everywhere. Whenever we see redness anywhere, we see fire there; whenever we see whiteness, we see water there; whenever we see blackness, we see the earth element there. So what do we see anywhere? We see only three things. We do not see any other thing in the world. Other things do not exist in the world. 

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There are only these three elements—the fire element, the water element and the earth element. So what is it that the world is made of? It is made up of these three strands of substance which we call fire, water and earth. Again, these three have been already mentioned to be the manifestation of the Supreme Being. They are the threefold ejection of the force of the Absolute. And so, again, we come to a universality of perception. Whenever we see an object, we are seeing a face of the Absolute, one aspect of the manifestation of a single Being. So it is not a multitude that you see, it is a universality that is abstracted by the senses falsely and imagined to be an isolated object, as if it is disconnected from the others. 

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This is what the ancient masters found out and then they said, "Now there is nothing unknown to us. Oh, we have understood the secret! We know everything." So, if one thing is known, everything is known. This is the answer which the master Uddalaka gives to his own question that he put before his son, Svetaketu. "Do you know what that is, by knowing which everything can be known?" "Yes, now I know all these things. The one has become three, the three have become many. So what are these many? They are the one. So, the moment I know the one, I know the three, and I also know many at the same time."

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To be continued ..

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