The Chhandogya Upanishad - CH-2, SEC-9, POST-1. Swami Krishnananda.

 

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Monday, April 26, 2021. 07:57. PM.
Chapter Two: Uddalaka's Teaching Concerning the Oneness of the Self
SECTION 9: THE INDWELLING SPIRIT-1.
Post-1.
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"Yatha, saumya, madhu madhukrto nistishthanti, nanatyayanam vrkshanam rasan samavaharam katam rasam gamaynti."

"Te yatha tatra na vivekam labhante, amushyaham vrkshasya raso'smi, amushyaham vrkshasya rasosmiti, evam eva khalu, saumya, imah sarvah prajah sati sampadya na viduh, sati sampadyamaha iti."

What happens to all individuals when they reach Being? The explanation is given through an analogy. "You see," says the father to the son, "honeybees go to different flowers, collect the essence of the flowers and convert it into a jelly by certain chemical processes that take place within their own bodies. Thus is formed what is called honey. Now this thing called honey includes the essences of various flowers, hundreds and hundreds of them from where they have been collected. The honey is an amalgam of all these essences, but in this body of the honey one cannot distinguish the essence of one flower from that of another flower. No particular essence can be cognised in its own individuality in this mass called honey. 

Everything has become indistinguishable. It is something like what happens to the various essences of the flowers when they become honey. They have become one and they are present in honey, no doubt, but that distinguishability of character is absent. No particular flower can be distinguished there in the body of the honey, and no particular essence will be conscious of its presence there as an individual isolated from others. There would be a total consciousness of the honey, but not the individual consciousness of the particular essence of the flowers of which the honey has been formed. This is the work that the bees have done. They have abolished the distinction of all these flowers and merged them into a single essence. That is called honey. 

This is what happens to all people when they go to pure Being. They are drawn back to pure Being just as the essences of flowers are drawn into the body of the honey. And when they go there they no more exist—not that they do not exist. The essences of the flowers do exist in the honey. The only difference is that they will not be aware of such thoughts as, "I am this flower", "I am that flower" and so on. Similarly when all reach the Being, though they do not cease to exist, they do not have such thoughts such as "I am Mr. So-and-so", "I am Mrs. So-and-so", "I am a man", "I am a woman", "I am a human being", "I am this", "I am that", etc. All distinction vanishes. They will be there as the constitutive essence of the pure substance that Being is, even as honey is, so that there would be no self-consciousness of a particularised nature. This will happen to us when we reach pure Reality, the Absolute Being.

To be continued ...

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