The Chandogya Upanishad - CH-3-1. Swami Krishnananda.

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Thursday, September 02, 2021. 10:16. PM.
HAPTER III: SANATKUMARA'S INSTRUCTIONS ON BHUMA-VIDYA : 1.
1. INTRODUCTION. 
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In the course of the study of the Panchagni-Vidya in the first chapter, we have discovered that life is ultimately all sorrow on account of one being subjected to the process of transmigration. It is a fact that there are higher pressures exerted upon the individual and that these pressures compel one to be driven along the course of creativity. As long as the cause of this pressure is not realised as identical with one's own Self, one is not going to attain ultimate freedom from samsara, the cycle of metempsychosis. This cause for ultimate freedom is the Self of all, the realisation of which bestows true freedom. And that Self is the Universal Reality. This has been told to us in the subsequent section dealing with the Vaisvanara-Vidya in the same chapter. Then in the second chapter which corresponds to the sixth chapter of the Upanishad, the subject has been continued in a different fashion altogether. There it has been explained through various analogies, comparisons and illustrations as to how there can be only one Being and that every detail in creation is only a form taken by this one Being in the process of creation, so that there is really only one Being and not two, and that Being is the Self, the Atman.

Now, we are moving towards the seventh chapter of the Upanishad, which is a very prominent one because it expounds the magnificent doctrine of the Bhuma, the Absolute, the plenum of Being, the fullness of Reality, and this is done in a Socratic manner, gradually taking the mind of the student from the lowest reality conceivable to the highest, stage by stage, indicating thereby that nothing is lost when the Absolute is realised. When God is attained, nothing of the world is lost, just as when we catch the original we cannot be said to have lost the shadow. Everything is gained in a supersensible manner. The shadow may be said to be a part of the original. It is included in the original. All the lesser degrees of Reality are only forms of Its manifestation. Every name and form in this creation is a lesser degree of manifestation of the Reality. The lower degree is not excluded from the higher degree, as the higher includes the lower, and the highest is everything and is all-inclusive. This is the subject of this chapter which begins with the great sage Narada approaching the master Sanatkumara for spiritual instructions and spiritual solace.

Narada was not only learned in all the arts and sciences, but was himself a great saint and a sage. There was practically nothing that he did not know. He is renowned in all the epics and the Puranas as a unique personality in many ways. He could travel throughout this earth, the atmosphere and the heavens and talk to the gods personally. He had, therefore, a free passport, as it were, to move through every realm and every plane of Being. Such was his capacity, such was his greatness, and such was his knowledge and power. Such a renowned person now comes as a disciple, a student, to the son of Brahma, Sanatkumara; he pleads his ignorance, and expresses his grief over the fact that he knows so many things but does not have peace of mind in spite of all this knowledge. There is something missing in spite of every kind of learning of which he is a master and in which he has specialised. "Great Sir, teach me. I have come to you as a humble student." This is how Narada, a master, a sage himself, approaches the divine teacher Sanatkumara.

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To be continued ...

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