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By Jayaram V
Brahman is the central theme of almost all the Upanishads. Brahman is
the indescribable, inexhaustible, omniscient, omnipresent, original,
first, eternal
and absolute principle who is without a beginning,
without an end , who is hidden in all and who is the cause, source,
material and effect of all creation known, unknown and yet to happen
in the entire universe.
He is the incomprehensible, unapproachable radiant being whom the
ordinary senses and ordinary intellect cannot fathom grasp or able to
describe even with partial success. He is the mysterious Being totally
out of the reach of all sensory activity, rationale effort and mere
intellectual, decorative and pompous endeavor.
The Upanishads describe Him as the One and indivisible, eternal
universal self, who is present in all and in whom all are present.
Generally unknown and mysterious to the ordinary masses, Brahman of
the Upanishads remained mostly confined to the meditative minds of the
ancient seers who considered Him to be too sacred and esoteric to be
brought out and dissected amidst public glare.
Though impassioned and above the ordinary feelings of the mind, the
masters of the Upanishads some times could not suppress the glory, the
emotion, the passion and the poetry that accompanied the vast and
utterly delightful , inner experience of His vast vision. In the
Mundaka Upanishad the mind explodes to reverberate with this
verse," Imperishable is the Lord of love, as from a blazing fire
thousands of sparks leap forth, so millions of beings arise from Him
and return to Him." Again in the Katha Upanishad we come across a
very poetic and emphatic expression, "In His robe are woven
heaven and earth, mind and body...He is the bridge from death to
deathless life."
The Brahman of the Upanishads is not meant for the ordinary or the
ignorant souls, who are accustomed to seek spiritual solace through
ritualistic practices and rationalization of knowledge. Discipline,
determination, guidance form a self-realized soul, purity of mind,
mastery of the senses, self-control and desireless actions are some of
the pre-requisites needed to achieve even a semblance of success on
this path. Only the strong of the heart and pure of the mind can think
of dislodging layer after layer of illusion and ignorance that
surrounds him and see the golden light of Truth beckoning from beyond.
He is not like the other gods either. He is incomprehensible even
to almost all the gods. And He chooses not to be worshipped in the
temples and other places of worship but in one's heart and mind as the
indweller of the material body and master of the senses, the
charioteer. He is too remote and incomprehensible to be revered and
approached with personal supplications although He is the deepest and
the highest vision mankind could ever conceive of or attain.
The weak and the timid stand no chance to approach Him even
remotely, except through some circuitous route. For the materialistic
and the otherworldly who excel in the art of converting everything and
anything into a source of personal gain, He does not offer any
attraction, solace or security as a personal God.
That is why we do not see any temples or forms of ritualistic
worship existing for Brahman either at present or in the past. We only
hear of fire sacrifice, later to be called Nachiketa fire, to attain
Him, which was taught to the young Nachiketa by Lord of Death, but
lost in the course of time to us. Perhaps the sacrifice was more a
meditative or spiritual practice involving the sacrifice of soul
consciousness than a ritual worship.
Whatever it is, the fact is that Brahman of the Upanishads is more
appealing to the seekers of Truth and Knowledge than seekers of
material gains. Even during the Islamic rule when the principles of
monotheism challenged the very foundations of Hinduism , Brahman was
never brought into the glare of public debate to challenge the
invading and overwhelming ideas of the monotheistic foreign theology.
And even during the period of the Bhakti movement , when the path
of devotion assumed unparalleled importance in the medieval Hindu
society, Brahman was somehow not made the center of direct worship in
the form of Brahman as such. He became the personal God with a name
and form, but as Brahman remained out side the preview of the Bhakti
movement.
Perhaps the exclusion was so evident and seemingly so intentional
that even Lord Brahma, the first among the Trinity and the first among
the created, was also simultaneously excluded from the ritualistic
worship, probably for the similarity in names. Very few temples exist
for this god even today in India, probably as He is seen more as a
source of intelligence and creativity than of material wealth.
Some Upanishads do describe Brahman as the Lord of Love. It is a
description born out of pure personal experience of a seeker of truth,
not from a devotee's imaginative and self-induced emotional energy.
The description and approach, therefore, is more philosophical and
impressionably revelatory in its approach than feverishly emotional or
reverently devotional. The reason was not difficult to understand.
Brahman was too remote, indifferent, disinterested, too vast a
principle to be reduced into meaningful and intellectually satisfying
forms and shapes and worshipped as such. Existing beyond all the
surface activities of illusory life, he was like the remote star,
heard but rarely seen, seen but vaguely remembered, remembered but
rarely explicable, unlike the daily sun that traversed across the sky
spreading its splendor in all directions and appealing to the common
man with its intensity, visible luminosity and comforting him with its
assuring and predictable routine.
Hidden, however, in the practice of Bhakti was the inherent and
inviolable belief that the aim of all devotion was the attainment of
the Supreme Self, though the path chosen for the purpose was
circuitous and symbolic, rarely suggestive of any direct involvement
of the eternal Brahman Himself in His original formless condition.
Since the mind could only comprehend and derive inspiration in a
language that it can understand and interpret, the Saguna Brahman,
Iswara in the form of various manifestations became the object of
devotion and personal worship.
But the same was not true of the formless Nirguna Brahman, beyond
duality and activity. Ignoring the citadels of human civilization, He,
the Absolute, continued to remain in the hearts of His spiritual
aspirants, away from the din of materialistic life. He remained
confined even as of today, to a few illumined minds, guiding them in
His mysterious and invisible ways through the minds of self-realized
souls, who have been too spiritualistic and disinterested in worldly
life to consider any thing other than self as a matter of spiritual
interest.
The ancient seers described Brahman as the One eternal principle,
the unity behind all, the connecting principle, the light shining
through all. But at the same time they also referred to him variously
as almost every thing. He was thus One and the many, the finite and
the infinite, the center as well as the circumference, the enjoyer as
well the enjoyer, the hidden as well as the manifest, in a nut shell,
every thing and any thing that we can conceive of or imagine or
perhaps much more than that. Incomprehensible even to the gods, as
Kena Upanishad narrates, He stands above all, tall and mysterious,
almost incommunicable except through personal experience and inner
voyage.
As a formless Being He was the Nirguna Brahman, the unqualified
principle totally beyond the reach of all levels of intelligence.
Assuming myriad forms He becomes Saguna Brahman, the one with
attributes and qualifications. In this capacity as the formless and
the One with form, He becomes all the multiplicity in this vast
universe. He becomes everything and also nothing. Thus He is the day
and night, light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, the river and
the ocean, the sky and the earth, the sound and the silence, the
smallest as well as biggest of all and also the abyss of the
mysterious nothingness.
The attributes are many and repetitively suggestive of His
universality and His unquestionable supremacy. This existence of the
duality and the myriad contradictions inherent in the creation of life
are the riddles which the minds of the disciples were expected to
understand and assimilate till all the confusion and contradiction
becomes reduced to one harmonious and meaningful mass of Truth.
In the Katha Upanishad we come across this explanation of Brahman
being compared to the Aswaththa tree in reverse ,whose roots are above
and the branches spread down below. "Its pure root is Brahman
from whom the world draws nourishment and whom none can surpass."
Actually this is an analogy drawn from the Sun whose base is above and
whose rays spread downwards in thousand directions.
Myriad are the ways in which Brahman is described in the
Upanishads. The verses strenuously struggle to explain the novice
students of spiritual practice the immensity of the object of their
meditation. Theirs is a feeling of respect and reverence mixed with
fear and awe. Even the gods seems to be not very comfortable with this
concept of an unknown, mysterious and unfathomable God. The Lord of
death explains to the young Nachiketa, "In fear of Him the fire
burns, the sun shines, the clouds rain and the winds blow. In fear of
Him death stalks about to kill."
He is the creator, the life giver and also the reliever of the
devoted and determined from Bondage. The manifest universe is his
creation. He created it through Self-projection, out of Ananda, pure
Delight. The process of creation is not very explicitly mentioned but
one can draw some inferences from verses such as this, "The
deathless Self meditated upon Himself and projected the universe as an
evolutionary energy. From this energy developed life, the mind, the
elements, and the world of karma."
This is not the God who can be supplicated with rituals and
sacrifices. The Upanishadic seers did not show much respect to the
outer aspects of religious practice. The rituals according to them
constituted the lower knowledge. "Such rituals," declares
Mundaka Upanishad, " are unsafe rafts for crossing the sea of
worldly life, of birth and death. Doomed to shipwreck are they who try
to cross the sea of worldly life on these poor rafts." The
argument does not end here. It goes on," Ignorant of their
ignorance, yet wise in their estimate, these deluded men proud of
their learning go round and round like the blind, led by the blind.
Living in darkness, immature unaware of any higher good or goal, they
fall again and again into the sea."
To read the concluding part of the essay on Brahman click on the
first link provided below.
Suggested Further Reading
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