-
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Astronomers call it the cosmic atom. But the word atom has
such peculiar suggestiveness to our thinking mind that often
we are likely to slip into the thought of it being a little, small
thing. The smallness and the bigness question does not arise
there. In that condition, we cannot say what is small and
what is big. Who is a tall man? If I ask you this, whom will
you bring? Bring a short man. These are all relative terms.
In comparison with a tall man, someone may look short, etc.
So there is no such thing as a tall man or a short man, a long
shirt or a short shirt; they are comparative words. So, too, we
cannot say what kind of atom it was. Therefore, they call it
brahmanda; and it split, we are told, into two halves. What
kind of halves they are is not very clear. The subject and the
object, can we say? The Cosmic Subject and the Cosmic
Object can be two halves of the cosmic egg or we may say it
is the Cosmic Awareness meeting with the Cosmic Object,
which is material in its nature. The materiality of the object
follows automatically from its segregation from the
perceiving consciousness. The concept of matter also has to
90
be very carefully noted. Here, in this condition, matter
actually means a hard stone or granite or a brick; it is also a
vibration. The Samkhya definition of prakriti, in its highest
condition, is not in the form of a solid object but a vibratory
condition of a tripartite nature sattva, rajas and tamas.
Certain Upanishads analogically tell us that these two halves
of the cosmic egg are something like the two halves of a split
pea. The pea is one whole, but it has two halves.
Everything in the world has a subjective side and an
objective side. I conceive of myself as a subject and, for some
other reason, I also conceive of myself as an object. The
impact that is produced upon me by conditions that are not
me may make me feel that I am an object, but the impact that
I produce on the external conditions may make me feel that I
am a subject. That which exists outside my perceiving
consciousness may make me conceive of myself as a subject
of perception, but the presence of such an object for itself
will appear as an object. This dualism, cosmically introduced
at the very beginning of things, is the subject of all the
religious doctrines of creation, wherever one may go in this
world. God created the world, somehow. This somehow
brings in this peculiarity of the externalisation of God s
Universality. The Supreme Purusha sacrificed Himself as
this cosmos, says the Purusha Sukta. The supreme
alienation of the Universal into the supreme externality is
called creation. God alienated Himself, as it were, in the form
of this large, vast, perceived world. He has become this vast
world. I mentioned to you previously the difficulty arising
out of using such words as becoming , transforming , etc. I
will not go into that subject once again. These words have to
be understood in their proper connotation and signification.
Tasmat va etasmat atmana akasas sambhutah (Tait.
2.1.1): This fundamental cosmic space-time-motion, or
vibration, became more and more gross in the form of wind
vayu. Actually, the word vayu used here should not be taken
in the sense of what we breathe through the nostrils. It is,
91
again, a vibration of a vital nature, which we call prana. An
energy manifested itself; cosmic energy emanated, as it were,
from this basic vibratory centre which is the space-time-
motion complex, to put it in a modern, intelligible style. The
solidification, condensation and more and more
externalisation of the preceding one in the succeeding stage
is actually the process of the coming of what is called the
elements. From space, or akasha, arose vayu; from vayu, or
air, came friction heat, or fire; from there came the
liquefied form, water; and then came the solid form of the
earth.
Tasmad va etasmad atmana akasa sambhuta, akasad
vayuh, vayor agnih, agner apah, adbhyah prthivi, prthivya
osadhayah (Tait. 2.1.1): All vegetation started from the
earth. Osadhibhyo annam: The diet that we consume is
nothing but the vegetation growing on earth. Annat
purushah: Our personality is an adumbration, solidification,
concretisation, clarification whatever we may call it of the
food that we eat. In the personality of the human being we
find in a miniature form all that has come cosmically down to
the earth, right from the Supreme Brahman satyam jnanam
anantam brahma. So the universe is called brahmanda and
the individual is called pindanda. The macrocosm is the
universe, and the microcosm, or the individual, is a cross-
section of the macrocosm. All that is in the universe you will
find in yourself. You are a miniature of creation. If you know
yourself, you know the whole world. This is why it is said,
Know thyself and be free. Nobody says Go outside and
know things. It will not serve your purpose. Know yourself
and all things are known, because you are the nearest thing
that can be contacted and the nearest thing containing all
things that are the furthest and the remotest. Therefore, the
Ultimate Reality is also called the nearest and the furthest.
Tad dure tad vad antike (Isa 5): Very far is It in terms of
the spatio-temporal expanse of creation; Very near is It as
the Self of your own existence.
92
The miniature individual, as I mentioned, has all the
layers of the universe. These are the physicality of the lowest
earth, the vibratory form of the prana, the mental creation or
the mentation, the power of thought, which is reflected in the
process of creation from the Ultimate Being Itself, and a
peculiar negation that we experience in our own self in the
form of the ultimate causality of sleep, which is comparable
to the negation that was referred to just now in the form of
the manifestation of space-time-motion. This individualised
microcosmic representation of the cosmic layers is seen
individually as a series of what is called the koshas, or the
coverings of the consciousness in us. We may, in a way, say
the whole universe is a covering up over Brahman.
The cosmic sheaths can be conceived, and they are really
conceived many a time when we speak of Brahman becoming
Ishvara, Ishvara becoming Hiranyagarbha, Hiranyagarbha
becoming Virat, and so on. These sheaths in us the physical,
vital, mental, intellectual and causal are the inverted forms
of the otherwise-vertical, we may say, forms of the cosmic
sheaths which are in the form of the five elements earth,
water, fire, air and ether, going upwards from below. The
Ultimate satyam jnanam anantam is negated, as it were, in
this creation, because the Universal being is absent in all that
is external. The word external contradicts anything that can
be considered as universal. In a way, God is denied in this
world. We cannot see God anywhere; we see only particulars
and spread-out things which are external in nature.
Nevertheless, as the Isavasya Upanishad warns us, the so-
called negated, abolished existence of the Supreme Reality is
also hiddenly present as the Atman behind the earth, the
Atman behind water, fire, air and ether. There is an Atman
even behind space and time. Various degrees of the
manifestation of universality can be seen in the operation of
the five elements. The Universal is least manifest in the earth,
more manifest in water, still more in fire, still more in air and
still more in space, so that space looks almost universal, but
yet it is not universal because it is externalised.
93 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- matkadziecka.xlx.pl