1.#.Opinion : Friday, April 28, 2023. 06:45. 3097. /// 1.# Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 18. Swami Krishnananda.
Chinmaya Mission - (CIF) :
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1.#.Opinion : Friday, April 28, 2023. 06:45. 3097. ///
1.# Ancient Culture ( Samskaram ) of India ( Bharatham ) - 18. Swami Krishnananda.
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Chapter 8: India's Concept of Totality-1.
Post-18.
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The Vedas and the Upanishads cater to the intuitional and the direct apprehension faculties of the human individual. Intuition is the faculty which was the cause of the coming of these great scriptures, the Vedas and the Upanishads, but they can also be apprehended directly. We cannot read the Vedas and the Upanishads like a school textbook whose meaning is clear on a proper linguistic analysis or from the point of view of grammar. The Vedas and the Upanishads are not to be studied from the point of view of etymology, grammar or linguistics.
These days, people are attempting to translate the Vedas into the English language, and into other languages. I was presented with one or two volumes of a translation printed together with the original Sanskrit mantras. What I found was that it is a grammatically construed translation. I asked one of the sponsors of this great project, “What are the steps that you take? In what direction are you moving when you are embarking upon the translation of the Vedas? Do you appreciate that when the Vedas have infinite meaning—due to which it is that they are considered as the foundation of India's culture—should the Vedas be understood merely as a Sanskrit poem which requires only knowledge of etymology, meter and grammar to know its meaning? Are the Vedas not a foundation for an all-round appreciation of life outside and inside, subjective, objective, spiritual, material, social and transcendent? How would you bring out all these connotations of the Vedas?” He replied, “This is not our business, and we cannot say anything in this matter.”
It was Sri Aurobindo and some of his followers who tried to look at the Vedas from an integral point of view, and delved into the inner content of the Veda mantras, whereby they could decipher certain potentials of cosmic powers behind the otherwise anthropological names that are found in the Vedas, such as Indra, Varuna, Mitra, etc. These names of gods in heaven are actually significances, indications of the powers of Nature, and when I say ‘Nature', you should not identify it with trees and rivers and mountains, the geographical earth. Nature has revealed itself in various degrees of its manifestation, or reality. By Nature, we mean all that this cosmos is; and all the potentials and powers that are hidden in the cosmos are to be considered as the superintending principles of Nature's activity.
There is a famous doctrine in the Chhandogya Upanishad called the Panchagni Vidya. This tells us how even the grossest and the most obvious of occurrences in the world—such as rainfall, which we consider as something commonplace—have been considered as objects of meditation through this Panchagni Vidya. By Panchagni, what is intended is the visualisation of a fivefold stratification of the working of cosmic powers before they actually become visible to the eyes. Rain does not fall merely because clouds gather. We must also know why clouds gather. We are told that clouds are caused by the heat of the sun, which brings about a vaporisation of the waters of the ocean. Winds collaborating with this activity move the condensed form of this vapour as clouds in different directions, and when the clouds come in contact with certain atmospheric pressure, especially near mountains and forests, they release water in the form of rain.
But there is something mysterious behind the action of the rays of the sun on the water of the ocean. Why should the rays of the sun act on the waters of the ocean in that particular manner? The moon causes tides in the ocean. On a full moon day there is high tide. The waves rise up as if they are being pulled above the surface of the earth towards the moon. The moon does not pull only the waters; it pulls the entire earth. Because water is liquid, we can see it rising above its normal levels, but the influence of the moon on the solid parts of the earth cannot be seen with the eyes because solid objects do not rise up. Nevertheless, the influence of the moon is there on the earth, and it is not merely an influence on some part of the earth. The entire planet is pulled up due to the law of gravitation; and when this total pull of the moon over the earth is exerted during the full moon, our brains are also pulled up. It is said that people think in a certain manner on full moon and new moon days, and for people whose minds are not normal in the accepted sense of the term, the feeling of this pull is accentuated, and they behave a little erratically on these days. The word ‘luna' applies to the moon. Anything connected with the moon is lunar, and even the word ‘lunatic' comes from that very word—highly influenced by the movement of the moon. So is the case with the sun. The power which the sun exerts upon the other planets is much more than the power that the moon exerts on the earth.
Now, the question is: Why should they act in this manner? The Panchagni Vidya says there is something above even the phenomenon of the planetary actions or the solar action on water, etc. Up to the invisible realm we are taken by the doctrine of the Panchagni Vidya. A central action seems to be taking place somewhere—in modern terms we may call it interstellar space—and today science has also been telling us that there are certain things called cosmic rays coming from interstellar distance. The action of the cosmic rays upon the whole atmosphere of the solar system is something that has been observed but not fully explained in a scientific manner. Every little activity, every event, historical or economic, all these are conditioned from the centre of the cosmos in a manner very unintelligible to us.
This is a suggestive observation from the point of view of the in-depth analysis made by the seers of the Vedas and the Upanishads, and it can be appreciated only from the point of view of a deeper insight into the nature of things. The Vedas and the Upanishads are sacred not merely because we carry them on our heads as a textbook for our daily guidance; they are repositories of a wisdom that is beyond the comprehension of the sense organs, and even the mind. The translations of the Vedas available these days are only the shell, the outer covering, as it were, of the form of the Vedic mantras, but not its inner wisdom.
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To be continued
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