Video 2

Reflections on the Mundaka Upanisad II

foreign okay this foreign okay page 34 and please join [Music] Ed foreign foreign foreign I don't know so much foreign good morning everyone last week we started a new series on the wonderful punishad this is one of the upanishads that was very dear to Swami Vivekananda we saw last week that he spoke about the upanishads quite often without always explicitly mentioning the particular verses or even the name of the upanishad this is one of the ones that he actually went through the whole thing uh we for some reason don't find it in the complete works until this last volume nine which is rather recent maybe 30 years ago something like that was was added then you'll find the whole thing there the translation and commentary and everything but it was clearly one of swamiji's favorites one of my favorites uh it doesn't have a very interesting storyline the most interesting probably KATU panishad with the Beautiful Stories nachikete going to Yama king of death and everything but the verses in this wonderful or especially beautiful and the swamiji quotes from it quite often we saw last time that the upanishad is basically one question and a long answer to that one question there was a great householder by the name of shonika and there was a great Sage by the name of angirus and this householder was obviously a very deeply insightful person because the question is a very beautiful question that he wants to know that is there some essential thing is there one thing knowing which everything can be known is there a key to everything that if we know that one thing then we can explain everything in terms of that one thing so he says what is that one thing to be known knowing which all this that is everything all this this we find this very often it means everything that we see this visible Universe also it doesn't simply mean uh some Transcendent reality but in everything what is that one thing knowing which so there's an assumption here the assumption is that there's a Unity to everything that there's a a basis that can explain everything that can be seen as the ground of everything or everything can be seen as a manifestation of this one thing so the Assumption here is one of Unity universality Oneness however we understand it that everything has to go back to one single cause and I will find that this assumption is true Everything the the answer that we get will be perfectly attuned to the particular question so uh this is that search this is the search and could it be that it'll be some material thing can it be that we have to look and and find that atoms and molecules and the energy and all of that could be the upanishadic thinkers they were open to everything they weren't restricted to anything we are restricted to the upanishads into vedanta we have our Shruti in everything they didn't have anything like that there's a pure investigation and through their internal investigation and their meditation and everything that they they reached a solution that satisfied them and actually led to a very high state of Enlightenment and realization now we found this time that the reply is not what we expect it's not exactly following the question what was the reply does anyone remember so the first thing that that we get is this this reply well first you have to understand that there are two different types of knowledge a very strong distinction is made here between that which is lower knowledge in that Which is higher knowledge now the lower knowledge we understand will be anything that has to do with this external universe and the scientific types of things but the surprising thing that this external knowledge includes even The Vedas and the vedangas all of the scriptures the most Sacred Scriptures and in the whole vedantic tradition are included in now why is that why because even even that type of knowledge is within the bounds of time space and causation within Maya it's also preliminary this is what when swamiji says you won't find the truth in in the doctrines or dogmas it's in direct realization it's going Beyond these These are helpful but still somehow they belong to this lower type of of knowledge so what is this the higher type of knowledge that by virtue of which we realize the akshara the imperishable absolute the Supreme Brahman we don't always find the term Ibrahim in here but this is basically what's meant here that there should be something which is beyond time-space and causation there should be something absolute that if we want to find the ground of everything particular it has to be something that's beyond the particular I always think of sharami krishna's illustration of that that vat of liquid that you can die any any cloth you put in it'll come out any color that you want it to be the dye itself can't have any particular color if it has any particular color the cloth will always come out that color it has to be colorless so the the ground of everything that will be full of manifestation has to be somehow beyond all of that that type of nuttiness or emptiness which can be responsible for everything in this manifest universe everything that is changed for all the ground will have to be unchanging so this is why it's called akshara that it'll be something that Beyond everything that we understand if if we want to see anything by the Light of the Sun that sunlight that sunlight has to be invisible it can't have any light of its own otherwise it'll affect the light of object so this is that idea that we want to find that which is this the ground of everything relative and we find that it'll have to be something absolute it'll have to be Beyond if it can account for everything yeah this is this is how in this the whole Hindu tradition with all of the hundreds and thousands of gods and goddesses how can they all be true only if they're all manifestations of one which has nothing particular this is this is a beautiful idea so we'll find here a very basic distinction between the absolute and the relative and this is what we find in Sri ramakrishna's teachings about the absolute and Lila the relative so this will be God in the world this will be that Transcendent reality and this imminent manifestation the self and the non-self we have many different ways of understanding these things usually as a duality one is Sat one is assat but they both belong to the same reality they're not two different things this is that other great truth of srama Krishna nithyan Lila both belong to the same reality two different ways of looking at it one is changeful and the other is as the ground of everything to use another example of srama Krishna that we can see all of the artificial fruit it's all wax but at the same time we can see apples and bananas and pears and all sorts of things there but the substance is one but here a substance will be Consciousness itself this is that distinction between a materialistic type of interpretation and a vedantic type of interpretation so we'll have this basic type of distinction between the Eternal and the ephemeral the unchanging in the chain field now the Monaco upanishad it'll go along and also make a second distinction between Guyana and Karma now karma in the upanishads generally means ritual we have the karma Kanda the first portion of the of the nived Israel have all the different Agnesian sacrifices and everything even in the gospel of Swami Krishna very often when taku was talking about Karma Yoga and we wonder why he's not praising it so much it'll turn out that a lot of it is ritual this is one standard way of understanding what was meant by karma in the early days so there's a big distinction that will be made there that Karma uh will have a temporary result no matter what it is if anything that is done that that has something particular to it anything that's changeful anything's involved with the cause and effect we'll have some some particular end and some end to it so there's all of these youngness and everything to go to heaven heaven can't be permanent if the if the cause is is something limited the effect has to be limited so there's a long section actually about all of the different types of rituals and and how we can get to the Abode of the different gods and goddesses and everything and at the end we find that this is all meant to show us the limitations of of ritual the limitations of of that type of of a Karma so because otherwise we wonder why in this upanishad do we have a long section about this different types of sacrifices and everything it's meant to show us the limited value of it because the results will not be permanent either the results or some enjoyment in this lifetime or even some enjoyment in heaven but ultimate goal is to understand and realize this this higher truth which alone will give us Enlightenment and liberation so it's the way the upanishad does it is by going through all of this and then showing us how foolish it is to disregard this this higher wisdom and and just focusing on some type of enjoyment in life and even enjoyment in in the heaven is also considered a type of a type of enjoyment and the goal of the upanishads is to go beyond the impermanent and try to get to the permanent we we know that your army Krishna loves to use this term anitya he doesn't like to talk very much about everything being false and unreal and and illusion but very keen awareness of the transitory nature of everything that everything is is coming and going and changing and even this whole lifetime will go very quickly the older we get we find the faster it goes we even lost an hour last night without even knowing about it so this is the main subject of this upanishad and all the upanishads really discovering the real nature of that one reality which never changes which is eternal which is beyond the range of mind and thought something that really was inconceivable but is the most known because it's our very self this is this is the key to everything that we don't find it is some external type of ground we find it dwelling within our hearts as a very essence of our own being because it has to be the source not just for everything external but everything internal so we have two terms Jiva and jagat the world and and all of its inhabitants living beings that means we're conscious living beings then how do we explain uh our our existence not just as Flesh and Blood and Bones and everything but as conscious living beings that has that ground has to be conscious so this will be this Brahman that will be the ground in the source of everything and at the same time Beyond everything this is that Paradox seems to be a contradiction how can one thing be the source of everything and yet not undergo any type of change itself we have so many different types of of illustrations but this is this is what we find this wonderful concept of brahmana Brahmin and the perfect identity between Brahman and Atman and the self so what exactly can we say about Brahman who knows ramakrishna is very clear that what prominent cannot be uttered by the Tongue and yet he'll go on and on and on and give different examples and different ways of us trying to understand it so we can we can approach it from the side we can't say exactly what it is that has to be experienced when the Mind goes to a different level and we're not thinking in terms of ordinary Concepts and and terms and words and things but still we can get some type of sense of it and we find that we have two different pictures of the nature of Brahman one is a very beautiful deeply philosophical kind of pristine and pure concept of brahmana of the philosophers of the acharyas and the other is kind of living throbbing full of life joyful almost Brahman of the poet of the and this is what we find in the upanishads we'll find both of course both will be there but what we get in the upanishads is something that sometimes we miss when we study vedanta simply as a type of philosophy the Brahmin is very pure Roman can't do anything Brahman can't think anything Roman can't have any desires we put all sorts of limits on this near going to Brahman that I sometimes think that we've painted ourselves into a corner philosophically that where do we go from there how do we explain anything we bring in this concept of Maya a very interesting concept also but did upanishad paint a slightly different type of pictures of Brahman Swami Vivekananda used this term at least one time talking about Hegel Hegel also had some concept of the of the absolute he used to call it the bloodless absolute so and this I won't say bloodless but it's not the vibrant thriving that we find in the upanishads one of the terms that's used to describe Brahman in the upanishads is Rasa sweetness and in piranha is life some of you remember our Swami Tata he loved to say Brahman is life and he would bang on the the table from his life yeah we won't find this in our Dwight the way down to exactly we want to restricted yes pure consciousness there was an incident and the life of srama Krishna there was one great Pandit named samadhya and shivami Krishna met him once or twice he's I don't know if he was exactly a Brahma but he seemed to have spoken other times and this poor man I feel sorry for him he may have been a very nice man but takur always remembers one statement that he made that Roman is dry all right nirosh Roman is dry that we have to sweeten him up with our own love and devotion so Surah say what kind of statement is that to me that which is the essence of sweetness to say that it's dry he said It reminds me of the man who said that my uncle has a Cow Shed it's full of horses he says now who keeps horses in the Cow Shed that means he doesn't have anything there it's empty yeah so this Brahman of the upanishads will be living vibrant type of Brahman we may say oh this is all allegory but still I'd like to say poetry and to me poetry gets to the heart of religion and spirituality better than philosophy I've become a bit of an anti-philosopher as I get older I I appreciate it and and we need it but we get stuck in it sometimes and we lose the mystery sometimes of of spiritual life that the unexplainable part of a spiritual life you know I like that with that one verse about achintia that which which is beyond our ability to even imagine we shouldn't try to apply too much logic to it sometimes we have to just step back and be in awe of it as this great mystery of life so we find that the acharyas and and this is this is not to to criticize them but they come up with the philosophy they and they have to this is what they're supposed to do and uh it's incumbent on them to come up with consistency their rules for these acharyas there are different rules that they have to show that the upanishad is saying the same thing the beginning in the middle of the end uh there can't be any repetition everything has to be a little bit new but there can't be any internal contradiction uh so they they have to come up with some cohesive Theory now the upanishads don't always uh easily admit of that and Swami Vivekananda was a little bit critical of the all of the acharyas because he said all of them had to do a little text torturing in order to be consistent but this is what they had to do we we can't fault them for that but still we see that there's so many different varieties of interpretations possible indeed upanishads just to give one simple example that we'll get in this upanishad that everything is like Sparks coming out of the fire now it sounds very dualistic this creation Brahman is like a fire and Sparks coming out of it have their own independent existence and everything the non-dualist has to explain it in a way consistent with non-dualism the Duelist will say oh I like this one and they'll stick with that but then doulas will say tatwamacy and everything and what they have to explain it in their own way also so this is this is the Dilemma of the of the philosophers and the upanishads don't seem to care that you Punisher wants to give us a very free-flowing Concept in Brahmin that will give a lot of variety different room for interpretation as I say poetry and sometimes it'll lend itself to a dualistic interpretation sometimes to non-dualistic or and many many other things in between so let me start a little bit with the strict non-dualistic vedantic view of Brahman and we'll find that the upanishad has this it's not not that they're making this up out of nothing but we'll find in the upanishads and we'll find in in the in the eyes of the non-dualists that Brahman cannot be conceptualized that is beyond time space and causation that it's absolute that unchanging inactive now this is this is one of the difficulties that we get Nidia we'll get all of these different terms that it doesn't do anything now they say Brahman alone exists and brahmer alone is real and this is this universe is is unreal somehow but how do we account for even the unreal universe that we say this universe is unreal we all see it we can say okay it's not real the same way that Roman is real and it's constantly changing and everything but how to account even for this so suppose it's an illusion how to account for the illusion if we say something is just a dream that doesn't dismiss it then we have to figure out where did the dream come from so still we're stuck with this kind of of dilemma so they bring in this this concept of of Maya or or ignorance and uh it's very difficult to uh to kind of work out the nuts and bolts of this type of of theory but before that I will find that almost all the descriptions of Brahman are negative see we can't say anything very positive so we'll say that it's uh it can't be seen it can't be smelled it can't be touched beyond all of the senses and everything occasionally we'll get positive things this is all-knowing uh all pervading but most of the time it'll be in very negative terms and that will be told that it can be directly experienced when the Mind becomes still and quiet so this this Ramen is the closest we can really say that it's pure consciousness and not even not even mind for us Consciousness means thinking this will be something Beyond even thought uh in the relative World it'll be manifested it's just a pure witness of everything but this is the problem how to get from the nitya to the to the Leela to the to the Manifest Universe starting with this type of of concept we have something called vivartavada that there's no creation that there's only uh misapprehension of of the reality and we all know about the snake in the Rope now there's a beauty to this type of theory that if really there's only a rope then we don't have to ask this question uh how did it become a snake when did it become a snake we don't have to after enter any of those questions this is a good part the bad part of is where did this fellow come from who's walking around the road at night and happens to see the rope and thinks that it's a snake so the difficulties with all of these different doctrines when it comes to Creation and the dualists also have their problems that where does this creation come from what is the material out of which it comes all of the different things so uh this is advice for ramakrishna doesn't talk about it very much he'll say well this is the play of mother he won't give any and why is it like that ah out of fun he won't give any real answer that philosophers will like especially because there's really no good answer they're very hard to accept they're very hard for us to accept the fact that we really don't know why and how and when or anything that this creation came into existence I accept it because I don't care so much and really we're trying to go inward but if we're if we're really looking with the science how science how scientists is uh has done so much research into Big Bang Theory and all of these things but even then where did the black hole come from all of this we that's the answer that we we don't really have Einstein I love Einstein he was the one who really understood that we can understand everything about this phenomenal Universe he said and still know nothing about the ultimate cause of anything so this is this is the Dilemma that we have now what we do in vedanta is that once we accept this universe and we accept the fact that there has to be one single cause and it has to come from Brahman itself then we get around it a little bit by changing terminology they say no I won't call it Brahman I'll call it ishwara or I'll say this then somehow it's okay this Laguna brahmana can be involved it can have this this power to project the universe and uh Krishna likes this this point of view looking at things don't restricting you're going to Vermin you're going to Brahman said belonged one in the same reality that only distinction is sometimes the Shakti is active sometimes it's not active so the upanishads when they speak of Brahman half the time the philosophers have to say oh they mean saguna Brahman really mean the ishwara they're not talking about this other Brahmin as if they're two different things but of course they're not two different things it's all the same that when an absolute reality so we'll find the upanishads they'll resort to poetry they'll resort to allegory uh I I like the section that we find in it upanishad where Brahman is as if sitting down and getting bored and looking around and and nothing to do as somebody who wants a playmate huh that we have that beautiful verse very very beautiful conception that as I say is more poetry than anything else he meaning Brahman however we want to say ishwara we can say that he desired where desire came into his mind may I be many he's one he's all alone may I be many may I take birth he entered a state of intense austerity Tapas Tapas means heat but there's not any physical type of heat through this this type of meditation this meditation is is turning out this whole universe somehow so we entered a state of intense austerity meditation and having performed that intense meditation he created all this or projected all this whatever there is having created all this he entered into it having entered into it he became both the Manifest and the unmanifest both defined and the undefined both the supported and the unsupported say well this beautiful Paradox both the intelligent and the non-intelligent both the real and the unreal now this is not we're not speaking here in the upanishads of some Creator or anything we're talking about Brahman itself because men alone exists as the one Ultimate Reality before this universe exists then there's nothing but this environment it can't be anything else we we have to this is the premise what is that one thing knowing which everything is known it'll be this is Roman of course so what we'll find in the upanishads is not strictly speaking this pure Consciousness which cannot do anything other than be conscious and if it has nothing to be conscious of then it's just internally conscious we don't even know what that that means exactly Consciousness without any object at all from a cosmic point of view it'll be pure potential somehow that if something comes before his purview then it'll be aware of it anyhow this is that pure Consciousness that the philosophers speak of that gets expanded that becomes this uh almost a being capable of process capable of some type of of creation so we find in the upanishads that there's no uh is not a sin to call this Brahman the source of creation there's nothing wrong with it and if we think about it we're talking about God we're talking we're not talking about yes some some principles some abstract printable we're talking about that which is the source of everything we have to give a little power to it so there's power of creating this is one of the main teachings of surama Krishna that we have to admit that there's a power inherent in this absolute reality and that main powers this chit-shakti to project everything and then to enter into everything to sustain everything and finally to withdraw everything back into it so we lose a little bit of this this as I say this very pristine logical Purity when we when we bring in this idea that yeah Brahmin may have a little desire to create asrama Krishna says a Divine mother is her play that she wants to play to go on somehow but uh the upanishads they get away with all of this with this beautiful allegorical language in this kind of poetic way of of placing things one thing I find helpful sometimes is to if we want to understand what that really these these great rishis those who came up with these ideas had these these realizations what they really thought about these things sometimes it's helpful to look at the etymological meaning of the terms that they use that's very interesting that uh we look at Brahman Brahman is unchanging unchanging absolute reality yet the word itself means to expand it means to expand so this is the picture that comes into my mind that these are ancient rishis thought of this Brahman as something with this tremendous power to expand into the whole entire universe so they use this term Brahman now remember Brahma with the long R they're masculine is the creator there's a reason why it's the same word is used huh the same word this is this is indicated Brahman in Brahma indicates the Oneness of near going to Brahman and Brahman Vermin beyond all attributes in Roman together with its Shakti so this is that room in term admin now did these ancient thinkers think of the self the ottoman did they think of that as pure consciousness the word actually comes from a root meaning to breathe as as breath as some type of life and we find this in many many ancient Traditions a very beautiful idea that the soul is the Breath of God that God will breathe the soul into the universe I learned something interesting this morning I never knew this atmosphere atmosphere yeah they cognate with Atman yeah admin early meaning breath or wind something like that so this was the conception of the self in the very early days that it was it was life it was breath that source then Maya this is the third very interesting term we know Maya the Maya of the philosophers again is some type of ignorance or Veil that covers everything but it comes from this root ma meaning to to to measure something and I don't know if it's if this is actually a valid statement but to me it it seems that the English word magic will should be cognate with the word Maya because the very early meaning of it was something like magic or magical power how to explain how this this infinite absolute reality Brahmin can manifest itself it'll have to be some magical power that means there's no logical explanation for it so this it seems to be the the very early concept we don't find this this concept of Maya in the upanishads until we get to the later upanishad you remember when some of you when we studied upanishad that here we have some concept of Maya uh before that we get in in some of the Vedic hymns where it really is the Maya of Indra that meant that this power with this Thunderbolt and everything so Maya has that early type of meaning the philosophers uh are are not corrupting the early meaning or anything they're they're giving it making it a beautiful philosophical system out of it but my whole point is that if we only look at it that way we're losing this this other side this kind of poetic side to everything which to me is is something very helpful when we to get back to upanishad when we start to see the way these upanishads will explain Brahman that first thing is that we find that these great Souls great sages they behold Brahman dwelling everywhere so we don't really start out Simply with this idea that roam it is just Transcendent reality but it can be seen everywhere at the same time they'll say that it can't be seen like an object it cannot be seen it cannot be grasped unconnected with anything it has no qualities this is our near Guna Brahman Without Eyes Without Ears see everything is paradox and we have beautiful verses in the Gita that having no senses of its own it can it can see in here and everything and through our own senses that we so Eternal omnipresent all pervading we get all of these terms and everything and which is the womb or source of all beings so the very beginning very beginning when we get a description of this Brahmin we'll find three different ideas three very beautiful but distinctive ideas and all of them fall within this upanishadic view of what Brahman is so the first is the problem is that one single Transcendent reality there's pure Consciousness we can't say anything about it that it's not connected with anything it's never tainted this very standard idea of Brahman that cannot be perceived or thought about just pure Transcendent Ultimate Reality second idea is that the same Ramen pervades everything pervades everything that exists and the sages don't simply have this this vague understanding but they see it everywhere they look in all directions they see nothing but Roman now we know that srirama Krishna had this Vision he saw everything as as the embodiment of pure Consciousness wherever he looked he saw Divinity throbbing through everything so this is that second idea and the third is that it's not just pervading and throbbing the source of everything the womb of everything the source of old creation now we may try to explain this creation as I say with the snake in the rope and all of that but the upanishads seem to prefer this idea that that near going to Brahmin which doesn't do anything is also going to run in that looked at from a different point of view that this creative power is inherent within Roman and essential to it but not essential in uh in the way that it defines Roman if Roman does not engaged in the Act of Creation Brahman is still Berman so just like with an individual that we may have our occupation and everything we're something other than that when we're not doing that occupation we're still the same person there's something deeper that pervades everything about us but that occupation is still our occupation we can't dismiss that so this is that type of idea that we have and then we start to get illustrations and we'll get three illustrations this is verse seven that one just that the spider ascends forth and draws back it's in its its thread so this is the the creation will come out of the spider the the thread comes out they say ornament they thought it came out of the navel it comes out of the mouth I think yeah so uh this is the first example of the of the spider second as plants grow out of the Earth this whole universe Springs from Roman third as hair grows out of the body of a living person so does this universe arise out of the imperishable that is improment now the first example is very well known and it has a nice several nice applications one is that since the threat comes out of the body that means that there's there's no material used for this universe separate from Brahman that it's Roman it's also the material cause of the universe so this is that main thing material cause of the universe then where does the spider live after the spider spins the web in the web itself so Brahmin Universe comes out of Roman then Berman dwells within it now if you see it spider sometimes come down you know which creates a little thread and comes down and then gets scared it'll go right back up it'll withdraw the thread back into itself so this is one way of explaining that Brahman is the material cause of the universe and the efficient cause of the universe responsible for the creation the maintenance and also withdrawal and dwells within it where all of these ideas come from this this spider example now uh the fact that that the Romanus the material cause of the universe this doesn't stop the upanishads from speaking about some type of actual creation process now the Dwight in some of these with somebody very ideal schools of vedanta don't want to talk about it don't don't ask me about how the uh the snake came from the Rope it never came from the Rope finished end of story but in the upanishads we'll find that there's a real process that uh through this deep meditation that uh first it'll be a creation of the different elements they'll combined all different things will come almost like the sankya theory that will have a regular type of evolutionary process the distinction is in in sankya that doesn't come out of Roman that's separate but here we're trying to find uh how find out how this process takes place so this is that first one and I won't go into all of the details but it is a kind of evolution from one thing comes another then another then another and we get this this visible Universe now what about the second two illustrations if the first one were enough we wouldn't have the other two they have to add something to it again one of the the teachings the acharyas have to be able to to show that it's not simply redundant they call it tautology it has to give us some other some other element or some other feature now when the spider uh weaves the web there's some reason for it there's some motive spider's a conscious thing huh there has to be some desire behind it not that can think the way a human being can think but there's some design something has to be there some feeling so we have some feeling it's a volitional Act not thought out the way we do but still now when we get to this idea of herbs growing out of the earth and hair growing out of the body then we find that it's something natural and spontaneous we don't need Roman to sit down and think that let me create something that'll automatically happen when we when we go to sleep at night do we decide to have a dream we can't decide to ever dream because there's there's no dreamer before the dream takes place there's nobody to do it to make the decision there's only Consciousness at that time it just emerges somehow it emerges we don't know why we don't know how so this is that idea that the herbs growing out of the Earth or the hair growing out of the body now the first idea herbs growing out of the herb itself is is a living being it's sentient thing it has life but hair growing out of the body you can cut the hair and we won't feel anything so the Brahman is the source for that both sentient and in sentient for everything so we get these three different types of of illustrations that both will Trace their being back to this Brahmin itself now what is the distinction between Brahmin as the ground of this in sentient universe and the ground of sentient beings that that means manifest as jugged and manifest as ajiva if we if we look at the dream the the dream universe is a projection out of the Mind the cosmic mind the mind of the uh of the sleeper but the individual in the dream is the dreamer this is the pure vedantic idea that there's an absolute Oneness between the individual soul and the Supreme soul everything gets traced back to Brahman but one becomes the uh the other Remains the The Seer that distinction so now we're getting back to this picture of Brahman as as able to expand and to grow and and to manifest itself have this whole universe come out of it can dwell it within it and yet it remains unchanged somehow now did very briefly the way it's explained in this upanishad is something that is not a scientific theory but it just shows the the thinking of these upanishadic sages that the first emanation from Brahman is called Anna food now why should that be huh we can take that as meaning some substance some unformed type of substance and then comes Prana or energy and then onus in mind and then finally comes Satya which we have to take is some physical types of things so uh as I said before it's almost a type of evolution independently so the upanishad punishtic view of the world is something that it's it's not materialism because everything gets traced back to Brahman but it's a type of realism it's a type of realism that give some independent reality to this universe which we all feel we we may claim that we're graded dwightens and as all illusion and dream and everything but who here doesn't feel that we're all in the same room together huh that we know that it's changing and impermanent and not exactly the way we understand it even even the scientists will say you're not looking at a chair you're looking at the atoms and things molecules things going around in circles and everything but some common space that we're all in so this the upanishad explains how from that one source which is consciousness itself we ended with something which apparently seems to have its own independent type of reality but has to be sustained by consciousness so what we get all out of all of this is that in ramen is no longer a very abstract dry type of of concept Consciousness which uh doesn't do anything now as I say this is also it's a beautiful concept I I also like that that this the the shankaracharya is the idea of the Brahmin Brahman alone being real and everything there's a tremendous joy and Beauty in in that type of thought but we if we want to get the full picture we have to understand that the upanishad is not restricted to that that we get this other type of idea that Brahman is a vibrant type of entity and by the very nature of it this whole universe gets spun out like like the the web out of the spider may not have that same philosophical Purity but it's easier for us to accept that why not say that this power of creation belongs to this this one single reality otherwise how do we explain anything so this was Taco's view really that you can't separate Shakti from Brahman this power has to be there and what is this power the chit chakti this power to project this power to to dwell within to withdraw to pervade everything and to manifest as our own very real self so we can really uh if we if we look at the upanishads and we look at the teachings of sharami Krishna uh where he'll talk about the reality of both nity and Leela will find it very much in keeping with this upanishadic ideal and what we find in the teachings of srama Krishna is that everything that they say about seeing Brahman everywhere this is something that he realized and this is something that he explained is the is the way the vigyani the god realized Soul who comes down from that highest realization this is the way they live in the world this is the way they see they see everything as a manifestation of the Divine and they see God dwelling within each and every being so this is this is the uh essence of the upanishadic teaching which includes all of the beautiful philosophical ideas of the Oneness of the individual soul and the Supreme Soul this all of our uh tatuamasi and everything but also gives this other view of Brahman as a source of everything and uh source of Joy also rasa that this realization of Brahman won't be any dry abstract thing but it will make life joyful and it'll uh it'll bring that ultimate Enlightenment that is the ultimate goal of life so let me stop here and let's sit for a few minutes in quiet meditation thank you foreign [Music] next Sunday is will speak on journey of life and then following Sunday Jeffrey long most of you many of you know him of course he's a professor at one of the universities in Pennsylvania he'll be coming and speak speaking on uh Swami Vivekananda and the four yogas and then following weekend is our big weekend the Silver Jubilee concluding ceremony concluding weekend of this over Jubilee 25th anniversary of our Center and we'll have several visiting swamis and one for Rodger also and we'll send out there will be a whole schedule and everything you should get it within a few days we're just finalizing that but it'll be Swami sorry Swami is and good did I get everybody sorry harmonies yeah I hope they're only six is it seven and there will have been under Neath he shot my hand there anyhow I better make sure I get it right okay so uh we invite everyone to the basement and we have some snacks for everyone thank you foreign