Notes from the Isha Upanishad

SELF-REALISATION

Brahman is, subjectively, Atman, the Self or immutable existence
of all that is in the universe. Everything that changes in us, mind,
life, body, character, temperament, action, is not our real and unchanging
self, but becomings of the Self in the movement, jagatÈ.
In Nature, therefore, all things that exist, animate or inanimate,
are becomings of the one Self of all. All these different creatures are
one indivisible existence. This is the truth each being has to realise.
When this unity has been realised by the individual in every part
of his being, he becomes perfect, pure, liberated from ego and the
dualities, possessed of the entire divine felicity.


ATMAN

Atman, our true self, is Brahman; it is pure indivisible Being,
self-luminous, self-concentrated in consciousness, self-concentrated
in force, self-delighted. Its existence is light and bliss. It is timeless,
spaceless and free.
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It is the mental ego-sense that creates this distortion by division
and limitation of the Self. The limitation is brought about through
the Kshara Purusha identifying itself with the changeable formations
of Nature in the separate body, the individual life and the egoistic
mind, to the exclusion of the sense of unity with all existence and
with all existences.
This exclusion is a fixed habit of the understanding due to our
past evolution in the movement, not an ineffugable law of human
consciousness. Its diminution and final disappearance are the condition
of self-realisation.
The beginning of wisdom, perfection and beatitude is the vision
of the One.

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Real knowledge begins with the perception of essential oneness,—
one Matter, one Life, one Mind, one Soul playing in many forms.

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We perceive the soul in all bodies to be this one Self or Sachchidananda
multiplying itself in individual consciousness. We see
also all minds, lives, bodies to be active formations of the same existence
in the extended being of the Self.
This is the vision of all existences in the Self and of the Self in
all existences which is the foundation of perfect internal liberty and
perfect joy and peace.
For by this vision, in proportion as it increases in intensity and
completeness, there disappears from the individual mentality all
jugupsÀ, that is to say, all repulsion, shrinking, dislike, fear, hatred
and other perversions of feeling which arise from division and personal
opposition to other beings or to the objectivities that surround
us. Perfect equality1 of soul is established.
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This is the double or synthetic ideal of the Isha Upanishad; to
embrace simultaneously Vidya and Avidya, the One and the Many;
to exist in the world, but change the terms of the Death into the terms
of the Immortality; to have the freedom and peace of the Non-Birth
simultaneously with the activity of the Birth

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There is no possibility of self-delusion (moha); for the soul,
having attained to the perception of the Unknowable behind all existence,
is no longer attached to the Becoming and no longer attributes
an absolute value to any particularity in the universe, as if that were
an object in itself and desirable in itself. All is enjoyable and has a
value as the manifestation of the Self and for the sake of the Self
which is manifested in it, but none for its own.1 Desire and illusion
are removed; illusion is replaced by knowledge, desire by the active
beatitude of universal possession.

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This becomes still clearer if we consider the manifestation of
Sachchidananda. In that manifestation Delight translates itself into
Love; Consciousness translates itself into double terms, conceptive
Knowledge, executive Force; Existence translates itself into Being,
that is to say, into Person and Substance. But Love is incomplete
without a Lover and an object of Love, Knowledge without a Knower
and an object of Knowledge, Force without a Worker and a Work,
Substance without a Person cognising and constituting it.

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