Chapter 3Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad

Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad First Adhyaya aoEmy td rm

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pAsFt aoEmEt

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OM is the syllable (the Imperishable One); one should follow after it as the upward Song (movement); for with OM one sings (goes) upwards; of which this is the analytical explanation. So, literally translated in its double meaning, both its ex- oteric, physical and symbolic sense and its esoteric symbolised reality, runs the initial sentence of the Upanishad. These opening lines or passages of the Vedanta are always of great importance; they are always so designed as to suggest or even sum up, if not all that comes afterwards, yet the central and pervading idea of the Upanishad. The Isha Vasyam of the Vajasaneyi, the Keneshitam manas of the Talavakara, the Sacrificial Horse of the Brihad Aranyaka, the solitary Atman with its hint of the future world vibrations in the Aitareya are of this type. The Chhandogya, we see from its first and introductory sentence, is to be a work on the right & perfect way of devoting oneself to the Brahman; the spirit, the methods, the formulae are to be given to us. Its subject is the Brahman, but the Brahman as symbolised in the OM, the sacred syllable of the Veda; not, therefore, the pure state of the Universal Existence only, but that Existence in all its parts, the waking world & the dream self and the sleeping, the manifest, half-manifest and hidden, Bhurloka, Bhuvar & Swar, — the right means to win all of them, enjoy all of them, transcend all of them, is the subject of the Chhandogya. OM is the symbol and the thing symbolised. It is the symbol, aksharam, the syllable in which all sound of speech is brought back to its wide, pure indeterminate state; it is the symbolised, aksharam, the change- less, undiminishing, unincreasing, unappearing, undying Reality

Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad which shows itself to experience in all the change, increase, diminution, appearance, departure which in a particular sum & harmony of them we call the world, just as OM the pure eternal sound-basis of speech shows itself to the ear in the variations and combinations of impure sound which in a particular sum and harmony of them we call the Veda. We are to follow after this OM with all our souls, up´as´ıta, — to apply ourselves to it and devote ourselves to its knowledge and possession, but always to OM as the Udgitha. Again in this word we have the symbolic sense and the truth symbolised expressed, as in aksharam and OM, in a single vocable with a double function and significance. The Sanscrit has always been a language in which one word is naturally capable of several meanings and therefore carries with it a number of varied associations. It lends itself, therefore, with peculiar ease and naturalness to the figure called slesha or embrace, the marriage of different meanings in a single form of words. Paronomasia in English is mere punning, a tour-de- force, an incongruity, a grotesque and artificial play of humour. Paronomasia, slesha, in Sanscrit, though in form precisely the same thing, is not punning, not incongruous but easily appropri- ate, not grotesque or artificial, but natural and often inevitable, not used for intellectual horseplay, but with a serious, often a high and worthy purpose. It has been abused by rhetorical writers; yet great and noble poetical effects have been obtained by its aid, as, for instance, when the same form of words has been used to convey open blame & cover secret praise. Nevertheless in classical Sanscrit, the language has become a little too rigid for the perfect use of the figure; it is too literary, too minutely grammatised; it has lost the memory of its origins. A sense of cleverness and artifice suggests itself to us because meanings known to be distinct and widely separate are brought together in a single activity of the word which usually suggests them only in different contexts. But in the Vedic slesha we have no sense of cleverness or artifice, because the writers themselves had none. The language was still near to its origins and had, not perhaps an intellectual, but still an instinctive memory of them. With less grammatical and as little etymological knowledge as

Kena and Other Upanishads: Part Two Panini and the other classical grammarians, the Rishis had better possession of the soul of Sanscrit speech. The different meanings of a word, though distinct, were not yet entirely separate; many links yet survived between them which were afterwards lost; the gradations of sense remained, the hint of the word’s history, the shading off from one sense to another. Ardha now means half and it means nothing else. To the Vedic man it carried other associations. Derived from the root ridh which meant originally to go and join, then to add, to increase, to prosper, it bore the sense of place of destination, the person to whom I direct myself, or simply place; increase, also addition, a part added and so simply a part or half. To have used it in any other sense than “place of destination” or as at once “half, part” and “a place of destination” would not be a violence to the Vedic mind, but a natural association of ideas. So when they spoke of the higher worlds of Sacchidananda as Parardha, they meant at once the higher half of man’s inner existence & the param dh´ama or high seat of Vishnou in other worlds and, in addition, thought of that high seat as the destination of our upward movement. All this rose at once to their mind when the word was uttered, naturally, easily and, by long association, inevitably. OM is a word in instance. When the word was spoken as a solemn affirmation, everyone thought of the Pranava in the Veda, but no one could listen to the word OM without thinking also of the Brahman in Its triple manifestation and in Its transcendent being. The word, aksharam, meaning both syllable & unshifting, when coupled with OM, is a word in instance; “OM the syllable” meant also, inevitably, to the Vedic mind “Brahman, who changes not nor perishes”. The words udg´ıtha and udg´ayati are words in instance. In classical Sanscrit the prepositional prefix to the verb was dead and bore only a conventional significance or had no force at all; udg´ayati or prag´ayati is not very different from the simple g´ayati; all mean merely sing or chant. But in Veda the preposition is still living & joins its verb or separates itself as it pleases; therefore it keeps its full meaning always. In Vedanta the power of separation is lost, but the separate force remains. Again the roots g´ı and g´a

Notes on the Chhandogya Upanishad in classical Sanscrit mean to sing and have resigned the sense of going to their kinsman gam; but in Vedic times, the sense of going was still active and common. They meant also to express, to possess, to hold; but these meanings once common to the family are now entrusted to particular members of it, gir, for expression, grih, for holding. G´ath´a, g´ıth´a, g´ana, g´ayati, g´at´a, g´atu, meant to the Vedic mind both going and singing, udg´ıtha meant ascension as well as casting upward the voice or the soul in song. When the Vedic singer said Ud g´ay´ami, the physical idea was that, perhaps, of the song rising upward, but he had also the psychical idea of the soul rising up in song to the gods and fulfilling in its meeting with them and entering into them its expressed aspiration. To show that this idea is not a modern etymological fancy of my own, it is sufficient to cite the evidence of the Chhandogya Upanishad itself in this very chapter where Baka Dalbhya is spoken of as the Udgata of the Naimishiyas who obtained their desires for them by the Vedic chant, ebhya ´ag´ayati k´am´an; so, adds the Upanishad, shall everyone be a “singer to” & a “bringer to” of desires, ´ag´at´a k´am´an´am, who with this knowledge follows after OM, the Brahman, as the Udgitha. This then is the meaning of the Upanishad that OM, the syllable, technically called the Udgitha, is to be meditated on as a symbol of the fourfold Brahman with two objects, the “singing to” of one’s desires & aspirations in the triple manifestation and the spiritual ascension into the Brahman Itself so as to meet and enter into heaven after heaven & even into Its transcendent felicity. For, it says, with the syllable OM one begins the chant of the Samaveda, or, in the esoteric sense, by means of the medita- tion on OM one makes this soul-ascension and becomes master of all the soul desires. It is in this aspect & to this end that the Upanishad will expound OM. To explain Brahman in Its nature & workings, to teach the right worship and meditation on Brahman, to establish what are the different means of at- tainment of different results and the formulae of the meditation and worship, is its purpose. All this work of explanation has to be done in reference to Veda & Vedic sacrifice and ritual of which OM is the substance. In a certain sense, therefore,

Kena and Other Upanishads: Part Two the Upanishad is an explanation of the purpose & symbology of Vedic formulae & ritual; it sums up the results of the long travail of seeking by which the first founders & pioneers of Vedantism in an age when the secret & true sense of Veda had been largely submerged in the ceremonialism & formalism of the close of the Dwapara Yuga, attempted to recover their lost heritage partly by reference to the adepts who still remained in possession of it, partly by the traditions of the great seekers of the past Yuga, Janaka, Yajnavalkya, Krishna and others, partly by their own illuminations and spiritual experience. The Chhandogya Upani- shad is thus the summary history of one of the greatest & most interesting ages of human thought.