ANNAPURNA SARADA, Friday, August 21, 2015 11:10 am

Discriminating the Self from Nature: Alienation or Mature Renunciation?

In my last post, we discussed dissolving the mindstream using the methodology of Yoga to involute the gross into the subtle, and the subtle into the causal, and finally everything into the Great Self, Brahman-Atman.  This brought forward again a recurring thought I’ve had for several years concerning the importance of the yajnas in ancient Vedic culture and their place in the path of Liberation, and also the result of their disappearance.  Some of this may be considered speculation since I am not exactly a scholar on these matters, but I am certain the reasoning is sound.

The Advaita teachings do not spend time on the daily fire sacrifices that were incumbent on householders in the ancient days.  The Upanisadic truths that are taught today by modern Vedanta teachers also leave out these practices.  No doubt they were very time consuming and suitable for a simpler society, more agricultural than urban.  And certainly, when Vedanta and Advaita Vedanta are presented to Westerners, that part is left behind because we generally have no cultural basis for understanding them and their significance.  Besides, we read in some of the Upanisads that the fire ceremonies were performed for attaining boons here in this life or in heavenly existences.  Those who sought the highest Truth renounced them because they were fraught with karma and bound one to the wheel of birth and death.  Like Nachiketas, we want to know what is beyond all that.  And we all want the highest Truth as Advaitists, yes?  So we renounce them without knowing anything about them.

It was a revelation to me when I first began reading in the Taittiriya and Chandogya Upanisads just what was happening in some of those rituals. In particular, I am referring to the upasanas, the meditations.  Even with commentary, I could not always follow exactly all the significances, but it was clear that these practices were aligning the worshipper with the deities/cosmic forces at more and more subtle levels.  In some cases they were meditating on fire as it appears in the bhutakasha, in the pranakasha, in the chittakasha, etc, though they used different words to express those inner realms.  They meditated on water, on earth, on speech, etc., similarly.  By the time the spirit of true renunciation dawned on these souls, they had mastered the elements, the senses, the mind, and the cosmic forces behind these.  They had mastered them via knowledge of them, and knowledge is never external to oneself. Now they were ready to meditate on Brahman. They saw the limitations of these rituals and recognized their own innate Awareness as greater than all the gross and subtle deified objects they contemplated.  Thus they had explored the path of involution and evolution via these daily fire ceremonies with their meditations/upasanas in the spirit of worship and increasing kinship with the deities. 

Beautiful, isn’t it?  I find it thrilling.  Their culminating renunciation of Nature was truly via deification of it.  And part of the legacy they left us with is the idea of Nirguna Brahman and Saguna Brahman: Brahman without attributes, beyond the Gunas, and Brahman with attributes, with the Gunas.  All is Brahman.  Thus, their renunciation saw nothing separate from the Self.

Contrast that with how we are practicing today.  Most Westerners are taught to renounce desire, renounce the senses, renounce sense objects, renounce Nature – all without learning what these consist of and how they proceed from the mind, cosmically, collectively, and individually.  Or, if we are taught that they originate in the mind, we think that is a foul thing, and still do not comprehend cosmic, collective, individual.  This results in alienation from Nature and an inharmonious relation (as in sense of separation) with objects, people, and circumstances.  Yes, truly the Self is completely untouched by Nature and cause and effect, etc. But only when one has realized that, will one’s actions be in harmony naturally.  Along the way to that realization, we must gain knowledge and understand our association with Nature at all levels.  Granted, this is not the only way of proceeding, but it is comprehensive. 

But, who has time for the ancient way of those rituals?  This is where Yoga methodology comes in.  The very process of contemplating the 24 Cosmic Principles as alambanas, objects for meditation, can provide much of what the ancients gained via fire ceremonies.  Patanjali teaches the different ways to meditate on each one via:

Its origin

Its qualities, attributes, characteristics

Its consistency and content

Its appearance in waking and dream

Its changing nature

Its place in the mind and thoughts

Its power and hold over the mind

Its disappearance in deep sleep

Beginners, and particularly Westerners, may need to guard against practicing this mechanically and without reverence or love for the Divine Reality/Consciousness that manifests simultaneously through oneself and the cosmic principles – not a love that desires, but ultimately that Love which is the absence of all desires. What kind of harmony or unity is there without this Love as its basis? As long as we are still mastering and practicing involution of the Twenty-four Cosmic Principles or the gross, subtle, and causal states, we are in Ishvara/Ishvari’s (Cosmic Lord or Mother) realm of projection, preservation, and dissolution.  Those are Her cosmic powers and they are planted within us if we but look for them and recognize how they are operating automatically as waking, dream, and deep sleep, and consciously in the practice of meditation.  These practices will reveal our inherent identity with the Cosmic Mother/Lord, or Saguna Brahman, if one prefers.  With Love the universe is projected outward, and in Love it is tucked back into the Cosmic Chest of Drawers, as my teacher puts it. The Cosmic Being gains nothing and loses nothing in either process, as Sri Krishna states in the Gita about His “work.” Becoming familiar with both processes, and recognizing our individual consciousness as one with the Cosmic Being (i.e. transcending individual and collective consciousness to cosmic awareness) prepares us to transcend all processes.

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