An Analysis of the Brahma Sutra - 5.1.- Swami Krishnananda.

 =====================================================================

=======================================================================

Friday, August 12, 2022. 07:00. 

Chapter 5: Towards Liberation :1.

======================================================================

What is birth? All the elements joining together to produce a form. But suppose a person has done immense charitable deeds – the good exceeds the bad – seventy-five percent are immensely good and twenty-five percent are not good, such people will go to the moon after passing and enjoy the nectar of the gods, pitris (forefathers). When the momentum of the good deeds gets exhausted, there will be a coming back from the moon, to rebirth into this world.

There is another interesting feature mentioned in the Chhandogya Upanishad. What happens to the bad deeds which are twenty-five percent? The seventy-five percent has taken the soul to the Chandraloka and it enjoyed blissful experience there and after the exhaustion of the blissful experience there, subsequent to the exhaustion of the momentum of those deeds, there is a reversal, a coming back. Is it that the person is exempted completely from the results of the twenty-five percent bad deeds? No, there is no exemption. The next birth will be determined by the twenty-five percent balance of the karmas.

But suppose you are a devotee of God primarily and not merely a rich person doing charity and building houses and temples, and planting trees on the roadside and digging wells, building choultries etc. – not merely that – but you have been an ardent worshipper of God – such a soul after departing does not go to the moon. Highly purified souls bright in their behaviour, shining in their character, travel through the rays of the sun to the orb of the sun. The rays of the sun are the paths through which the soul travels higher and reaches the Sun. In order to go to the sun, the soul has to be as bright, as powerful, as pure as the Sun. The soul gets purified in Surya Loka (Solar Region).

Surya Upanasa (Sun-worship) is a very important means of sadhana because one day or the other you have to go to the sun, provided you are fit for attaining Moksha. Otherwise, you will go somewhere else and come back; any number of births can take place. The Upanishad goes on describing several stages of ascent. There is no sudden jump into the Supreme Being. The soul crosses through the worlds above, the five elements, the physical embodiment of the fourteen lokas – Bhu-loka, Bhuvar-loka, Suvar-loka, Mahar-loka, Jana-loka, Tapo-loka, up to Satya-loka. It moves direct towards the borderland of the Universal Being – Brahma-loka. The consciousness of individuality is maintained for sometime. The soul knows that it is moving in some direction. But at one point, it loses that consciousness.

The nearer you go to the border of the Universal Being, the less you become conscious of your individuality. You feel at that time that you are withering away and vanishing like a burnt camphor. Yet the individuality in a very rarefied form persists. Only the individuality which is rajasika (distracted) and tamasika (dark) will have a consciousness of itself. Pure sattva-dominated jivatva (individuality) will not be conscious of itself because it will be so transparent then. It is like a clean glass. The glass, if we imagine that glass has consciousness, may not know that it is existing because of the transparency of the glass. The glass attains a transparency of the highest sattva-guna, and loses self-awareness, individual consciousness. At that time, says the Upanishad, the Great Creator sends a messenger. A being who is not human comes and leads the soul along the path of the Supreme Creator. This is the stage of cosmic consciousness but it is not liberation fully, because to have cosmic consciousness there must be some object of which one must be conscious. Thus, it is still a lower stage.

Saguna Brahma Upasana and Nirguna Brahma Upasana are two types of meditation. In the third chapter of the Brahma Sutra, the various types of Upanishadic meditations are described. It is a subject by itself.

To be continued ...

=========================================================================