{"id":673,"date":"2013-07-13T01:29:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=673"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:29:37","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:29:37","slug":"39-ishavasyam-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/01-sabcl\/12-the-upanishad-volume-12\/39-ishavasyam-vol-12-the-upanishad-volume-12","title":{"rendered":"-39_Ishavasyam.htm"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n
\n


\n
\nIshavasyam<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\nT<\/span>HE
\n<\/span><\/b>Isha Upanishad in its very inception goes straight
\nto the root of the problem the Seer has set out to resolve; he starts at once
\nwith the two supreme terms of which our existence seems to be composed and in a
\nmonumental phrase, cast with the bronze of eight brief but sufficient words, he
\nconfronts them and sets them in their right and eternal relation.
\nĪśāvāsyamidam sarvam yat ki\u00f1ca jagatyām jagat<\/i>. Isha and Jagat, God and
\nNature, Spirit and World, are the two poles of being between which our
\nconsciousness revolves. This double or biune reality is existence, is life, is
\nman. The Eternal seated sole in all His creations occupies the ever-shifting
\nuniverse and its innumerable whorls and knots of motion, each called by us an
\nobject, in all of which one Lord is multitudinously the Inhabitant. From the
\nbrilliant suns to the rose and the grain of dust, from the God and the Titan in
\ntheir dark or their luminous worlds to man and the insect that he crushes
\nthoughtlessly under his feet, everything is His temple and mansion. His is the
\nveiled deity in the temple, the open householder in the mansion; for Him and His
\nenjoyment of the multiplicity and the unity of His being, all were created and
\nthey have no other reason for their existence. For habitation by the Lord is all
\nthis, everything whatsoever that is moving thing in her that moves.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThe problem of a perfect life upon earth, a life free from
\nthose ills of which humanity seems to be the eternal and irredeemable prisoner
\nand victim, can only be solved, in the belief of the Vedantins, if we go back to
\nthe fundamental nature of existence; for there alone can we find the root of the
\nevil and the truth of the remedy. They are here in the two words Isha and Jagat.
\nThe inhabitant is the Lord; in this truth, in the knowledge of it by our minds,
\nin the realisation of it by our whole nature and being is the way of escape for
\nthe victim of evil, the prisoner of limitation and death. On the other hand.
\nNature is a fleeting and inconstant motion preserved by the harmonious fixity of
\nthe laws<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 524<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\n which governs her particular motions. This subjection and
\n inconstancy of Nature is the secret of our bondage, death, limitation and suffering.
\n We who entangle ourselves in the modalities of Nature must realise, if we would
\n escape from her confounding illusion, the other pole of our existence, unqualified
\n Spirit or God. By rising to the God within us we become free and stand liberated
\n from the bondage of the world and the snare of death. For God is freedom. God
\n is immortality. Mr<\/i><\/span>̣<\/span>tyum
\n tīrtvā amr<\/span>̣<\/span>tam
\n aśnute. <\/span> <\/i> Crossing
\n over death, w^ enjoy immortality.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis relation of Nature and Spirit, World and God, on which
\nthe Seer fixes. Nature the mansion. God the occupant, is their practical not
\ntheir essential relation. Conscious existence is Brahman, single and
\nindivisible. Spirit and Nature, World and God are one; anejadekam manaso
\njavīyah<\/i><\/span>̣<\/span><\/i>, \u2014 they are
\nOne unmoving swifter than mind. But for life whether bound or free and for the
\nmovement from bondage to freedom, this One must always be conceived as a double
\nor biune term in which God is the reverse side of Nature, Nature the obverse
\nside of God, our conscious existence. The distinction has been made by Spirit
\nitself in its own being for the object which the Seer expresses in the single
\nword vāsyam<\/i>; God has thrown out His own being in the spatial and temporal
\nmovement of the Universe, building up forms in His mobile, extended
\nself-consciousness which He conceives as different from His still and eternal,
\noccupying and enjoying self-consciousness, so that He as soul, the subject, may
\nhave an objective existence which it can regard, occupy and enjoy, the
\nhouseholder of its self-mansion, the God of its self-temple, the King of its
\nself-empire. In this cosmic relation of Spirit to Nature the word Isha expresses
\nthe perfected and abso\u00adlute freedom, eternally uninfringed with which the Spirit
\nenvisages the object and occupies its kingdom. The World is not a material shell
\nin which Spirit is bound nor is Spirit a roving breath of things ensnared, to
\nwhich the object it inspires is a prison-house. The indwelling God is the Lord
\nof His creations and not their servant or prisoner; as a householder is lord of
\nhis dwelling-places to enter them and go forth from them at his will and to pull
\ndown what he has built up whenever it ceases to<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 525<\/span><\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n

\nplease him or be serviceable to his needs, so the Spirit is
\nfree to enter or go forth from its bodies and has power to build, destroy and
\nrebuild whatever it pleases in this universe. The very universe itself It is
\nfree at any moment to destroy and recreate. God is not bound; He is the entire,
\nfree and unopposed master of His creations.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nThis word ‘Isha’, the Lord is placed designedly at the
\nopening of this great strain of Vedantic thought to rule as with a master-tone
\nall its rhythms. It is the key to everything that follows in the eighteen verses
\nof the Upanishad. Not only does it contradict all mechanical theories of the
\nUniverse and assert the pre-existence, omnipotence, majesty and freedom of the
\ntran\u00adscendent Soul of things within, but by identifying the Lord of the universe
\nwith the Spirit in all bodies, it asserts the greatness, freedom and secret
\nomnipotence of the soul of man that seems here to wander thus painfully
\nentangled and bewildered. Behind all the veils of his nature, the soul in man
\nalso is master, not slave, not bound but free. Grief, death and limitation are
\ninstru\u00adments of some activity it is here to fulfil for its own delight, and the
\nman is not bound to his instruments; he can modify them, he can reject, he can
\nchange. If, then, we appear as though bound, by the fixed nature of our minds
\nand bodies, by the nature of the visible universe, by the dualities of grief and
\njoy, pleasure and pain, by the chain of cause and effect or by any other chain,
\nshackle or tie whatsoever, the bondage is a semblance and can be nothing more.
\nIt is Maya, a willed illusion of bondage, or it is Lila, a self-chosen play at
\nbondage. Like a child pretending to be this or that and identifying itself with
\nits role, the Purusha, this divine inhabitant within, may seem to forget his
\nfreedom, but even when he forgets, the freedom is still there, self-existent,
\ntherefore inalienable. Never lost except in appearance, it is recoverable even
\nin appearance. The game of the world-existence is not a game of bondage alone,
\nbut equally of freedom and the liberation from bondage.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n <\/p>\n

\n(<\/span>Incomplete<\/span><\/i>)<\/span> \n<\/p>\n

\n
\nPage \u2013 526<\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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