Miscellaneous - Religion   

The spiritual quest

CHENNAI: The Absolute Self (Brahman) is the cause of all existence and also the one who directs all beings from within as the indwelling Self (Atman). But ignorance blinds an individual about his true nature and so the self-identity of a person is with the body, mind and the intellect. Spiritual quest involves negating all these layers of the human personality to discover the Self within and this can be realised only when the ignorance responsible for this wrong identification is dispelled through Self-knowledge.

In his discourse, Sri Mani Dravid Sastrigal said the Kena Upanishad began with Self-enquiry by a spiritual seeker questioning who directed the senses and the mind. The Upanishads resort to an analysis of the human personality to teach a spiritual aspirant and by a gradual elimination of the non-Self reveal the Self within. To this seeker the Guru answered: “Since He is the Ear of the ear, the Mind of the mind, the Speech of the speech, the Life of life, and the Eye of the eye, therefore the intelligent men, after giving up (self-identification with the senses) and renouncing the world, become immortal.” The preceptor is driving home the truth that the Self within is eternal which the seeker must realise by way of eliminating all identifications with the body-mind-intellect and the life force (Prana). But the manner in which he described the Self as the “Ear of the ear” and so on may be confounding for a beginner. This way of expression is resorted to because the Self is both the witness to the functioning of all these faculties and also the one who makes all of them act.

The predicament that arises while teaching spiritual knowledge is the Self’s indescribability. Preceptors down the ages have handled this by conveying at some point the impossibility of teaching it like any other knowledge and that the Self has to be experienced. This Upanishad states this as, “The eye does not go there, nor speech, nor mind. We do not know (Brahman to be such and such); hence we are not aware of any process of instructing about It.” Then the Guru began the teaching saying that Brahman is different from the known, and It is above the unknown.

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